Perspective - Chapter Two
[TITLE] Perspective
[PAIRING] Cloud Stife/Riku
[RATING] PG-13
[DISCLAIMERS] I wish, okay? It’s all lies. I don’t own Kingdom Hearts, I don’t know anyone who owns Kingdom Hearts, and I am not affiliated with anyone who is affiliated with anyone who owns Kingdom Hearts. I think that about covers it.
Chapter Two: Kimiko Asaki
I always knew raising children would be a challenge. When my daughter was born, it was just as I expected. She kept me on the go, up and down all night to appease her needs. When she started crawling, I kept one eye on her at all times, and when she started walking, I gave up on afternoon naps all-together. She was expensive between the costs of setting up a nursery, childcare, clothing, and doctor’s bills. I never minded much. Ayumi was a healthy, happy little girl full of curiosity, and I loved to watch her play with her dolls, brushing their hair, or running around on the beach building sandcastles. I knew I wasn’t the perfect mother, but I had the best of intentions, and always put my daughter first. With a face like that, it was hard not to adore her.
Ayumi was three years old when Riku was born. Ecstatic to be a big sister, her dolls lay forgotten as we doted over the precious new addition to our family. I thought I was more prepared this time around when I brought my son home from the hospital. I had handled a newborn in the house before, and thought it would be a similar experience. Three weeks later, I learned that Riku was determined to not let me get off as easily as Ayumi had.
Riku was fourteen when he thanked me for being so understanding and supportive over the years. I think I laughed. He always challenged me, and just when I thought I’d figured him out, he turned around on me again. As an infant, he adjusted to sleeping at night with naps during the day quickly, and just as I thought I might get some sleep with this one, he began sleeping during the day and cried his lungs out straight through the night. Once I adjusted to his new schedule, he started sleeping for little more than two hours at a time, crying through wakefulness. I tried to feed him. I took him to the doctor.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I pleaded with my husband after six months of Riku’s erratic sleeping patterns.
Riku’s pediatrician smiled when I told him of my plight, and explained that my son was perfectly healthy.
“It seems he’s just giving you a hard time, Kimiko,” he once said.
Hard time, indeed. When Riku started to crawl, he was into everything. By the time Ayumi started walking, the breakables were out of her reach. When Riku started walking, there weren’t any breakables left because he learned to climb around the same time. He had a wicked sense of humor. He purposefully did things I told him not to with a devilish smirk-his form of playing. When Ayumi started speaking in entire sentences, she talked to her dolls. She asked me questions about how things worked. Riku’s whole sentences made little sense, and when I tried to correct him, he burst into peals of laughter. Yelling never worked with him, because nothing amused him more.
Both my son and daughter were quick to make friends, but while Ayumi splashed in the ocean with her friends and stayed within view, Riku led his all over the islands the first second I looked away. The emergency room was like a second home. He was always covered in cuts and scrapes. I’d scold him constantly for the things he did to himself-wandering off, breaking bones-and he’d give me those big, tear eyes, sob into my shirt, apologizing, clinging to me.
“He’s a little demon,” I said to my husband one night after tucking Riku into bed. It had been another day in the emergency room. Riku broke his wrist trying to show off to some of the older boys. My head ached. “He’s so sweet sometimes, and then he turns around and . . .”
“He’s a four-year-old boy,” said Tsubasa. “What do you expect, Kimi?”
I sighed.
“I don’t know. I just . . . He’s a little . . . excessive.”
He shrugged.
“Riku is normal. He’s mischievous, not evil.”
“He wants to learn to spar. He asked me if you’d teach him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’d talk to you about it.”
“Don’t worry so much. He’s just a little boy. He’ll grow out of it.”
“I just . . . Ayumi wasn’t like this.”
“That’s because Ayumi is a little girl, and they’re different people.”
“I know that. I just . . . I don’t know how to handle him.”
“He’s testing his limits in the world around him.”
“He has a broken wrist.”
“Be thankful it isn’t his neck.”
