Snow and Ash - Chapter Twelve Part 1
Ryo:
“Now?” he finally asks, his voice loud in the all-too-quiet room even though it is nothing more than a whisper. “After everything?”
“She tried to kill you, Shige.” When he doesn’t answer, I continue. “I can’t say that I’ll be happy giving this up. But I know for sure that I will never be happy walking to your grave because I didn’t.”
He sighs. “I’m not going to die, Ryo.”
“In case you forgot, you almost did today.”
He reaches over me and flips on the light next to my bed. “I don’t think that is what she wants. It doesn’t make sense,” he says as though any of this makes sense.
“She’s not stupid,” he responds to my thoughts.
“You’re reading my mind again?”
“You feel really bad, Ryo. I can’t help it.” He places a hand over mine and though I don’t like him feeling what I feel if it’s not good, I want him to know I’m not all of a sudden doing this for no reason. “Say that situation did happen and you’re walking to my grave. After you put flowers on it and say another goodbye to me-“
“Shige.” I wince.
He shakes his head before squeezing my fingers. “Just listen. Afterwards, as you’re walking away, will you want to pass the curse?”
“No.”
“See? What will killing me do for her?”
The heavy feeling begins to lift, allowing me to breathe more easily, before it comes back again. “So I should just sit back and watch as she hurts you but doesn’t kill you.”
“I don't think she wants to hurt me.”
“Then why did she do it? She used her power to overwhelm you.”
He shakes his head in disagreement once again. “Or maybe using her power caused me to be overwhelmed. Her real target is you.”
I think back to earlier today when I couldn’t remember anything and I blacked out. Was she trying to get into my head?
Shige moves forward and hugs me, burying his face into the material of my shirt. “Even if I’m not her target, you should think about passing it, Ryo. If she tries to hurt you don’t just endure it.” His hold tightens. “Please.”
---
Koyama:
My face is cupped in one hand, and with the other I am holding onto a pen and scraping over the surface with the nail of my index finger. There are always times like these, certain moments that come out of nowhere when I don’t feel anything at all.
Things are tense at home with everyone wondering what Shiku’s next move will be. I’m afraid. Shige is my best friend after all and Ryo-chan is part of my family but they’ve decided to wait and see where things are going before making any big decision. I just don’t know how long that waiting period will be.
It seems like all I’ve been doing is waiting - waiting for things that either come unexpectedly or don’t arrive at all.
I think about Yamapi a lot even though I have begun to focus on other things. I can't really help it. I’ve thought about packing the rest of his things but every time I open a drawer I end up closing it once again.
I tell myself I will move on but in the end they are just words. There is still some hope burning inside of me that he will come back even though I tell myself to let go of it. When I think about it, Shige’s words are in my head saying “Don’t give up on him” and even more frequently I hear Yamapi whispering his love for me in my ear and I can’t bring myself to believe that those words meant nothing.
“Ne, Koyama?” a familiar voice - Naoya - calls to me and I drop my pen in surprise when I’m pulled out of the daze.
I look up at the elderly woman patient in front of me, staring with an innocent smile.
“I’m sorry.”
She just nods and Naoya comes over to me and places a hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright? It’s not like you to zone out.”
“Um. Yeah, I probably just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“That’s not good,” the patient says in her soft voice. “You should get more sleep, dear. I’m okay here.” She pats the blanket in front of her to emphasize this. “Go take a nap.”
I can’t just leave with that statement, but I nod anyway and when I continue with what I was doing before, I can’t help but think I’ve met so many good people here.
Naoya is waiting in the hallway when I finish. He’s a doctor here and we’ve hung out a few times to talk over a drink. He’s probably the one I’m closest to here.
“You’ve been down lately,” he observes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Things have been a bit shaky with my boyfriend, so…”
“And by shaky you mean?”
“He basically moved out.”
He winces. “That bad, huh?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well you’re not the only one.”
He looks upset suddenly. “Hmm?”
“Just broke up with mine. After 2 years.”
I nod. “Three.”
He smiles weakly, the kind that hides his own suffering in order to make me feel better. “We should stick together, ne? Forget them.”
I thank him and he runs off down the hallway, turning around only to say “We’ll have fun, okay?”
