THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY by Moon71
Summary: While walking in the park one evening, Eiri has a fateful encounter. (Well, we all know that, but this is from his point of view!)
Chapter 3: Eiri finally get home, but with a persistent muse hard on his heels…
NOTES: As always, huge thanks are owed to those who took time to review. Especial thanks to those on Gurabite who I couldn't respond to directly! I try to pay as close attention to the manga and anime as I can, especially when I'm basing something on a scene or trying to get inside the head of one of the characters. I don't know about the rest of you, but, artistic license aside, I really hate it when fic writers completely ignore what Ms Murakami implicitly states through her characters (like for example that Tohma's love for Eiri has nothing to do with sex… and that Tohma was fully in favour of the Eiri / Shuichi relationship until Eiri got sick… hint hint… though I do appreciate that even she sometimes contradicts herself…)
Anyway, enough ranting, but it's good to know all that hard, hard study, forcing myself to watch episode one of the anime, and read vol 1 of the manga, and the OVA, doesn't go completely unnoticed…
The second beer should have done the trick. In spite of the complaints of my father, relayed through Mika, I am not that heavy a drinker. I like my pleasures, and beer is one of them, but the idea of drinking myself into a stupor alone is really rather unappealing to me, and the idea of drinking myself into a stupor with a group of "drinking buddies" is actually repulsive. But one or two beers usually helps to settle my head when the voices won't shut up.
This time, however, the alcohol only seemed to make the voices clearer.
It was a divine judgement, I decided with some resignation. Yuki was wrong and Harper Lee was right. An unprovoked attack on an innocent songbird was a sin, and so was the unfounded presumption that Yuki-Sensei possessed the wisdom of a god. And it would seem as though my punishment was to suddenly lose the ability to forget.
But it wasn't Yuki I was remembering. I really, really didn't want to remember any of that, and for some reason my memory did not insist that I should. What it wanted… was the songbird.
The next scenario began to form even as I crushed the empty beer can in my hand and gazed down at it, wondering if it was time for a third, though my head was pounding and I was starting to feel a little sick. I closed my eyes and tried to recite the twelve times table from one to three hundred but before I could get past five times twelve I was back in the crummy little all night café (it had to be crummy, I decided, with a slovenly waitress, horrible coffee, stale cake and a few lonely drifters passing the time), offering to introduce the boy to Seguchi while he gazed up at me with violet eyes glowing with admiration.
Yes, I know. A total waste of mental energy. Yuki Eiri does not do shonen-ai, let alone yaoi. Mizuki had once vaguely suggested I might try it, reminding me that that peculiar little sub-genre was popular with the same bored housewives and angst-ridden schoolgirls who enjoyed my books. Just as a one-off, Yuki-san. As a change of pace. An artistic experiment. You wouldn't want to start growing stale, would you? I had told her where to stick her artistic experiment and she had not suggested it again.
Then again, if it was one sided and ended unhappily…
As we sit in the café, the boy mistakenly assumes I am trying to pick him up. At first he is frightened, but by the time we part with a promise to meet at the NG building the next morning, he is not sure whether he is relieved or disappointed that I have not made a move. By the time we've seen Seguchi… (I'm not sure about this bit – Seguchi's such a nosey bastard and he tells Mika everything, for all he insists he's taking no sides in the family feud… besides, I'd have to decide what his verdict will be… Well it doesn't matter, since I'll never write this shit anyway.) Where was I? Right, I'm saying goodbye to the boy. He makes some clumsy pass, but I turn him down. Same ending, really. Just as he has a chance of getting what he'd always dreamed of, he's found something he wants even more that will forever be beyond his reach.
End of story, once again.
Only my mind won't let it go.
A third beer. While I was in the kitchen, I looked at the packets of medication my psychiatrist has prescribed. The anti-depressants are a part of my routine. The sedatives I try to avoid if it's humanly possible. They do get me to sleep, but it's not a good sleep. More often than not, it's tainted by nightmares from which it is exceptionally hard to wake. But perhaps tonight I should make an exception, even if washing them down with beer wouldn't be the brightest move I've ever made.
If I offered the idea to one of those silly women who write that boy-love trash, would it finally go away?
But it wasn't the idea. It was the songbird. The boy.
I closed my eyes. And there we were. In the café again. The coffee, as I said, is horrible. I suggest, quite without thinking, that we have some back at my place instead. Innocent as a newborn babe, he agrees. He's there, now, sitting beside me on the couch, talking excitedly about how helpful my advice is. But I'm tired of talking… and it's getting late… and he's sitting very close to me… so close I can hear him breathing… so close I can feel his warmth… and without thinking, I…
Stop this. Right now. What are you, some sort of pervert?
Oh shut up. It's only a blasted story. A writer's exercise.
It's a damned fantasy and you know it. If you're going to have depraved daydreams like this, at least turn him into a girl!
I did give it a try. But it wouldn't stick. When I closed my eyes I found myself trying to picture what the songbird would look like naked. His lips, I recalled, were full for a boy's. What would it be like to kiss him? Then I tried to imagine holding him in my arms. I half expected to catch myself imagining the full breasts and soft curves of a woman when I played this scenario out – I have very little other experience to call upon. But when the scene resumes he is as he must be – small but firm and strong, a young man.
All the same, I allow him to tremble a little, then to smile shyly at me as he did in the park. Yes, that's just perfect. A blush too? Maybe I've used that once too often. He's afraid, but he wants this as much as I do. Has he ever been with another boy before? I decide not. It works better if I'm his first man. He calls me by name for the first time. Eiri. And I kiss him.
I awoke from the fantasy with a start. I couldn't believe it. The final insult. I was actually aroused. Painfully so.
