So, here I am with my annual update. I feel bad, honestly, that it's taken me this long to actually get back to this story. Anyone still reading (other than the alpha phoenix who for I think five years now has encouraged me with this tale) probably thought that this was abandoned. Part of me thought that was maybe the case as well. I'm back though, for now. Let's hope it doesn't take me another year to update.
One of my favorite poems, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronmer by Walt Whitman, makes an appearance this chapter, as it does with most of my heartfelt stories. Some of you may even recognize it.
Quote of the day:
"But there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather...I had a dream my life would be so much more than this hell I'm living. So different now than what it seems. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."
-Fantine, Les Misérables
It was a beautiful cloudless night, and Hikari almost couldn't believe how she had spent it. She had heard more than once in her life that the night in Japan was dream time, the lives and fates of so many people being decided when the sun went down and when the dark sky was illuminated only by city lights or stars, depending on wherever it was that anyone in Japan found themselves calling home. For her, it happened to be Odaiba, but there were so many other places all around the world that Hikari had imagined herself living in, chasing after this dream or that one, trailing the path of one ghost or another. It was when she dreamt of the lights of New York City or the cobblestones of London however, of the stars in the Paris night sky or in the burning horizon of a Havana dawn, that she realized that Takeru was a poltergeist in her life, haunting her wishes and her dreams and her heart even when she tried to imagine them without him there.
As she walked with Daisuke by her side, she couldn't decide whether she wanted to smile or frown at her thoughts of Takeru, so instead she simply looked over at the boy beside her. It was three in the morning at the moment as the two of them walked through her neighborhood, and even though the both of them were tired, each of them knew that there wasn't any way that either of them would have ever gotten a chance to sleep that night. Taichi had decided to host a night for his soccer mates filled with pizza and cheap beer while their parents were out of town for the weekend, and to no one's surprise, both Daisuke and Ken had been among them. Ken was still back at the apartment apparently for the expressed reason of cleaning up after Taichi's rowdy friends, but Hikari knew the truth of the matter as to why Ken had wanted to avoid accompanying Daisuke and herself, Dai having asked for a chance to speak with her, the two of them now by themselves.
Despite the fact that he had wanted to speak to her, Daisuke had remained silent since they had left her apartment. He had mostly been his usual self as they had spent the majority of their evening laughing and watching some of the best soccer moments of the last year, Daisuke smiling and joking along with the rest of them, with nothing being amiss from the usual picture that was a cheerful boy named Motomiya. That is, until Daisuke had asked if he could take her for a walk.
Most of Taichi's soccer mates had joked about Daisuke's sudden change in demeanor, teasing the boy and yet congratulating him for finally gathering up the courage to apparently make a move on her. Another mate had drunkenly complained about the fact that he didn't know that Taichi's little sister wasn't off-limits, until said Taichi silenced him with a well-placed blow to the head. Ken had remained his silent unreadable self at the request, and her brother had only watched, Daisuke being one of the only two boys in the world that could take his sister out for a walk at three in the morning and still have his complete trust. Not knowing what this was about, Hikari had said yes, Daisuke becoming her partner in crime for the night, the usual dashing smile of the boy instead oddly enough replaced by a midnight melancholy, and a sense of doom.
She peered out at him from the corner of her eye, Hikari shivering for a moment at both the frosty night, and at a feeling inside of her that something important was happening somewhere far away. She gave the boy beside her a nudge with her elbow, and she flashed him a smile, remembering that somewhere in the history of their relationship that it would have been a moment that Daisuke would have not only cherished, but would go on to treasure forever in the deepest part of his soul. This time, he only smiled back at her briefly, Daisuke soon enough returning to gaze the path that was stretched out before them, their destination somewhere in the dark horizon.
"I wonder," Daisuke broke the silence after another few minutes of walking into the darkness, the boy having not looked at her once all the while, "what is Takeru doing right now?"
It was then that she stopped walking, unsure of why Daisuke was bringing up Takeru. He too soon halted, and Hikari only stared at the boy in front of her as he looked back at her with eyes that were deeper and stronger and more intent than she had almost ever seen them before, a golden smolder in his eyes. She blinked, unsure of what was going on. She had seldom seen Daisuke watching her in the same way that he was doing right now, and his intensity was almost breathtaking.
"I don't know what Takeru is doing right now," Hikari replied in a way that she wasn't sure whether or not she was being honest, the girl remembering that tonight was the night that Takeru had had a date with his girlfriend.
Daisuke only turned away from her and continued walking the same path they had just been heading in, his next statements more a wonderment than it was a question, "So he hasn't texted you back then."
