Chapter Ten
[Mikagami Tokiya]
The moment I woke up I had a bad feeling. I sat up in bed, and ran a hand through my hair, looking over to the mirror on my left.
Aargh. I was right.
Bad hair day!!
It was not proper to enter her room, so I waited for her to emerge, using the time to have a bath and straighten out the kinks in my hair. It was late morning by the time she awoke, surprisingly late, but she had been so exhausted the night before, so I suppose I could understand why.
"Breakfast?" I asked.
She gave a little sniff. "No." Then, softer, "no, thank you."
I shrugged. "Do you like the place?" I asked, offhand. Her eyes quickly swung across the room, taking it all in. The lush carpeting, glass-and-teak casings, cream curtains, floor-to-ceiling windows. Simple, minimalist, tasteful.
She nodded noncommittally. "Not bad." Her expression blasé, bored.
"So what do you want to do today?"
"Whatever." She settled herself on the couch, savagely, primly.
"You want to see the city?"
"Not really."
"There are some interesting shrines, if you want – "
"No."
"A movie?"
"No."
"Er – " I tried my best to be nice to her, but her monosyllabic answers were getting on my nerves. She turned away from me and sneered at the dining table, rolling her eyes. "So what do you want?" I asked, keeping calm. I was good at that, controlling my temper.
"Whatever, I don't care," she drawled tonelessly.
I sat down next to her. "Okay, then, let's talk."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Let's, you know, have a talk." I could hardly believe what I was saying.
"Do you have to be so damn cheerful in the morning? I think I liked you better when you kept your mouth shut." Her expression was black with irritability.
I could hardly believe what she was saying.
"Excuse me?"
"Why? Why is it always talk, talk, talk? You've said more in the last two weeks than all the rest of the year I've known you. Why can't you just be silent? Do you want to be like Hanabishi? Are we having a bad influence on you? Talk, talk, talk. All you do is talk. And eat. Eat, eat, eat. Everything you say to me is about eating. It's like, all that I am to you is a damn mouth. And the only thing that matters is whether or not food goes in. But it doesn't matter that this mouth wants to be left alone, because you judge me by your standards and everyone else's, not mine. But maybe what you think is important is not what I think is important and what you think is important should not be the issue at all because it is MY life after all and who gives you the right to meddle in it, that's what I'd like to know. In case you were wondering, I'm fine. I'm totally fine! Nothing's wrong!" She let out a deflatied sigh, ending her aimless rambling.
"All I want to be is left alone, you know?" she added softly. "But then, not really." She turned away so I would not see the tears she did not cry. "I don't know what I want, Mikagami. Can you tell me? Can you tell me the things in my heart that even I cannot see?"
I wanted to reach out and touch this fragile spirit who called my name. But then she turned back to face me, dry-eyed and sulky.
"But who am I to you, right? We are two separate people, and my concerns are not yours. I doubt you can find it in your heart the magnanimity to help me. I am caustic and cynical and acerbic. It's a thankless, hopeless task. So why bother. Right? Why bother." She frowned irritatedly.
And she was saying all these things about herself. The person she put down as being too ungrateful to care about was her own self. What sort of person thought such bitter things about herself?
I could not comprehend the lack of self-esteem she must have had. How could she think herself worthless who was so precious?
The afternoon passed badly. I studied some, I don't know what she did. We were unconsciously-on-purpose ignoring each other. She was being irritable and was in a bad humour. I understood, as much as I was able to. Depression is not just the overwhelming flood of despair, is not just the touching stirring sad moments, it is also petulance like sand in the eye. It is then that it loses that quality that moves people. It is easy to cry for someone who is so alien and is hurting so much she wants to hurt herself, or do some other drastic grandiose thing. But when that velvet darkness turns to black grit and mud in frustrated prickliness, it becomes mundane and tedious, and unlovable, though kindness is needed just as much, kindness and understanding. Man can only love pain when it is dignified and grief when it is anguished, and forgets so easily that its less beautiful sister, irritation, can be just as torturous to the sufferer.
I understood, but not enough. So I left her alone, doubting it was the best thing to do, but I am not her keeper.
There was a space on the roof, it was deserted most of the time. It was where I practised the skills I learnt at such great cost – I had given so much to learn them, I was not about to let them go to waste through that most insidious vice of disregard. Besides, it was a comfort to fall into the certainty and assurance of the Ensui in the times when life becomes gruelling.
Fuuko was there on the roof, clutching her throat and looking decidedly ill. During the winter she had lost most of her tan – all of us had – and her pale taut skin seemed to be drawn tightly, far too tightly, over her bones. Her thin hair, pulled back into a tail, strained at her cheekbones, and her face was hollow and her eyes gaunt.
"Are you okay?"
She whirled around.
"It's there. It's still there. It's sick. I can feel it," she said absently, scabbing lightly at her gullet. "But I shouldn't. It is out, it is all out."
"What is?"
"Huh?" She looked lost, as if seeing me for the first time. "Oh – you know," gesturing vaguely.
"You know," she repeated, doubtfully, more to herself than to me. "Never mind." She shook herself and ran lightly past me and back into the building.
No, I wanted to say. No, I didn't know, though I could guess. And I was stunned.
If I was right, if she – no. No. I can't be right. There was no way – was there?
I tried to imagine her kneeling in the bathroom, crying tears of half-masticated food. It was just not possible. It was like cancer: it doesn't happen to people I know. But then again, neither does death, or so I once thought – and I had been so terribly wrong.
Was she that sort? To throw up what little she ate?
I didn't know – I never guessed. Though I should have. Empirically, it was not much different from that what I already knew, that about her refusing to eat normally. But with all the other implications factored in – now it was not just a severe diet. It was a sickness, a devastating, ravaging sickness.
