This is a bit of a yikes. I had the idea to do a full on post-good ending Rin fic because I identified too many loose ends which tying them up would make me gushily happy. Got to about 30 pages and then the motivation kind of died. I'm not sure if I'll ever continue this, but what I have below currently ends somewhat reasonably (as in, the rest of the day/night of the final day in Rin's good route).
I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Thanks.
"What is it?"
"What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
I heard her words, understood them just fine, but I couldn't answer before becoming locked into a longing stare which led me down a lonesome memory lane. I could see her laying on her bed, one eye closed, shirt unbuttoned - not seeming to care at all - amber hair even more disheveled than now, and completely out of it. And yet, the most ecstatic smile on her face. I felt happy and sad at the same time.
I blinked for a second too long, and the memory was gone. The purple skylight returned, sprinkled with the fading remnants of the dandelions about to begin their new journey. Rin just stood there, her expression unchanged as if she could wait for my answer forever. I'd never been so thankful for her impassiveness.
I was a bit surprised at how hidden away that memory had been. This smile, admittedly, lacked some of the vibrancy my remembered one had, but I didn't complain. I supposed it was hard to beat being on cold medicine, even for Rin. Close enough, though. Close enough to try my hardest to mirror it although I thought Rin was beating me in the not-having-a-care-in-the-world department.
I stood up - I had previously knelt down a bit to blow the clock - felt the air breeze through my own hair, and headed towards Rin to be by her side as we watched the sky. Through my peripheral I could see her green, almond-sized eyes following mine until our shoulders began to align at which point she took the liberty to pull her gaze back to the cerulean expanse. The rock she was standing on allowed her to be as tall as me. We stood at nearly an arm's reach of each other, the thin air breezing through our short gap. I pretended like the air was trying restlessly to pull us together like two repelling magnets.
I allowed this air to fill my lungs and was taken aback at how good it had felt. Why? I didn't remember my previous inhales being particularly uncomfortable or short. If I'd had to describe it any further, I wouldn't have been able to find the words.
"I'm trying to think of a word for that, but I don't know," I finally said. "What made you think that?" I only saw a glimmer of a purple ooze reflecting on the leftmost side of her left eye. We let the sky be our mediator and spoke to it so it would speak to the other.
"The sky. It looks more perfect than usual. I don't think I've seen it be this perfect before." I heard her pause to inhale deeply, as if my actions had inexplicably transferred to her. "I feel like I could fly if I had to. Would you catch me if I try to fly and end up falling?"
"Of course, but I don't think that will happen." I answered her, but for all I knew she could have been talking to the sky.
I heard the sudden rustling of Rin's hair in the gentle wind. She must have been shaking her head. "I know I can't fly for real. It just feels like I can. Other than that I can't describe it, but I don't think I've felt like this before. That's why I wanted to know the word for it."
"There might not be a word for it," I remarked. "Or maybe I just don't have a good enough vocabulary."
"Your vocabulary is fine. Isn't it just that thing you were saying?"
"What thing I was saying?" I raised my brows curiously. At the sky, but it was meant for Rin.
"That thing," she said plainly, as if I was supposed to know. I was about to ask for clarification as patiently as I could before she granted my silent wish. "Yesterday. The thing you were saying about looking at the starry sky and it makes you feel something. But if you put it into words it would lose its meaning?"
"Oh." Yes, the same yesterday where she broke down on my chest and I didn't comfort her. The same yesterday where my brain nearly exploded from an overflow of what-could-have-beens. I thought we were supposed to be forgetting about the past for today. "Yes, what about it?"
"Well, I am looking at the starry sky now. And I feel something that I don't know how to describe to other people. I'm not even sure if I understand it myself." She paused and blinked, as if to look upon the embracing world with this new revelation that had seemingly sprung on her. Then she asked a question that I knew was for me and not the sky, even though her gaze remained trapped in the purple void. "You are looking at the sky too, right? The same one that I am. That question doesn't make sense. I don't think there is more than one sky."
"Yeah, I'm looking at it." No I wasn't - I was looking at her - but I was fine with cheating a little bit. Her question did break me out of my semi-trance though. I could have sworn that I had stopped staring at her but I guessed I hadn't.
"Do you feel something that you can't describe too?"
I stood there for a while, finally taking in the sight, trying not to get distracted by her being.
