[oneshot] paloma
title: paloma
rating: g
pairing: yamazaki kento / tsuchiya tao
genre: holla magical realism, i watch too many ghibli shit i swear
disclaimer: purely fiction. any coincidences with things in real life, dead or alive, coincidental or not, are for fictional
summary: To a boy she met in the forest, she was everything he wanted to keep from the evil of the world.
notes: mainly for kamille, but also for all my kentao-loving friends of course. also, goddamn it i had to cut some parts because it got super long and i don't wanna bore people x_x
To many, she was just the strange girl who'd walk around barefoot in the forest despite the cushion of snow beneath her feet, who'd wear nothing but a lavish kimono all year around; a girl who'd rather talk to the animals in the woods than to spend time playing with the local children. Some considered her not right in the head, a living, breathing spot of anomaly in a little town. To her mother, she was an angel entrusted to the arms of the little girl's grandmother a few minutes before dying from childbirth. To her grandmother, she was an imagery of a painful memory. To her father, she was irrelevant. To a boy she met in the forest, she was everything he wanted to keep from the evil of the world.
But she knew the truth. Deep down, she always did, for whenever she tried to close her eyes to sleep, she'd whisper the only truth she so badly wanted to believe in.
She wanted to be was a girl.
-
Kento sits by the lake in the forest, not caring about the cold seeping through the fabric of his pants courtesy of the melting snow he's on. He stares, eyes far away and distant, facial expression stoic and unrecognisable from the effort to mask the mountainous pile of sorrow and fury ready to burst from inside the bubble cage in his chest. The lake shifts ever so gently, lonely ripples gracing through the air, followed by howls of winter's chill caressing his cheeks, lips turning blue from bleak frost.
Somewhere in the distant, a trickery between a memory and an illusion, he hears the echo of a voice calling. Kento feels a twist in the pit of his stomach and he shakes it off, chugging it down to delusion birthed from his inability to let go.
Letting go, Kento learns, is allowing himself to let millions of invisible razors and blades to sweep their sharp, sharp ends right where his heart is. There had been cuts over cuts, wounds over wounds left untreated and left to bleed, the ache to see her face or to crush her into a hug or having to look slightly downward when talking to her so his face would align with hers-
The ivory road before him run on for miles and miles away, deeper into the woods engulfed with more big tress and more secrets Kento doesn't want to know much longer. Forests are never his thing, for they have always been hers. She was the only reason he loved being in the forest.
Now that she's not around, the forest feels too loud and too big for him.
Above him, birds fly in flock rather aggressively from behind the bald trees, shaking branches creaking twigs. Kento silently hopes they don't get burned from flying too close to the sun.
-
No one expects to know what love really feels like until one experiences it for themselves. The girls at school talked about having crushes all the time but Tao never understood what they meant. She couldn't see love from under the roof she was in.
Grandmother was cold, distant. She never combed Tao's hair, never allowed her to have midnight snacks and never really allowed her to go out alone. When Tao was ten, she wondered if that's how Grandmother showed her love - detached and glacial. Then again, Tao never really knew what kind of love existed, other than the one Grandmother showed to her.
That day, Grandmother called her to get ready. They were going to Grandmother's favourite pottery and ceramics shop, the Yamazakis. Usually, Grandmother wouldn't asked for Tao's company, but today was a special day. Housekeeper Wakana wasn't around for some reason and Grandmother didn't want to lose her privilege of watching Tao like a hawk.
The day she was allowed to accompany her grandmother someplace else other than their usual morning grocery run, Tao sneaked her way out of Grandmother's sight when the old woman was too busy chit-chatting with someone she assumed to be the Yamazaki patriarch, a seventy-something year old man only a few years older than Tao's grandmother it turned out.
She didn't know where she's heading but anything was better than around Grandmother. Tao never had the opportunity to explore things around, unless escaping into the forest at night counts. Whenever the sun's up, though, Tao's expected to stay at home, surrounded by tatami floorings and sliding doors and wooden engawa veranda. She'd spend her time doodling or dancing or talking to plants. Grandmother used to comment on her habit - "don't let people see you talking to flowers, nobody likes a crazy girl" - so Tao hid in her shell even further.
The Yamazaki house looked like any other house in the village, just like hers. However, unlike her empty corners, the Yamazakis kept all their art and crafts in glass cabinets. Tao found herself staring.
"Excuse me, who are you?"