I carried Tsubasa’s words with me long after that night. Riku started going to school the next year. His instructors fawned over him. He was a good student, and school seemed to calm him. I watched his endless, scattered energy collect as he focused on his assignments as if he had a mission to accomplish. A sense of pride lit in his eyes over the praise his father and I bestowed for his hard work. His group of friends became smaller but closer, and after two years in school, Sora Harada from next door was practically a permanent fixture in our household.
Sora and Riku played together from the time Riku was four and Sora was three, but they had never been especially close until after Riku’s seventh birthday. Sora’s mother, Ayaka, and I became fast friends as we shared the duty of supervising our little troublemakers. When Riku was eight, he came home after a day at the Harada house. I set a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the table with a glass of milk and sat in the chair beside him.
“Did you have fun with Sora today, honey?”
Riku nodded.
“Yeah. He’s my bestest friend. When I grow up, I’m gonna marry him.”
I smiled.
“Don’t you think you’ll marry a girl when you grow up instead?”
“Nope.”
“You say that now, but wait until you’re older. Girls won’t be so icky then.”
Riku set his sandwich down and stared at me.
“Momma, is it weird I want to marry Sora when I grow up?”
I think I stared for a few seconds. No, honestly, I hadn’t thought it was weird. Little boys were supposed to think girls had cooties. I was more amused than anything, but the way he looked at me was unsettling.
“Why do you ask, sweetheart?”
“Cause Wakka has a girlfriend, and Tidus got married on the playground to a girl, and Mizuki wanted to marry me, but I told her I was gonna marry Sora when I grew up, and Souta said that was weird and called me gay. What’s gay mean?”
“It . . . It means that you’re a boy who likes boys like boys are supposed to like girls.”
“Oh.” Riku paused, sipped his milk, and nodded. “That’s okay, then.”
“What’s okay?”
“I thought he said something mean, but I do like boys, so that’s okay, then.”
I didn’t comment further, and I never said anything to Tsubasa. I still believed that Riku was too young to like girls, and maybe he was a little behind the other boys, but he’d get there eventually. When Riku was nine, Kairi arrived on Destiny Islands, and the terrible twosome of Riku and Sora turned into a threesome. By the time Riku was eleven, it was painfully obvious that Sora and Kairi had crushes on each other. Riku grew quiet around them and tended to sulk around the house. When he turned twelve, I couldn’t ignore the situation anymore.
“Riku’s gay,” I said one night after Ayumi and Riku were in bed. Tsubasa looked up from his work papers, his eyebrows high.
“Excuse me?”
“Riku’s gay.”
“He told you this?”
“Not in so many words.”
“When?”
“About four years ago.”
“What?”
I retold the events in the kitchen when Riku was still eight. Tsubasa studied me as I spoke. When I finished, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“This makes you think he’s gay?”
“He still likes Sora. I don’t know how you can miss it. And it breaks my heart because Sora likes Kairi, and I just want to shake that boy.”
“I don’t think Ayaka would appreciate you shaking her son.”
“I’m not like I’m going to, but Riku likes him, and . . . I just don’t know what to do.”
“You’re sure of this, aren’t you?”
“I know my son, okay? Riku’s gay. Trust me.”
“Do you think he realizes?”
“Yes and no. I think he knows he likes boys, but . . . I don’t think he realizes what it means, yet.”
“So what are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t know. Wait for him to tell us, I suppose.”
“It’s a hard life.”
“At least it’s not his neck.”
“What?”
“It could be worse, you know? We could not support him. Something horrible could happen to him. He’s healthy. I just . . . I don’t want him to . . .”
“You want him to be him and not try to be something else. You want him to be happy.”
I sighed.
“Yes.”
Riku was my heart attack waiting to happen from the time he was born. When he was thirteen, he came out to the family, and we respected his wishes to keep it quiet. He swore he’d tell his friends when he was ready, and though I could see his surprise that Tsubasa, Ayumi, and I took it so well, the sadness remained in his eyes. He stopped playing, sparred more, and continued exploring the extents of the Islands. Ayumi said he’d taken up residence on a paopu tree on the island the kids like to play on. She called it his ‘sulking place.’
