Clouds of Storm [Part Two]
A disturbing silence haunted the city at the mourning. Contrary to the beginning of the year, Koushirou's travel became quicker without so many people in the street. But it didn't compensate the green men that watched every people's movement. With cautious tone, he should be looked in a more rigid Tokyo than normal, some corner that appeased a stinging that had already been prolonged too much. Many time it stood out the austere sound of the bicycle, between passages of tension and fearful murmurs. Passing in front of alleys that hid demonstrators' multitudes that stayed in silence when seeing any stranger that produced them the minimum suspicion and in the next one, whole regiments with deceiving factions, adolescents and old men corroded under the untenable flag, guarding without truce toward an accomplished and unavoidable fact.
Through puddles that reflected black clouds that covered the faces of the men representatives of the leveled masses, launching proclamations about a new era; a wave of fear and horror which nothing more expected that the own and definitive faith.
His veiled sight, half-severe. It's made an effort for not get his attention, the delicate and painful trip submerged with insistence toward a deaf station of fatigue. Their habit of not uniting to other cyclists while lasts the trip it's seemed to mean that between to listen or not to listen, or not to know about trust from him was not something restrictive, but imposed. His Iron Cruz might be. He worked equally for everything as if the familiar things were painful to him. It took me lot of time to realize that in his way to be there was something convulsive, in roads of surrender before the most appropriate error. The true Izumi could not feel this so strange to manifest the minimum likeness as possible.
For a moment, he come back from his thoughts and noticed that the only place that seemed quiet was the Okayama cemetery. There in the distance a funeral was carried out, making remembered him a similar fact that had witnessed some time ago.
Flashback:
A little nervous he hoped to come closer to the group of people that remained in a deep lethargy.
Among the sound of the monk's sutras, emissaries of the torment. Already beached in the functional character of the ceremony, He looked among the assistants to the person that had contacted him. Being distinguished in the bottom a young figure, the smallest. With fixed sight in the burial gave he suddenly find the sober look of an old friend that walked hesitant to him. Koushirou didn't tell word since a mutual empathy expression it destroyed any comment.
-I'm glad to see you again, I'm sorry that has to be this way -, he finally said kneeling down next to the young men.
-Don't worry, I thank that you have come -, Iori said with unavoidable courtesy.
-I'm sorry not to have been able to warn to the other ones, the truth is that I no longer know anybody -.
-It doesn't matter, I couldn't make anybody face though a bad experience -. These words hung crudely on Izumi. He experienced a little steel and strange expression. Unjustifiably, Iori had a crushing way to share its feelings, feelings that skirted the incipient. He shouldn't bear so many misfortunes at so short age. Although he was good hiding his pain, tired and dull, extending a latent pathos that through the whole funeral like the scent of incense.
Koushirou's morally resisted to discern on the awkward feeling that all that caused him. However, it was a funeral that in comparison, it overcame any personal difference.
Even so, that moment could easily contract a heart. Iori suffered the death of another loved one. The oldest that didn't impede his going, but rather it was his noble spirit that maintained him until the eighty nine years. Chikara Hida lay between frills and gifts. A blanket covered his face; otherwise, it had been impossible to remove the eyes of it. His image caused a feeling of uneasiness that tunneled any intent of avoiding the fact of there loss. The few present could not be been worth of their proximity but yes of their grace, since it was one of the most honorable members in the family. The most direct relative was Iori who took charge of praying now and during the 49 days of closing (1)
He didn't speak again, you know? since my mother's death. He built a cabin outside of the house and stayed there the whole day, without doing anything… -.
-I know that he meant a lot to you; I suppose that it was like a father -. This comment caused a small reaction in Iori that Izumi noticed immediately.
-No, no, that is not true. He even told it to me, there's no way to replace a father, please don't say those things -, said with effort.
-You have misinterpret me, of course that I couldn't understand for what you going through, but he made all the possible to raise you so you owe him a lot -, Koushirou said unalterable.
-no, of course you couldn't understand it, because you don't know what feels… to lose both parents -.
Koushirou felt that his throat was dried out, a terrible cold it was spread on its temples. His friend's words had been devastating. That memory, in fact, didn't approach certainly to the experience of the young Hida. To demand of his will, avoided to say anything, absolutely convinced that he had made a mistake.
- Do you know what was the last thing that he told me? Holding his tears that I if could forgave him. That what happened to my father was his fault that… you can't watch your children grow up but you can do it whit your grandsons, that he was thanked by my, for be a good person -.
Soon other persons ended up consoling the young men in front of Koushirou's immobility. Moving away from that scene felt sorrow like it hadn't felt in years. He couldn't continue in that place any longer and left it without nobody noticed it. Quietly walked outside of the living room with the hands in the pockets, escaping from a cold and measured farewell, taking that expression in the face of Iori and reproducing it over and over in his mind. Without changing anything in it, training himself to recognize their own bitterness.
