Carved and Uncarved [3/4, Tora/Shou]
Two months passed, holiday was over. I attended classes punctually, never missed one, took piritone when my nose started to run. I studied more, too, even to the point of completely ignoring my PSP - it collected dust while I hunched over my text books, only taking bathroom breaks and giving myself at most forty minutes per meal, cleanup time included.
Nao seemed to have noticed: “Dude, are you trying to be the Terminator or something? Detective Conan?”
Other than quarter-snide remarks - “Brilliant observation, L.” - I gave him no respond, neither glance nor retaliation. I treated him like a statue would to a pigeon, and I treated the world even worse. My answers to lecturers would always be maximum five words; I merely deleted suggestive girls from my mind, my memories, my existence whenever they tried to lure me with their so-called “charm” - to put it frankly, such “charm” was in reality a kind replacement for “vulgar whoring deserving of zero respect”.
They were more of a hooker than Shou had ever been - they had a choice; Shou did not.
Furthermore, I was angry. As to who - or what - I harboured such negative feelings for, I didn’t have a clue. Days passed, weeks flew by, each taking a piece of ripped paper, a pencil catapulted across the room, a bruised chair, and the concern written all over Nao’s face; concern that dripped like thick syrup, dying the pillow beneath his head, tainting the sheets tangled with his limbs - every day, every night, from dawn to dusk, every day and every night; concern that was reacted to with reaction never shown at all.
Nao was, in the end, the closest friend I had. Sure, I loved talking, found it as fun as summoning the wind to dance beside me while riding on my bike, but there are only a certain few whom I could really converse with - Shou, for example, and Nao.
And the scary thing was - I was half-crazy without Shou, what would I be if Nao somehow left my life, just like that, without a trace?
Finally, Shou came back, unexpected, a little different. He left me a voicemail, one that was neither short nor long:
“Amano-san, this is Shou. Well, I’m not Shou anymore - I’ve quit, so now I’m just Kohara Kazamasa. I ask for you to please call me by my real name. I’m sorry, really, for ignoring you so selfishly - I was… not quite right, not quite in it, if this makes sense at all. But you are not to blame - so please, just listen to my explanation:
“You helped me, Amano-san. Remember when I asked you about your dreams, your ambitions? Your answer - how you wish for more improvement - motivated me, moved me; it drove me positively into resignation. I didn’t want to be a prostitute anymore, didn’t want to sell my body for a price, as if money alone can by me for whatever length of time desired.
“Again, please forgive me, please. Let us meet up again, hopefully.”
Ecstatic, I immediately dialled his number. His phone was apparently switched off, but that didn’t matter - voice mail was no different, was it? I could barely contain all I wanted to tell him, and indeed, I could not - I ended up belting things out as they came to mind, hurled them one right after the other into the receiver, even dialled again when I reached the maximum limit. In fact, I was going so fast, I was not sure if I myself made any sense at all - were my words, in the end, just a trashload of useless garbage?
No, fortunately they were not. He called me back the next day, greeted himself as Kohara Kazamasa. We scheduled a lunch meeting at Shibuya; we would meet right at the entrance of 109 - typical hangout spot for a group of SHINee fangirls; perhaps it was excitement that blinded me from the possible humiliation I would have to suffer merely from taking two microscopic steps into the female-oriented shopping centre.
I arrived not on time, but much, much earlier. Soon enough, however, he was here too, his smile the direct epitome of freedom. He got a haircut too - bangs a lot shorter, layers less prominent, even dyed the golden to ebony ink black. His skin was paler against the new darkness of his hair, but his strides were longer and held more confidence.
We didn’t enter 109, thank god, just walked, dotted the cemented grounds of Shibuya with invisible footsteps. We walked side by side, hands kept to ourselves, careful not to let our shoulders brush against each other, which was profoundly difficult, considering our body builts. Sometimes he would stop, or I would, and the both of us would halt until the other was ready to continue pacing north, pacing east, pacing west. Never south - none of us wanted to go back.
There was nothing but silent walking at first. Then, slowly, starting in a low, almost inaudible whisper, Kazamasa began to talk. His lips were slightly chapped, I noticed, as they parted to make way for his words.
“I don’t have a lot of money, this should be clear as Sunday. Naturally, not long after resigning, I began job hunting.”
I nodded, but said nothing. He had more to tell, after all.
“I was unsuccessful, unfortunately. I didn’t want to let anyone know I used to be a whore, but I haven’t worked at Disneyland for a number of years. In other words, I had a shit resume. I looked everywhere - everywhere legal, that is,” his lips curled into a soft smirk. “I even thought of flying to the moon, just in case if they needed an errand boy. I couldn’t do it, though - I didn’t feel like defying earthly gravity.”