Honestly, he seemed more disappointed than anything. It would have been a lie if Hikari had said that she wasn't stunned for a moment, and after she had gathered her bearings she had trailed after Daisuke, who had been walking purposely slow. How had he known that she had texted Takeru? Had he been watching her that night? Or was she that obvious? When she caught up to his side, Hikari finally responded with a question of her own, her tone perhaps more harsh and sharp than she had intended it to be.
"And who hasn't texted you back, Daisuke? You've been looking at your phone all night."
This time, it was Daisuke who stopped. For a moment he seemed to only just notice where the two of them were on their path, and Daisuke looked back at her again, apparently only then realizing that he too had spent a great deal of his night glancing down at his phone. He was about to say something, before he stopped and looked out into the distance of the great dark path before them. Then, Daisuke only laughed as he walked off the path and motioned for her to follow him. Not caring about the cold weather or the morning dew, Daisuke dropped himself onto his back in the grass, smiling as he stared up at the night sky above them, eyes twinkling like stars as if he had seen the light of a thousand pale white moons.
Following his lead, Hikari slowly and unsurely made her way to the spot beside Daisuke, before proceeding to lie down next to him in the cold wet grass. It was uncomfortable and much too frosty for her liking, but she remembered that right now was supposed to be dream time. Were moments like this what Takeru and Daisuke would dream of in the parts of their lives that they were in love with her? There was a sense of intimacy that she could feel between the two of them that night, and for the second time that early still dark morning, Hikari felt as if the two of them were the only ones in the world.
"How do you know when you're in l-" Daisuke frowned as he paused, wondering what the best words were to use that early morning before amending them, "how do you know when there's someone out there that you truly like? Someone that you have a growing affection for in your heart."
For just a second, she couldn't help but wonder if he was talking about her. She never responded, but she never needed to. Instead, she grabbed his hand, and the two of them watched the night sky above them. For a moment of time, they were in love. Then, she remembered Takeru, and Daisuke remembered the girl whose skin was as white as the moon. Perhaps in another time and place they each wondered, but for now their souls belonged to other people.
For just that moment though, they were alone in the universe.
"You were very handsome today."
Ayano's words had been quiet. They had been as quiet as she had been all day when they sat together for lunch at school, or when they had gone out after classes had ended for burgers and a movie, and a walk through the park that lasted for more than a couple of hours, but Takeru said nothing in response, the way that his girlfriend had said what she had making the teenage boy feel unsure of himself. Her words had been quiet, but they seemed to scream at him in the darkened room they were sharing with one another.
His eyes trailed over to the girl across the room who was staring out the window of his apartment into the night beyond the glass, and Takeru's gaze was slow as it worked its way up from the back of her legs to the side of her face that he could see from his angle, the girl wearing nothing but an old t-shirt that Takeru had found simply lying about the floor of his room. As he looked at her, Takeru had wanted to respond to her in turn, telling her that she was beautiful, and a light in his life, but for a reason that he couldn't or didn't want to place, the words became stuck in his throat.
Despite his silence however, she really was a beautiful sight to behold. There was something darkly enchanting about Ayano's sad eyes, and her skin that was as white as the moon.
"Takeru?" Ayano wondered out loud, her voice as soft as ever, "Did you hear what I said?"
A part of him entertained not answering again, but Takeru decided against it, unsure of why he had been silent in the first place. "Yeah."
The girl forced a smile at his truth, but Takeru could see it as plain as Oshiro's pale skin that his one word had cut her like a dagger to the heart. Without another word, she turned away from him and brought a hand to the handle of the glass door that led out into the balcony, and she paused when Takeru called out to her, "Ayano", but continued on when he said nothing except for her name. He remained just as quiet as she had been all day, as the both of them had been on the more recent of their date nights, and Takeru's eyes lingered on the open balcony where Ayano now stood outside in the cold night wearing only one of his shirts.
A light from the coffee table distracted Takeru from his girlfriend, and a smile came across his face for what felt like the first time that night when he saw that the reason that his cell phone was now glowing was because of a text message from Hikari. Instinctively, he reached for his phone to read just what exactly Hikari had decided to send him this late at night, but Takeru paused when he saw another light begin to shine just across the table. The light from his own phone was starting to dim, but Ayano's was now shining like a lighthouse by the sea. He quickly read the message on his own phone from Hikari, and after a moment of hesitation, Takeru reached over to read the message on Ayano's phone as well. Something in his heart sank when he read that both messages contained the same words.
Are you awake?
In a move that surprised even himself, Takeru set down his phone without responding, and in the dark and silence of the night he found himself staring at his girlfriend's phone. After a minute or so the light had dimmed on hers just as it had on his own, and Takeru played with the idea of going through it to see just who it was that was texting her. He wondered if contemplating doing so made him a hypocrite on account of his own relationship with Hikari that he couldn't exactly find the proper words to define it. In any case however, Takeru stared down at Ayano's phone until the dim light disappeared into darkness, leaving him, and his thoughts, sitting in the shadow of the night.