Noticing the difference between both experiences prepared suddenly to visit their parents that same day, finding their behavior like highly sentimental. "But what do I care? They are my parents".
Confused by what happened tried to overcome their exaltation at soon as possible. Before he have to inform their friends of this tragedy, although to his grief doesn't want to share misfortunes to their distant partners. The fact was that Chikara Hida had died in a day of September, just in the national day for the respect to the elders.
End of the Flashback
Now well, what I just mentioned have a quite ambiguous value to me. Because it would be impossible for me to find out of these events from my own. Everything tour around of some notes that I found in the apartment in my days of leisure and that Koushirou had surely never allowed me to include in this book. Counting with he doesn't get interest in read it, however knowing that I have betrayed the respect of many to write it. I don't know exactly in what moment he wrote this notes or why he left them carelessly within my reach, but they have been of great help to decipher him and even myself. They meant an escape or some palliative class perhaps. Morbid sometimes, I couldn't give me the luxury of judging them besides of not being in my right, they have ended up being measurably pleasant. Without wishing to protect my objectivity by no means my friend's bearable thoughts, should say that when I fortunately found humanity samples in most of the stories I can say that this reading appeals perhaps to all worries and suffering that a normal person can have. Although put unaccountably in a frantic state of observation and analysis that made seem that those experiences belonged to some one else and, in their expense, it served as an errant experiment.
Reading carefully, could newly imagine the internal discord and misery in rude appearance that he had. I always suspected that it was unhappy; and in what way… Remembering to him once or rather being revealed to him in an ordinary day:
What about you? did I say.
Excuse me?
What reason do you have to allow you to be so miserable? He did a make grimace a little apathetic. My arrogance somehow caused him grace.
Is truth, I am miserable isn't? or will you maybe mean a poor devil. I am not right and neither should I. In my opinion, there is not possible excuse to be deprived from happiness. That's what you mean?
No, if you are as miserable as I believe you should have said something as: "The concept of happiness is a foregone illusion before the human's ingenuousness and its tendency to simplify or to try to explain a state most than all inappropriate and not very sincere of its genius and circumstance in the reality". He looked at me without making any expression.
Takeru, that seems a textual definition, he said ironically.
Respond, is something like that, what you feel, right?
Yes, probably that's my position but tell me, did you hope I gave you that answer or are you simply guessing something that deserves the same answer to your image?
I don't say that I am not unhappy, I only say that in bottom you and I are not so different, I responded. He smiled again and looked the floor for moment.
I believe that the difference is in that one of us can decide to be miserable, not so the other
I see, so I am a phoney I said confused.
No, I believe that your misery is real but it is not good to justify that it pleases you to feel unhappy
I don't like… - listen to yourself! - It interrupted.
Do you expect to spend the rest of your life cursing all expression or thought unaware to your shield? as if your suffering was the biggest in the world. The only thing that I see is a talented and promising man that prefers to feel unhappy before accepting that he doesn't have the enough courage to begin again. That much they have hurt you? I don't know it.
It's care? Of course not. And do you plan to tell to me that allow myself to be a miserable when the only thing you do is to whimper every time that somebody says or does something that you don't find honest?, If that the way you can go to hell.
Said this, stood up and it left the apartment abruptly only leaving me with my evident weakness...
Probably the most intense argument that we have. However, he had so much reason and, after all, I make him to express some emotion; in this case anger. It is worth in any case to return to those moments, because they mean a lot. Although this isn't the last incursion that I will have to these memories, it will be good to speak more detailedly of them.
When my friend deliberately was refused to speak of his problems could appeal to the paper, difference of me, he made it for a much more complex cause. With an enviable calligraphy, he gave sporadic jumps to certain stages of their life and contradictory situations that I could never interpret. In the afternoons, I devoured the paragraphs and read over and over the intricate dilemmas of a certainly brilliant mind. Without admitting him my discovery, I found a familiar image: For him I was a wasted talent and weak of character. Qualifications that I didn't see as unjust but a little accelerated after all, he was get used to the success and to act quickly. I simply went where the circumstances take me. This didn't mean that it could not find an exit to write in the future, only that in my form of making things didn't always have some plan or at least a purpose.
Indeed, if he is right, in my strange hours of pleasure I could fall back to the deceiving defense of the contempt. Said this way, my betrayal had been so brutal that I feared to the possibility of an encounter with myself, forgetting all the rules that govern the normal members of the society. I preferred to erase all vitality leaving it subjected and forced to the depravity and finally to the extinction.
As an honest author, I can't try to defend of this position. I had become a worthless, coarse and thrashed being.
- Oh, all this has been made by yourself! - I should come off of this attitude of deception whose effect didn't cared. But why was so difficult?, there was some very precise good, something that I was ignoring and that it was so necessary that I didn't allow to imagine my life like a free man?