I nod, smiling, and as I make my way down the hallway in the opposite direction towards the elevator, I freeze when I hear his voice. When I get closer to the room, I peek in and see Yamapi and Reiko standing next to the bed of an older woman. Her aunt? Mother? His? She doesn’t look like anyone I’ve seen in pictures.
Reiko-san looks up at me in surprise and I step away from the doorway, heading towards the elevator once again.
“Wait!” she yells and when I turn around she’s coming towards me. I’d forgotten how pretty she was.
“Koyama-san, ne? We haven’t spoken to each other in a while.”
“Mm,” is all I manage to say in response.
She looks disappointed. “I told Tomo-kun that he should invite you over to my apartment for dinner since you mentioned it that one time but he doesn’t seem to like the idea.”
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed that. But now it’s as if it is a normal response for him to not want me there.
“Maybe he knows you’re busy?” she asks innocently. She really is a nice girl.
“Maybe. Is that your…”
“My mom. She fainted today but they said she’ll be okay. We brought snacks if you want some.”
“Thank you, but I really should get going-“
“Reiko!” I hear his voice call and my heart skips a beat. “Why did you leave so sudd-“ He trails off when he arrives in the doorway and sees me. “Kei.”
“I saw him passing by,” Reiko answers. I wonder if she doesn’t notice the tension between us. But that thought suddenly falls away when the closer distance allows me to see the beginnings of a burn on his collarbone.
“You should take care of them properly,” I say and I realize that these words have been the first ones I have spoken to him in over a month. I will myself to calm down, but it’s not easy as he steps closer to me.
“They just come back. It’s not like I can go to a doctor.”
All the words overflow and come out at once. “Then go to someone you can. I know we’re not exactly okay right now but that doesn’t mean you should remain burned. You work, don’t you? Your students will wonder.”
He tilts his head and looks at me in a way he never has before. “You want me to use you? Oh wait, that’s what you think I’ve been doing since we met.”
“I’m just saying that if you need me-“
“But I don’t. And you don’t need me, so that’s it.”
“Tomo!” Reiko shrieks, her eyes wide. I wonder if she just realized that things aren’t always perfect and innocent. “You’re being dumb. Who talks that way to a friend?”
I let go of the repulsion to the last word and push it all inside. “We can’t do this here. I need to go now, best wishes to your mother.”
I don’t even move a few steps before her hands are on my arm, stopping me. “Please…even if you guys are fighting please heal him. He’s being dumb right now but they hurt him.” Tears line her eyes and I can’t bear to say no. My eyes drift over to Yamapi, who is leaning against the wall, eyes closed and his hand over his stomach. Why don’t you tell me if they hurt so much? Even if we get to the point where we hate each other I would never turn you away.
“I get off in two hours. But we can’t…be in public when it happens.”
She nods and bows to me. “Thank you. Is my car okay? I’d offer you someplace nicer but it doesn’t seem like you two want to-“
“That’s fine.”
---
When I reach the car, in the far side of the parking lot, Reiko is sitting in the driver’s seat, tapping her fingers on the wheel to music and Yamapi is in the backseat saying something to her. I knock on the window before opening the door and slipping in the backseat.
Reiko turns off the car and the music is silenced. “I’ll run across the street to get us dinner, okay?”
She leaves, and though so many words came out of my mouth earlier, now I can’t think of any to say.
After a motionless minute, he turns to me, not quite looking me in the eye. “It hurts. Every time I move.”
“Where?” I ask quietly.
“Only my upper half. Like usual.”
Hesitantly, I reach forward for the top button of his shirt but he pulls away and begins to do it himself. The burns on his chest are really bad. It makes me wish that I would have realized this sooner and went to her house to see him and heal them before it got to this.
I scoot closer and my fingers are trembling slightly when I place my hands on his chest, closing my eyes and healing him. He inhales sharply and my eyes flutter open. He reaches his hand up and covers one of mine, slipping his fingers through the spaces in between.
The warmth flows through my veins and as he begins to move my hand over his chest, it feels like instead he has taken his hand and hit me.
Don’t tease me like this if you’re going to act like you want nothing to do with me.
He lets go once the front is healed and he turns around so that his back is facing me and drops the shirt over his shoulders, revealing the burns there as well.
