Fandom: 囀る鳥は羽ばたかない/ Saezuru tori wa habatakanai / Twittering Birds Never Fly
Title: glittering emptiness.
Pairing: Ryuuzaki x Yashiro
Rating: PG-13
Description: Nineteen-year-old Yashiro visits Ryuuzaki on a Sunday afternoon…
Disclaimer: Yoneda Kou-sensei's the owner of this fabulous manga.
At this time,
what are you thinking of?
At that time,
even if I could reach you,
where have you disappeared off to?
In an hourglass of sand…
Just flowing like going towards the ocean to drown,
my heart breaks.
Yet it's still here.
The person I've been waiting for
because they cannot go there,
I wave goodbye.
My preferences are always changing because
the seasons do too.
Yet again, I am still here.
Time doesn't move for me.
Slipping on handcuffs,
imprisoned by following other's mannerisms…
…what do I do now?
glittering emptiness.
by Miyamoto Yui
"Yes…that feels good…"
I laid my head back more onto the familiar floor, the stifling air pressing onto me as much as his body does over mine. Rocking in motion, my fingertips push into the wood, desperately scraping for something to hold onto since he refused to tie my wrists.
Why is this more excruciating though?
"Ah…AH~…" My chin points upwards as I try to swallow him more into me. I almost want to feel it as far as my stomach, filling me with what I'll never beg for.
To embrace without being embraced…
People who don't know, they won't ever get it. This guilt without committing a crime.
And those who know, we fall backwards into extremes with both arms out. Especially with our preference for that. Because it wasn't a thing, I need to trap it with the right circumstances. Otherwise, it's a waste of time and I can't feel good.
However, I'll vomit if the sweetness goes beyond the parameters of what my flesh can take.
Whip, belt, flogger, hand, nail, cigarette, knife, whatever I'll experiment on…
My pain will only be skin deep. Whenever I look at the mirror, the more blood or blueish-purple marks inside my reflected image remind me that I'm still conscious.
That I could 'feel' something as far as that.
Nothing else seems to work.
The simulated violence becomes addicting. Your mind thinks your body needs it, but actually, you've become numb. After all, the body has this uncanny way of healing itself even if your mind repeatedly keeps getting shattered. It's funny that those chipped pieces can become fine pieces of sand…
…and yet they can still be killed as you watch with both eyes wide open.
Many times, I've smashed them all by myself, my fists bleeding into tiny scars. With so many complicated steps to heaven, these are my disguised layers of hell.
"Why do you never…ah…break me…oh…even though I ask you to? NNGH~!" My fingernails scratch against the floor.
"You're awfully *huff* verbal today *huff*."
Pushing as far as he can go, his rhythm increases as he sits up with his overlapping thighs lightly pushing on mine. Pressing onto the floor, the fingers of his left hand almost touch mine as he grabs onto me and my shoulders lift in response. I struggle to breathe.
Moaning, I happen to look up to see him looking with unwavering eyes.
Why are you watching me like that?
I flinch as he suddenly leans over to bite my left nipple as if he'll rip it off.
"Yes…harder…" I hoarsely order. "Oh~!"
Drifting among the 'normal', I became another being who wanted contact, but didn't want to be touched. Kageyama was all right as long as I didn't return the favor.
Fetish or sympathy, I could relate to both. I wasn't called slut for nothing. I didn't need money for I could accept what others were willing to give, whatever the amount.
The only stipulation was that I chose was with who.
And then I came here.
/Without being exposed, I either had a high tolerance for pain or a low threshold for pity once I let myself go. If ever.
For I deftly separated my selves with incision-like precision to control the aching numbness.
There were questions I wanted to ask him, but that would've lead to more questionable things (or answers to be demanded of which I had no explanation for). I was comfortable from a distance. Maybe I was turned on that he had no interest in me, exposing the abuse I wasn't really ashamed of but didn't want to deal with society's collective scrutiny over my body and my own choices.
Before I came conscious of Kageyama, I never had possession of my body or options. I didn't know I held the power of choice, limited as it may have been. Or was it another way for me to survive?
"For what?"
What was freedom anyway but a space? Somewhere your mind could live, another where your body would feel gratified and safe, and a place your heart could feel to its widest extent, a net capturing everything that could be caught inside it and letting go of what was unnecessary.
Or you go berserk cutting the rope because you couldn't handle it anymore, unaware you've already lost everything.
Even the important things you were trying to save.
I went to the roof and lay on the ground ready to nap. With no appetite, I stared into the blue nothingness. No clouds, just a palette of baby blue watercolor.
"I don't even have the strength to reach out for it."
