[Setouchi] 100
the circular argument, and your string of shells
#100 setouching
PG/PG13
I. Who is the sea, and who am I?
Here are the things that Mouri Motonari, a graduate student completing his doctorate in Comparative Literature, knows:
1) It is nearly midnight. It is nearly midnight on a Wednesday night, and his adviser wants to see the third draft of his dissertation by tomorrow at noon. It is nearly midnight, and he is not in his own house, much less in his own bed, or even in his own clothes or drinking out of his own glass. It is nearly midnight, when the minute hand once again swings by to eclipse its partner.
2) Borges has been done before. Many things have been done before. Laundry has been done before, that morning, but then Chousokabe reached over and made him come all over the sheets. Borges has been done before, like the agonizingly familiar turn in the labyrinth, and but no one ever learns.
3) Chousokabe Motochika is hopeless. The engineering undergraduate is completely, utterly hopeless. Mouri opens his mouth and the boy pours in another shot of bourbon before his tutor can utter another word about Borges and hourglasses. Scowling, Mouri reaches over but his hand does not stretch out far enough, so Chousokabe laughs and pulls him closer.
Those are the things Mouri Motonari knows when the clock strikes midnight, and he collapses on the sheets. Those are things he knows, but he does not know why, where, or even when.
II. Before time coined its substance into days, the sea, the always sea, existed: was.
They met by chance--like the serendipitous turn to the end of the labyrinth.
It had been Borges who Mouri left in the coffee shop, back in autumn. He was three blocks down south when his messenger bag complained of lightness, and wondered if maybe Borges, or at least his poems, had wandered off. The graduate student backtracked his way to the cafe, and discovered only a napkin covering the absence of the anthology. Mouri grabbed the flimsy substitute, and read a note so hastily scrawled that he could practically hear the sheepishly brazen plea through the dips and curves of the surprisingly flamboyant penmanship. A scowl crossed the graduate student's face. Well.
Well, in retrospect, Chousokabe should have had left some sort of way to contact him outside of pure randomness.
And so Mouri returned to the coffee shop, day after day, because damn it to hell if he was going to let some idiot waltz off with his anthology--the one filled with notes, bookmarks, and translations back to Japanese. Finally, on the fifth day, after a long sleepless night due to the rampant gang warfare running through the campus, a shadow loomed over the tired graduate student and pulled back a shark-bite grin.
"I'm Chousokabe Motochika," the boy said as he eased into the chair on the other side of the table. "Here's your book back."
Dark eyes met that one lonely baby blue, and Mouri tilted his head. Not a muscle on his face moved--not one twitch to a frown or smile or a tic above the eyebrow--as the graduate student reached over and snatched the heavy volume. He impassively flipped through the pages and then, letting loose a great sigh, slammed Borges into Chousokabe's grinning face.
III. Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall into the dark, on the other side of the wall?
I'm Chousokabe Motochika.
I know.
IV. If you should waken up abruptly, do you feel that something has been stolen from you?
There is something hovering, like the spirits which vanish from peripheries of vision and the mysterious itch that cannot be scratched. There is something hovering, and leaves soak in time like aging wine as the season dwindles by. Mouri glances over his shoulder, and--and most unfortunately, Chousokabe Motochika always seems to be there.
"Don't you have class," Mouri deadpans as he finds the younger student lingering outside his office. "Aren't engineering majors especially busy?"
"I still don't understand Borges."
"No one understands Borges," Mouri growls irritably. "You're an idiot to take such a difficult elective."
"The professor has great tits."
Mouri slams the door in Chousokabe's face.
There is something hovering, like a string teasing in the wind. He is Perseus in his dreams, Perseus who has been dropped into a labyrinth at the edge of sea. Mouri pushes through the thick air of his dreamscape, chases after the red thread spiraling farther and farther away, and jolts awake in a cold sweat.
"Mouri," Chousokabe pleads while banging on the office door. "Mouri... senpai?"
"I am not your senpai!"
"Sensei?"
"Go away!"
V. They were a ghostly line, who still ply in my body their mysterious disciplines, habits, and anxieties.
"Borges can only be understood with beer," Chousokabe once declares.
Mouri stares impassively across the coffee table. He isn't sure just when he became this idiot's personal tutor, but he has figured that if he can't get the platinum-haired fool to stop following him around and babbling, he might as well have that piece of shit talk about something worth listening to. Or at least, something close. Something marginal. Something not about machines, ass, tits, and machines with asses and tits.