I wanted to reach out, say something, but Riku never responded well to smothering. He liked to figure things out on his own. As Tsubasa would say, he was testing the boundaries of the world around him, and now he was trying to find his place in it. He started high school, and though I saw Sora just as often, Riku started running around with an older crowd of boys now that he and Sora were in different schools. Ayumi and Riku had always been close, but they started to drift apart. She’d get on my case and demand I make Riku stop hanging out with his new friends. When he was fourteen, I caught him on the back porch at two a.m. with a cigarette in hand. Three weeks later, he stumbled in at three in the morning reeking of alcohol. I felt him drift farther away, and when I did try to say something, he refused to listen and stormed off.
When Riku was fifteen years old, he walked into the kitchen and announced that he was building a raft with Sora and Kairi, was leaving Destiny Islands, and was going to see other worlds. Ayumi laughed. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but it sounded so very . . . Riku . . . that once again I was at a loss.
On the night of the storm, I searched the house. I called everyone I knew. Ayaka was in tears. There was no sign of Riku, Sora, or Kairi anywhere. The months following the storm are a gaping hole in everyone’s memories. When the memories resumed, Kairi was safe and sound. Sora . . . Sora was a foggy entity that no one could really be sure if he existed at all. Riku was gone-missing. My heart broke a little more every day. After a year, I was sure he was dead even when everyone remembered Sora all at the same time without any explanation as to why. When Kairi disappeared again, I knew he had to be dead. I resigned to never seeing my son again.
Several months after Kairi’s disappearance, I was setting the table for dinner. Ayumi was in the living room on the phone, chatting away with one of her friends. Tsubasa walked into the kitchen from the garage, propped the door open with his foot, and looked at me.
“You won’t believe who I saw walking down our street,” said Tsubasa.
I frowned.
“Who?”
“Sora Harada.”
I dropped the glass from my hands. It shattered across the floor.
“Mom?” said Ayumi. “Is something wrong?”
“Sora?” I said. “Sora was . . .”
“And you won’t believe who was with him.”
Tsubasa pushed the garage door opened. I fell into a chair. He was several inches taller. The tanned glow to his skin had paled, and heavy bags hung under his eyes. He walked with a slight limp. Riku opened his mouth, closed it again, and stared at the floor. His feet shifted.
“. . . Riku . . .”
He looked up. He gave me the eyes. I burst into tears.
“Mom?” said Ayumi. She walked into the kitchen. Stared. “I have to go.”
Ayumi turned off the phone, dropped it on the table, and dropped in the seat across me. Tsubasa patted Riku’s back.
“They’re a little emotional right now,” my husband said.
“Guess you can’t blame them,” said Riku. “I did run away for almost two years.”
“Oh . . . Riku . . .”
His voice more than his appearance was what really broke me, I think. I walked to him, pulled him into a hug, and as I held him there and stroked his hair, I heard his breath hitch. It was the first time I’d seen Riku cry since he was ten.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m home now. I’m so sorry.”
The entire family gathered together again, and after dinner through most of which Riku was silent we went into the living room and listened. Riku began by warning us that we might not believe him-that we might even think he’d gone crazy. I urged him to continue. His story started long before he left. Most of the beginning I suspected regarding his crush on Sora and his attempts to act out. He’d fallen victim to my fears in trying to be heterosexual, fearful of what his friends would say. I learned about the Heartless, why we all had a months-long gap in memory after the storm, and Riku’s role in the invasion of our world. He told us about the other worlds, the darkness, and how he’d succumbed to it. Riku didn’t hold back when he explained his fight with Sora, Sora’s role as Keyblade master, his possession, and the realm of darkness. Though he refused to meet our eyes when he told us about taking on the appearance of Xehanort’s Heartless, his voice remained strong.
“And here I am,” he finished.
“You’re an idiot!” Ayumi said through tears.