The fields were filled with shouting of indistinct sports chants and colorful cheering. Conversations floated up in between buildings as keyword snippets, girls with secrets of a new diet or how many dates they were able to collect and boys hungry to eat or plan for kiss attacks, exchanging critiques on either manga or models or both (depending on the yet-to-be confiscated weekly illustrated magazines).
I wasn't sure if I should've been disturbed or pleased, but I felt nothing.
As empty as the sky above me.
To understand, I mirrored many things without meaning, a screen of 'passable' mannerisms to sift through my everyday life.
"You've stopped coming to the infirmary." Kageyama sat next to me and immediately took out his lunch, eating voraciously.
"Well…"
Noticing I had nothing on me, he questioned, "Aren't you going to eat?"
"Naw. I don't feel like it. I wanted to nap but…"
"Have things gotten better?" He put his chopsticks down to poke his thumb at his favorite scar on my body. It was over the right side of my stomach where the crispness deeply contrasted the smooth flesh.
As he rubbed on it through my shirt, I took a deep breath but my face was as a blank as ever.
"Better…"
Walking between a question or statement, I could have fallen off my personal wire act so easily./
I think of Kageyama's touch as he's about to finish.
Fluttering between past memory and present consciousness, I feel the latent presence of disappointment. His feelings translate into me the further and faster he pushes himself inside.
When he comes, I sip the air as our index fingers touch one another.
"Where are you right now?" his gaze begs while his closed lips make a perturbed line.
Pulling my jaw, he glimpses at something I don't want others to know...
No one needs me.
And no matter how much you may want to enter, the more I close myself off. Even Kageyama…I don't know why he stays with me.
And you…
I wonder why I feel so vexed. This isn't what I want.
Never sleep with someone who'll feel for you.
I don't know how to open myself anymore…
You're waiting for no one. The soul who lives here cannot sustain itself.
Ryuuzaki gets off me.
+/+/+/+/+/
After washing out my hair in the sink, I pat myself dry with a small towel. Giving me a new set of clothes, I change into a white t-shirt and black flowy pants with white stripes on them.
Alone in the office, it becomes another Sunday afternoon where he's staring at me while sitting backwards on a chair with a cigarette between his fingers.
"Yes?" I pull on the pants string and tie a knot. "Spill it."
"You're so not cute, brat." He shakes his head and takes another puff.
"When would I ever think that?" I tilt my head, smiling provocatively at him.
He looks like he doesn't believe me, that I haven't seen myself in the mirror. I had. I saw nothing special.
What is beauty anyway? I don't need my body.
So why stare?
I begin to laugh.
Surprised, he empties some ashes into the ashtray. "What's so funny?"
"Your sympathy is making me sick."
"Uncomfortable, isn't it?" He smirks and leans his chin on his arm over the chair, lifting up his cigarette a bit.
Pinch.
I know better than provoke him while he has the upper hand, and so I open the windows even though he's scolding me not to do so. Listlessly, I stare upwards at the cloudy ickiness. There's no breeze to comfort me right now.
"You never go farther though I tell you to hurt me more."
Like wine glasses clinking together in my head, I become more aware of why I keep coming back here, to this place along with my own space of loneliness. Of why I particularly watch him when I close my eyes when they're all on me, the stimulants of my pleasure bombarding all my senses, but one.
I always keep my eyes open when facing you, Ryuuzaki.
He smashes his cigarette and gets up to go over lists and other documents that need to be passed to their boss later on. Without a word, I take my things in a plastic bag and leave.
The echo of my shoes loudly pounds itself into the tile floors.
What is love anyway? Requirements. Tests. Borderlines people make for their checklist of ingredients. I never fit any of those categories.
I wouldn't know where to begin.
And that's where I shut down.
If you attach to something, it lodges itself into your consciousness, taking over territories of your own perusal or disposal.
Attachment starts with an inkling of interest, whether instigated or voluntary.
But sometimes, you don't know you'll like it until you're forced to. It takes too much energy, too much effort to hold on to something. And if by chance it's a parasite attached to you, your first instinct is to fight or kill it to save your ego.
Yes, in that sense, this concept of 'love' is a senseless killing of ourselves given to another we deem worthy.
How ironic. Again, it's just another set of requirements.
I happen to view the sky as soon as I get onto the street and there he's smoking again while languidly hanging out the window. He doesn't see me because he's also absorbing the grayness. Before he notices me, I decide to go the opposite direction of my apartment.
Mendoukusai…
I don't need that glittering emptiness.
"I'm going to burn these clothes when I get back."
Owari. / The End.
Mendoukusai – Troublesome, bothersome.
8/28/2021 8:45:18 PM – Los Angeles
8/29/2021 12:45:18 PM – Tokyo