"Want to get some beer?" Chousokabe asks with an extra spring to his step.
"Only some one underage can get that excited about beer."
"Hey there," the engineering student protests. "Who doesn't get excited for Guinness? Hey, it'll be my treat."
Oh, this is going to be good. Mouri folds his book up and tucks it into the messenger bag. Temperatures have plummeted across the city, and he tightly wraps his green scarf twice around his neck, and once over his mouth. The graduate student follows Chousokabe, who wears a similar but bright magenta scarf, down the street into a cozy lounge, and waits for the bartender to kick the boy's underage ass.
"Hey, aniki, two pints?"
The bartender stares at Chousokabe and frowns. "Card?"
"Hey come on now, aniki--"
"Don't 'aniki' me."
Chousokabe just laughs and shakes his head. His left finger hooks under his scarf and pulls down the collar of his white t-shirt just ever so slightly. Mouri's eyes widen as the magenta ink of the fiercest gang in the district peaks into view. The collar snaps back into place. Chousokabe's smile never falters.
The bartender does not even blink or hesitate. Chousokabe hands a pint of Guinness over to Mouri, and slaps down a generous tip.
Later, after they have straddled a table off in a corner, it is Mouri who breaks the silence first.
"What's an engineering student doing in a gang?"
Chousokabe shrugs. "Habit left over from junior high."
Dark eyes narrow. "Let me repeat: what's an engineering--"
"Oi," Chousokabe suddenly begins as his smile slips off. He places his half drained glass squarely on the table. "Don't mix business shit with personal shit."
"Your business shit is personal shit." Before Chousokabe can retort, Mouri stands up so fast that he nearly flips the table over. He slams down change for his beer and storms out of the bar.
VI. It never stops, the spilling of the sand. I am the one who weakens, not the glass.
Snow begins to collect on the sidewalk around midnight, so when a knock suddenly echoes through the dark sitting room of Mouri's apartment, the graduate student turns off his reading lamp and creeps into the kitchen. Under the bright moonlight filtering through the white curtains, he drains an bottle of sake over the sink, and grips the rim. The graduate student takes a deep breath, and approaches the door brimming with murderous intent.
Chousokabe practically jumps out of his skin when the door swings open to reveal gleaming eyes and a raised glass bottle.
"Holy fuck, Mouri," Chousokabe hisses. "Put that down!"
Mouri does not move.
"No seriously, please put that down!"
"Why are you here?" Mouri flatly asks.
"To apologize, okay? Apologize. I'm apologizing. Put the bottle down. You don't know how to use that."
"How do you know that I don't know how to use this?"
Chousokabe licks his lips nervously. To be honest, his gut scoffs at the very idea of some one as cultured at Mouri Motonari wielding such a weapon--or even, getting into a fight. The boy's gut has never been wrong before, but something--something about the gleam of moonlight off those glowering dark eyes pauses his heart for just a second and then sets his blood racing with a lash of the whip. Chousokabe wants--he wants to leap forward, he wants to grab the bottle from Mouri's clenched hand, to pin those wrists down, to grab at that dark hair and the challenge springing from that ready, wet pink mouth--he wants, he wants to rush, to hurl, to coax. Anticipation blossoms across his body and shakes.
"Well?" Mouri growls.
"Just put the bottle down," Chousokabe pleads.
Mouri inhales and cold air unfurls in his chest. There is something hovering, just beyond the peripheries of their vision and playing in the moonlight. Mouri suddenly whirls around, and catches sight of sea shells, sea shells strung along a bright red string, recoiling and collapsing and disappearing into the air. Exhale, exhale, and he releases the bottle into Chousokabe's outstretched hand.
Later, under the sheets, Chousokabe asks with a profound disregard of self-preservation, "Motonari, have you ... er, have you fought before?"
But Mouri has already decided that some things are worth Motochika's concern and confusion, and smiles into the pillow.
VII. I know there is an Other in the shadows.
On the first day of of winter break, Chousokabe Motochika has already broken his previous daily record of 17 tweets, 11 texts, 2 calls to an irate Mouri Motonari. The latter contemplates a restraining order until that Friday passes without one word from the overenthusiastic engineering student. The graduate student frowns as he restarts his phone for the third time--no, everything is in working order. Mouri swivels around in his chair and types out a paragraph of his dissertation in a manner that only a distracted graduate student can manage.