I wonder if Reiko-san finds them ugly? The connection of burning and healing has always been one that only we could share and so although they might make some turn away in disgust, to me they are beautiful.
His breaths come in quick puffs. I know it feels good for him, but I also know that won’t change anything.
I run my hands down his arms, the ones which once held me but now wrap around someone else. Does he burn her too? Does he burn their sheets?
Though I wish it didn’t, a tear falls from my eye onto his now perfect skin and he turns his head back for a second but doesn’t say anything. I close my eyes and quickly wipe my eyes and move back. “Okay. You’re done.”
“Thanks,” is all he says and when he finishes redressing Reiko comes back with a plastic bag.
He moves to the front seat and smiles at her when she hands him the bag. She thanks me a few more times and I pause when I open the door.
“Sorry if I made you feel awkward before,” he says to her. “I really shouldn’t have fought with him around you.”
My emotions get the best of me and something else, something deeper, takes the place of those optimistic feelings of hope I had been clinging to. The thin threads are breaking one by one, piece by piece, as I see the way he looks at her.
She eyes me for a moment, tilts her head a bit and then focuses once again on Yamapi. “You shouldn’t treat a friend like that, especially one who is so good to you. I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“I know,” he answers and one last time I wait for a correction.
But he doesn’t say anything. Not a he’s more than that or a he’s a best friend with whom I have shared my darkest secrets. Just friend, like someone you meet with every once in a while at school or work. Everyone parts ways at some point, and perhaps our parting was imminent the moment Reiko stepped back into his life. But what hurts the most is that our time together has sunk to this. He won’t even acknowledge it.
“You bastard,” I spit out and they both look back at me, my hand on the door handle, with their eyes widening in surprise. I step out of the car, thinking it wasn’t the right thing to say and hurting over the fact that I would ever say that to him in the first place.
I just want to walk away and leave him in the world he’s chosen, one that obviously has no room for me. After I take a few quick steps away from the car, I hear a door slam and then he’s calling me and grabbing my arm when he catches up. I yank my arm away immediately, not wanting him to touch me, and I continue back towards the hospital.
“Wait, will you?” he calls to me and at first I don’t want to hear it but after a few more steps I pause for just a moment and turn back to look at him. He’s standing where I left him but starts running towards me to catch up. But it feels as though the final threads are ripping and no matter how long he runs, no matter how close he stands to me, we’re not standing in the same place anymore. “What was that?” he asks.
I bring myself to look him in the eyes. “Is it fun for you, Yamashita? To pretend like I’m nothing to you, like I’m some secret that would kill you if it ever got out? If you had no intention of acknowledging me as your boyfriend once you got your life back, why did you make me fall in love with you? As a joke? A game?”
“You know that’s not true.”
I nod, my throat tightening around my words before they fall from my lips. “But why, then?”
“I never knew what I was going to do, Kei. It was all temporary. I was constantly, constantly scrambling around trying to piece things together. Yeah, we were together during that time but when I’m with her I don’t have to think about whether or not it’s what I want. It just is.”
I bite my lip in attempt to calm my emotions. “That’s what I wanted to know. That’s why I asked for a break. I wanted you to find the answer. And you did.”
He doesn’t look at me, and I feel a drop of water fall onto my cheek and run down as if it was a tear.
“I’ll pack the rest of your things and get them to you somehow.” I place my hand on his shoulder, feeling the warmth as well as the coldness of a few more raindrops landing on my skin. “Best of luck, Tomohisa.” Before I can help myself, I hesitantly run my hand over his shoulder, trace my fingers up his neck and rest on his cheek. He looks into my eyes, and his expression is almost blank except for the slightest hint of a smile that appears on his lips.
The last thread breaks apart and I turn away from him, running towards the street, not wanting anything more than to go home. The rain continues to pour from the black sky and once again I picture that soft glimpse of a smile, a fragment of the man I fell in love with. My throat tightens and I stop, the rain pounding on my now soaked t-shirt. I can’t miss him anymore.
I drop my bag on the ground and I slink down next to it against a fence and for the first time, there is no optimism to block out the tears. I cover my mouth with my hand, both trembling as the warmer tears mix with cold raindrops. I draw my knees to my chest and for a few minutes I allow myself to just cry.