She latched onto Riku, sobbing into his shoulder. His smiled failed to reach his eyes. My heart broke as he spoke, wishing I could have been there, could have done something for him. He was here, though. He had defeated the piece of Xehanort in his heart. My little boy didn’t need picked up anymore. He was exploring his boundaries, finding his place in the world, and through it all, he had learned the fly. The part breaking my heart now was the shame in his eyes.
When Riku was fourteen, he thanked me for being understanding and I laughed. He’d been my heart attack waiting to happen since he was born. At seventeen years old, when I hadn’t seen him in almost two years, he finally made sense, and for the first time, I knew what to do.
I smiled, touched his wrist, and waited for his eyes to reach mine.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said.
His smile reached his eyes. It would have been sweet if it wasn’t the same, devious smile I’d seen on his face his entire life.
“There’s actually one more thing . . .”
“Do I want to know?” I asked.
“I hope so. I’ve got a boyfriend. I met him two months after the storm. He’s the one who helped me through everything. I’m . . . I’m really in love.”
Ayumi squealed.
“I’m so happy for you.”
“Does Sora know?” said Ayumi.
“Not yet, but I’m going to tell him as soon as things have settled down around here.”
“You know,” said Tsubasa, “it wasn’t necessary to go through all that to find yourself a boyfriend.”
Riku grinned and shrugged.
“I guess I like to do things the hard way.”
“So tell us about this boy,” I said.
“Well, his name’s Cloud.”
“Is he hot?” said Ayumi.
“Oh, yeah. He’s a lot like me with the way he was stuck in darkness, but he’s defeated his demons, too. He’s just . . . he’s great. He’s been so supportive of me . . . he had so much faith in me when he should have given up . . . Oh, yeah. Obviously, he lives on another world, so . . . well, I’m going to have to figure out a way to see him, and everything. And . . . well . . . he’s almost twenty-four. I hope that’s not a problem.”
Some things never change. Just when I think I’ve got Riku figured out, he turns everything around.
Tsubasa said that after everything Riku had gone through, a boyfriend seven years Riku’s senior shouldn’t have bothered me so deeply. He rationalized in Riku’s defense when I worried about him leaving again. While he spent time with the family, there was something detached in Riku that I didn’t like. I often saw him on his cell phone talking to Cloud. Two weeks after his return, he finally came out to his friends, and I ached when I found out how it had gone only because I overheard him tell his boyfriend.
A month after Riku came home, I met Cloud. I observed them interact-the playful banter, the gentle touches, and the soft way Cloud watched Riku when he didn’t realize anyone was watching. I wanted to dislike Cloud. I wanted it to be meaningless. I wanted to keep Riku forever now that he was safe and sound-now that he was home.
“You need to let him go,” said Tsubasa one evening as I watched Cloud and Riku in the living room.
“He really adores Riku, doesn’t he?”
Tsubasa nodded.
“It appears that way.”
“Riku loves him, too.”
“He’s said so, yes.”
“I don’t want him to go.”
“He won’t be gone forever. Riku’s a good kid. He’ll keep in touch.”
When I wasn’t looking, Riku had fallen, and while he was gone, he learned to fly. Cloud sparked something in Riku that I hadn’t seen in him since he was still young, open, and carefree. I envied Cloud in a way, because where I never knew how to handle Riku, Cloud always said the right things. He gave Riku his space without there being a distance.
Riku stretched out on the couch. Cloud poked him in the side.
“Stop squirming,” said Cloud.
“I’m not squirming.”
“You are.”
“I’m restless.”
“Then go lay somewhere else, cause you’re squirming all over me.”
“I’m not squirming, and I wouldn’t be so restless if you weren’t so bony.”
“I’m not bony. I’m sexy and muscular.”
“Well your sexy, muscular physique is not comfy.”
“Oh, you, come here.”
Cloud extended his arm and scooped Riku toward his body.
“Better?” said Cloud.
“No. When did you get so short?”
“I didn’t. You got tall.”
“Were you always this short?”
“Yes.”
“Midget.”
“Brat.”
“I love you?”
“Yeah, yeah. I love you, too.”
I looked back at Tsubasa.
“He’s all grown up now, isn’t he?”