I nodded again, then said: “The moon would have loved you.”
A laugh. “Yeah right. There’s no need for that anymore, Amano-san - I finally got a job.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Oh really? What is it?”
“I work at Starbucks, right here, in Shibuya.”
Immediately following that, I spent all my mornings in Shibuya. I didn’t have any morning classes, so I had breakfast there every day, in that medium-sized Starbucks coffee shop. Kazamasa worked full time, Mondays to Fridays, but even on free days, he would still be there, with only a few small differences - out of uniform, and sitting across from me, two plastic cups of iced latte between us and a split muffin, its soft crumbs scattered like snowdust across the onyx surface of the low Starbucks table. We talked a lot, as usual, sometimes about him, sometimes about me, but mostly about the things caught betwixt. He asked about my classes, what I learned, how the lecturer taught, if anything capslock-worthy happened; I answered him honestly: I learned more from the powerpoint slides set by the lecturers, the lecturers seemed to teach with only that method, and as usual, nothing much happened.
- - - - - - - -
I was twenty-four when Kazamasa and I first met, he a little older. I graduated by twenty-five, but he still worked the same job, still served mugs of tea and plates of doughnuts in the same Starbucks café, still wore the same old uniform from Mondays to Fridays. That gave me no other choice than to stay for a Starbucks breakfast every day, not that I minded that - I was more curious, even confused, on why he never switched jobs. I had thought of asking him, plain and direct, but decided against it in the end.
Spring rolled, summer flashed, autumn twirled. His twenty-seventh birthday arrived; we celebrated it with drinks and hotdogs, then did the same when I stepped into my twenty-seventh year as well. I watched him day after day, watched his eyebags as they slowly vanished, watched them as they came back again, followed the way his brows would furrow in frustration, the way they slowly swam back into place when something made relief in him. He seemed to grow much, much older at times, but then he would be young again, lips pulling into wide grins. Another autumn passed, and suddenly we were twenty-eight, venturing into thirty without any special thoughts on age.
Four, a thought came to mind one day, I’ve known him for only four years.
But it felt like four thousand.
- - - - - - - -
AN: I cried a bit while writing this. This chapter is dedicated to my constant, Lauster, who doesn't have an LJ account, unfortunately. Lots of "underlying" messages for you to crack.
Nao seemed to have noticed: “Dude, are you trying to be the Terminator or something? Detective Conan?”
Other than quarter-snide remarks - “Brilliant observation, L.” - I gave him no respond, neither glance nor retaliation. I treated him like a statue would to a pigeon, and I treated the world even worse. My answers to lecturers would always be maximum five words; I merely deleted suggestive girls from my mind, my memories, my existence whenever they tried to lure me with their so-called “charm” - to put it frankly, such “charm” was in reality a kind replacement for “vulgar whoring deserving of zero respect”.
They were more of a hooker than Shou had ever been - they had a choice; Shou did not.
Furthermore, I was angry. As to who - or what - I harboured such negative feelings for, I didn’t have a clue. Days passed, weeks flew by, each taking a piece of ripped paper, a pencil catapulted across the room, a bruised chair, and the concern written all over Nao’s face; concern that dripped like thick syrup, dying the pillow beneath his head, tainting the sheets tangled with his limbs - every day, every night, from dawn to dusk, every day and every night; concern that was reacted to with reaction never shown at all.
Nao was, in the end, the closest friend I had. Sure, I loved talking, found it as fun as summoning the wind to dance beside me while riding on my bike, but there are only a certain few whom I could really converse with - Shou, for example, and Nao.
And the scary thing was - I was half-crazy without Shou, what would I be if Nao somehow left my life, just like that, without a trace?
Finally, Shou came back, unexpected, a little different. He left me a voicemail, one that was neither short nor long:
“Amano-san, this is Shou. Well, I’m not Shou anymore - I’ve quit, so now I’m just Kohara Kazamasa. I ask for you to please call me by my real name. I’m sorry, really, for ignoring you so selfishly - I was… not quite right, not quite in it, if this makes sense at all. But you are not to blame - so please, just listen to my explanation:
“You helped me, Amano-san. Remember when I asked you about your dreams, your ambitions? Your answer - how you wish for more improvement - motivated me, moved me; it drove me positively into resignation. I didn’t want to be a prostitute anymore, didn’t want to sell my body for a price, as if money alone can by me for whatever length of time desired.
