The Kids from yesterday
"Come," he said as he took his hand, guiding him.
"Where are you taking me?" He asked between laughs while he groped his way still with the blindfold on. "I'm going to fall!"
"You're not going to fall, don't be a fool. You just have to trust me." He squeezed his hand tightly and kept walking in the dark.
"Here it is," he heard him cheerfully. "You can take off the bandage."
When he discovered his eyes, he only saw the infinite sky starred. Without a satellite in sight, without a helicopter, without the glassy reflection of the dome standing between them, only thousands of incandescent lights.
" What do you think?" He was interested. He couldn't shut his mouth.
"It's beautiful," he whispered amidst the stupor, "I didn't know you could see stars on this side of the dome ... How did you find it?"
"I usually come here when I don't want to think," he replied, also looking at the sky.
When his gaze filled with melancholy made him sad, he knew that he would never be able to fully understand how great his unhappiness was in the middle of a huge and sometimes sterile city.
He brought his hand close to his until his fingers brushed; first shyly and then decisively; interwinding tightly in the silence.
He was also afraid; of the future, of what awaited them in a city segregated by surnames and social position.
An apparently perfect city, where you couldn't feel sadness, or anxiety, or doubt; where he could not be at his side freely.
He knew that as soon as they were discovered there would be a scandal. His mother would cry and his father would see him as a shame, as a danger to his position and as the end of his family.
He was about to say something when his hands cradled his face and he felt his lips on his.
"I didn't bring you to be sad," he said.
"Sorry," he replied with a tremulous smile. "I just got carried away by my thoughts."
"I don't want you to think about tomorrow," he read his thoughts "or what will happen if they discover us, or what your family will do… We'll take care of that tomorrow or someday."
He had a knack for making him feel calm and shutting down his insecurities for just a little while.
"But ... "He hesitated "We can't be like this forever ... the day will come when I ..."
"Let's not talk about it for now," he pressed his forehead to his and he could detail the amber of his eyes and feel the warmth of his hands between his. "Stay with me now and we'll see tomorrow. What do you say, Ritsu?"
"Okay," he whispered, closing his eyes to kiss him.
"So what do you think?" She asked at the end of the presentation.
Ritsu looked at the screen trying to put himself together before giving an answer that was incorrect or unexpected. The unfortunate thing about his daydreams was to regain the thread of reality.
"Can we see this again tomorrow?" He replied. "There are several points that haven't been clear to me."
"Which ones?" She asked again. "We can go back to review the points where you have doubts ..."
"All of them." He broke into an exhausted sigh and everyone around him looked disappointed at the apparent apathy. "I am very sorry, I really want us to present the best we can."
The climate of tension around him only grew denser and began to weigh on his back.
"You know what?" The girl next to him smiled gently. "Let's get some rest. It's been a long day and maybe we need to clear our minds to go over it again. I promise you that our boss will be at his full potential by then."
Everyone at the table gathered their things and left the room. Some just said goodbye to her.
"Thank you, An" he said sincerely as soon as everyone left. She sighed.
"I wish it didn't happen so often." She handed him a glass of water and sat across from him. "Ritsu ... Is there something you haven't told me? Something that causes this yet again?"
An was a sweet and good woman; Ritsu knew how lucky he had been to find her, and how little he deserved her as a friend, assistant or fiancé.
"A citation from the security department arrived this morning," he breathed out in resignation. "They want to ask me again about the radio transmission on the panoramic road."
"Again?" She exclaimed angrily "But we already told them that we don't know how they do it. We have checked every carrier and every transmitter in this city."
"I didn't want to worry you." He patted her shoulder to comfort her. "Tomorrow I'll go and talk to Asahina. I hope now this situation is clarified once and for all."
"I'll go home to rest." He got up from the table. "Again I'm sorry about today and thank you so much for saving me again. Tomorrow you'll have my full attention, I promise."
"Ritsu ... Are you sure that is the only thing that has you like this?" She asked, "It seemed that you were thinking of something else."
"It was just that, don't worry about me anymore." He took her hand and stroked it. "See you at home."
"Okay," She smiled sympathetically. "See you at home."
Ritsu hated lying to her, but telling her the truth was even worse. How could he look her in the face and openly admit he was thinking of him? That his thoughts always revolved around him, that from that day he lived trapped in the memory.
When he left the building, he took the panoramic road and drove to the park. Since they had been separated, it was where he ran away when he was sad, or felt too trapped in the past.
Droplets began to fill the windshield and he remembered why there was such a hurry to approve the broadcasts of the season.
As it rained inside the dome, the drought worsened outside, so it was necessary to distract people from the protests that could be generated in the border area.
There were also gangs who robbed service stations; possibly they would come more frequently. Ritsu had mixed feelings for them; what they were doing was not right, but what other way did they have to survive?
He wondered if he was starving or cold in the shelters… possibly he would have already died alone and ill.
He wiped the tears away with his hand before accelerating.
When he got to the lookout, people were leaving, covering their heads in the direction of the parking lot or public transport stops. Ritsu opened the umbrella and advanced in the opposite direction, towards the entrance of the park.
He was no longer going up the steep dirt road like when he was a teenager and he helped him; now he took the paved road where the skyscrapers could be seen.
He reached the last station and sat in the gazebo. Today there would be no clear sky full of stars like that day. In their place were precast clouds that kept everyone from dying of thirst.
Ritsu sometimes wondered if as a last act of rebellion he left the dome to look for him, or appear in a television broadcast telling people to look at the stars while they could; or showing those films that he himself decreed to be banned because they spoke of freedom, sexuality and insurgency. Words that had been demonized years ago to prohibit people from thinking for themselves.
He wondered if the professor who had deserted the city had noticed.
He pulled a black mechanical pencil from his jacket; the only memory he had of him. They had exchanged them at school when they met; and since then he always kept it with him, to anchor himself in that happy childhood under the park sun or in the solitude of his room where he taught him to kiss and caress him.
"So many years ago since then," he whispered, tears running down his face, "... and it still hurts like the first day, Masamune."