My husband nodded.
Chapter One
[PAIRING] Cloud Stife/Riku
[RATING] PG-13
[DISCLAIMERS] I wish, okay? It’s all lies. I don’t own Kingdom Hearts, I don’t know anyone who owns Kingdom Hearts, and I am not affiliated with anyone who is affiliated with anyone who owns Kingdom Hearts. I think that about covers it.
Chapter Two: Kimiko Asaki
I always knew raising children would be a challenge. When my daughter was born, it was just as I expected. She kept me on the go, up and down all night to appease her needs. When she started crawling, I kept one eye on her at all times, and when she started walking, I gave up on afternoon naps all-together. She was expensive between the costs of setting up a nursery, childcare, clothing, and doctor’s bills. I never minded much. Ayumi was a healthy, happy little girl full of curiosity, and I loved to watch her play with her dolls, brushing their hair, or running around on the beach building sandcastles. I knew I wasn’t the perfect mother, but I had the best of intentions, and always put my daughter first. With a face like that, it was hard not to adore her.
Ayumi was three years old when Riku was born. Ecstatic to be a big sister, her dolls lay forgotten as we doted over the precious new addition to our family. I thought I was more prepared this time around when I brought my son home from the hospital. I had handled a newborn in the house before, and thought it would be a similar experience. Three weeks later, I learned that Riku was determined to not let me get off as easily as Ayumi had.
Riku was fourteen when he thanked me for being so understanding and supportive over the years. I think I laughed. He always challenged me, and just when I thought I’d figured him out, he turned around on me again. As an infant, he adjusted to sleeping at night with naps during the day quickly, and just as I thought I might get some sleep with this one, he began sleeping during the day and cried his lungs out straight through the night. Once I adjusted to his new schedule, he started sleeping for little more than two hours at a time, crying through wakefulness. I tried to feed him. I took him to the doctor.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I pleaded with my husband after six months of Riku’s erratic sleeping patterns.
Riku’s pediatrician smiled when I told him of my plight, and explained that my son was perfectly healthy.
“It seems he’s just giving you a hard time, Kimiko,” he once said.
Hard time, indeed. When Riku started to crawl, he was into everything. By the time Ayumi started walking, the breakables were out of her reach. When Riku started walking, there weren’t any breakables left because he learned to climb around the same time. He had a wicked sense of humor. He purposefully did things I told him not to with a devilish smirk-his form of playing. When Ayumi started speaking in entire sentences, she talked to her dolls. She asked me questions about how things worked. Riku’s whole sentences made little sense, and when I tried to correct him, he burst into peals of laughter. Yelling never worked with him, because nothing amused him more.
Both my son and daughter were quick to make friends, but while Ayumi splashed in the ocean with her friends and stayed within view, Riku led his all over the islands the first second I looked away. The emergency room was like a second home. He was always covered in cuts and scrapes. I’d scold him constantly for the things he did to himself-wandering off, breaking bones-and he’d give me those big, tear eyes, sob into my shirt, apologizing, clinging to me.
“He’s a little demon,” I said to my husband one night after tucking Riku into bed. It had been another day in the emergency room. Riku broke his wrist trying to show off to some of the older boys. My head ached. “He’s so sweet sometimes, and then he turns around and . . .”
“He’s a four-year-old boy,” said Tsubasa. “What do you expect, Kimi?”
I sighed.
“I don’t know. I just . . . He’s a little . . . excessive.”
He shrugged.
“Riku is normal. He’s mischievous, not evil.”
“He wants to learn to spar. He asked me if you’d teach him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’d talk to you about it.”
“Don’t worry so much. He’s just a little boy. He’ll grow out of it.”
“I just . . . Ayumi wasn’t like this.”
“That’s because Ayumi is a little girl, and they’re different people.”
“I know that. I just . . . I don’t know how to handle him.”
“He’s testing his limits in the world around him.”
“He has a broken wrist.”
“Be thankful it isn’t his neck.”
