soba ni iru / sore wa boku no /
kimi no tame ni dekiru koto
'Staying nearby; that is
what I can do for you.'
--Gackt, 'Kimi No Tame Ni Dekiru Koto'
HOME 2 : kimi no tame ni dekiru koto
It is a cold morning and the blue of the sky makes the man's head ache. There are no words on this tombstone, no plain-framed monochrome photograph placed in front of it; the grass in front of it grows without obstruction. His hands are empty, cold as they hang by his side.
He hears the woman, walking over the grass to where he stands. When he turns and looks at her he thinks, she has not grown very old; her hair still black, glowing dangerously with violent shimmer where the light touches it, her face still sharp-chinned and smooth-skinned. He sees himself reflected in the enormous sunglasses that hide her eyes; his face is also young, younger than even hers.
"Miss Black," he says.
"What do I call you?" she asks.
"Officially, I am Lieutenant Colonel Feng Shin Chen," the military man says. "But, officially, you are not Miss Jane Black; and so neither am I really a man called Chen."
"But you are in the army."
"I had nothing else to do," he says.
She looks at the grave, then away.
"Where were you, that day?" she asks.
"In a cryogenic hold. It was as if they knew it would happen. As if they were planning for my future..."
"Who?"
"The Van. The leaders of the Red Dragon. Perhaps they did not plan enough for themselves. Perhaps they decided that it was good enough that the Red Dragon should go on. Perhaps. I will never know. They did not tell me, when they woke me up; they left no message for me. Only a brief letter, and numbers of bank accounts; and a new name, to remake myself with."
"I've never seen you before," the woman says.
"I've never seen you before," the military man says. "But you knew him. You worked with him. After he left us, he was on a ship, and you were there, too. I have the names in my head - Faye Valentine, Jet Black, and a hacker called Edward."
"And a dog called Ein."
The military man angles his head. His features are sharp, and his irises brilliant green, startling to see in the narrow slant of his eyes. When he smiles it is only for a moment, but the woman feels a brief regret to see it disappear so quickly. Without his smile he looks like any other cold man, a killer in uniform, a scientist in a suit...
"Yet I don't know anything about you," the woman says.
"You checked the military database for my records."
"Not Lieutenant Colonel Chen," the woman says. "I found out a lot about Chen. He's boring. Good officer, stellar biochemist, bright future; where's the excitement in that? No, I don't want to know about Lieutenant Colonel Chen. I'd rather know about the boy that the Dragons decided was so important they had to freeze him, until the trouble was over. Who was that boy? And what did this... what does this grave mean, to you, that you'd come back after it's all over? You can't do anything about it, any more..."
"He was my teacher," the military man replies. "I came to pay my respects. I wasn't there when I should have been, but then again, he wasn't there when he should have been, either."
He looks at the woman, and there is that smile again, but so sad, now; the same uplift of lips, but without humour or joy or mirth.
"I have found," he says. "That there is truly no one to blame for anything. It is only people who need to carry out revenge; only we who decide that someone else must suffer, because we have suffered."
"But there is a cause for everything," the woman says.
"Yes," the military man says, "there is. It is ourselves. It is he who kissed her and changed that part of their lives; he who left us; he who found you, and he who left his friends, once again. It is I who stayed, I who obeyed, I who took the bullet; it is you who joined them, you who stayed with them, then, later, you who decided to go on. When other people do something, that is nothing; it is you who reacts to it. People do things to other people all the time. What we decide to do; that is what happens. Where were you, that day?"
The woman touches the brim of her hat, as the wind brushes by. A family places flowers at the head of a grave, further down the hill; she wonders at how colourful they seem, toy figures brightly dresed against the green, then she wonders what she and the military man must look like, sober black-suited figures high and lonely on this hill.
"It doesn't matter," she says. "I remember. But it doesn't matter. Nothing has really mattered, since then. Nothing has seemed as real as it did, in those days."