The sun sets so early those days.
Mouri wraps his bright green scarf twice around his neck and once over his mouth. The lamp just outside the lobby flickers once and then again just as Mouri steps out. His boots sink into an inch of wet snow, and the damp chill of the grey skies draws his breath out like mist.
Chousokabe still has not called.
Despite the cold, Mouri chooses the long way home. As he approaches the rail road crossing which demands a final decision, he hesitates only briefly before he turns a heel towards Chousokabe's address.
A bent white fence surrounds the Chousokabe residence like gleaming whale bones looming out of the snow. Mouri climbs over and taps on the front door. The door easily gives way beneath his fingertips and the frost curling around his breath pushes into the dark, icy interior.
When Mouri finds Chousokabe laying in the corner clothed only in a sweat shirt and jeans, he does not rush or cry out. The graduate student, instead, turns on the lonely light bulb overlooking a sitting room cluttered with half finished machines and even less finished drawings, and kneels down next to the sleeping younger boy. A rose blossoms across a broad shoulder and petals dribble down an arm. Mouri runs a finger lightly down the right sleeve, which is still damp with blood. He then places his palms over Chousokabe's cold, so cold, cheeks.
That lonely baby blue flutters open. Chousokabe stares at Mouri against the backdrop of the dim yellow ceiling light, as if he cannot recognize the man who he has painstakingly stalked for the past semester. A worried smile then breaks across his face. "Did they follow you in?"
"Yes."
"Wait, what?"
"I killed them."
The boy stares again, and then chuckles weakly. "Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?"
--but once again, Mouri does not bother to confirm or deny. He bites down on his tongue to keep from laughing when panic suddenly replaces worry behind that baby blue. "Did you dress the wound at all?" Mouri cuts in before the latter can implode.
Chousokabe bites down on his bottom lip, but swallows his questions. "Yeah, a bit. Was a bit much. I didn't get to turn the heat on before I passed--"
"I can see that," Mouri responds dryly.
And so, ten minutes later, with the heater on full blast, Mouri finds himself bent over Chousokabe's scarred torso on the latter's bed. It is not as if he has not seen the boy naked before--hell, they've fucked more times than he has bothered to remember--but he has never actually paid attention. Now, as he dabs cotton around the oozing cut across Chousokabe's shoulder, his fingers brush by dozens of scars and scrapes tattooing across the latter's torso like mapping history.
Mouri finishes cleaning the wound with a ruthless splash of alcohol and a slap of a bandage.
"Damnit Motonari," Chousokabe winces. "If I wanted this much pain, I'd just go get cut again."
"Ingrate," Mouri scowls. He kicks the first aid kit off the bed and burrows under the covers.
For a few blissful minutes, only the heater rumbles on. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Chosuokabe's shadow pounces over Mouri's terse body.
"Hey, Motonari?"
"What?"
"I'm really horny--"
A thin wrist slaps against Chousokabe's wound.
"FUCKING HELL---"
VIII. I follow the hated path of monotonous walls that is my destiny.
Sometimes, he takes a wrong turn in the labyrinth and his toes sink into the soft, moist mess of spilled intestines and ripped flesh. Mouri walks along that beach, and the sun burns with such ferocity that white sears across the horizon. The warlord--he is a warlord in those days--gingerly steps over skulls but cannot feel the splintered bones digging against the bottom of his boots. He walks along the beach, along the edge where the lapping waves weakly bow and melt at his feet, until ash fades into ash, dust into dust. A kingfisher flits across the sky, and, in the distance, he spots two boys perched on a tall boulder.
"I'll bring more shells next time," a young pirate assures a smaller, although perhaps not younger, dark-haired boy. The pirate draws spirals in the sand with his toes, and then another for his friend, whose feet dangle in the air.
The dark-haired boy frowns and shakes his head.
"No really," the young pirate insists as he holds out an incomplete seashell necklace. "I'll come back with more shells, and we can make as many as you want."
The young warlord grabs the seashell necklace and holds the string of shells taunt. Those tiny hands then begin to oscillate each end so that they never quite meet on the same plane. The shells undulate like waves, and the dreamscape slows each rolling cadence as Mouri, from afar, watches the line of shells fold and unfold in an agonizing rhythm.