Maybe I didn't understand as much as I thought I did after all. Not about her, not about myself. I felt so blind. I hadn't understood all the things she had told me. I hadn't understood her signals for help. I hadn't understood her constant sore throat. I hadn't understood her desperate need. I hadn't understood anything, though I had deluded myself that I did.
I was held with the conviction that it was imperative that I did something to help her. But I didn't know how to, or what to do. And I was afraid. Because, if I tried, would I fail? Was I inadequate? As useless as a boy-child before his sister, while a blade fell?
I couldn't concentrate on the sword exercises that day. All I saw was the image of her, retching into the toilet, over and over and over and over again, like a tape played too many times, until it mixed in giddying eddies in my mind with the unyielding cold of the sword, and I fell horrified into the vision.
I never knew.
I never, never knew. Her. Of all people. Her.
Arrogantly, I had thought I knew everything. I had always to be right. I had to be the best, the most. The most intelligent, the most hardworking, the most insightful, the most troubled. No one person was allowed to be smarter or in more pain than I was. I was too selfish to accept that I was not the single most hurt-filled person in my world. An unreasonable jealousy would emerge with the realisation that I was not, perhaps, the only person alive to have felt pain. Possibly it stemmed from an unquenchable need for affection, or maybe it was rooted in pride, because I could not admit that I was normal like all the people around me. I didn't want to be normal. I wanted to be special, to be superior. Perhaps it was all of that, or perhaps it was none of it. I couldn't say.
Now, Fuuko had forced me to see that I was not after all the best. I was not the most pained. The control I had over myself paled in comparison to the discipline she possessed. And I couldn't even pretend to be insightful and discerning. She had as good as told me she had an eating disorder, but I hadn't realised it. Not for all her tears, not for all her fears, not for all the uneasiness of her friends, had I been able to understand her desperate message. I was blind. I was blind.
So many things I had believed about myself were falling to pieces. I suddenly felt pathetic. I was blind. I was not so amazing as I had believed. I was blind. My illusions about my brilliancy were dissolving into pieces in my hands and falling through my fingers. I was not who I thought I was. I was so much less.
But I didn't care, not really. Because deep inside, I knew I had value. Not as much as I thought I did, but it was value nonetheless. I had a sense of my self-worth, I had self-esteem. Which was what Fuuko did not have.
And without that, she had nothing.
[Kirisawa Fuuko]
Alone in my room again, I wondered why I had let him know I had just thrown up. It was a big deal to me, telling him that I purged. He already knew so much about me, and it made me uneasy. It was as if the secret parts of my heart no longer belonged to me, once they were known to another. And if nobody knew what I did, there would be nobody to judge me, and I would not be wrong.
Perhaps I had needed that gratifying rush of release. Perhaps I had been unconsciously seeking help for what my rational mind insisted was not a misery but my soul insisted needed healing. Perhaps I had been too enchanted by that moment of revealing. I had worked so hard to become who I was, and I wanted someone to know what I had achieved. I had forgotten that I didn't even want people to know what I was.
I realized that I had done what felt right at that time. It felt right, and it was therefore the only thing to do. Now I had to suffer for it, but because it had been right, so was the suffering.
It wasn't as if he would do anything about it, anyway. Maybe he didn't even know what I was trying to tell him. Or, maybe he did, but it didn't mean anything. Because it really seemed that way, with all the stuff I had told him he hadn't given a damn about. He implied he cared. But he hadn't proved it.
Okay, so maybe his inviting me to spend the summer with him proved it. Perhaps to him, this constituted "doing something for Fuuko". To me, though, what did it show? Not one damn thing. It was an empty gesture that had no meaningful purpose.
I wrapped myself in the blankets. In the cool air-conditioned air of the room, nothing could be quite as nice as their comfort.
Vaguely I realized I was being very disagreeable. I was in a Mood, and I felt guilty for snapping at Mikagami and felt horrible for revealing that to him. In a more lucid frame of mind, I would have had said nothing, done nothing. How easily my moods controlled me.
Then again, who was I to expect anything from him? I was nothing – nothing to him. In his world, I had no meaning. He was so much better than I was. To hope that he would do anything for me was presumptuous, because I did not, I definitely did not, deserve any of the sort of kindness he was capable of. Not like Koganei, whose saving from Mokuren had been justified. Koganei was worth it; I was not. It was as simple as that.
I feel your breath on my skin. I feel you next to me. Your voice whispers in my head. You gather me up in your arms. My eyes are closed and I do not see. But I do not want sight. All I need now is the feeling, the heat and the sensation. I feel your skin, dry and clean, sliding over mine. Each small hot breath is measured, each red movement amplified. You are all around me. You are in my mind and in my head and on my skin. I am no longer a thinking being but a giant sensation.
I open my arms to you.
And I feel only air.
The quickness of my breath shredding the darkness, I sat up in bed, arms and legs tangled in the sheets. All of a sudden a pain wrenched my heart and tears pricked my eyes. I knew, with absolute certainty, that there would never be an us, that there would only be him and me. I hunched over with grief, sobbing silently dry tears of sighs.
Why, why were we never to be? Was he never to know love, he of that battered soul, who had a heart as pure as driven snow? Didn't he want to?
He once said that the samurai was a machine. In the fight, all there was room for was precision and focus, or mistakes – often fatal – would result. There was no space in the life of a fighter for love or desire. The way of the sword required absolute dedication and complete devotion. There could be only that, and nothing else.
I could see why. Yet an inner part of me wondered, was he not a man, too? Men and women had other needs, than had a samurai. Men and women needed belonging and company and, most of all, men and women needed love. Was he not a man? Did he not need love?
Desire screamed against the darkness. To feel him in my arms, right that moment, was the only thing that seemed right. But that night, as with all other nights, there was nothing in my arms.