I must have underestimated how much time I'd spent looking at her instead of the sky. I could have sworn it was still holding onto its purpleness. But now it looked like the setting sun had just dipped below the horizon. The dandelion specks were becoming harder to see in the gloaming. The view of nature, or even the city lights if I looked hard enough, were going to sleep under the embrace of the night. I could see stars from the distance becoming more defined, eternally blinking in a white shine from what seemed like a thousand planets away. This was all over the skylight that was losing its purple color in favor of a navy blue. I noticed the shadows that were splashing onto the canvas of the mountaintop we'd been standing on. We were becoming enveloped by the darkness, the stars and descending sun doing their best to stop us from losing light even though I knew we would still be here well past that point.
I couldn't bring myself to mention that it was getting late, or that we should be heading back. I was too mesmerized by the sight. Despite all this darkness, the twilight managed not to betray the beauty of what once belonged to the pristine cerulean expanse that had no choice but to leave us for the night. And my knowing that it was the same sky that Rin and I had watched on the school rooftop - or even through the smoky plumes we'd created in the atelier - conveyed something about constancy in my life that I may not have known I'd had. I felt warm on the inside, like the world was going to accept me for whatever I was going to be. The air that was seeping into my lungs with each breath seemed to weigh less and less, and I thought I would ascend if I'd so much as shift the weight on my feet.
I almost didn't hear the answer coming out of my throat, as if I had swallowed a huge lump of plum pudding. "I feel like everything's going to be all right, too. But like I said, I don't know the word for it. And I'm not sure if it's the sky or you making me feel that way."
My admission forced a nervous chuckle out of me. Even if I wasn't sure what Rin was feeling, I thought that I had a better idea than ever before. I made no pretensions to know love any better than she did, but the warm feeling was there and still radiated throughout my skin.
"That's a weird thought." Hearing Rin's voice broke me out of my trance again. It did not fail to sprinkle grains of dread into the dreamy mood I'd managed to fall into.
"Why?"
I momentarily heard nothing. No natural shuffling of weight, no steps, no pensive breathing. This was par for the course for Rin. It might have been a sad thought considering how it seemed like we were finally getting somewhere, but I still wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said nothing to elaborate. Then she spoke. I imagined her managing to pipe up after these dense silences would have startled anyone else.
"You just said you felt like the world was going to be all right. I said this too. So, we might be feeling a similar thing. But we both still cannot find the word to describe it to each other. Which might just mean that we are feeling something with a lot of meaning that would have less meaning if we tried to put it into words. But we don't know if we are feeling the same way or feeling it from the same thing. Or if it really does have a lot of meaning in the first place. That's really weird."
"That's not so bad though, is it? Even if we're not feeling the exact same thing, and even if we don't fully understand what the other is feeling, it's still ok, right? We're still feeling something together and acknowledge that we're feeling something we haven't felt before. So something special must be happening. Even if we don't know what it is."
"Have you ever felt like this before?"
Her question slightly startled me. I almost drew a sideways glance at her, but I restrained myself as if looking away from the sky would destroy this maybe potentially wholesome moment we were having. I took another moment to consider if this really was a unique experience for me. Surprisingly I didn't have to do as much digging back into my past as I thought to find somewhat of a match. I was glad this memory was in my post-heart attack era. Not everything in my life since the hospital had been completely meaningless after all.
"I thought I felt like this the last time we were here. In retrospect, I was wrong. I must have felt a lot of things when you first showed me this place, when we spoke about getting better, or changing, or whatever. I probably thought everything after that day was going to be better for me, or at least better than I'd been doing." I found myself punctuating the thoughts from a stream of my consciousness with a longing sigh. "My life is probably better in some ways now, but worse in others. I just thought it was going to be more like sunshine and rainbows. Like there was only up to go from where I was. I guess sometimes not even I can understand what I'm feeling."
"I don't remember there being sunshine and rainbows. Maybe sunshine, but I would have remembered a rainbow if there had been one. It probably would be similar to the reverse rainbow I try to imagine every now and then. That's really hard."
"Nevermind that part." I said it as matter-of-factly as I could, like I had to respect her literalness even if it made no sense. "My point is that no one, not even ourselves, can always understand what we're feeling. Sometimes we'll realize what we were feeling too late. But we're still feeling it and it makes us feel a certain way that influences our actions, so it can't be for nothing." Right? Was I blindly saying things that I thought made sense or truly speaking from experience? I didn't know anymore.
I broke my gaze from the hypnotic skylight to peer over at Rin. I noticed her head was tilting down at the ground, having lost interest in the sky. The bangs of her warm red hair, which still managed to gleam in the dusk, hid her face from mine, like always. She looked deeply flustered, almost pained, from all of this. As much as I wanted to reach out - physically or metaphorically, I didn't think I could do much more than try to explain it in as clear, patient sentences as possible. For once, this effort did not immediately present itself to me as futile.