Finally, time blinks out of the trance, and the young warlord hands the seashell necklace back. "Will you really come back?"
"Of course I'll come back. I'll always come back. Why wouldn't I, Shojumaru?"
The warlord with the bloodied boots sucks in a deep breath between his teeth and leaps forward. His younger self dissipates from the rock as he lands at the young pirate's feet. The blood soaked curve of a ring blade grazes lightly against Chousokabe Motochika's chin.
That lonely baby blue, however, does not accept the challenge.
"Say the word, Motonari," the boy whispers as he begins to blur against the searing white backdrop of the sun. "Say the word, Motonari, and we don't have to fight."
"Our clans at are war, Motochika."
"We're the ones who decide that, not our clans."
"Do you even understand what it takes to be a leader?" Mouri snarls.
"Do you understand what it takes to lead?" Chousokabe shouts back, and suddenly, he's taller, much taller, and when the anchor fires down from the sky, Mouri cannot even blink.
IX. In the pale dust, I have discerned signs that frighten me.
"Hey, Mouri, do you believe in past lives?"
"No."
".... for a literature student, you have surprisingly little imagination."
"I don't need an imagination. I just need to know how to read people, and more importantly, how to read."
".... low, that's a low blow. It's not my fault that I don't know how to read Borges and nearly failed that class. Hey. You said it yourself. No one knows how to read Borges. And plus, I can read. I can read you formulas. Like, we just learned this new one which relates power to--"
"Be quiet."
"Hey, that's not even fair."
"Go away."
"Really? Do you want me to go?"
"Yes."
"Motonari, I'm serious. You say the the word. I'll stay. I'll leave the gang. You just say it."
"I don't give a damn, Motochika. Be quiet or get out."
X. If only this were the final day of waiting.
Sometimes, Mouri finds the end of the labyrinth. The sea stretches out from under his feet as he readies himself to leap into the depths. In the distance, the giant torii of Itsukushima peak just above the horizon as the blazing sun bleaches the sky.
Mouri glances down at his boots and reaches back to undo the tassels of his armor. Long green plates shed off his arms like second skin and sink into the endless, watery depths. Mouri watches them fade, and then removes his hat.
Sometimes sailors see mirages out at sea. Shadows spring to life from gently rolling waves--slender shoulders, bulky shadows--one, with an anchor casually slung across his back. That shadow, the one with the amaranthine tint and shock of platinum-hair, laughs and tosses a string of shells into the air. Click click click, and the shells fold back against each other. The shadow, the one with the anchor, moves farther and father away. He takes a deep breath and jumps into the sea.
In the dark depths, a whale slips beneath his fingers. Mouri closes his eyes and listens to the whale song which has lived in his bones for so, so long. It's a mistake, it's all been a mistake. Mouri presses his cheek against the whale's cold back, and apologizes. It's all been a mistake. He has not reached the end of the labyrinth; he's only returned to the beginning.
It's New Years when he wakes, and it has been one year since Chousokabe Motochika died.
To be honest, Mouri hasn't even visited the grave. Back then, it was too much of a hassle, with all the yellow tape and testimonies and media. Then came his goddamn defense, all the burdens of graduate life, and then all the goddamn shit of post-graduate life. And then--
--and then.
Mouri rakes a hand through his hair and stumbles out of bed. He grabs his coat and wraps a bright magenta scarf twice around his neck and once around his mouth.
The shadow of a kingfisher looms over Motochika's tombstone as Mouri approaches under the winter sky. The man blinks, and then blinks again when the kingfisher dissipates like a mirage. Frost curls past his lips, and Mouri kneels down before Motochika's grave. One thickly gloved hand reaches into a coat pocket, and draws out a string of shells.
"In another life then," Mouri says as the shells collapse onto the frozen ground before the tombstone. Dark eyes stare at the cold hard slashes of Chousokabe Motochika's name against grey marble, and then squeeze shut.
Of course I'll come back. I'll always come back.
Motochika, if you just stayed, then you'd never have to return.
fin
The Labyrinth, Borges, translated
Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me. I have forgotten
the men I was before; I follow the hated
path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the days' usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carried a roar
toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.
I know there is an Other in the shadows,
whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes
which weave and unweave this Hades
and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other. If only this
were the final day of waiting.
