author's note: written for aph rare pair week 2017, day 1 ~ day 7 prompts
零、
物の哀れ
【 mono no aware 】
the awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō),
or transience of things,
a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing,
a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.
一、
She sends him pressed flowers, never the live, blooming ones.
The first time Japan receives pressed flowers from Taiwan was a little after 1988, the first time he met with her after her martial law ended. She had sent a note with it, too, her Japanese scrawled in rounded, neat but messy handwriting. She wrote, they reminded me of you , and that was all it said.
It bothered him, for a time, that she, who is so vibrant, would only send him desaturated, lifeless things. He kept every one of them, trying to find a meaning, a message, anything in those flat and dried flow.
When she found out that he had kept her pressed flowers in an album, each one meticulously labeled with the date and name of the plant, she smiled in a way that made him want to take it and press it in between the pages of a beloved book and keep it forever.
He understands now.
She sends him pressed flowers, and he, in return, sends her some, too— cherry blossoms she loves, plum blossoms he cherishes, sharp red maple leaves and golden ginkgo leaves and more.
Live flowers wilt easy; pressed flowers bloom forever.
二、
She is a little in love with his voice nowadays.
Not his obnoxious, loud pissed drunk karaoke singing voice, of course. From the blurry bits and pieces she can still remember, it is very much less than pretty and takes on a traditional nōh tone.
His usual voice, however, is music. It reminds Taiwan of the cello theme from Departures . She likes how it reminds her of the evening autumn breeze and the steam over a cup of green tea and the ocean when it is calm, and blue, and clear. She loves how much softer it is now in comparison to when his voice was like the bloodstained steel of his katana .
It's a shame Japan does not sing more, but she wouldn't ask of him to.
She herself likes to hum to herself as she works, whistle as she walks— no, dance. There is a little dance in her every movement. Her life and very existence might be getting harder, but she has the freedom to dance, to hope, to live before the (hopefully) unthinkable day she may be forced to surrender who she is.
Yet, she loves his voice because it is different in how it makes her want to still in her dance, slow as how water can erode rocks.
Perhaps this is why she likes to voice call him as often as possible. She likes his voice objectively, and she likes hearing it. Maybe she even misses him a little, sometimes, occasionally.
It's 2 a.m., and she shouldn't be awake. It's 3 a.m. for him, and he's probably staying up the whole night.
Half-asleep, she asks him to sing for her through a yawn.
He obliges.
三、
He wonders if she remembers him.
Before she was ever Taiwan, before Holland ever set his sights on her, before China ever thought her to be of any value, Japan had been the one who wanted her. 1592, 1609, 1619— he, as a hot-blooded teenager still smarting from a defeat, had tried to make her a tribute to him. He had wanted her before anyone else did.
He remembers her eyes, brown like the earth that promises to raise thousand-year cypresses, wild and defiant. She was much younger then, asavage child, feet as quick as a deer and gaze as fierce as a cloud leopard.
Despite his frustration, he had found her fascinating and had given her the name Takasago, 高砂 . Sometimes he still calls her that in his mind. It suits her better, to be named after the tall mountains of her spine. A stronger, more powerful name than her other ones.
But this is his name for her, and she would not have any other name than her own.
"What were you like growing up?" His surprise subdues. It's a question more suited for China to answer, perhaps, but he knows they don't talk, and he doesn't trust his former mentor to tell her the true story. "Somehow, I can't imagine you ever being young."
"I was, once," he smiles, it is an indulgent smile for a difficult question. "We all had to be." His voice has an edge of playfulness when he says, "You're still young."
Although it is clear he is avoiding her question, she does not pursue his answer. Taiwan shakes her head with a chuckle, "No, I feel as if I had always been old."
And it's true.
She was born in a time where the world was changing rapidly, expanding as far as a map on sails. Time passed even more quickly in the twentieth century, making it feel like a thousand years in a century. He has never had to go through one colonizer to another, martial law of nearly four decades, the pain of never being recognized as her own being. In some ways, she has had to grow up in ways he never had to.
She is far from a child or an adolescent, no matter what China says.
He takes her hand in his tentatively, trading a thumb over the lack of wrinkles on the back of her hand.
"You know we're not meant to have childhoods, Takasago ," he murmurs.
Different memories surface in their minds.
They mourn the same thing.
四、
History is taboo for the them.
They, who had once been the colonizer and the colony.
Fifty years of taboo between them.
Japan doesn't like to think about it. Granted, she was best colony— by comparison, the best treated, too. When he does think of their history, he'd prefer to think of it in a faded golden haze where he had brought her (dragged her by the hair) to modernization and had been a fair, if not strict, ruler. Some of it is true, perhaps.
He'd just rather not contemplate the shadows.
Fifty years she had been his while he had been an empire of the sun, and now she, in all her history, their history, is the one so blinding he cannot bear to look her in the eye.
Taiwan has had years of house arrest— spelled as m-a-r-t-i-a-l l-a-w— to reflect upon their history, and who he was, and who she was, and how did she become who she is now because of it.
History shapes them, but she knows it doesn't define them, not really. She wants to move forward. She can't, not with him still carrying it with him like a cursed ghost.
Decades of silence, of repressing your voice, teach you that speaking is precious. She wants to talk about history, now, because she can.