I don't see it. I don't know for where to begin. I already arrived to this extreme, to the closeness of my feelings. Being that irreversible, the presage wouldn't be good. I wouldn't know where to go, I wouldn't have neither objectives or aspirations. Soon I no longer would be necessary for anybody and no matter how much sends my thoughts to another part in search of serenity, it wouldn't get anything. Everything was old and withered, without a single light of hope.
- God! will I have begun to digress? Please forgive me, this should not only refer to me. I don't require at the moment of these details and I know that neither do you.
But well, enough of these explanations that nothing have to do with I was telling you, their true relevance it needs in fact to be told through the history, it is better to continue now like it's due.
Right, two days have been since Monday. The conference. I woke up that morning without remembering it. Seemingly, my isolation level erased any thought that took a lot of time without being revised. I probably carried out a routine without many stimulate. Taking a shower, I supposes, and having some poor breakfast. It was not until I put the view in the computer that Koushirou left doing "I do not know what" that my memory returned boisterously to make me react.
Maybe I owe it to him… What matter could I wait in this… exhibition? A sort of lost cause that I never dared to mention. The Digiworld was not close, no way. Of being able to admit it I would maybe feel less guilty of not attending, but not of pleasing Koushirou. Being so patient with me is the less than I can do, however… how problematic!
I had the impression that my conscience gets clouded at times; if that is possible. It had probably arrived to the limit of being enclosed so much time. I couldn't even think correctly.
If I lost my mind there wouldn't very much to do. For it, a small part of me wanted to go out again. But this time I have to resist, if I controlled myself I will had the opportunity to leave another day, unfortunately I still have to face him. It would be then: or to venture to an unpredictable occasion, or to bear my roommate well deserved bitterness for some time.
-It's resolved, I won't go-.
I looked on the desk the paper that my partner had shown me. The event was programmed for ten thirty of the morning. -Right, I had forgotten it -. The clock marked little more than nine thirty. -Koushirou should be already there-. The only thing that I left was to call to try to convince him.
I didn't remember the last time that I used a phone and as ours it had been canceled I had to go down to reception for one. Pressed by the fact of having to leave although it was only of the apartment I felt a sign of scorn from my part for the first time. It's not such a big deal!
I took a breath and opened the door quickly. It was as dark as inside, although much fresher. To the bottom, following a passage was the stairways. I look at the door after me, I doubted if to continue or not. When I noticing of the ridiculous thing that this was turning. I concentrated and I advanced with determination.
I found the road eternal; the delicate light of the corridors was still able to blind me. In my loner walk, I distinguished voices in the distance that only promised new manifestations and precipitations during the whole week. Taking care of each step, I get down with both hands in the rail as if it was a handicap.
When I arriving my vision was already quite limited. I didn't see anybody while I was going down neither when I arrived. As if the rest of people had stopped to exist and all the sounds were product of my imagination.
Finally, I was in the first floor, the entrance was a narrow corridor that gave to a small door. Surrounded by a pale and weakened red that tinted the room. In the center, a yellowish window that illuminated the whole first floor and that make people's silhouettes look like a great mantel that it covered everything. Some steps before the exit were hung in an old telephone. In spite of the diffuse of the numbers, I could mark them without more problems. As I was holding, I tried to think in the exact words that I would say, without finding any convincing argument and those ephemeral seconds. Suddenly I had an inexplicable feeling, a chill in my whole body that made me lose all stability, while it floated stunned a shadow stopped outside of the door for an instant. A majestic figure that it filled the whole room it's made me return to the reality. I felt that it observed me, I wanted to escape but I was attracted by an indescribable scent. I feel tormented, insignificant. That image however seemed to be there for me, I had been reserved a last comfort before disintegrating my will completely.
In that same moment my call was attended, it felt like woke up, at the same time the figure moved away from the window leaving me without answer. - Hello, hello? -, was it heard from the headphone. I stayed looking at the device and without thinking it twice I hung and I ran hopelessly after the figure.
When I go out my eyes was burned, I couldn't see anything. Covering with the forearm, the only thing that noticed was the endless sidewalk, completely deserted. It had lost the mysterious silhouette, however the scent had not left me; it was even stronger. The chill returned but in a lighter way. Below to my right, to a couple of feets a young girl buckled up her stiffness without notice me. Confused, I look how she stand up and stayed seeing fixedly at me. My vision had clearing up a little, but she stood out clear mainly of the rest. Her look was clear and deep, her face seemed to be drawn as I went finding fragments of a beauty that I thought I had forgotten. When finally I finished recognizing her I listened surprised the sound of my own voice like a shock.
-Hi -.
She didn't respond and only looked at me. When her mouth emulated a contained smile that took place in me such a comfortable feeling that just in that moment I realized that it had left the building.