#100 setouching
PG/PG13
I. Who is the sea, and who am I?
Here are the things that Mouri Motonari, a graduate student completing his doctorate in Comparative Literature, knows:
1) It is nearly midnight. It is nearly midnight on a Wednesday night, and his adviser wants to see the third draft of his dissertation by tomorrow at noon. It is nearly midnight, and he is not in his own house, much less in his own bed, or even in his own clothes or drinking out of his own glass. It is nearly midnight, when the minute hand once again swings by to eclipse its partner.
2) Borges has been done before. Many things have been done before. Laundry has been done before, that morning, but then Chousokabe reached over and made him come all over the sheets. Borges has been done before, like the agonizingly familiar turn in the labyrinth, and but no one ever learns.
3) Chousokabe Motochika is hopeless. The engineering undergraduate is completely, utterly hopeless. Mouri opens his mouth and the boy pours in another shot of bourbon before his tutor can utter another word about Borges and hourglasses. Scowling, Mouri reaches over but his hand does not stretch out far enough, so Chousokabe laughs and pulls him closer.
Those are the things Mouri Motonari knows when the clock strikes midnight, and he collapses on the sheets. Those are things he knows, but he does not know why, where, or even when.
II. Before time coined its substance into days, the sea, the always sea, existed: was.
They met by chance--like the serendipitous turn to the end of the labyrinth.
It had been Borges who Mouri left in the coffee shop, back in autumn. He was three blocks down south when his messenger bag complained of lightness, and wondered if maybe Borges, or at least his poems, had wandered off. The graduate student backtracked his way to the cafe, and discovered only a napkin covering the absence of the anthology. Mouri grabbed the flimsy substitute, and read a note so hastily scrawled that he could practically hear the sheepishly brazen plea through the dips and curves of the surprisingly flamboyant penmanship. A scowl crossed the graduate student's face. Well.
Well, in retrospect, Chousokabe should have had left some sort of way to contact him outside of pure randomness.
And so Mouri returned to the coffee shop, day after day, because damn it to hell if he was going to let some idiot waltz off with his anthology--the one filled with notes, bookmarks, and translations back to Japanese. Finally, on the fifth day, after a long sleepless night due to the rampant gang warfare running through the campus, a shadow loomed over the tired graduate student and pulled back a shark-bite grin.
"I'm Chousokabe Motochika," the boy said as he eased into the chair on the other side of the table. "Here's your book back."
Dark eyes met that one lonely baby blue, and Mouri tilted his head. Not a muscle on his face moved--not one twitch to a frown or smile or a tic above the eyebrow--as the graduate student reached over and snatched the heavy volume. He impassively flipped through the pages and then, letting loose a great sigh, slammed Borges into Chousokabe's grinning face.
III. Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall into the dark, on the other side of the wall?
I'm Chousokabe Motochika.
I know.
IV. If you should waken up abruptly, do you feel that something has been stolen from you?
There is something hovering, like the spirits which vanish from peripheries of vision and the mysterious itch that cannot be scratched. There is something hovering, and leaves soak in time like aging wine as the season dwindles by. Mouri glances over his shoulder, and--and most unfortunately, Chousokabe Motochika always seems to be there.
"Don't you have class," Mouri deadpans as he finds the younger student lingering outside his office. "Aren't engineering majors especially busy?"
"I still don't understand Borges."
"No one understands Borges," Mouri growls irritably. "You're an idiot to take such a difficult elective."
"The professor has great tits."
Mouri slams the door in Chousokabe's face.
There is something hovering, like a string teasing in the wind. He is Perseus in his dreams, Perseus who has been dropped into a labyrinth at the edge of sea. Mouri pushes through the thick air of his dreamscape, chases after the red thread spiraling farther and farther away, and jolts awake in a cold sweat.
"Mouri," Chousokabe pleads while banging on the office door. "Mouri... senpai?"
"I am not your senpai!"
"Sensei?"
"Go away!"
V. They were a ghostly line, who still ply in my body their mysterious disciplines, habits, and anxieties.
"Borges can only be understood with beer," Chousokabe once declares.
Mouri stares impassively across the coffee table. He isn't sure just when he became this idiot's personal tutor, but he has figured that if he can't get the platinum-haired fool to stop following him around and babbling, he might as well have that piece of shit talk about something worth listening to. Or at least, something close. Something marginal. Something not about machines, ass, tits, and machines with asses and tits.
