i am the fast sinking anchor [chiinen/tsugunaga]
The first thing he hears when he steps off the bus is wind chimes dancing in the breeze, that, and only that. Birds don’t sing their melodies in the trees and nothing breathes beneath the dappled green light, under the trees. He makes the sort of face you do when you’re confused, all scrunched up and nose wrinkled, eyes narrowed to slits. “Kaa-san, why?”
“The air will be good for you, Yuuri,” she replies mildly, her hand on his shoulder while she gently pushes him to the village gates. Beside her, his father retells stories of his youth here and his sister listens attentively with her ears opened and eyes shut closed. Above him, the sky stretches forever blue for miles and frost clouds swirl up, up, up.
Chiinen Yuuri doesn’t like the quiet of this place, where you can hear your own heartbeat and your thoughts resound against the emptiness, he doesn’t like how here, they will grow to know one another yet they will not know him. He shrugs his shoulders and flicks his hair out of his face. The air will be good for him; Johnny-san had said the same thing.
Senzumura is forty miles from the nearest town, a small village of no more than two hundred. Mountains and forests cradle the village, where there are no shops, not even electricity, it’s the type of place where time has forgotten and put on a standstill. At night, the stars shiver and shake against a sheet of black so dark fears ignite in a flurry of sparks.
Wind chimes. He tilts his head in the direction of the noise, but it is everywhere around him, cutting chills through his body like icy cold nights. His body trembles in the cold and he pulls his jacket closer, even though the sun glitters above like a golden disk, the clouds drift along without aims. His mother leads him along the dirt path.
It’s quiet.
Once in a while, his father stops to greet someone Chiinen’s never seen before, with a clap on the back and an exchange of pleasantries. “I haven’t seen you in so long, Kou!” they laugh, and his eyes go elsewhere. The chimes are back again. His father agrees to come over for dinner later this week to family, a man and a woman with a baby on her hip.
Around him, the voices grow, though he doesn’t hear their words. The house they stop in front of is like any of the other houses, with paper screens and wooden doors and tiled roofs. Out comes a small woman who throws her arms around his father, and then turns to greet his mother, and then turns her gaze to them.
“Kou? It is! Kou-kun, we’ve been expecting you! This must be the lovely Mitsuki-san, it’s nice to finally meet you after hearing about you for so long. And these two must be Saaya and Yuuri, my, the last time I saw you two, you were only little babies! You’re looking at me funny, I’m your Aunt Haruka,” she talks, her voice brimming with joy and Chiinen frowns.
They are welcomed into the house and settle down. Aunt Haruka talks on about fields as far as the mind can imagine dotted with poppies red in the summer sun, and Saaya listens with childish fascination for the tales of two lovers being reunited by a bridge of birds once a year. Outside, the breeze picks up the sound of music and laughter of a girl.
Chiinen opens the window and fills the empty, empty space with the sound of wind chimes. “It’s quiet and lonely here,” he tells himself and curls onto the futon. In the morning, the pillow is stained with water as he rubs his eyes in silent wonder. Rain is falling outside from forever blue skies and the world is a million times softer.
Out he runs and the droplets fall as pearls onto his skin.
-
She looks a bit like a girl you could find on a magazine, right now, with her hand outstretched to him, head to the side so her hair falls just right and sunlight to her face. A bit like a shoujo manga heroine, smile indescribably warm and irresistibly compelling, she holds her rainbow umbrella at an arm’s length above him. The rain falls like music and moonlight.
“Momoko, Tsugunaga Momoko, but you can call me Momo,” she replies with a voice that is used to poetry and lyrics on a sheet of paper. She wears a dress the color of secret pools and shoes of places with brighter sunshine, and he’s sure she wouldn’t fit in if she were in Tokyo. But this isn’t Tokyo, and he’s sure he’s never seen someone as…as…his brows knit together as he struggles for a word, any word.
He takes her hand in his and ducks under the umbrella. Frogs croak by the roadside and drops cling to spider webs, crystal necklaces strung up on blades of grass, and sparrows dart through the puddles, feathers ruffled. He’s a little surprised when she fits right there, below his chin as they pull together to get out of the rain. “I’m…Chiinen Yuuri.”
“Ah, the new kid,” her reply is blunt, a bit harsh and oddly…perfect. He shifts and feels her fingers curve around his jacket and her hot breath blowing smoke into the air, her smile perpetual in a way that rivals even the sun, or so he thinks it is. She seems to keep smiling regardless, some tune or another under her breath.
A pair of butterflies pale in a verdant landscape dance away and their wings flutter wet, the air smells of pine and blossoms and he sighs soft. This isn’t Tokyo, with harsh lights and smog, only a small village in the middle of nowhere with girls who didn’t look like they would fit in. He has to remind himself this place is quiet and lonely and he can hear his heart beat (faster, faster) and he hates it.
There he turns to look at her, she who’s smiling like there is no evil in the world with her fingertips to the rain and sky, looking a little bewildered as the rain splatters on her wrist. It’s a look of surprise, marvel, a look you find only a magicians or scientists or very young children, and her eyes dance with unseen wonders of the world.