“Again, please forgive me, please. Let us meet up again, hopefully.”
Ecstatic, I immediately dialled his number. His phone was apparently switched off, but that didn’t matter - voice mail was no different, was it? I could barely contain all I wanted to tell him, and indeed, I could not - I ended up belting things out as they came to mind, hurled them one right after the other into the receiver, even dialled again when I reached the maximum limit. In fact, I was going so fast, I was not sure if I myself made any sense at all - were my words, in the end, just a trashload of useless garbage?
No, fortunately they were not. He called me back the next day, greeted himself as Kohara Kazamasa. We scheduled a lunch meeting at Shibuya; we would meet right at the entrance of 109 - typical hangout spot for a group of SHINee fangirls; perhaps it was excitement that blinded me from the possible humiliation I would have to suffer merely from taking two microscopic steps into the female-oriented shopping centre.
I arrived not on time, but much, much earlier. Soon enough, however, he was here too, his smile the direct epitome of freedom. He got a haircut too - bangs a lot shorter, layers less prominent, even dyed the golden to ebony ink black. His skin was paler against the new darkness of his hair, but his strides were longer and held more confidence.
We didn’t enter 109, thank god, just walked, dotted the cemented grounds of Shibuya with invisible footsteps. We walked side by side, hands kept to ourselves, careful not to let our shoulders brush against each other, which was profoundly difficult, considering our body builts. Sometimes he would stop, or I would, and the both of us would halt until the other was ready to continue pacing north, pacing east, pacing west. Never south - none of us wanted to go back.
There was nothing but silent walking at first. Then, slowly, starting in a low, almost inaudible whisper, Kazamasa began to talk. His lips were slightly chapped, I noticed, as they parted to make way for his words.
“I don’t have a lot of money, this should be clear as Sunday. Naturally, not long after resigning, I began job hunting.”
I nodded, but said nothing. He had more to tell, after all.
“I was unsuccessful, unfortunately. I didn’t want to let anyone know I used to be a whore, but I haven’t worked at Disneyland for a number of years. In other words, I had a shit resume. I looked everywhere - everywhere legal, that is,” his lips curled into a soft smirk. “I even thought of flying to the moon, just in case if they needed an errand boy. I couldn’t do it, though - I didn’t feel like defying earthly gravity.”
I nodded again, then said: “The moon would have loved you.”
A laugh. “Yeah right. There’s no need for that anymore, Amano-san - I finally got a job.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Oh really? What is it?”
“I work at Starbucks, right here, in Shibuya.”
Immediately following that, I spent all my mornings in Shibuya. I didn’t have any morning classes, so I had breakfast there every day, in that medium-sized Starbucks coffee shop. Kazamasa worked full time, Mondays to Fridays, but even on free days, he would still be there, with only a few small differences - out of uniform, and sitting across from me, two plastic cups of iced latte between us and a split muffin, its soft crumbs scattered like snowdust across the onyx surface of the low Starbucks table. We talked a lot, as usual, sometimes about him, sometimes about me, but mostly about the things caught betwixt. He asked about my classes, what I learned, how the lecturer taught, if anything capslock-worthy happened; I answered him honestly: I learned more from the powerpoint slides set by the lecturers, the lecturers seemed to teach with only that method, and as usual, nothing much happened.
- - - - - - - -
I was twenty-four when Kazamasa and I first met, he a little older. I graduated by twenty-five, but he still worked the same job, still served mugs of tea and plates of doughnuts in the same Starbucks café, still wore the same old uniform from Mondays to Fridays. That gave me no other choice than to stay for a Starbucks breakfast every day, not that I minded that - I was more curious, even confused, on why he never switched jobs. I had thought of asking him, plain and direct, but decided against it in the end.
Spring rolled, summer flashed, autumn twirled. His twenty-seventh birthday arrived; we celebrated it with drinks and hotdogs, then did the same when I stepped into my twenty-seventh year as well. I watched him day after day, watched his eyebags as they slowly vanished, watched them as they came back again, followed the way his brows would furrow in frustration, the way they slowly swam back into place when something made relief in him. He seemed to grow much, much older at times, but then he would be young again, lips pulling into wide grins. Another autumn passed, and suddenly we were twenty-eight, venturing into thirty without any special thoughts on age.
Four, a thought came to mind one day, I’ve known him for only four years.
But it felt like four thousand.
- - - - - - - -
AN: I cried a bit while writing this. This chapter is dedicated to my constant, Lauster, who doesn't have an LJ account, unfortunately. Lots of "underlying" messages for you to crack.