"Want to get some beer?" Chousokabe asks with an extra spring to his step.
"Only some one underage can get that excited about beer."
"Hey there," the engineering student protests. "Who doesn't get excited for Guinness? Hey, it'll be my treat."
Oh, this is going to be good. Mouri folds his book up and tucks it into the messenger bag. Temperatures have plummeted across the city, and he tightly wraps his green scarf twice around his neck, and once over his mouth. The graduate student follows Chousokabe, who wears a similar but bright magenta scarf, down the street into a cozy lounge, and waits for the bartender to kick the boy's underage ass.
"Hey, aniki, two pints?"
The bartender stares at Chousokabe and frowns. "Card?"
"Hey come on now, aniki--"
"Don't 'aniki' me."
Chousokabe just laughs and shakes his head. His left finger hooks under his scarf and pulls down the collar of his white t-shirt just ever so slightly. Mouri's eyes widen as the magenta ink of the fiercest gang in the district peaks into view. The collar snaps back into place. Chousokabe's smile never falters.
The bartender does not even blink or hesitate. Chousokabe hands a pint of Guinness over to Mouri, and slaps down a generous tip.
Later, after they have straddled a table off in a corner, it is Mouri who breaks the silence first.
"What's an engineering student doing in a gang?"
Chousokabe shrugs. "Habit left over from junior high."
Dark eyes narrow. "Let me repeat: what's an engineering--"
"Oi," Chousokabe suddenly begins as his smile slips off. He places his half drained glass squarely on the table. "Don't mix business shit with personal shit."
"Your business shit is personal shit." Before Chousokabe can retort, Mouri stands up so fast that he nearly flips the table over. He slams down change for his beer and storms out of the bar.
VI. It never stops, the spilling of the sand. I am the one who weakens, not the glass.
Snow begins to collect on the sidewalk around midnight, so when a knock suddenly echoes through the dark sitting room of Mouri's apartment, the graduate student turns off his reading lamp and creeps into the kitchen. Under the bright moonlight filtering through the white curtains, he drains an bottle of sake over the sink, and grips the rim. The graduate student takes a deep breath, and approaches the door brimming with murderous intent.
Chousokabe practically jumps out of his skin when the door swings open to reveal gleaming eyes and a raised glass bottle.
"Holy fuck, Mouri," Chousokabe hisses. "Put that down!"
Mouri does not move.
"No seriously, please put that down!"
"Why are you here?" Mouri flatly asks.
"To apologize, okay? Apologize. I'm apologizing. Put the bottle down. You don't know how to use that."
"How do you know that I don't know how to use this?"
Chousokabe licks his lips nervously. To be honest, his gut scoffs at the very idea of some one as cultured at Mouri Motonari wielding such a weapon--or even, getting into a fight. The boy's gut has never been wrong before, but something--something about the gleam of moonlight off those glowering dark eyes pauses his heart for just a second and then sets his blood racing with a lash of the whip. Chousokabe wants--he wants to leap forward, he wants to grab the bottle from Mouri's clenched hand, to pin those wrists down, to grab at that dark hair and the challenge springing from that ready, wet pink mouth--he wants, he wants to rush, to hurl, to coax. Anticipation blossoms across his body and shakes.
"Well?" Mouri growls.
"Just put the bottle down," Chousokabe pleads.
Mouri inhales and cold air unfurls in his chest. There is something hovering, just beyond the peripheries of their vision and playing in the moonlight. Mouri suddenly whirls around, and catches sight of sea shells, sea shells strung along a bright red string, recoiling and collapsing and disappearing into the air. Exhale, exhale, and he releases the bottle into Chousokabe's outstretched hand.
Later, under the sheets, Chousokabe asks with a profound disregard of self-preservation, "Motonari, have you ... er, have you fought before?"
But Mouri has already decided that some things are worth Motochika's concern and confusion, and smiles into the pillow.
VII. I know there is an Other in the shadows.
On the first day of of winter break, Chousokabe Motochika has already broken his previous daily record of 17 tweets, 11 texts, 2 calls to an irate Mouri Motonari. The latter contemplates a restraining order until that Friday passes without one word from the overenthusiastic engineering student. The graduate student frowns as he restarts his phone for the third time--no, everything is in working order. Mouri swivels around in his chair and types out a paragraph of his dissertation in a manner that only a distracted graduate student can manage.