She almost jumped and fell face first. Thankfully, she didn't. The shock, however, was a different story. There, to her left, stood a boy in a plain black yukata with his arms crossed. Standing next to him made Tao feel like a bird, what's with all the lavish patterns on her own yukata.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" was she prying too much by wandering around someone's household? Tao felt like a sore thumb sticking out of place. She had never interacted with anyone in the village and now that she was, she couldn't really look at them in the eyes. Grandmother's stern voice rang in her ears, it made her look down even more.
"Are you Tsuchiya-san's granddaughter?"
Tao dared herself to look up. The boy's voice was gentle, like daisies and sunflowers in early spring. His eyes were sort of cold and unwelcoming but his voice betrayed his defensive stance.
"Yes," she replied, "yes I am. I didn't mean to sneak around, I-"
"It's alright. Our house is a shop too anyway," he shrugged, "it must be boring to accompany your grandmother and not knowing what to do. Want me to show you around?"
-
Her name is, was Tsuchiya Tao. She was the granddaughter who spent her entire life growing up sheltered in the Tsuchiya household, only leaving her house on special occasion such as grocery run. Even then she'd be accompanied by her grandmother, the Tsuchiya matriarch who, despite adopting a friendly gesture and connection with the locals, had always been cold and distant with her granddaughter. Like her grandmother, Tao always wore kimono and never anything else.
Another thing Kento noticed was her lack of social skill. At first, he thought her strange. It wasn't until he listened to bits and pieces of her life that he found himself sympathising. Even so, he noticed the childlike sparkles in her eyes when she talked about the trees, the lake in the forest and the flowers. He listened to every word she had to say, offering her a cold bottle of Ramune in between to let her catch her breath.
For a shy girl he first met in his house by accident, Kento realised how much of a chatterbox she could be. Not that he mind it anyway, considering how he's come to appreciate her presence.
Tao turned to face him, urging him to tell her his stories. Really, there wasn't much to say, but he did it anyway. Growing up in a family of crafts and tradition, Kento was expected to learn the art of pottery as well. He didn't hate it, no, but he didn't love it either. It was a meticulous job, so he said, but still he persevered. He saw the sparks in her eyes again when she commented how cool his works were, but Kento was too embarrassed to say anything other than telling her to shut up.
Together, they both sat on the stairs of a local shrine. Summer sky turned to shades of red and orange above them, the sun slowly beginning to set. Cold Ramune in hand, Kento silently wished they could stay forever like that.
-
Grandmother was unhappy with how often Tao left the house as days went by. Although the elderly woman had a soft spot for the young Yamazaki apprentice, she was still a woman of rules and order. Still, Tao leaving the house wasn't something she's fond of.
There were arguments and quarrels and Tao asking why repeatedly and not once did she received a solid answer. Ten year old Tao would have screamed and cried herself to sleep but eighteen year old Tao wasn't going to take no for an answer. She demanded an explanation, yelled her lungs out and pulled her hair in tangles. The teenager wasn't having any of it, not when she finally, finally made a friend.
Grandmother's only response was a firm 'sit down', a command and not an offer. She sat down anyway, not breaking off her icy glare pinned on the elderly woman. Wrinkled and grey, Tao never realised how exhausted and worn out and done her grandmother looked. Tao wondered if she's the reason for all her grandmother's misery.
"You are not a girl. You- you are different."
Tao choked back a fit. Instinctively, her hand reached for her back, as if trying to feel something from the fabric of her expensive kimono. She couldn't feel it from the material but deep down, she knew they were there. Tao bit her lip, wanting to set them free and let the world see that despite her differences, she's still a girl with dreams and yearnings of love; a girl who wanted nothing but to spend hours and hours in the forest, watching the lake and talking about little silly things with that Yamazaki boy.
"I am a girl, grandmother."
"Not with those hideous wings you're not. People aren't going to love you once they see what you are. The world isn't a forgiving place, Tao. People don't like differences, they don't welcome sorrowful strangeness. Love is a dangerous game to play with. You are young, you don't understand it. Your mother died of love, your father left out of love. Your grandfather said he loved me even though I did not chose him out of love, only to die the next day in his sleep. Don't you see? We, the Tsuchiya women, were cursed with misfortunes. Tao, this is for your own good."
Tao gripped the edge of her kimono so tight her knuckles began to turn into the same shade as the wings suffocated by her kimono.
-
"Tao-chan, what are we doing in the forest? It's cold out here."
"Kento-kun, are you afraid of me?"
"Of course not, you're my friend."
