Warning!: this story is largely inspired by Haruki Murakami's "After Dark". Plus, I'm translating it from my actual language, italian. So, please, forgive any or eventual errors, even if I'm paying my best attentions to translate it the better than I can!
After Dark
The night has her own characteristic charme. She envelopes every surface with her soft ebony embrace. Somebody will say that it's quite an excessive gloomy and not so tempting moment of the day. Children, for example, who fear the dark. They are always scared that in the shadowy ravine of the wall will hide monsters, which would be ready to jump to their throat, unseen. And adults, too, which seem to feel the weights on their shoulders even heavier and less tolerable, as soon as the sun falls down and the clock hands follow one another rhythmically. It seems that the day's sister doesn't enjoy of a good reputation, in the world. Thus, it's just during the night's hours that the city cloaks herself with that slightly and orange warm, spreading from the streetlights, from the shop entrances and from the random smiles of people.
For example, in that Izumi cafeteria, at the corner of an extremely lonely street of Tokyo, everything seemed to limply suffuse, along with the soft lights of the apliques on the walls. The gentle scent of tea and hot drinks, with the characteristic noises typical of a bar, clinks of glasses, pelting limpid water. The moves of the barmen were slow and measured, almost kind in their usual mechanicity. Even the small chatting of the customers sounded like a slight murmur in the background, united with the ambient music from America and Europe. The warm and relaxing place, opened all night long, looked like an unusual living room.
Every kind of people was sitting at the glass tables, which seemed clean and minimal, just like the entire cafeteria did. Middle-aged women were sipping wine, bending their crimson fleshy lips in open smiles of complicity, toasting to men who would have never known or to successful carriers. Eder people were reading the newspaper with the dim light of the lamp, squeezing their eyes to better distinguish the very little characters printed upon the light grey paper. Businessmen were taking a pause from their full-working nights, drinking their umpteenth coffee, nibbling a sandwich with bacon.
The young boy sitting near the glass wall was the only student in the whole cafeteria. Head down low upon a huge chemistry book, he made such a strange impression. And it wasn't the late night time -sure not well adapted for study- acting as the disturbing element of the whole symphony. The dish with the meal of the set menu laid on the table in solitude, not so far from the book and the pencil case. It was intact. He didn't eat anything. He was staring intensively at the pages he had in front of his face, just like nothing else mattered, except for his academic world. Maximum concentration. He was rather young, nothing more than seventeen. He didn't even look Japanese. His long hair, of the same color of the ripe wheat, was tied in an high ponytail; which ends were softly descending upon his shoulder, just like a straight golden waterfall. His eyes, big and European, encased a pair of irises with strange golden reflexes. They were so unusual that the people who were looking at them, often wondered if they were natural or just daily contacts lens. The bravest, even asked him to take a picture of those unnatural eyes. He always answered negatively to them. Face with well-defined outlines, small French nose and thin lips, of a soft shade of pink, standing still in an unexpressive line. Broad and straight shoulders, strong arms hidden by an anonymous sweatshirt of the university he was signed in. The hands, with long and tapered fingers, laid abandoned along the edges of the pages of his book, almost as he was protectively surrounding them. The phalanxes of the right hand were highlighted by a steel ring for every finger. Which shone following the fingers' movements, wriggling to the light. That boy looked extremely serious, completely oblivious of what time was and about his attitude of closure towards the outside. He seemed to live only for the notions he was learning.
The only sign of human weakness that he allowed to himself was caffeine: a tiny cup of white ceramic stood still next to the filled dish, the depths of the drink lumpy silhouetted against the clear material. Out of that wretched livelihood, he didn't seemed in need of anything. He didn't even noticed the door of the cafeteria opening, making the little bells clinking upon the locker. The glass door showed the figure of a second young person.
It was a girl, which was holding herself in her anorak, with rosy cheeks due to the fresh September nights' air. She was blonde too, with long hair falling over her waist just like golden remnants of silk. She had big azure eyes, fleshy and pinky lips. She walked forward, ordering a set menu and a hot tea with a drop of milk. She paid for her ordination and looked around her for an empty seat. She noticed the chair in front of the student, approaching to it without hesitations. When she reached the seat, she put an hand upon the back of the chair, saying something to him. Which he didn't hear. She tried again, raising her voice.
«What?» Asked him, looking seriously annoyed, as he was forced to look away from his precious university book. He focused his interlocutor, without hiding the insolence of analyzing her appearance, mentally classifying her as his contemporary. Even if her face had something more than familiar. It was like a kick from the farther recess of his memory, an event so clear that he couldn't not remember. Still, he couldn't tell who she was. He thought maybe that girl looked like some pop or movie star.
«I was asking if this seat was taken», she repeated, raising an eyebrow.
«Nope», answered the boy, diving his head again in the book, letting her understand that the conversation could as well be considered as closed.
«So… I'm taking it…» she murmured, wondering if he could even hear her. She looked at him, waiting for any reaction, in vain. So, she shrugged, sighing. She moved the chair, which feet scratched the floor, creating an annoying sound. She took off her anorak, sitting. Meanwhile, her hand bumped the coffee cup, which protested clinking.
«Would you mind being less noisy?» He intervened, with a consistent dose of sourness, without even looking at her. She scowled at him, but her malignancy vanished as smoke when she noticed the name silkscreened upon the sweatshirt of the boy.