The sun sets so early those days.
Mouri wraps his bright green scarf twice around his neck and once over his mouth. The lamp just outside the lobby flickers once and then again just as Mouri steps out. His boots sink into an inch of wet snow, and the damp chill of the grey skies draws his breath out like mist.
Chousokabe still has not called.
Despite the cold, Mouri chooses the long way home. As he approaches the rail road crossing which demands a final decision, he hesitates only briefly before he turns a heel towards Chousokabe's address.
A bent white fence surrounds the Chousokabe residence like gleaming whale bones looming out of the snow. Mouri climbs over and taps on the front door. The door easily gives way beneath his fingertips and the frost curling around his breath pushes into the dark, icy interior.
When Mouri finds Chousokabe laying in the corner clothed only in a sweat shirt and jeans, he does not rush or cry out. The graduate student, instead, turns on the lonely light bulb overlooking a sitting room cluttered with half finished machines and even less finished drawings, and kneels down next to the sleeping younger boy. A rose blossoms across a broad shoulder and petals dribble down an arm. Mouri runs a finger lightly down the right sleeve, which is still damp with blood. He then places his palms over Chousokabe's cold, so cold, cheeks.
That lonely baby blue flutters open. Chousokabe stares at Mouri against the backdrop of the dim yellow ceiling light, as if he cannot recognize the man who he has painstakingly stalked for the past semester. A worried smile then breaks across his face. "Did they follow you in?"
"Yes."
"Wait, what?"
"I killed them."
The boy stares again, and then chuckles weakly. "Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?"
--but once again, Mouri does not bother to confirm or deny. He bites down on his tongue to keep from laughing when panic suddenly replaces worry behind that baby blue. "Did you dress the wound at all?" Mouri cuts in before the latter can implode.
Chousokabe bites down on his bottom lip, but swallows his questions. "Yeah, a bit. Was a bit much. I didn't get to turn the heat on before I passed--"
"I can see that," Mouri responds dryly.
And so, ten minutes later, with the heater on full blast, Mouri finds himself bent over Chousokabe's scarred torso on the latter's bed. It is not as if he has not seen the boy naked before--hell, they've fucked more times than he has bothered to remember--but he has never actually paid attention. Now, as he dabs cotton around the oozing cut across Chousokabe's shoulder, his fingers brush by dozens of scars and scrapes tattooing across the latter's torso like mapping history.
Mouri finishes cleaning the wound with a ruthless splash of alcohol and a slap of a bandage.
"Damnit Motonari," Chousokabe winces. "If I wanted this much pain, I'd just go get cut again."
"Ingrate," Mouri scowls. He kicks the first aid kit off the bed and burrows under the covers.
For a few blissful minutes, only the heater rumbles on. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Chosuokabe's shadow pounces over Mouri's terse body.
"Hey, Motonari?"
"What?"
"I'm really horny--"
A thin wrist slaps against Chousokabe's wound.
"FUCKING HELL---"
VIII. I follow the hated path of monotonous walls that is my destiny.
Sometimes, he takes a wrong turn in the labyrinth and his toes sink into the soft, moist mess of spilled intestines and ripped flesh. Mouri walks along that beach, and the sun burns with such ferocity that white sears across the horizon. The warlord--he is a warlord in those days--gingerly steps over skulls but cannot feel the splintered bones digging against the bottom of his boots. He walks along the beach, along the edge where the lapping waves weakly bow and melt at his feet, until ash fades into ash, dust into dust. A kingfisher flits across the sky, and, in the distance, he spots two boys perched on a tall boulder.
"I'll bring more shells next time," a young pirate assures a smaller, although perhaps not younger, dark-haired boy. The pirate draws spirals in the sand with his toes, and then another for his friend, whose feet dangle in the air.
The dark-haired boy frowns and shakes his head.
"No really," the young pirate insists as he holds out an incomplete seashell necklace. "I'll come back with more shells, and we can make as many as you want."
The young warlord grabs the seashell necklace and holds the string of shells taunt. Those tiny hands then begin to oscillate each end so that they never quite meet on the same plane. The shells undulate like waves, and the dreamscape slows each rolling cadence as Mouri, from afar, watches the line of shells fold and unfold in an agonizing rhythm.