"Even if I'm different?"
"What are you trying to say?"
"I have wings."
"Don't be ridiculous, Tao-chan. Humans don't have wings!"
The echo of a laughter, the ruffles of wind brushing against cleanly shaven trees, a sing-song of birds flying high above their heads like a scenery you see when the presence of wildlife is trying to warn you of something very dangerous.
A swift moment and a coat fell on the snowy grounds they stood on. A grunt followed, a movement somehow resembling a push, an exerted force. Pieces of white feathers descended from the sky, a pair of excellent grown wings reaching for the sky, the flapping sound, the plucked edges.
Wings. A pair of wings the colour of clean sheet and chalk and milk, like doves untainted and undaunted by sin and the weight of the world.
Kento fell, his butt landed on soft pillows made of snow. There's a reason Tao wasn't wearing her usual kimono that day, because it'd have been a hassle to let her wings go.
-
To the people in the village, she was a monstrosity. They didn't understand when she pleaded (and boy did she plead, fear swimming in the dark pool of her eyes, dilated pupils quivering lips and not from the cold of first winter) and backed away, one step two steps three-
They were chasing her, boots crunching on fresh morning snow sending echoes of gunfires and loose cannon ringing in her ears. There were layers of screams and accusing fingers demanding for answers, famished fire bursting into the air from the other end - the end pointing towards her - of thick wooden stakes.
Wings - her wings fluttered and flailed, gushing of the wind summoned upon them. By then it was too late when she tried to apologise at the unwanted after effect of people falling face first into the snow, some of them thrown a few metres away, eventually slamming their backs against the tree trunk. No! She pleaded, the wings glued on her back continued to spread far and wide into the sky, a vivid imagery of a shield she couldn't control.
It was then when she heard someone yelled her name. A voice burst through the angry crowds about to charge.
"Stop it, leave her alone!"
His voice sounded like church bells in her ears. Her knees gave way, breaking her stance, landing knees first into the snow. Her feet, bare and raw, were red from the constant running. They could hardly use some breaks, her too.
"Leave her be!"
He stood before her, arms outstretched and eyes blurry with tears ready to pour a rainfall down his pale cheeks. Clearly he wasn't dressed in winter's clothing. Clad in a yukata, she sensed his lips turning blue. He's going to freeze, she thought. He's going to freeze and he might die, she pressed. Snowflakes descended from the sky, some buried into his hair, reminding her of that time they watched the falling pellets of snow sleet. They were laughing then, but they were frightened now.
"She's not human! They- the Tsuchiya women have been tricking us! They are not humans!"
"Move, young man! She's a monster!"
"No ordinary girl would have wings like that- she's an abomination and we need to kill her!"
Winter had always been hers, she belonged with them; innocence painted in white, a canvas so clean and pure she never knew why she was born with wings sewn into the deep of her flesh, forever a part of who she was and a reminder that she could never be a girl though she insisted she was one. Shivering, and not from the cold, she stood up. Her wings, fully grown and strong, enveloped him into a cocoon, earning a series of gasps instilled with both terror and wonder all at once.
There they were, two craving hearts wrapped inside a protective, giant cocoon made of feathers. He had his arms around her, pulling her deep into an embrace he wasn't willing to let go.
"I'll die if I have to." he whispered. His voice was shaking, his whole body trembling.
She sighed, allowing herself to breathe for a few minutes. Slowly, she allowed herself to return the hug. Ignoring the protests of villagers waiting for her to 'get out of that cursed shell' (it's not a shell, it's MY wings - she wanted to yell). In spite of their hatred, she knew they wouldn't take a step forward just to force her to leave the cocoon.
So they did what they did best: they screamed out her name in chants, repeatedly accusing her of being a witch.
"Thank you." she couldn't recognise her own voice. It was shaking, she was shaking. Looking into his eyes almost, almost made her fall. She couldn't do it, so she thought. She couldn't say it now - three words, eight letters, a promise only both of them knew - not when she had something more important to do.
"Don't go!" he tugged on her arm, not wanting to let go (not ever). He breathed in her scent - the scent of freshly picked flowers, forest wonders and warm vanilla - and placed his forehead against hers. "Please, don't leave. We can- we can go somewhere, some place else... just, don't go."
"It's a cruel, isn't it? But there's something I have to do."