It’s my way of saying goodbye.
Part 2
“Now?” he finally asks, his voice loud in the all-too-quiet room even though it is nothing more than a whisper. “After everything?”
“She tried to kill you, Shige.” When he doesn’t answer, I continue. “I can’t say that I’ll be happy giving this up. But I know for sure that I will never be happy walking to your grave because I didn’t.”
He sighs. “I’m not going to die, Ryo.”
“In case you forgot, you almost did today.”
He reaches over me and flips on the light next to my bed. “I don’t think that is what she wants. It doesn’t make sense,” he says as though any of this makes sense.
“She’s not stupid,” he responds to my thoughts.
“You’re reading my mind again?”
“You feel really bad, Ryo. I can’t help it.” He places a hand over mine and though I don’t like him feeling what I feel if it’s not good, I want him to know I’m not all of a sudden doing this for no reason. “Say that situation did happen and you’re walking to my grave. After you put flowers on it and say another goodbye to me-“
“Shige.” I wince.
He shakes his head before squeezing my fingers. “Just listen. Afterwards, as you’re walking away, will you want to pass the curse?”
“No.”
“See? What will killing me do for her?”
The heavy feeling begins to lift, allowing me to breathe more easily, before it comes back again. “So I should just sit back and watch as she hurts you but doesn’t kill you.”
“I don't think she wants to hurt me.”
“Then why did she do it? She used her power to overwhelm you.”
He shakes his head in disagreement once again. “Or maybe using her power caused me to be overwhelmed. Her real target is you.”
I think back to earlier today when I couldn’t remember anything and I blacked out. Was she trying to get into my head?
Shige moves forward and hugs me, burying his face into the material of my shirt. “Even if I’m not her target, you should think about passing it, Ryo. If she tries to hurt you don’t just endure it.” His hold tightens. “Please.”
---
Koyama:
My face is cupped in one hand, and with the other I am holding onto a pen and scraping over the surface with the nail of my index finger. There are always times like these, certain moments that come out of nowhere when I don’t feel anything at all.
Things are tense at home with everyone wondering what Shiku’s next move will be. I’m afraid. Shige is my best friend after all and Ryo-chan is part of my family but they’ve decided to wait and see where things are going before making any big decision. I just don’t know how long that waiting period will be.
It seems like all I’ve been doing is waiting - waiting for things that either come unexpectedly or don’t arrive at all.
I think about Yamapi a lot even though I have begun to focus on other things. I can't really help it. I’ve thought about packing the rest of his things but every time I open a drawer I end up closing it once again.
I tell myself I will move on but in the end they are just words. There is still some hope burning inside of me that he will come back even though I tell myself to let go of it. When I think about it, Shige’s words are in my head saying “Don’t give up on him” and even more frequently I hear Yamapi whispering his love for me in my ear and I can’t bring myself to believe that those words meant nothing.
“Ne, Koyama?” a familiar voice - Naoya - calls to me and I drop my pen in surprise when I’m pulled out of the daze.
I look up at the elderly woman patient in front of me, staring with an innocent smile.
“I’m sorry.”
She just nods and Naoya comes over to me and places a hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright? It’s not like you to zone out.”
“Um. Yeah, I probably just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“That’s not good,” the patient says in her soft voice. “You should get more sleep, dear. I’m okay here.” She pats the blanket in front of her to emphasize this. “Go take a nap.”
I can’t just leave with that statement, but I nod anyway and when I continue with what I was doing before, I can’t help but think I’ve met so many good people here.
Naoya is waiting in the hallway when I finish. He’s a doctor here and we’ve hung out a few times to talk over a drink. He’s probably the one I’m closest to here.
“You’ve been down lately,” he observes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Things have been a bit shaky with my boyfriend, so…”
“And by shaky you mean?”
“He basically moved out.”
He winces. “That bad, huh?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well you’re not the only one.”
He looks upset suddenly. “Hmm?”
“Just broke up with mine. After 2 years.”
I nod. “Three.”
He smiles weakly, the kind that hides his own suffering in order to make me feel better. “We should stick together, ne? Forget them.”
I thank him and he runs off down the hallway, turning around only to say “We’ll have fun, okay?”
