Fandom: Zetsuai
Title: Visibly and invisibly.
Pairing: Koji + Izumi
Rating: PG
Description: Koji is trying to finish a song that has been bugging him, but instead, it brings out the loneliness he feels for Izumi.
Disclaimer: Zetsuai isn't mine.
Visibly and invisibly.
By miyamoto yui
"Why are you acting like this?" Shibuya had questioned me in my apartment as he paced back and forth with an index finger on his forehead. His right hand hung onto his side as he gave me a sigh full of frustration.
"I just asked for one more track to be added into the new album," I simply said as I took up a cigarette and puffed into it.
He took the cig from me and smashed it into the ashtray. "Don't smoke around me."
I lifted up my hands with a hesitant surrender. "Fine."
He then stood right up and looked to one side with a change in position. Now, he was rubbing his chin while staring at me with a gleam in his eye that I didn't like.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked in a grave tone.
"You can't always do this, Koji," he sighed in exasperation. "I can't always cover up for you. It's getting too tiring."
"Doing that and annoying me are but what you always do best though," I answered while laughing and leaning forward in my chair.
Shrugging his shoulders and smirking happily, he replied, "I know, but the fact of the matter is if that song isn't done by tomorrow afternoon, your ass is kicked by the record label's president himself."
I nodded at the challenge. "Okay," I nonchalantly said as I looked at him.
He then patted me on the shoulder. "I know you'll make it a great song. Just remember…"
Looking me straight in the eye, he gave me a serious look. It was so contradictory to his 'happy-go-lucky' nature. With a strict tone, he warned, "And keep away from that soccer player."
I nodded my head in compliance. "Okay, already."
"I know you, Koji." He began to whistle as he walked towards the door. "You may be all right with your obsession over him, but think about his whole life. It will change because of you."
Opening the door, he glanced back at me. "Please, for this once, don't be selfish."
I looked at him blankly as he closed the door behind him. Then, I turned my head as if he were still there.
My eyes bent down in shame and I sighed as I got up from my chair.
"Don't be selfish, he says," I mumbled to myself as I went to the bathroom to wash my face.
The water dripped onto the sink like tears falling from my cheeks and I watched my reflection in the mirror before me.
"I was a product of selfishness," I said to my reflection. "And now, you deny me my nature."
Angrily, I pulled the towel from its rack and wiped my face while walking back to the dining room. I sat in my chair looking at the sheet of music that was before me.
I had the song, but there were no words.
My song had no life in it.
There was still no soul within it.
I had made it because I knew it would be this particular rhythm that would unravel me like no other. The other songs on the cd were sexy, marketable, and overall great.
But, there was something missing.
Turning away, I looked down to the ground with my eyes wide and my fingers running up the side of my head through my hair. I felt like my heart was going to burst at that moment from the pounding blood flowing through my body.
The instrumental I had made didn't have to be played for it kept on ringing in my ear like Izumi's smile. I couldn't get him out of my mind.
And I had to be satisfied with a single picture or two in the paper about him.
I took a big gulp as the song tortured me. The song I had made for the girl that I thought would love me for being myself. She would be an angel to save me from my loneliness.
This song had risen from the depths of my feelings, and it was as familiar to me as the powerful, magnetic eyes that had burned themselves into my memory years before.
Now, I was scorched from this longing…
For this person I had searched for who turned out to be a man like myself.
"Izumi…" I whispered to myself as it echoed all around me.
I was going to go insane if the words didn't come out. The words I had always wanted to tell you.
Waiting,
wanting,
longing…
I bent my head lower as I pulled on my hair a bit.
Stop torturing me…
Stop torturing me!
Whether I'm awake or asleep, I'm bothered. I can't go to sleep because I want to reach for you next to me.
When my eyes are open, I want to close them to the reality of it all.
If I'm half-conscious, I find myself writing poetry because that's when I'm half sane. That's when I don't care if my heart is hurt so much it feels like burning ice to the point that I can't breathe.
How…
How can I reach you if we're in two different places?
Impulsively, I reached for my pen as I winced slowly while looking at the sheet music. Seeing the blank piece of paper, I began to write.
Writing and writing until I wanted to be blind…
I didn't want to see anything anymore…
"Izumi…
What should I do? I don't know what to do about you. But you're driving me insane.
Wherever I am, I just keep going towards you. Even though I know you push me away, I want to push myself away too.
I just can't stop. It's an addiction. I love everything about you. And the more I can't know, the more I want to break the barrier of myself.
Only for you…
Was I wrong when I knew I felt this way? Am I wrong to feel this way? Yes, if it hurts both of us, is this called love at all?
This hopelessness that I call love.
Why can't I love you?
Because we can't. Who we are, who we were, what we've become.
We're no good for one another, ruining each other in the process of trying to reach for something that maybe cannot ever be attained.
My heart wants to shun upon itself. I leave it alone on a shelf wanting it to die. But either way, when I look at you and myself, I feel the same as if it were death itself.
Listen to me and what I'm trying to say to you."
Click.
I let the pen fall from my hand as my body shook violently.
I put my right hand in fist as I pounded it onto the glass table.
CRASH!
Flap…flap…
The table shattered to the ground as I knelt to pick up the pieces of paper onto top of the broken glass.
Instead, I opened my hands and gathered the pieces into my hands and squeezed them so hard that red drops came out through my fingers…
…as clear drops began to form and drip from my eyes…
I opened my mouth to breathe slowly.
When I opened them, a tear had fallen on "hopelessness" making the ink smear onto the bloodied word, "love".
Flashes came to my mind.
Lips, hands, arms, hair, knees, legs, shoes, socks, shorts, shoulders, neck, face, hair, voice, eyes…
I always looked at your eyes trying to find an answer
Only to find that they led me to more questions.
Almost losing my mind, I breathed, "Why?"
When I saw you years ago, I wanted your energy.
I wanted that fervor you put when you kicked that soccer ball into the net.
I want you with just as much passion. If not, more.
But why is yours justified, while mine is forbidden?
Because mine is called obsession…
And frighteningly, I'm gradually going beyond that with no sense of where to stop…
With my blurry eyes, I stared down at the two words of 'hopelessness' and 'love' before me. In a cracked voice filled with desperation, I asked the silence around me, "Does no one understand my torture?"
No…
No one understands my love…
Crunching the pieces further into my hands, I felt more blood spill slowly out of me, trying to find a tangible way to convey how my heart felt all this time.
Breathlessly, I whispered, "And you don't even want to understand, Izumi…"
My heart ached even more as I bled more and more,
Visibly and invisibly.
Owari.
-
Author's note: Dunno why I made this. I wanted to make a Zetsuai fic for about two weeks and it finally came to me. But as I wrote it, my heart felt like it had been burned in some way and I couldn't breathe for a while.
I know that there's not much movement, gomen. But I wanted to catch the feeling of being conscious of what's around you and yet being so lonely, you'd burst. Except, you didn't know how to cry.
December 26th, 2002