"No you don't! You can escape, we can escape! We talked about living in the woods together, remember? And I-"
The wings around them split, enforcing the path from the outside world to filter through. The villagers moved forward and they, a few steps backwards. It could go on forever and they'd have taken this fight deeper into the words. She couldn't - she wouldn't endanger him like that, not when he's her most important person.
Her wings stretched sidewards again as she stepped in front of him. Obscured from the sight of angry villagers, he held her hand one last time, hoping she'd change her mind.
"I know, Kento-kun. I feel the same way too."
And then she charged forward, ignoring his cries.
-
"Can you fly?" Kento reached out to touch one of her wings, "with these, you'd be able to fly across the world without a need for passports."
Tao chuckled, leaning against the tree trunk by the lake. After spending much time together, they realised that the spot by the lake halfway through the forest had become their favourite. She called it their paradise, once, and Kento had laughed at how childish that sounded.
"Maybe I'll take you with me, how does that sound?"
"Yeah, that'd be great," head on her shoulder, fingers playing with the long strands of her raven black hair, Kento sighed in relief, "we can even live in the woods if you're into that sort of thing." He couldn't admit that he wasn't interested in pottery or ceramics. Really, he didn't know what he wanted to do other than be with someone who can understands him. Like her grandmother, his grandfather was never a warm family man after all.
A dry laugh escaped from her throat. Kento stiffened at the sound of hidden grief slowly making its way up to her lips. "Thinking about your grandmother again?" he asked. When Tao nodded, he held her hand in his. What began as a natural instinct had grown to be a natural habit both of them were fond of.
"Grandmother used to say that the women in our family are cursed. Mama died from the love she heavily carried on her shoulders, Papa left for a brand new love he yearned from the heart of another maiden; Grandmother only married Grandfather because she demanded love in the form of diamonds and golds; Grandfather married Grandmother for a love he never received in return til the day he died."
Her voice, ever so soft and gentle and fragile, resembled the silent waters in the lake. There was always that tone of sadness he so desperately wished he could remove from where her heart slept - a girl kept from the world, from ever knowing anything beyond the walls of her home. He so badly wished he could do something, anything.
"So I guess, Grandmother's curse was the sudden death in her sleep." Tao walked into the lake, her feet fully submerged in the waters, soaking the ends of her kimono. "I wonder if there's more to my curse."
"It's not a curse." By then he had removed his sandals, following her footsteps of walking into the still water. "Your wings- I don't think they're a curse. I think they're beautiful."
A leaf fell from the old oak tree above them and landed on her head. Breath caught, Kento reached out. "There's a leaf on your head." he said, as if it wasn't the most ridiculous thing that ever came out of his mouth.
Still, she laughed at his deadpanned eyes. Kento-kun is a natural isn't he, she once joked. At that time, he couldn't understand why natural would be the first word he chose to describe their relationship.
Now, though, he knew that it's something people these days might call love.
-
Blood. There was blood everywhere. Dark, crimson shades stained the bedsheets of nature in white. Around him, there were bodies - stiff and quiet and no longer screaming curses to a teenage girl standing tall with her wings big and strong and unwavering, their eyes empty and distant, their nerves and muscles motionless.
"Tao?"
When he spoke her name, it broke her from a trance. Kento forced himself to stand up, his knees weak with threats of falling down. He wasn't - he couldn't let himself fall. He shouldn't.
The girl standing before him painted an entirely different picture of reality he had known for months. Dry blood splotches smeared across her cheeks, some drops on her forehead and most on her white dress. In the snowy fields, Tao reminded him of the wounded dove he once tried to desperately save when he was ten - parched and exhausted and fragile all at once.
"Kento-kun, are you afraid of me now?"
Every footstep she took left prints gilded in guilt and regret and strength on the snow, the sceneries and vibration of villagers crying for mercy when she hovered (above, behind, side and front) to snatch away their burning stakes and little kitchen knives and blacksmith blades. Folded negatives unwrapped themselves in her head, replaying each scene of what she just did - slashes to the throats, punctures to the flesh, bloodcurdling contempt.
She had butchered them all like animals raised for slaughter.
"You- you didn't mean it. You didn't-" Kento stuttered, grabbing her hand and gripping it so tightly she wondered when he'd stop believing in his lies.
"Tell them it's me. Tell them it's my doing. Let them try to find me, let them."
"They'll kill you!" he was shaking her and she just let him do it without a fight. She wasn't going to fight. "They'll kill you and I'll- I need you!"