I nod, smiling, and as I make my way down the hallway in the opposite direction towards the elevator, I freeze when I hear his voice. When I get closer to the room, I peek in and see Yamapi and Reiko standing next to the bed of an older woman. Her aunt? Mother? His? She doesn’t look like anyone I’ve seen in pictures.
Reiko-san looks up at me in surprise and I step away from the doorway, heading towards the elevator once again.
“Wait!” she yells and when I turn around she’s coming towards me. I’d forgotten how pretty she was.
“Koyama-san, ne? We haven’t spoken to each other in a while.”
“Mm,” is all I manage to say in response.
She looks disappointed. “I told Tomo-kun that he should invite you over to my apartment for dinner since you mentioned it that one time but he doesn’t seem to like the idea.”
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed that. But now it’s as if it is a normal response for him to not want me there.
“Maybe he knows you’re busy?” she asks innocently. She really is a nice girl.
“Maybe. Is that your…”
“My mom. She fainted today but they said she’ll be okay. We brought snacks if you want some.”
“Thank you, but I really should get going-“
“Reiko!” I hear his voice call and my heart skips a beat. “Why did you leave so sudd-“ He trails off when he arrives in the doorway and sees me. “Kei.”
“I saw him passing by,” Reiko answers. I wonder if she doesn’t notice the tension between us. But that thought suddenly falls away when the closer distance allows me to see the beginnings of a burn on his collarbone.
“You should take care of them properly,” I say and I realize that these words have been the first ones I have spoken to him in over a month. I will myself to calm down, but it’s not easy as he steps closer to me.
“They just come back. It’s not like I can go to a doctor.”
All the words overflow and come out at once. “Then go to someone you can. I know we’re not exactly okay right now but that doesn’t mean you should remain burned. You work, don’t you? Your students will wonder.”
He tilts his head and looks at me in a way he never has before. “You want me to use you? Oh wait, that’s what you think I’ve been doing since we met.”
“I’m just saying that if you need me-“
“But I don’t. And you don’t need me, so that’s it.”
“Tomo!” Reiko shrieks, her eyes wide. I wonder if she just realized that things aren’t always perfect and innocent. “You’re being dumb. Who talks that way to a friend?”
I let go of the repulsion to the last word and push it all inside. “We can’t do this here. I need to go now, best wishes to your mother.”
I don’t even move a few steps before her hands are on my arm, stopping me. “Please…even if you guys are fighting please heal him. He’s being dumb right now but they hurt him.” Tears line her eyes and I can’t bear to say no. My eyes drift over to Yamapi, who is leaning against the wall, eyes closed and his hand over his stomach. Why don’t you tell me if they hurt so much? Even if we get to the point where we hate each other I would never turn you away.
“I get off in two hours. But we can’t…be in public when it happens.”
She nods and bows to me. “Thank you. Is my car okay? I’d offer you someplace nicer but it doesn’t seem like you two want to-“
“That’s fine.”
---
When I reach the car, in the far side of the parking lot, Reiko is sitting in the driver’s seat, tapping her fingers on the wheel to music and Yamapi is in the backseat saying something to her. I knock on the window before opening the door and slipping in the backseat.
Reiko turns off the car and the music is silenced. “I’ll run across the street to get us dinner, okay?”
She leaves, and though so many words came out of my mouth earlier, now I can’t think of any to say.
After a motionless minute, he turns to me, not quite looking me in the eye. “It hurts. Every time I move.”
“Where?” I ask quietly.
“Only my upper half. Like usual.”
Hesitantly, I reach forward for the top button of his shirt but he pulls away and begins to do it himself. The burns on his chest are really bad. It makes me wish that I would have realized this sooner and went to her house to see him and heal them before it got to this.
I scoot closer and my fingers are trembling slightly when I place my hands on his chest, closing my eyes and healing him. He inhales sharply and my eyes flutter open. He reaches his hand up and covers one of mine, slipping his fingers through the spaces in between.
The warmth flows through my veins and as he begins to move my hand over his chest, it feels like instead he has taken his hand and hit me.
Don’t tease me like this if you’re going to act like you want nothing to do with me.
He lets go once the front is healed and he turns around so that his back is facing me and drops the shirt over his shoulders, revealing the burns there as well.