«Are you attending Todai?» She cried with admiration. She received an affirmative nod. «It's really hard as everybody say? Have you immediately passed the tests?» Kept asking her, incapable to get a hold of her tongue, overexcited. She finally managed to make him raise his head, thus with disappointment, receiving a glare of pure golden hatred.
«It's not "hard"» he commented, miming a pair of quotation marks with his fingers. «It's simply not a place for timewasters», he added, lapidary. «And, yes, I made it at first shot».
«With what score?» She questioned, then, seeming to ignore the common sense of privacy and discretion.
«Do you really need to know it?» He said, annoyingly looking at her. She gave him an opinionated smile.
«This is the classic reply of the losers» she mocked him, while a waiter served her the dish with the set menu she ordered before, just like the one the blond didn't eat. Hearing her, he slightly winced, incredulous in front of all that insolence of hers.
«Just saying, I scored the best ranking! And I didn't have to say it to you, anyway» he cried, justifying himself and crossing his arms in anger.
«But you did it, already» she said, smiling while crushing the sandwich to bite it better. The boy shut his mouth in a shamed muteness, realizing he couldn't have the last word in that discussion, slightly happy to study again. After those that seemed seconds, to him, the voice of the girl disturbed the quiet again. He had to admit that blondie had a natural talent for catching his attention and smashing his nerves with particular attention and expertise.
«You must be Edward Elric», she said with ease, assaulting the sandwich with feminine grace. The boy blinked, disoriented.
«I don't remember any properly presentation» he commented. The girl shrugged.
«A friend of mine did the Todai tests. So he kept me updated with the results. We are still surprised that the first nationally ranked isn't even Japanese» she explained, leaving her sandwich half eaten in the plate. She took a fried potato and dipped it in the pan-dose of ketchup that the waiter gave her along with the dinner. «You should be my contemporary, more or less. You attend Todai and scored best ranking. And, most of all, you really don't seem Japanese», she added. «Am I wrong?»
•
In the room of an apartment, on the third floor of a pretty anonymous condominium, everything stood still. Contrasting with the seducing light smirking outside the window, the place was fully embraced with darkness. The typical furniture, which provided the rooms of every young men, could be recognized in penumbra. A wooden desk with haggard books piled up one on another, randomly. There was still an exercise book, opened to a page half filled with handwritten inked characters. The walls were full of movie posters, blowups of wonderful European views of cities, such as the Eiffel tower or Windsor Castle, in England. Upon the chair near the desk, laid some clothes accurately bent, a shirt, a pullover and a pair of jeans, staked one on another. The silent television was off, in a corner of the room. It highlighted the stillness of those four walls. A wooden seagull was hanging from the ceiling. A tiny chord came out of his belly, allowing anybody to pull it and making his arms move, thanks to the mechanism hidden in his chest. A dream catcher hanged on the wall, upon the headboard of the bed.
The room would have been inhabited, if it wasn't for those swellings under the sheets, unequivocal signs of a human body. Lying upon the cold mattress, his profile enlightened by the moonlight, there was a boy. Nothing more than sixteen years old, his expression with gentle features seemed absorbed in eternal peace. Eyelids sealed, lips slightly disclosed. Only the rhythmic and imperceptible raising and lowing of his chest assured that he was, effectively, sleeping. That face, so pale in that immobile perfection, would have been beautiful and florid, in another time. His hair, not so long neither short absorbed the moonlight, changing their natural golden in silver white, under the spell of the incautious silent rays. A prying artist would have paid a fortune to immortalize a scene like that upon his canvas.
If only the room was given best attentions, probably the tiny veil of dust would have been so clear to the eyes, making the furniture look brighter than it should. It was a sign that nobody changed or touched the things for long time. As long as that young boy hasn't left his bed for so many days. He has been sleeping deeply for eight long months. He seemed to develop his physiological needs in a state of somnambulism, with never opening his eyes and getting out of sleep. He lived in the stillness, just as the cold seagull hanging from the ceiling.
Suddenly, the television in the corner seemed to reanimate, turning on by itself. Upon the screen a series of electric shocks succeeded one another, making impossible to see anything at all for a while. Until the monitor cleaned itself, showing a full white corridor. Then, it focused on the figure of a boy, recorded from the back. He was out of breath, running from someone or something. He looked quite tall, strong and well trained. He was wearing a simple pullover and a pair of jeans. He had fair hair, looking right similar to the boy who was sleeping in the dark room. Who didn't seem to notice anything that was happening around him.
Unexpectedly, the Angle View focused upon the boy's face. It was him, the same lying sleeping under the sheets. His gentle features, usually perfectly still in the motionless sleep, were disturbed by a glimpse of pure terror. His big and European eyes had irises of a strange shade of golden, the apples tight as pinheads, due to all the brightness around him. The only hearable noises were the ones of the soles of his shoes tramping the inconsistent floor and the gasps that the run provoked him. He kept going, until he reached a huge stone railing. He slowed down until he finally stopped running. Then, he bended on his knees, with a hand on his knee and the other clawing his chest, taking so deep breaths he almost risked fainting. A warm tear of sweat fell down from his right temple to his chin, leaving a grey spot upon the pavement. He coughed a few times, filling the space around him with the echoes of his own expectorations. When his breath seemed to take a quiet rhythm and his heart started to calm down, he felt a thrill running down his spine.
«This is the end of the run», said a sound that seemed to be the addiction of every voice in the world. «Isn't it, Alphonse?»
The boy slowly raised his chest, turning back with extreme attention. The Angle View caught the fast wince of the blond and then the screen turned grey, filled with those annoying electric shocks.