To Kento, Tao was never cold. She could walk barefoot in the snow and still her touch felt warm, like rays of sunshine passing through the window in his room. This time, however, her hand felt numb and cold as she touched his cheek, smearing prints of leftover blood.
"They'll kill you."
Falling to his knees, Kento looked down and let the wreckage swallow him whole from the inside out. He choked, he sobbed, he screamed and clawed and punched the ground. His fist bled and he looked just as damaged as she was.
"Not if they can't find me. They won't find me. I'll just have to run." Tao ran her fingers across his palm, as if she could magically heal the bruise slowly forming. Her voice, ever so gentle and patience and kind, made him even angrier than before. "Love is a curse, Kento-kun. Grandmother said so."
"Don't-"
But she was already standing up, her opened wings (half ruined and torn suffering from pain in silence) curtained the sunlight from his vision.
"I have to go now."
Kento watched her soar up, higher and higher until he could no longer see her figure. In between the clouds Tao looked more than just a misunderstood scorned girl whose only intention was to be loved and to find love. He ran and fell and ran again, shouting her name like she's his entire lifeline.
The last thing he remembered doing was whispering the syllables of her name: T A O, a silent prayer filled with so, so much love unspoken.
-
Seven years. It took him seven damn years to be able to return to this place.
Despite the changes, local businesses run as usual the way he used to remember them. Stepping into the sceneries reminds him of what it felt like to be nineteen again. This place he grew up in, the place he once called home, had died alongside whatever's left in him when she left for god knows where.
Most claimed that the essence of grief gets better over time, that there are seven stages of grief before one moves on with life. Kento doesn't know if he'd ever truly believes in any of them. He can't even stomach his nausea when he walked pass her house earlier today. The nameplate was no longer in its finest condition. In fact, it had come loose and crooked and filled with cracks. Ever since what happened, nobody wanted to occupy the house. Some said it's brimming with dust and mold, others spread rumours that if you were to live there, you'd be cursed for eternity.
Kento had fought the urge to punch whoever said that out loud but decided to walk pass them anyway. After what happened in the woods seven years ago, he couldn't stay as the same person. He quit his craftsmanship (to his grandfather's dismay), packed his bag and went off for Tokyo. He didn't know why he chose Tokyo but it was where he headed regardless.
Life in Tokyo is quiet - the kind of quiet that makes him space out every now and then, switching the channels on his television only to watch the screen flickers between shows he never really cares about. Sometimes, he'd spend days watching the sky, wondering if maybe he'd be able to see her again someday. At night, Kento would lay in bed staring at the walls of his apartment, thinking about how the white paint resembles her pretty, pretty wings.
Everywhere he goes, every breath he takes and every move he makes sends thousands and thousands of electricity down his veins. Most times he'd think about her and fall asleep from the nostalgia of their peaceful days in the woods, other times he'd let a drop or two escape his eyes and wakes up to a damp pillow.
Kento doesn't remember how much tears have been shed. He doesn't really want to know.
"Yamazaki-san?"
It's the housekeeper's voice reeling him back to reality. Kento has been standing in the middle of his room (the one he grew up and spent almost his entire childhood and teenage years in), his expression unreachable.
"Do you need any help?"
"No, it's fine. I just came here to pick up a few things. I'll be off to Tokyo first thing in the morning." He nods thankfully when the housekeeper left. Kento, not bothering to even learn her name, wishes he doesn't have to spend another few hours in this wretched place. Ever since his grandfather passed away, their pottery store had closed down. Unlike the Tsuchiya house at the end of the lane, the Yamazaki household has been kept clean and prim even though nobody lives in it. Somehow and for some reason, Kento's estranged father had hired someone to keep it pristine - not that the young man cares, though, since he barely knew his father anyway.
Unfolding the futon, Kento shuts the sliding door of his room and turns on the shoji lamp. Like a prayer, Kento mumbles a little 'good night' into the air. Deep down, he feels nineteen again, hoping for some miracle that she'd come knocking on his door so they can finally fulfil their dream of living together in the woods, away from prying eyes and people who can never understand what they have, had. His chest swells and ache from the reality that he'd never know if she's still out there somewhere, alive and breathing.
A group of dove silhouettes printed on the rice paper-made panels of his shoji lamp paints a cinematic shadowgraphy of carefree, high soaring birds on the wall.
-
paloma (n.) derived from the latin 'palumbus' which means dove, a symbol of peace, innocence and gentleness. like pigeons, doves are thought to bring love, peace and an understanding of gentleness. in some culture, doves are also symbolic of home and security.