I carried Tsubasa’s words with me long after that night. Riku started going to school the next year. His instructors fawned over him. He was a good student, and school seemed to calm him. I watched his endless, scattered energy collect as he focused on his assignments as if he had a mission to accomplish. A sense of pride lit in his eyes over the praise his father and I bestowed for his hard work. His group of friends became smaller but closer, and after two years in school, Sora Harada from next door was practically a permanent fixture in our household.
Sora and Riku played together from the time Riku was four and Sora was three, but they had never been especially close until after Riku’s seventh birthday. Sora’s mother, Ayaka, and I became fast friends as we shared the duty of supervising our little troublemakers. When Riku was eight, he came home after a day at the Harada house. I set a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the table with a glass of milk and sat in the chair beside him.
“Did you have fun with Sora today, honey?”
Riku nodded.
“Yeah. He’s my bestest friend. When I grow up, I’m gonna marry him.”
I smiled.
“Don’t you think you’ll marry a girl when you grow up instead?”
“Nope.”
“You say that now, but wait until you’re older. Girls won’t be so icky then.”
Riku set his sandwich down and stared at me.
“Momma, is it weird I want to marry Sora when I grow up?”
I think I stared for a few seconds. No, honestly, I hadn’t thought it was weird. Little boys were supposed to think girls had cooties. I was more amused than anything, but the way he looked at me was unsettling.
“Why do you ask, sweetheart?”
“Cause Wakka has a girlfriend, and Tidus got married on the playground to a girl, and Mizuki wanted to marry me, but I told her I was gonna marry Sora when I grew up, and Souta said that was weird and called me gay. What’s gay mean?”
“It . . . It means that you’re a boy who likes boys like boys are supposed to like girls.”
“Oh.” Riku paused, sipped his milk, and nodded. “That’s okay, then.”
“What’s okay?”
“I thought he said something mean, but I do like boys, so that’s okay, then.”
I didn’t comment further, and I never said anything to Tsubasa. I still believed that Riku was too young to like girls, and maybe he was a little behind the other boys, but he’d get there eventually. When Riku was nine, Kairi arrived on Destiny Islands, and the terrible twosome of Riku and Sora turned into a threesome. By the time Riku was eleven, it was painfully obvious that Sora and Kairi had crushes on each other. Riku grew quiet around them and tended to sulk around the house. When he turned twelve, I couldn’t ignore the situation anymore.
“Riku’s gay,” I said one night after Ayumi and Riku were in bed. Tsubasa looked up from his work papers, his eyebrows high.
“Excuse me?”
“Riku’s gay.”
“He told you this?”
“Not in so many words.”
“When?”
“About four years ago.”
“What?”
I retold the events in the kitchen when Riku was still eight. Tsubasa studied me as I spoke. When I finished, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“This makes you think he’s gay?”
“He still likes Sora. I don’t know how you can miss it. And it breaks my heart because Sora likes Kairi, and I just want to shake that boy.”
“I don’t think Ayaka would appreciate you shaking her son.”
“I’m not like I’m going to, but Riku likes him, and . . . I just don’t know what to do.”
“You’re sure of this, aren’t you?”
“I know my son, okay? Riku’s gay. Trust me.”
“Do you think he realizes?”
“Yes and no. I think he knows he likes boys, but . . . I don’t think he realizes what it means, yet.”
“So what are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t know. Wait for him to tell us, I suppose.”
“It’s a hard life.”
“At least it’s not his neck.”
“What?”
“It could be worse, you know? We could not support him. Something horrible could happen to him. He’s healthy. I just . . . I don’t want him to . . .”
“You want him to be him and not try to be something else. You want him to be happy.”
I sighed.
“Yes.”
Riku was my heart attack waiting to happen from the time he was born. When he was thirteen, he came out to the family, and we respected his wishes to keep it quiet. He swore he’d tell his friends when he was ready, and though I could see his surprise that Tsubasa, Ayumi, and I took it so well, the sadness remained in his eyes. He stopped playing, sparred more, and continued exploring the extents of the Islands. Ayumi said he’d taken up residence on a paopu tree on the island the kids like to play on. She called it his ‘sulking place.’
