May
005
The heat is blinding, growing, mutating into flames that burn, that destroy, that peel away reality, slowly, slowly, it rains ash
He sings. It is a beautifully melody to Ivan ears, it is a tale about numbers, incoherent language he does not understand and so he listens, carefully, as he recounts everything through the thin stream of electricity. The flowers are at last open and the aroma of sunflower and lavender is at its finest, so permanent that he's certain it sticks to him, follows him, and distinct him in a way only a Braginski can.
"And I told him that he was not a Doctor, and therefore did not have the requirements or rights to tell me I was not forgetting."
Yao laughs, and the melody of binary and infinity stop. He breaths in, listening into the cell line that connects the two. He hears static, the static burns cold and it scares him so he digs the phone closer to his ears. Like a man blind of all senses he listens eagerly, like a blind man, he thinks humourlessly, but if he is blind then it is of love and desire and the eagerness of possession.
He accepts love as some other kind of disease. Chronic, incurable, deadly. Its fine, he was already sick to begin with.
"You are too impulsive," Yao finally whispers softly, humming whatever melody he can cling onto, "and childish."
Numbers continue soft, gradual hesitation. Ivan's been counting which numbers Yao stops at, sixty-nine and ninety-nine and eighty-two, all of which he cannot remember in the language that is foreign to him. But the imperfection makes him smile fondly, he never liked perfect people. The imperfection makes him feel better, more connected to it all. The craziness of forgetting is imperfect as well.
"Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-" a pause in between the silence, "fifty...fifty-" There is a quiet yet subtle whimper, a sigh of despair, disappointment, and longing. All of which is lessened by the giggle and the erratic flow of laughter and sobs.
And so Ivan listens, watchful in the way that he can imagine the tears, the smell and stench of salt and remorse. Yao is so fragile, he thinks again, and small and sweet. He is so full of a dying life and that thought makes his blood go cold. No, Ivan thinks, Yao isn't dying, Yao cannot die.
"What happens next, Yiwan?", a distracted soft voice asks. Yao's table is a mess of paper and ink. Black and white so bright against soft wood. He is relieved that Ivan cannot see, he does not want Ivan to see his own kind of crazy.
"Nothing," Ivan replies gently, he hears a shift of fabric, "I called you after, do you remember that night, Jao?"
A pause, a long pause, an eternity, his heart beat quickens and falls, "Ahhh yes, yes, you killed a Peony! What a shame!"
Yao is not dying.
Yao will always remember. Yao will remember him, won't he?
"Why are you telling me this now, Yiwan? Hasn't it been a while..." A mutter in a different language, a rustle of paper can be heard, and Ivan strains to listen. He's too preoccupied with the musical sound of glass. "A month, it's been a month."
Ivan doesn't know what to say so he stays quiet. His mouth moves before he thinks, maybe it's the vodka that he's realized he can't stop drinking. He rolls his tongue within his mouth, alcohol and iron so strong. The ice cubes clink gently against sides of the shot glass.
Copper, he tastes copper.
Bitterness has never tasted so wonderfully sweet before.
"Will you forget me, my little Yao Yao?" He say's bitterly, he feels angered that Yao could forget him when he loves Yao so much. He stares at his sunflowers, they are so big and wide, and the smell is calming like an aphrodisiac of a special kind, of a beautiful kind.
He waits, and once again it's like an eternity of seconds, of minutes of time that flows silently. Yao's voice cuts sharp, cold like a knife of red. Red is dangerous, and beautiful, and enticing.
Yao is red.
He is painful to see, to feel, to love. He is passion with intervals of sorrow; he is roses with thorns and blood. He is so much and so little. He is Ivan's and Ivan is his.
"Yiwan," he finally says, "come here."
He does not understand at first what this means but when he does he does not stop to wait. Instead, he pursues.
In a half drunken stupor he trips over clothes and bottles of vodka, his mind unfocused but his hammering heart reminds him to run. His vision blurs of diluted vodka but he makes it out the door all the same. And when he does, he searches for signs of Yao, things he remembers between all the buildings and cafes and shops. Everything is a blur and his watch counts the seconds, the seconds it takes to have Yao in his arms. They are only seconds but it is far too long, Ivan thinks.
He does not stop until he is in front of a small door he knows belongs to Yao. He remembers this neighbourhood because he's walked here with Yao thousands of time; he reaches for the handle only to find it open. Whether it's open for him or strangers he does not know.
He breaths in before pushing the door open, and he is then suddenly, beautifully, overtaken— consumed by red. He feels eaten alive by the sheer irony of it all, it feels strangely foreign and exotic if not the fact that he's known the colour in the most intimate way. Blood, roses, Yao, Yao, Yao.
There is red and black and white that swirl in wood, in paintings, in patterns, and sketches. But he realizes there is purple. Trails of purple moor that intertwine with red, there are different shades, amethyst that burns gold in paintings of a human kind, of patterns and ink that are stained with purple finger tips. His eyes trail slowly to the core of this beautiful messy room. Organized chaos makes his blood boil.
It's crazy, he thinks, how such a mess is so beautiful. But all the while he reminds himself he is sick with love so it makes more sense, calms him with newfound understanding.
His breath gets caught because in the middle of this mess a man sits. Hollow red and black, a blur so transfixing and so gorgeously tainted in the way black hair travels down white. He sees the purple finger tips and the paintbrush of violet, so foreign on his skin, so dangerously vivid on hollow cheeks and gold. So innocently pretty.
Only then does he realize. He steps closer, cautiously because he is too scared to break this moment of perfection. It is him in every piece of parchments, it is his eyes, and face, and mouth. There are words too; dialogue of what he recalls faintly telling the older man.
Yao is trying to remember. Yao is trying so hard to remember him.
His existence.
Some could think it is crazy, some could perhaps see the taint of such love but Ivan does not see it. He is already so infatuated by this beautiful, gorgeous red and violet cacophony. He is too lost to settle for less, too lost to settle for organization and cleanliness and order. He wants this, this transfixing monstrous mess.
"Ivan." Yao says, and despite the room there is nothing but sanity and love grounded within gold, and so he feels tears despite the heartache, the headache, the ache of his body.
He's not crazy or mad, he's just love sick. Sick because of love. He blames his vulnerability on love but he knows that in reality he's just lonely, and his love is very pure. His pure love is too vulnerable to the harsh heat of summer, too weak for this cruel reality.
"How could I ever forget you?"
It is hot in the dead summer so Ivan and Yao dance and laugh and sing together. They sing about numbers and memory and this time when Yao is unable to remember, Ivan fills the numbers in with his own tongue.
Together, they think. Smiles with tear stained cheeks are all to contradictory and bleak in the mesh of blood red and violet.
Together, they think again, and they smile at the sheer irony of it all.
They believe they will die of love sickness before there memory takes them.
The illusion is strong, it pushes and holds, and slowly, slowly, ever so slowly it lowers the victim in a blanket of warmth and love...the joy that kills.