Soon enough he found himself standing up from his couch, taking with him the blanket that Takeru and Ayano had napped together under earlier, before he set his girlfriend's phone back down in the spot he had found it. He hesitated with what to do, whether it was to call Goro to pick up Ayano as he said he would that night no matter the time, and Takeru even wondered if he should just tell Ayano that he was going to bed, not only because he was tired, but to also cloister away all these emotions that he couldn't understand, that he hadn't been able to understand for so long, and to push them on through to the next day, and the next after that. He almost chose to go with the latter choice, before Takeru took a deep breath, and began walking in the di+rection of his balcony.
As he stepped into the twilight of the day that he wasn't sure he could call either late at night or early morning, Takeru found Ayano sitting in a nearby wicker chair, with her legs crossed and looking out into the cityscape of Odaiba with eyes that shone like mahogany stars. He wasn't even surprised that there was still an air of elegance about her, even as she wore nothing but an old tattered shirt of his. Without a word he made his way over to the empty wicker chair beside her, and he sat down, the two of them then spending the next minutes in silence, the sound of faraway night time adventures being their only company. Takeru draped one half of the blanket over Ayano and the other over himself, the quiet between them remaining unbroken as he did so.
He almost thought that neither of them were going to say another word for the rest of the night, before he heard the soft voice of the girl beside him speak again.
"I don't have a view this nice at home."
Takeru glanced at Ayano out of the corner of his eye, wondering how that could possibly be true considering that her family was richer than most could ever hope to be, but he didn't respond to her immediately. Instead, he inched a bit to his girlfriend, the teenage boy remaining as unsure as ever when Ayano remained as still as the surface of a pond on a clear and sunny day.
"You live in a mansion," was the only thing that he could say, Takeru staring out into the same night having the same view as Ayano, seeing nothing special in the everyday sight of the lights and scape of the city.
The girl beside him remain unperturbed however, eyes still focusing on the glorious lights of the city, her mind and soul and heart all somewhere far and far away. "In a mansion, Takeru, what do you think that I see?"
"Statues, or one of your gardens." Takeru replied after some thought, Ayano's home being a different world than what he knew, the blood money that paid for it almost being forgotten in the elegance of it, "You have that nice pond on your property as well."
"All lovely things," she agreed, eyes glistening in the night,
"But?"
For a moment, Takeru almost thought that she was about to lean into him. However, whether it was hesitation or just his imagination, Ayano paused and sat straight back up again. She shivered, as did he, and the girl remained silent for a minute or so, admiring the night and the city, wondering things in her mind that Takeru would never have a clue about.
"But what's lovelier than staring out there and knowing that a thousand different people are living a thousand different lives with a thousand different possibilities? It's dream time."
As had often become the case with him lately, Takeru was once again silent. He wasn't sure if Ayano had expected a response, or had even wanted one really, and he watched her for a second, before looking off in the direction that she had been for the last few minutes. He couldn't help but wonder if the view of Odaiba's city lights were really as enchanting to her as she was saying at the moment, or if the thousand lives of these thousand people were really the things that were tugging at her heart as she dreamt of them. Perhaps, and Takeru only thought this for a moment of time before pushing it back to the farthest part of his mind and the deepest shadow of his heart, maybe the thing that this girl dreamt about was the one thing he could never give her.
"When I heard the learned astronomer" the girl interrupted his thoughts, Takeru watching his girlfriend more intently now, her words being an echo of Walt Whitman, her words being a flicker in his heart, "when the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me. When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide and measure them."
Part of him was touched that she had remembered his favorite poem, and yet, another part was heartbroken. "When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room."
Ayano finally met eyes with him, this time not hiding her tears before she looked away again. "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself in the mystical moist night air."
Takeru almost didn't realize that he was crying too. "And from time to time looked up in perfect silence at the stars."
And so they sat together in perfect silence, the twilight being a cloak in the darkness, the dawn being an eternity away.
So, Takari might be canon? In some Japanese magazine that someone translated and uploaded to Tumblr, there was a picture of Takeru and Hikari shopping together, and an interview by their voice actors. Takeru's voice actor confirmed that Takeru has romantic feelings for Hikari, and Hikari's confirmed that the girl knows about the feelings but chooses to tease him about them, unsure of what to think. They also said that "the feelings are unrequited, for now" and that a future OVA is going to explore the relationship between Takeru and Hikari, whatever that turns out to be.
So, I'm not sure what to think? Let's talk about it.
