I COULD SWALLOW THE SEAS (TO WASH DOWN ALL THIS PRIDE)
"Show me the shape of love," the voice demanded.
At the tender age of five, Kuon was more perturbed to encounter a locked door than he was to find a disembodied voice speaking to him. The door taunted him with promises of secrets untold, mysteries yet to be discovered. Cradled by rock and shrub and dirt as it was, it only served to make this entrance seem more grandiose with its stone and wood and metal inextricably plaited one into the other. He was overcome by the unquenchable need to know what lay beyond it.
"Show me the shape of love," the voice called again, from everywhere and nowhere, in the same soft lilt as his mother.
Dropping into a squat, Kuon drew a wobbly heart with one finger in the patch of dirt beneath him. It was lopsided, but a decent attempt for someone his age. He looked around in confusion as the air shuddered in response to his efforts. A breath of a laugh; a pitying, low thing that would normally be accompanied by the shaking of one's head.
"Not quite, little one," said the voice's gentle, placating tone. "But you are welcome to keep trying."
He opened his mouth to reply only to awake, tangled in his own bedsheets with the remnants of a protest dying on his lips.
"Mom, what's the shape of love?" he asked the following afternoon, the previous night's dream still clinging stubbornly to his mind.
His parents rarely treated his non-sequitur questions as trivialities. Unless, of course, it was his tenth time asking why he couldn't have the purple stuffed elephant that trumpeted each time you squeezed it. He only defaulted to his mother due to his father's penchant for waxing academic (or poetic, depending) on any given topic he asked about. But in this instance, he wasn't trying to incite a lecture to avoid going to bed on time
Julie pouted her lips in careful consideration before answering, "I guess it's different for everyone."
"What's that mean?" he pressed, crawling into her lap.
"Well," she began with a happy sigh as she wrapped her arms around her son, "my love for your father takes the shape of the delicious meals he likes to cook for us. It's the warmth of his hands and the stretch of his lips when he grins at me like loving me is the greatest secret he's ever shared."
Kuon's nose wrinkled as he pulled away with a frown. "I don't get it."
Julie laughed. "And my love for you," she poked the tip of his nose with her finger, "is shaped like your cries, your giggles, and the way the sunlight hits your hair in the morning while you sleep. It's the sparkling green of your eyes and every rock and shell and leaf you've ever found and gifted to me.
That only served to confuse him further.
In the days, months, and years to follow, the dream became lost among new dreams filled with fantasies and far-flung futures. His teen years heralded his friendship with Rick and a facade of arrogance that concealed his carefully curated collection of insecurities. According to Rick, the main one of the bunch was cowardice. His argument was only strengthened upon Kuon adopting the chicken he was meant to dispatch and naming it Brian.
The dream returned not long after that.
"Show me the shape of love," the voice boomed with the air of confidence he associated with Rick.
A crudely-drawn chicken making an even more crude gesture was his reply. Something about Rick's voice provoked him. He couldn't help but be petulant and thought nothing more of it upon waking. It was just a stupid dream. It meant nothing.
The voice rumbled with Rick's deep, patronizing laugh. "Close, but still not there."
It meant nothing right up until Rick's death and the dream was again crowded out by a determination driven by self-loathing.
There were no dreams then. He gave so much to his waking moments that nothing remained when he eventually succumbed to his weariness. Time passed with unassuming swiftness as callow Kuon became the mature Ren, a metamorphosis staged in the cocoon of his father's homeland. He traded his name, appearance, and life for that of another, leaving his past behind. Or so he'd hoped.
A hope he carried faithfully until a stone the color of lavender buds bounced its way back into his life, chased by the girl he'd given it to. Apparently. He hadn't recognized her at first, which wasn't entirely surprising. The memories of one's youth are often corrupted by the ravages of time.
And time, he learned as they became reacquainted, had done neither of them any favors.
They were little more than two scared kids escaping; trying their hardest to shape a future that looked nothing like their pasts. He saw it in her then because it felt like she'd held a mirror to his face. They were a pair of painful learning experiences masquerading as competent people. And yet they both were also one of the happiest memories from each other's childhoods.