I wanted to reach out, say something, but Riku never responded well to smothering. He liked to figure things out on his own. As Tsubasa would say, he was testing the boundaries of the world around him, and now he was trying to find his place in it. He started high school, and though I saw Sora just as often, Riku started running around with an older crowd of boys now that he and Sora were in different schools. Ayumi and Riku had always been close, but they started to drift apart. She’d get on my case and demand I make Riku stop hanging out with his new friends. When he was fourteen, I caught him on the back porch at two a.m. with a cigarette in hand. Three weeks later, he stumbled in at three in the morning reeking of alcohol. I felt him drift farther away, and when I did try to say something, he refused to listen and stormed off.
When Riku was fifteen years old, he walked into the kitchen and announced that he was building a raft with Sora and Kairi, was leaving Destiny Islands, and was going to see other worlds. Ayumi laughed. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but it sounded so very . . . Riku . . . that once again I was at a loss.
On the night of the storm, I searched the house. I called everyone I knew. Ayaka was in tears. There was no sign of Riku, Sora, or Kairi anywhere. The months following the storm are a gaping hole in everyone’s memories. When the memories resumed, Kairi was safe and sound. Sora . . . Sora was a foggy entity that no one could really be sure if he existed at all. Riku was gone-missing. My heart broke a little more every day. After a year, I was sure he was dead even when everyone remembered Sora all at the same time without any explanation as to why. When Kairi disappeared again, I knew he had to be dead. I resigned to never seeing my son again.
Several months after Kairi’s disappearance, I was setting the table for dinner. Ayumi was in the living room on the phone, chatting away with one of her friends. Tsubasa walked into the kitchen from the garage, propped the door open with his foot, and looked at me.
“You won’t believe who I saw walking down our street,” said Tsubasa.
I frowned.
“Who?”
“Sora Harada.”
I dropped the glass from my hands. It shattered across the floor.
“Mom?” said Ayumi. “Is something wrong?”
“Sora?” I said. “Sora was . . .”
“And you won’t believe who was with him.”
Tsubasa pushed the garage door opened. I fell into a chair. He was several inches taller. The tanned glow to his skin had paled, and heavy bags hung under his eyes. He walked with a slight limp. Riku opened his mouth, closed it again, and stared at the floor. His feet shifted.
“. . . Riku . . .”
He looked up. He gave me the eyes. I burst into tears.
“Mom?” said Ayumi. She walked into the kitchen. Stared. “I have to go.”
Ayumi turned off the phone, dropped it on the table, and dropped in the seat across me. Tsubasa patted Riku’s back.
“They’re a little emotional right now,” my husband said.
“Guess you can’t blame them,” said Riku. “I did run away for almost two years.”
“Oh . . . Riku . . .”
His voice more than his appearance was what really broke me, I think. I walked to him, pulled him into a hug, and as I held him there and stroked his hair, I heard his breath hitch. It was the first time I’d seen Riku cry since he was ten.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m home now. I’m so sorry.”
The entire family gathered together again, and after dinner through most of which Riku was silent we went into the living room and listened. Riku began by warning us that we might not believe him-that we might even think he’d gone crazy. I urged him to continue. His story started long before he left. Most of the beginning I suspected regarding his crush on Sora and his attempts to act out. He’d fallen victim to my fears in trying to be heterosexual, fearful of what his friends would say. I learned about the Heartless, why we all had a months-long gap in memory after the storm, and Riku’s role in the invasion of our world. He told us about the other worlds, the darkness, and how he’d succumbed to it. Riku didn’t hold back when he explained his fight with Sora, Sora’s role as Keyblade master, his possession, and the realm of darkness. Though he refused to meet our eyes when he told us about taking on the appearance of Xehanort’s Heartless, his voice remained strong.
“And here I am,” he finished.
“You’re an idiot!” Ayumi said through tears.