When Rin spoke, I saw her head rise up curiously. "It still feels a little weird. Or tastes. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's not as bad as yesterday, though. I think I was crying yesterday when you said all of this. You are telling it to me again but I'm not crying now. People cry when they are sad, right?"
"Sometimes, yeah."
"So I must not be sad now. Even though I still don't understand crying much."
That was not how it worked, Rin. "That's good, the part about you not being sad." If I hadn't been so familiar with her wording tendencies I would have thought she was trying to say I was being redundant, even though she'd brought this up. "Maybe what I think you're feeling isn't exactly what you're feeling. And maybe what you think I'm feeling isn't exactly what I'm feeling. But I think I might know what you might be feeling a little bit."
"How do you know what I'm feeling a little bit? Are you a mind reader? Did you just read my mind a little bit?" I saw Rin's eyes as she turned to me, their greenness almost fully hiding in the blueness of the twilight. She had the nerve to look interested even though I was sure she knew the answer I was about to give.
"No, and please stop asking me that."
"Then please stop reading my mind. Actually, no, you can keep doing it if you want. It would be selfish to ask you to overcome your disability for me."
"I'm not-." I finished my unfinished sentence with a groan. There was that safety-lock again. The mechanism in her brain that activated whenever it sensed she was getting too serious. If this were Emi I I would have already started saying choice words. "Look, it's just a gut-feeling that I have. Trust, I guess. Yeah, that's a good word for it. I trust that you are feeling something along the lines of what I think you are feeling. I also trust that you have a good idea of what I'm feeling. Even though I can't describe what I think you're feeling any better than you could, and I can't describe what I'm feeling to you. I think it's just something that happens between two people when they get to know each other better, even though that's probably not always the case."
"People can read each other's minds when they get to know each other better?"
I bit my lower lip to stop from glaring at her, but I think I did it anyway. "It's just two people making educated guesses about the other based on what they know about them."
I could see Rin mentally chewing on this answer. Her emerald eyes moved past me and started looking in the direction over my shoulder. I could see her toes tapping rhythmically against the rock she was standing on, as if they were repeating the words I'd said, in my exact cadence, to herself. When they stopped tapping, I cocked my head in slight concern and tried to catch her gaze. All I saw was the small frown that had since spread on her face.
"I don't like guessing. Even if I'm good at it sometimes."
I nodded my head despite my surprise. "You have no problem guessing people's disabilities at this school. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you enjoy it."
This caused Rin to shake her head vehemently. On cue, my eyes followed her strand, amber hairs waving and beating against her forehead, then caught her stare when her head stilled. Her voice sounded more firm. "Not that guessing. This guessing is different. Now that I think about it, is there a word for this kind of guessing?"
"What kind of guessing?"
"This guessing." Her narrowing eyelids told me she didn't want to have to repeat herself, not that I had been asking her to do that.
"The kind where you're not guessing people's problems?"
As if my question revived her spirits a little, she nodded, her eyes again falling back in the line of my gaze. "This guessing feels scarier. It's like wearing a snow jacket to a beach that has an ocean with swordfish in it. Maybe this is called swordfish guessing."
I must have been growing numb to the blows of her sudden and nonsensical metaphors spewing out of her mouth, because I didn't feel my expression change one iota. "How about 'Serious Guessing?'"
"That won't work." Her tone was somber as much as it was pensive. That's right. Rin was always serious, even if she'd never say as much herself. Come to think of it, I don't think I'd ever heard Rin try to make a joke. I couldn't recall the last time we'd shared even an incidental laugh. A frown that she couldn't see started tugging on my jaw. Her eyes were closed now, so I just stared at the marks her teeth were making on her upper lip. "It has to be the feeling where it will really hurt if you guess wrong. Like swordfish. Sometimes I wonder if I am a swordfish, actually."
"Wouldn't that mean you'd just hurt other people by guessing wrong?" I couldn't tell if my interest in this whole ordeal was feigned. "I don't think swordfish can stab themselves."
She didn't seem to notice the dryness in my cadence, her eyes opening in surprise. "You're right. This thought might not end up working."
It kind of made sense, though. There must have been a few times I'd hurt Rin as a consequence of assuming she was one way when she was really the other. I didn't think about it long enough for an actual memory to come up, because that probably would have started hurting me, too. "It's okay, though."
"It is?" She frowned a little, as if this conundrum of not being able to find a word for something that didn't even need a word was starting to get frustrating for her. Certainly it was not the first time she'd tried to do this, either, but it felt like the first time I was entertaining it.