She can understand why he'd rather not remember history: the atrocities he committed nor why— no matter how unfathomable now— he was so capable right of it, though.
But that doesn't mean she thinks him any less of a coward for it.
五、
She stands before Yue Lao (月老), the old man under the moon, the eternal matchmaker. It is said that he is the one who pairs unmarried individuals and seals their fate, their inevitable marriage, with a red string.
Taiwan is almost sure his powers do not work for personifications, pseudo-gods of a land and its peoples, but she prays to him, nonetheless. If not for herself, then for her people to find their partners and reproduce because heavens know she can feel her fertility rate dropping.
It's a little silly, but she still asks for guidance on love whenever there is a statue of Yue Lao . This time she isn't sure because she has brought a visitor with her.
She senses Japan's presence more than she hears his footsteps.
"This is… Yue Lao? "
The red strings in the old man's wooden carved hands are a clear enough indication of who he is. She nods to confirm.
"We have something similar," he comments idly, moving the both of them out of the way for a young woman who has come to pray to the god of marriage.
"Musubi-no-kami (結びの神), right?" She grins, "The one that appears as a handsome young man and gives girls cherry blossom branches as a promise of future love?"
He knows her well enough to recognize the gleam in her eyes and stops her before she can make a cheeky, vaguely dirty quip with, "Cherry blossoms and red strings— poetic, don't you think?"
She pouts, just a little, but agrees. She does not say that neither are gods who would answer them. She still makes sure they both pay their respect to the god before they leave.
When they are walking back to her apartment, she swears she sees an old man with a long, cloudlike beard standing under the moonlight. Recognition without name settles in her stomach as she stops.
Japan frowns a little at the empty street Taiwan is so fixated on.
The old man extends a hand at them. She watches as a red string shoots out, weaving and wrapping around them, as intricate as the things that bind them. With a flick of his hand, the red string are cherry blossom petals swept away by a sudden gust of wind.
There is no one under the moon when she looks again.
"What is it?" Japan asks quietly. He knows she can see beyond this world, the way he also once did.
She shakes her head lightly.
There is no red string tying their fates, but she thinks that their joined hands is a good enough tether for now.
六、
He watches her sleep.
Most of the time, it's unintentional: Taiwan falls asleep easily, earlier than he does, and he has long been awake before she wakes up naturally.
There is a soft haze of dreaming in the air. Japan is not one to feel emotions deeply; they more often creep up on him, settle over his heart like a gauze of mist.
Affection is a rare emotion for him, even rarer in action, but it's fine to indulge in the feeling when the world is shut outside and he's the only one awake in the universe. He brushes a few strands of hair from her face, allows his fingertips to linger on her cheek.
She spreads out in her sleep, stretched over his bed as if she owns it, one leg haphazardly thrown over him and a foot dangling off the edge. There's the barest hint of a snore in her breath, and her mouth is slightly parted, a bit of saliva glinting at a corner. She is not a pretty sleeper, butadorable comes to his mind.
Moments like this almost make him wish he could adore her the way she sleeps: without a care.
He presses a feather-light kiss to her forehead, not quite melancholic, just a bit sweet.
Her brows crunch.
She snuggles closer, seeking warmth in the crook of his neck. He hides a smile in her hair and fists his hands in her shirt. Her breath steadied against his collarbone, and he wonders if she can hear his heart in her sleep.
Tonight is a dreamless night. He'll hold her close til dawn.
七、
With spring, it's the cherry blossoms. Japan sends her many, many pictures of them, sometimes a few pressed ones. He doesn't have to keep going to all these cherry blossom parks just to send her pictures, and she'd sometimes wonder if he tires of them, but he does. It's always tempting to just fly over for a weekend to enjoy the sights. She suspects he sends her all those photos of his cherry blossoms (and, of course, food) to subtly nudge her into visiting him. She doesn't mind.
In the summer, she's usually the one inviting him over. Summer is when Taiwan is in her element, she has the southern sun in her blood. Even if Japan does not do well with the heat, he'd still go with her to the southernmost beaches. If there's more time, she would've liked to take him on a road trip all the way down. If there isn't, she's always happy to scare him a little with her driving skills and speed on the scooter as she takes them to a back alley ice shop.
The autumn always reminds her of him. What a quiet, sad, and lovely season it is. Not that her autumn is comparable to his, where the maple leaves turn blood red and the ginkgo leaves gold. Her autumn is more of the echoes of summer than its own season. Somehow, it's when they don't to meet up so often as other seasons. Autumn is for themselves. Yet, there are a lot more texting and phone calls and video calls too. She lets herself miss him a little, in autumn.
Winter shouldn't be so warm, but Taiwan is fine with it: she is still not used to the cold. There are many occasions in winter for her to see Japan. Christmas is romantic. Even if he isn't, she still thinks he is when he surprises her with a visit. New Year is difficult, but he always sends her congratulations an hour earlier. Sometimes she wants to escape, and they get pissed drunk at a karaoke bar on Lunar New Year. Winters aren't so cold when his hands are warm to hold.
To a personification, seasons are as fleeting as a moment. Time stretches long for them, slow as the beating heart of their planet. There are birds flying overhead, sparrows. The wind is still.
Taiwan closes her eyes, looking forward to many more seasons to come.