He couldn't help but cling to that like a lifeline.
And so he yearned. He yearned from afar; he yearned from up close. Any distance that would allow him to drown in the mire of emotions he'd curated for himself with a particularness that bordered on obsession. He craved the punishment of it because punishment is what he felt he deserved.
But, if the yearning was punishment, the dreams were absolute torment. If that wasn't infuriating enough, the voice now sounded just like Lory. Each night he encountered it, Ren chose to ignore the voice's entreaty with a steadfastness seen only in his professional life. The door could remain locked forever, for all he cared.
Which was, of course, a barefaced lie.
But what was one more lie when he'd already accumulated so many since moving to Japan?
Thus, he kept on lying. He lied to President Takarada, he lied to his manager. Even to Kyoko. Especially to her.
He lied about how he knew her so well; about his protectiveness, his motives, and his feelings. Piling each one atop the other, there was little surprise when his tower threatened to topple upon the appearance of one Kusunoki Kana. Between his potent jealousy towards Kyoko's supposed reconciliation with Sho and Kana's rash actions, his hand was forced to counterbalance the weight with the truth.
Telling the truth was a far scarier thing to do in the face of all the lies which preceded it. He could only manage one at the start. But it was a hefty one; the one upon which the majority of his subsequent lies were built. The other truths would have to wait until he was better prepared to form the words. His mouth was already having a difficult enough time just trying to tell her how he felt.
He went to sleep that night, a maelstrom of emotion. Relieved and lovestruck had formed an alliance, both warring with ferocity against guilt and doubt. When an oh-so-familiar door made its appearance, an agonized groan escaped his lips. The dream had returned. Honestly, he should have expected it.
"Show-" he cut off the facsimile of Lory's voice with a growl.
"Oh I'll show you, all right."
It was a desperate mangling of his dirt canvas as he clawed his fingers through it on his hands and knees, pushing small mounds aside to pull deep caverns between. Warped dandelions and roses melted into haphazard chickens and pillows resembling sheep which, in turn, blended into abstract gemstones that will always be sandy brown and never, ever a dazzling pink or a bold blue-ish purple. He was no artist, could not do any of this justice. Elbows left dents where the strength of his arms failed in his frenzy. Miniature ponds and streams formed where tears and sweat dripped from his face.
It was a disaster, a fitting homage to the turmoil he'd forced himself to endure.
Exhausted, he collapsed over it, his forehead resting on the dusty chaos scribbled below him. Each heaving breath sent loose dirt skittering over its brethren. This was his last attempt. Should he again be denied whatever was behind that door, he'd learn to get by without it. He'd love Kyoko without it.
The voice was silent. The sound of the door unlocking was anything but.
His head raised on its own, eyes searching as the door swung open to reveal…
Nothing.
"I don't understand," he breathed, sitting back on his ankles with shoulders sagged in defeat. "I don't-"
"Finding your own answer was far more important than any revelation this door could have concealed," the voice spoke finally.
"Why?"
"At one time there would have been something hidden in there, something you lacked," the voice explained, soft as ever. "Courage. Faith, perhaps, or maybe even hope. When you asked what lay within, the response you received was not a lie. It would have been what you needed to love at that time, however it was never implied that this was the only way to acquire it. You created that dichotomy on your own."
"So this was a test."
A gentle chuckle floated through the air; it sounded like his mother, like Rick, like Lory. "It was a lesson. One you taught yourself over the course of many years. You must have somehow realized this was the only way in which you would learn it."
His thoughts tripped over themselves at that revelation. Squinting, he wiped at the dirt on his face, leaving careless smudges in his wake. Looking around at the barren grays and whites of his surroundings save for the door that lay open before him. This was… him? He'd created this absurd challenge for himself?
Kuon didn't recall the words actually leaving his mouth, but the voice answered all the same.
"This is your dream is it not?"
AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR AUTHOR: I could only manage to write four things (well technically three but one has multiple chapters that span two days) but, yeah... it's gonna be a Ren-centric week this week. Fair warning!