Finally, time blinks out of the trance, and the young warlord hands the seashell necklace back. "Will you really come back?"
"Of course I'll come back. I'll always come back. Why wouldn't I, Shojumaru?"
The warlord with the bloodied boots sucks in a deep breath between his teeth and leaps forward. His younger self dissipates from the rock as he lands at the young pirate's feet. The blood soaked curve of a ring blade grazes lightly against Chousokabe Motochika's chin.
That lonely baby blue, however, does not accept the challenge.
"Say the word, Motonari," the boy whispers as he begins to blur against the searing white backdrop of the sun. "Say the word, Motonari, and we don't have to fight."
"Our clans at are war, Motochika."
"We're the ones who decide that, not our clans."
"Do you even understand what it takes to be a leader?" Mouri snarls.
"Do you understand what it takes to lead?" Chousokabe shouts back, and suddenly, he's taller, much taller, and when the anchor fires down from the sky, Mouri cannot even blink.
IX. In the pale dust, I have discerned signs that frighten me.
"Hey, Mouri, do you believe in past lives?"
"No."
".... for a literature student, you have surprisingly little imagination."
"I don't need an imagination. I just need to know how to read people, and more importantly, how to read."
".... low, that's a low blow. It's not my fault that I don't know how to read Borges and nearly failed that class. Hey. You said it yourself. No one knows how to read Borges. And plus, I can read. I can read you formulas. Like, we just learned this new one which relates power to--"
"Be quiet."
"Hey, that's not even fair."
"Go away."
"Really? Do you want me to go?"
"Yes."
"Motonari, I'm serious. You say the the word. I'll stay. I'll leave the gang. You just say it."
"I don't give a damn, Motochika. Be quiet or get out."
X. If only this were the final day of waiting.
Sometimes, Mouri finds the end of the labyrinth. The sea stretches out from under his feet as he readies himself to leap into the depths. In the distance, the giant torii of Itsukushima peak just above the horizon as the blazing sun bleaches the sky.
Mouri glances down at his boots and reaches back to undo the tassels of his armor. Long green plates shed off his arms like second skin and sink into the endless, watery depths. Mouri watches them fade, and then removes his hat.
Sometimes sailors see mirages out at sea. Shadows spring to life from gently rolling waves--slender shoulders, bulky shadows--one, with an anchor casually slung across his back. That shadow, the one with the amaranthine tint and shock of platinum-hair, laughs and tosses a string of shells into the air. Click click click, and the shells fold back against each other. The shadow, the one with the anchor, moves farther and father away. He takes a deep breath and jumps into the sea.
In the dark depths, a whale slips beneath his fingers. Mouri closes his eyes and listens to the whale song which has lived in his bones for so, so long. It's a mistake, it's all been a mistake. Mouri presses his cheek against the whale's cold back, and apologizes. It's all been a mistake. He has not reached the end of the labyrinth; he's only returned to the beginning.
It's New Years when he wakes, and it has been one year since Chousokabe Motochika died.
To be honest, Mouri hasn't even visited the grave. Back then, it was too much of a hassle, with all the yellow tape and testimonies and media. Then came his goddamn defense, all the burdens of graduate life, and then all the goddamn shit of post-graduate life. And then--
--and then.
Mouri rakes a hand through his hair and stumbles out of bed. He grabs his coat and wraps a bright magenta scarf twice around his neck and once around his mouth.
The shadow of a kingfisher looms over Motochika's tombstone as Mouri approaches under the winter sky. The man blinks, and then blinks again when the kingfisher dissipates like a mirage. Frost curls past his lips, and Mouri kneels down before Motochika's grave. One thickly gloved hand reaches into a coat pocket, and draws out a string of shells.
"In another life then," Mouri says as the shells collapse onto the frozen ground before the tombstone. Dark eyes stare at the cold hard slashes of Chousokabe Motochika's name against grey marble, and then squeeze shut.
Of course I'll come back. I'll always come back.
Motochika, if you just stayed, then you'd never have to return.
fin
The Labyrinth, Borges, translated
Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me. I have forgotten
the men I was before; I follow the hated
path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the days' usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carried a roar
toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.
I know there is an Other in the shadows,
whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes
which weave and unweave this Hades
and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other. If only this
were the final day of waiting.