This is ridiculous. Call one of the girls whose numbers you keep for emergencies.
No way. I'm not that desperate.
You seem pretty desperate to me.
Fuck off. Yuki Eiri doesn't do desperate. Those women are on the reserve list for curing writer's block, not for curing "oh dear, Yuki Eiri has started fancying boys." And even then its only for the most dire emergencies – I won't have any woman calling herself my muse, and bragging I've turned to her when I've had trouble with my writing. I don't have living muses; all I have is observation, imagination, and a general belief in the irredeemable corruption of the human race.
With a groan as much of frustration as of desire, I headed for the bathroom, throwing off my clothes and turning on the shower. A cold shower, I thought, would finally drive such thoughts far, far away. But whether by some subconscious desire or simply because I was distracted, I hit the hot tap instead. The warm water spilling over my body sent me into a trance.
When I closed my eyes this time, I was walking back through the park.
The kid is there, sitting on a bench with his hands tucked between his knees. Gazing timidly up at me through thick pink locks. Waiting for me.
Of course he's waiting for me. He wrote that song so that I'd come back.
I pull him into my arms and kiss him. He's frightened and fights me at first; but then he gives in. Very soon he is returning my kiss with passion. Right there, in the cool evening air, I undress him. And I make love to him.
Do what?! If you're going to have this absurd fantasy, at least describe it as it is. Fucking.
No.
Having sex, then.
No. It doesn't work. My writer's brain won't allow it. We're making love.
And it's glorious. Beyond anything I have ever experienced or imagined. I try to conjure the details – my readers like details, gauzed in soft romantic cliché – but such questions as who gives and who receives, who dominates and who submits, don't seem to matter. We are both naked now but we feel no shame. We are both young – I am still only twenty-two, damn it, only twenty two – and we are beautiful. The songbird makes me beautiful. He lets me share in his clean, sweet youth. He has come here to teach me to sing.
Teach you to what? Are you insane? Stop this, you freak. You don't fancy boys, remember? You're Yuki Eiri, the Tokyo lady-killer, remember? What are you, some sort of closet queer? Stop this… stop this… stop this…
That perpetually castigating voice, the cold, metallic voice of truth I had always thought to be me at my most cynical and self-aware, recedes to the level of an annoying mosquito whine before finally fading away. A new voice replaces it, singing words of joy. It could be the songbird's… or it could be Uesugi Eiri's – mine – from a very long time ago.
It was only when the song became a strangled cry that I realised it really was coming from deep in my throat. With a speed that would have devastated my female admirers I had reached my climax. I was exhausted. My heart was fluttering. And I was actually trembling.
I washed myself quickly, dressed for bed and headed into the kitchen for the sedatives.
I awoke late the next morning with a brain sodden with half-remembered dreams. I knew it had been a bad night, but could not work out why. Then I remembered that taking sedatives always made me feel like this, so I had to have taken them that evening, though I could hardly remember why.
It didn't matter. Feeling slightly queasy, I put coffee on to brew and headed into the shower.
Within half an hour I was in front of my laptop, finishing off the revisions Mizuki had suggested. When she had first asked for them, I had felt a small wave of despair. They seemed impossible. I was half tempted to delete the whole damn manuscript and start from scratch. But today the ideas flowed without effort. I could even appreciate my editor's reasoning, and concede that she was right – more or less.
It was only when I took a sip of the coffee I had reheated from breakfast and found it slightly too bitter that a flicker of memory danced through my mind. Drinking bad coffee in a cheap café.
With a pink haired boy.
One of the drug-induced dreams from last night, I supposed. I certainly couldn't remember ever doing such a thing for real.
But some of it felt real. A pink haired boy… in the park. A song. His song.
But when I tried to recall his face, it blurred. Whatever the words of the song had been, I could not remember them now. I remembered walking in the park the night before – I thought I remembered the boy. But that was all. And something told me it was not worth closer examination.
Don't go there.
Fine. I won't.
I downloaded the corrections onto a memory stick and dropped it into my trouser pocket before pulling myself up out of my chair. My head was still aching, but I decided not to put Mizuki off. She would only insist on coming to collect the revisions herself, insisting email was not secure enough, and would find some excuse to go through them with me right then. Better to meet her on neutral territory and let the publishing house bear the cost of a three-course lunch at a classy restaurant. One thing I liked about Mizuki – she made good use of her expense account.
As it turned out, lunch with Mizuki turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant affair. My headache gone, I found myself in good spirits. The good wine and the excellent food helped as well. Visibly relieved that I had not gone AWOL or arrived in a sulk, Mizuki was lively and amusing and actually talked of other subjects besides work.
By the time we parted it was getting late and it had begun pelting down with rain. Having offered chivalrously to drive Mizuki back to the publishing house I set out for home.
That was when some suicidal idiot jumped out in front of my car.
I slammed my foot down on the brake. The car skidded to a halt mere inches from where that moron was still standing, arm stretched out, apparently commanding me to stop. Heart racing, adrenalin pumping, I threw open the car door and burst out to face the lunatic who could have killed us both – and damaged my precious car in the process.
And then I saw him, just as if he had sprung from my dreams. Pink hair dripping wet but still quite unmistakable; boyish face flushed with a mixture of shock and defiant anger. All at once, the barriers fell and the lost thoughts and images of the night before surged back in like a tidal wave.
Memory, it would seem, persisted… no matter how hard we might fight to stop it.
THE END?
NOTE: You never know, there may be a sequel – I have no intention of rewriting the whole manga or anime in Eiri's voice of course, but I have thought about doing their second meeting. You never know! Life is imitating art – like Eiri I'm finding this idea won't lay down and die…