I wonder if Reiko-san finds them ugly? The connection of burning and healing has always been one that only we could share and so although they might make some turn away in disgust, to me they are beautiful.
His breaths come in quick puffs. I know it feels good for him, but I also know that won’t change anything.
I run my hands down his arms, the ones which once held me but now wrap around someone else. Does he burn her too? Does he burn their sheets?
Though I wish it didn’t, a tear falls from my eye onto his now perfect skin and he turns his head back for a second but doesn’t say anything. I close my eyes and quickly wipe my eyes and move back. “Okay. You’re done.”
“Thanks,” is all he says and when he finishes redressing Reiko comes back with a plastic bag.
He moves to the front seat and smiles at her when she hands him the bag. She thanks me a few more times and I pause when I open the door.
“Sorry if I made you feel awkward before,” he says to her. “I really shouldn’t have fought with him around you.”
My emotions get the best of me and something else, something deeper, takes the place of those optimistic feelings of hope I had been clinging to. The thin threads are breaking one by one, piece by piece, as I see the way he looks at her.
She eyes me for a moment, tilts her head a bit and then focuses once again on Yamapi. “You shouldn’t treat a friend like that, especially one who is so good to you. I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“I know,” he answers and one last time I wait for a correction.
But he doesn’t say anything. Not a he’s more than that or a he’s a best friend with whom I have shared my darkest secrets. Just friend, like someone you meet with every once in a while at school or work. Everyone parts ways at some point, and perhaps our parting was imminent the moment Reiko stepped back into his life. But what hurts the most is that our time together has sunk to this. He won’t even acknowledge it.
“You bastard,” I spit out and they both look back at me, my hand on the door handle, with their eyes widening in surprise. I step out of the car, thinking it wasn’t the right thing to say and hurting over the fact that I would ever say that to him in the first place.
I just want to walk away and leave him in the world he’s chosen, one that obviously has no room for me. After I take a few quick steps away from the car, I hear a door slam and then he’s calling me and grabbing my arm when he catches up. I yank my arm away immediately, not wanting him to touch me, and I continue back towards the hospital.
“Wait, will you?” he calls to me and at first I don’t want to hear it but after a few more steps I pause for just a moment and turn back to look at him. He’s standing where I left him but starts running towards me to catch up. But it feels as though the final threads are ripping and no matter how long he runs, no matter how close he stands to me, we’re not standing in the same place anymore. “What was that?” he asks.
I bring myself to look him in the eyes. “Is it fun for you, Yamashita? To pretend like I’m nothing to you, like I’m some secret that would kill you if it ever got out? If you had no intention of acknowledging me as your boyfriend once you got your life back, why did you make me fall in love with you? As a joke? A game?”
“You know that’s not true.”
I nod, my throat tightening around my words before they fall from my lips. “But why, then?”
“I never knew what I was going to do, Kei. It was all temporary. I was constantly, constantly scrambling around trying to piece things together. Yeah, we were together during that time but when I’m with her I don’t have to think about whether or not it’s what I want. It just is.”
I bite my lip in attempt to calm my emotions. “That’s what I wanted to know. That’s why I asked for a break. I wanted you to find the answer. And you did.”
He doesn’t look at me, and I feel a drop of water fall onto my cheek and run down as if it was a tear.
“I’ll pack the rest of your things and get them to you somehow.” I place my hand on his shoulder, feeling the warmth as well as the coldness of a few more raindrops landing on my skin. “Best of luck, Tomohisa.” Before I can help myself, I hesitantly run my hand over his shoulder, trace my fingers up his neck and rest on his cheek. He looks into my eyes, and his expression is almost blank except for the slightest hint of a smile that appears on his lips.
The last thread breaks apart and I turn away from him, running towards the street, not wanting anything more than to go home. The rain continues to pour from the black sky and once again I picture that soft glimpse of a smile, a fragment of the man I fell in love with. My throat tightens and I stop, the rain pounding on my now soaked t-shirt. I can’t miss him anymore.
I drop my bag on the ground and I slink down next to it against a fence and for the first time, there is no optimism to block out the tears. I cover my mouth with my hand, both trembling as the warmer tears mix with cold raindrops. I draw my knees to my chest and for a few minutes I allow myself to just cry.
It’s my way of saying goodbye.
Part 2