Closer


Two figures, each holding a cigarette, stood in the shadows as if hoping to find warmth. The taller one sighed from what sounded like boredom.

"Is that girl, repairer number 89, depressed?"

His husky voice had caught her off guard, but she didn't admit it.

"What? I'm a doctor, not a shrink, Azuma."

Azuma leaned against the wall roughly, his back making a heavy thud upon impact. Rill was a bit startled, but the surprise seemed to flit away with a wave of her hand. With each flick of her wrist, she scattered speckled ashes onto the floor.

"And even if her behavior does indicate depression, she'll have to continue exhibiting them for a significant number of weeks before anyone can diagnose them as such. Besides, what's she got to be depressed for? It's only been a few days since her pilot was promoted to GIS. They weren't…"

She paused, as if for dramatic effect. Naturally, there was none.

"Romantically involved, were they?"

The instructor gave a lazy shrug and shifted his weight onto his other leg.

"Not at all."

He wasn't looking at her, so Rill's pride ordered her to do the same.

"Why do you ask, anyway? Since when did you care so much?"

Coming from her, the words, like the tobacco on their tongues, tasted bitter, but they let the flavor burn quietly in their minds.

"I don't. But then I see her. She looks so sad. I mean, it doesn't get me feeling sentimental or anything, but it does make me wonder. Pilot and repairer. What is so special about a pilot and his repairer? Why are they so close? Maybe it's that a pilot entrusts his life to his repairer and she, in turn, takes care of it, protects it as though it were more precious than her own. I guess it's sort of beautiful if you look at it that way."

The doctor didn't know what to think. With sheer reason, she tried hard to eliminate the possibilities that kept arising. Then, Azuma smirked from behind his cigarette and both her feelings and logic were confirmed.

"Definitely more than what I can say about most friends I've had."

He laughed too loudly and Rill tried not to visibly stiffen.

"More than what I can say about myself, actually."

Azuma's laughter faded with the dissipating smoke and he only succeeded in reviving the latter.

"I used to think that the relationship between friends ran deeper than anything else, Rill. I truly believed it. Before I started teaching, before I became a pilot, before--"

Right then, she couldn't take it any more, couldn't stand the sound of his voice or the smell of his cigarette. Casting aside all self-control, she turned to look at Azuma's face. Shockingly—yet, at the same time, not—Azuma's mouth was twisted, almost painfully so. At her angle, where his colored lenses could shield nothing from her, Rill saw the trembling light in the man's eyes and was scared for half a second. But she had always been adverse to that area of emotion. Anger and apathy were far safer, far simpler.

"Before what?

"Before what, Azuma?

"Why do you talk as if I don't know, as if you don't know?

"Just say it!

"Before WHAT!

"BEFORE YOU STARTED SMOKING!"

He blinked. She blinked. He blinked again.

Everything became dead and grey, crumbling into a vision of abandoned ashes. Then, and it even wasn't out of hostility, his eyes narrowed and he turned his head away so that Rill could no longer see his face even if she tried, which she didn't. One hand—the hand without the cigarette—curled into a fist, and slammed the wall, right beside his thigh. Nothing broke. Sturdy material. Azuma didn't move at all, and he wasn't bleeding. He was sturdy, too.

Suddenly, Rill wished she had shut up, wished that she could blow her smoke and smile in Azuma's face, that she could take away that sour taste in her mouth, that she could fast forward to a future that had no past so she could cry with an excuse, but it was too late now. It didn't matter, anyway, not like it ever had before. It would never matter.

Rising like realizations yet to be conceived, drifting like desires that would never be satisfied, the hazy smoke around them floated higher, becoming heavier but always moving higher.

Azuma's face eventually relaxed into casual contemplation. Continuing where he left off, he spoke because he never heard her words. He was ignoring the past.

"And now that I'm an Instructor, I think I understand. I completely understand it all. It's the relationship between a pilot and a repairer that's most important, that runs the deepest. Deeper than anything else."

Rill breathed out pent-up air.

"Deeper than anything else, huh? Even deeper than…"

But she stopped, neither of them listening to her wordless echoes. He could think and say whatever he wanted now because all she could think about was that they smoked different brands.

And the smoke grew thicker, replacing all sound, as it swirled around them in the shape of cloudy dragonheads waiting to bite. Azuma's shoulders tensed as he gazed at the ceiling, his white cigarette hanging limply between his dry, thick lips. Rill's face was pointed in the opposite direction. She took a nice long drag before dropping her cigarette and watching it roll a few centimeters into the neat pile of ash that had gathered by the sole of her shoe. She didn't even wait for it to stop before reaching into her coat pocket to light up another one.