(Aya)
Yohji has left my room, and I can let go of myself a little. Lock my door, put away the book I was pretending to read, make sure the katana is in its place. I prefer to keep it under the edge of my futon, on the side where I sleep. Lie down for a while, drifting.
Wondering.
Longing.
No, nonsense, I do not long for him. Not for his warmth, his voice, his laughter. Not for his lips on my skin and his hands on my body. He is shopsoiled goods, used many times over and always returned. Though I am not blind – I can see why Omi likes him. They have this brotherly thing going on between them, and Ken, well, he is content when Omi is. Yohji gives the chibis the illusion of what they should have in a family, and his capacity for affection never ceases to amaze me because it is boundless and utterly indiscriminate. So they are a unit, the three of them, and I do not fit in, but that is fine by me: I do not want to fit in; I am not like them.
I think they know. Yohji can be such an open book, clear for everyone to read, though sometimes his annoying jolliness can be deceptive – it surprised me when I found out how lucid he can be, and I had to admit to myself that I was intrigued. Perhaps this is one reason why I let him come into my room so often, just to hang around and stink it out with his cigarettes. He even tries to smoke less now.
He is making an effort. He is trying to change.
And I know he does it for me because he told me so.
I do not want this, because it means he is way too serious about all this, that he is planning into the future, and he must be expecting me to do something too. He still has not understood that we have no future. Because he never listens properly, he thinks I refuse to love him back out of consideration for him. He is wrong. It's self preservation, for if I allow myself to love him, I will not want for anything else any longer, and I will forget my revenge. Lose what is left of me. In him.
No, I do not want to change. My goal is revenge, and I cannot afford to think of anything that might lie beyond.
Yet sometimes, when I am floating between waking and sleeping, and my thoughts are not entirely my own, I wonder who we would be if we could have lived the lives we had before all this.
With him doing his sleazy little snoop jobs, and me working for my father's company... I know with certainty how my life would have been, down to the last detail. But he... well, perhaps he would have had women instead of men because I believe he does not necessarily swing this way. Perhaps he would even have stuck with one woman. He hardly speaks of her, but her name makes his eyes go dark, and his face hardens with pain and something else I recognise too well: he can hate, too, and he can be cruel beneath his layers of compassion and love.
But while I would be a different man, someone who would not dream of getting his hands dirty, Yohji would still be himself.
Yohji, made for love and life and sunshine.
My lie is worse than his. And I wonder idly whether, given a choice, I would be able to leave him behind in order to regain this life that is now lost to me...
I am not a generous man. I don't think I have the right answer to this.
xxx
Next chapter: Crying For The Past