She latched onto Riku, sobbing into his shoulder. His smiled failed to reach his eyes. My heart broke as he spoke, wishing I could have been there, could have done something for him. He was here, though. He had defeated the piece of Xehanort in his heart. My little boy didn’t need picked up anymore. He was exploring his boundaries, finding his place in the world, and through it all, he had learned the fly. The part breaking my heart now was the shame in his eyes.
When Riku was fourteen, he thanked me for being understanding and I laughed. He’d been my heart attack waiting to happen since he was born. At seventeen years old, when I hadn’t seen him in almost two years, he finally made sense, and for the first time, I knew what to do.
I smiled, touched his wrist, and waited for his eyes to reach mine.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said.
His smile reached his eyes. It would have been sweet if it wasn’t the same, devious smile I’d seen on his face his entire life.
“There’s actually one more thing . . .”
“Do I want to know?” I asked.
“I hope so. I’ve got a boyfriend. I met him two months after the storm. He’s the one who helped me through everything. I’m . . . I’m really in love.”
Ayumi squealed.
“I’m so happy for you.”
“Does Sora know?” said Ayumi.
“Not yet, but I’m going to tell him as soon as things have settled down around here.”
“You know,” said Tsubasa, “it wasn’t necessary to go through all that to find yourself a boyfriend.”
Riku grinned and shrugged.
“I guess I like to do things the hard way.”
“So tell us about this boy,” I said.
“Well, his name’s Cloud.”
“Is he hot?” said Ayumi.
“Oh, yeah. He’s a lot like me with the way he was stuck in darkness, but he’s defeated his demons, too. He’s just . . . he’s great. He’s been so supportive of me . . . he had so much faith in me when he should have given up . . . Oh, yeah. Obviously, he lives on another world, so . . . well, I’m going to have to figure out a way to see him, and everything. And . . . well . . . he’s almost twenty-four. I hope that’s not a problem.”
Some things never change. Just when I think I’ve got Riku figured out, he turns everything around.
Tsubasa said that after everything Riku had gone through, a boyfriend seven years Riku’s senior shouldn’t have bothered me so deeply. He rationalized in Riku’s defense when I worried about him leaving again. While he spent time with the family, there was something detached in Riku that I didn’t like. I often saw him on his cell phone talking to Cloud. Two weeks after his return, he finally came out to his friends, and I ached when I found out how it had gone only because I overheard him tell his boyfriend.
A month after Riku came home, I met Cloud. I observed them interact-the playful banter, the gentle touches, and the soft way Cloud watched Riku when he didn’t realize anyone was watching. I wanted to dislike Cloud. I wanted it to be meaningless. I wanted to keep Riku forever now that he was safe and sound-now that he was home.
“You need to let him go,” said Tsubasa one evening as I watched Cloud and Riku in the living room.
“He really adores Riku, doesn’t he?”
Tsubasa nodded.
“It appears that way.”
“Riku loves him, too.”
“He’s said so, yes.”
“I don’t want him to go.”
“He won’t be gone forever. Riku’s a good kid. He’ll keep in touch.”
When I wasn’t looking, Riku had fallen, and while he was gone, he learned to fly. Cloud sparked something in Riku that I hadn’t seen in him since he was still young, open, and carefree. I envied Cloud in a way, because where I never knew how to handle Riku, Cloud always said the right things. He gave Riku his space without there being a distance.
Riku stretched out on the couch. Cloud poked him in the side.
“Stop squirming,” said Cloud.
“I’m not squirming.”
“You are.”
“I’m restless.”
“Then go lay somewhere else, cause you’re squirming all over me.”
“I’m not squirming, and I wouldn’t be so restless if you weren’t so bony.”
“I’m not bony. I’m sexy and muscular.”
“Well your sexy, muscular physique is not comfy.”
“Oh, you, come here.”
Cloud extended his arm and scooped Riku toward his body.
“Better?” said Cloud.
“No. When did you get so short?”
“I didn’t. You got tall.”
“Were you always this short?”
“Yes.”
“Midget.”
“Brat.”
“I love you?”
“Yeah, yeah. I love you, too.”
I looked back at Tsubasa.
“He’s all grown up now, isn’t he?”
My husband nodded.
Chapter One