His whole body tingles at her touch, fingers so unfamiliar from what he’s known, but what does he know of touch? He remembers dance lessons with Yamada Ryosuke and singing with Nakajima Yuuto and hugs to the girls who squeal in his class, the hands of fans with his name on their lips. “You’re warm,” he hears her murmur under her breath and he grows hot, then cold to the bone.
“You are too.” These are the stupidest words that have ever left him, and he trails his fingers over his mouth moments after they tumble out and scatter. Even after all the girls who love him in the world, that hang after every word spoken from his lips like bread to the hungry, he doesn’t know what to do next but hold his breath.
And it is not until she laughs her pretty little laugh, a laugh that reminds him of something poetic, does he relearn how to breathe again, inhale, exhale, and watch his breath fade off down a river bend or another, repeat. As long as he knew that much he was going to be okay. “You’re cute, too.” Her eyes are no longer on him and off again to droplets from the sky.
Forevermore has he heard the same phrase spoken to him by everyone around him, but the way she says it is another language altogether. She does not see him, Chiinen Yuuri of Hey! Say! JUMP, and she does not see him, Chiinen Yuuri, the boy idol the masses adore, but she sees him, quite simply, Chiinen Yuuri, the new kid. He stands a little slack jawed as she bids him goodbyes that he doesn’t quite process.
The rain lets up knowingly as she pulls him to a stop in front of her door. “I’ll see you sometime soon, Chiinen Yuuri,” the melody of her voice comes and goes as she disappears, teal dress and yellow sandals, into the house. Her footsteps are muffled by the sound of wind chimes that hang at the door.
-
She somehow ends up at his doorstep one morning, arm crooked around a basket of fruit from her mother to his aunt, flowers neon blue in her hair and this time an angel dress dotted with indigo. Instinctively he takes the basket away from her, and she takes him elsewhere, to fields of red and seas of gold with a creek snaked down the middle.
Mejiro, glittering green and yellow and a flash of snow, dance through the brush and sing their hearts content, but some things do not come easy. He finds himself fidgeting as he rolls up his pants to wade through water and she lifts her skirts above her knees, the sound of the creek and the sound of her words melding into one. “You don’t talk much.”
He glances up at her and looks surprised, someone caught off guard by limelight, but smiles to have her return one that blinds him. “I don’t know what to say,” he says to her, and dips his fingers into the water. It’s cold and he shivers lightly, when she takes his hand in hers and guides him down, down, until the water reaches her calves and the fishes nip their toes.
Thoughts knot themselves in his mind and he doesn’t know what to do next when she pulls him close, that he can’t understand what she had on her mind at the moment. When he thinks about it, he never did and might never will. She tosses her hair back and laughs, and hooks her arm onto his neck like she does a basket.
“Hey, Chiinen Yuuri, are you falling in love with me?” He replies by reaching for her, to miss as she moves away with a laugh. “Don’t.” Her fingers press his lips and the little peach girl has him spinning around and around her like a carousel, that much he is quite sure of, and he hates it. He is Chiinen Yuuri, the boy idol, and one girl does not have the power to hold him down. But he is Chiinen Yuuri, the new boy, and she has him right where he’s supposed to be.
Something more, something less, in the back of his mind he tells himself that he hates the quiet of this place, yet when he sees her he forgets everything else. They are running out of time as she splashes him with creek water and they tumble on top of one another, shrieking their laughter and limbs tangled.
-
“I’m leaving for Tokyo today.” His chest rises, falls and rises again as he says these foreign words, feel them heavy on his tongue while the syllables land harsh to her ears. There he watches her sunshine smile falter a little, the twitch of her lips and the wobble of her brows, and yet it is brighter still. He frowns a little more when she nods, dress painting blood red against willows weeping their last.
It’s raining still, today it is, and she holds her rainbow umbrella above their heads. “I know, Chiinen Yuuri.” She hasn’t stopped calling him by his full name, and he had asked her why, to have her laugh and her eyes sparkle in reply, ‘I might grow fond of you…and when you leave you’ll just be breaking my heart.’
Now who’s breaking whose heart, he wonders, when she pulls him down, threads her fingers through his hair and the umbrella, all red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet, forgotten beside them. She places her head on his shoulder, but it doesn’t fit quite right as books written say, and she’s fragile against him with glass bones and porcelain skin.
He strains and struggles and finds her ear against his lips, and waits until the words are softer than the rain on their hair, softer than the earth their feet tread right now, softer than their heartbeats combined. It is then does he whisper, softer than the world around them and poppies blooming in the summer, “I’ll come back, I promise.”
And when he does, she will throw her arms around him and he will sweep her off her feet, he is sure of it.
Author’s Note:
For Marchy! Happy belated birthday dear, and I’m sosososo sorry this is so late.
disclaimer: this is purely fictional. any coincidences with things in real life, dead or alive, coincidental or not, are for fictional purposes only.
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