"Yes," the military man says. "It seems to be more real, in a way; it is less fantastic, more normal, with things like regular sleep and coffee in the morning and a house key in your pocket. But it is hard to remember where the time goes to. To distinguish between the weeks, as they go past..."
"When did they freeze you?"
"Sixteen years ago. I was very badly injured. They were going to wake me up later, because they wanted someone to believe I was dead. After they killed him, they would have woken me up... or, if he killed them, then the doctors had orders to wake me up at a good time, after he was gone. But then it happened... and the doctors decided it would be better to wait a while."
"Who was that?"
"Vicious-sama."
"Ah..."
"He killed Spike-san."
"Yes, I know."
"You are angry with him?"
"Yes."
"It has been fifteen years..."
"It is remembered," the woman says.
"And Spike-san? What do you feel, for him?"
"I am also angry with him."
"But he is dead," the military man says.
"He could have stayed," she says. "He didn't have to go back. I have never gone back. Just moved on. It is empty... But it is better than being dead. The past cannot be changed no matter what you do. Why cause so many others to die and be hurt, instead of moving on, changing, finding a way to be happier?"
"That is the danger in finding your dreams realised, too early in life," the military man says. "When he was with us, when I was a little boy - he had already found what he was searching for. After he had left us, I think, perhaps, he realised that nothing could be as it was before - that he could not have her and have Vicious-sama, both, as he had in those days before Vicious-sama realised - and that made him a little too eager to die. That he could not have again what he had before..."
He looked up at the sky, a giddy blue, streaming tatters of clouds. He is young and strong and tall, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, hair cut short and teased into scruffy spikes. On his shoulders there are stripes of rank, a few medals lined up on the breast-pocket of his blazer; a scar, healing, lines the knuckles of one hand, an earring pierces the lobe of his left ear. There is a ring on the middle finger of his right hand, a silver chain around his neck, tucked beneath his jacket. All of these signs, the woman sees; all of them, signs of the life he leads, a normal life, the drama of it nothing next to the explosive action of his old one, but still life - still heady with joy, still plagued by disasters and challenges, still places to go and people to meet and things to do.
"You've moved on," she says.
"The Van would have wanted me to revive the Red Dragons," he says. "I did consider it. It was possible, and I am not a disloyal follower... But it is not a good time. Perhaps later, perhaps soon, perhaps never. For now, I am happy."
"It is very different from the life you had before, isn't it?" she asks. "Sometimes I wonder if staying was the right thing to do. He might have been right, you know. Sometimes when your dreams have died, maybe it's better to go out with them."
"Why not just look for new dreams to dream?" the military man says.
He turns away from the grave, his movements smart, precise, and offers her his arm. She takes it, feels the muscle of it, lean and hard, and says, "He must have trained you for a long time. You move exactly like he did."
"Yes," the man says. "He did. I loved him, very much. Did you?"
She looks at him. He has a lean face, a handsome face, but it also carries the innocence of a child's...
"He was a special person," she says.
They stop at her car, and she disengages her arm from his; feels alone again, although he is still there. It is so different, to have touched someone, then to be in contact with nothing more remarkable than the earth beneath your feet once more. You feel the need to reach out and touch them again. But sometimes, a great tragedy happens, and they will not always there.
Is that why Spike went back, in the end? After his dream-woman died, did he feel that he had no one to reach out and hold, ever again? Because, after he died...
"Dream new dreams," the military man says.
He smiles at her, a quick, shy flash of teeth.
"What's your true name?" she asks.
"Lin," he says. "But Lin died, on a rooftop in Callisto."
"Chen, then," she says. "Lieutenant Colonel Chen. Will you call me again, another day?"
"Of course."
The car pulls away, and the military man leaves, going back to his lab, his home, his friends; a life resumed, at a slower pace. The woman watches him in her rear-view mirror. It is strange, she thinks; you can live so carefree and casual until you meet someone who leaves so deep an impression upon you that you spend the rest of your life searching for a presence as powerful as his.
Head leaning back on the soft leather of the seat, she falls asleep, falls into dream; dreaming, maybe, new dreams, a new day to wake up to after tonight.