"Yeah." I offered as encouraging a smile as I could give, fighting against the muted frown that wanted to naturally appear. "Let's call it swordfish guessing."
She nodded again, this time looking more satisfied and relaxed. I thought I was surprised at seeing it, but then I realized it was coming from my reaction to how quickly she'd trusted me. "Okay. Well I don't like it. With painting, there was no one to tell me that I was wrong. Teacher would give advice but never told me that I was wrong. I am fine with not knowing the answer to something, but being wrong is scary."
"I don't like guessing either, usually. But it doesn't feel so bad to guess with you."
"It doesn't? But you're pretty good at guessing."
"Not this kind of guessing. Erm…swordfish guessing." I paused, stunned that I'd actually said that. It felt juvenile if not a bit wholesome. Was this the kind of secret language that annoying couples in romance movies boasted about having? "It feels bad but not that much. I think it's because we've gotten to know each other so well. We've been through so much together that you've become a little predictable to me."
My words seemed to be revealing enough to draw Rin out of her lamenting daze. I saw her blink for two long seconds. Upon opening, her eyes focused on me, which managed to shine some light on her otherwise unchanged expression. "Is that bad? Predictable people are usually not interesting."
"Knowing you, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about not being interesting." The sight of her frown was starting to sting, so I looked up and opted to speak at the no-judgment zone, courtesy of the twilight. "Also I said you were a little predictable, not all predictable."
"I don't think I understand the difference." I heard her shuffling a few steps. I didn't need to look to see she'd starting peering at the sky just as I had. I waited for her to elaborate, or to just start talking aloud again, until I realized she wasn't going to say anything. I had no idea what her closing off like this meant: whether it was her not understanding or her taking it all in. Or maybe she just didn't care much. As callous as that thought seemed, she did say she just wanted to be present for today. Being present was apparently something only I could keep up in my dorms earlier, at the bequest of her soft, gentle reprimand. Thinking about how she so confidently told me to stop worrying still intimidated me a little.
Wait…
I blinked so hard that after it, I noticed a black cloud had covered the blueness for a time. I realized that Rin was more perceptive than I'd thought, and probably more than she was giving herself credit for. To be able to sense that I was worrying, in a way. I tried to think about how many times I'd tried to stop my mind from running off, how many mountains I'd made out of molehills over these past few weeks, and how if I'd just had someone there to keep me in check I probably could have saved a lot of my sanity if not stopped these weekly ruminations about incompatibility, disconnect, and distance.
The first time I'd realized this, and here I was comforting, or sort of comforting, Rin for the same thing. "Try not to worry about it. I think it's going to be all right. You said that."
"I know."
I was expecting something more…Rin-like? Like "Okay," or nothing at all. This felt like a cool bonus. I dared not question it any further, opting to allow us to transition into a quiet moment again.
I only knew the dandelions were still flying because sometimes they gently brushed against my nose, causing me to occasionally sneeze. Rin did not bless me, nor did she seem to sneeze. I took it as her not wanting to ruin the silence. So I did my best each sneeze to quietly, almost surreptitiously, pull a tissue from my pocket. It was hard to wipe my nose clean without blowing it.
Aside from the occasional tissue pulls, my view of the sky was uninterrupted, so for what seemed like the fifth time in this same position, I tried to come up with something to fill my mind as I waited for either Rin or my impatience to break the silence. I had already thought about everything, though: how the sky looked, my guesses on how it made me or Rin feel, how if I tried hard enough I could concoct a story of the sky drawing us closer together as if it was the antidote to all of our problems over the last few weeks. My mind was sure good at wandering and covering all the bases to dwell on, no thanks to Rin's silence or enabling me to philosophize. So with an exhale that only I knew was a sigh, I, against all restraint levied at me from my instincts, began to think about the only thing I hadn't.
Absolutely nothing.
This was extremely hard. To call it absolutely nothing would have been giving me too much credit. In reality, I did my best to listen to the air flowing between my fingertips. When my mind started to ask me a question, I allowed the breeze to answer it.
It was like being so absentminded that I could have fallen asleep even if an orchestra were holding a concert up here. Like being the target of an audience's ire after a bad performance and just letting the tomatoes splatter on my clothes and face. Like falling the height of a ten-story building at full speed, making no attempt to build up drag force, and somehow knowing that I would end up on my feet without a single bruise.
To have such an aura of nothingness - harboring such a blank expression that it almost felt like I'd be offending someone if they were trying to talk to me - came off as an alien concept that I was afraid I would not be unable to understand. But as much as I wanted to go back to thinking about anything, something I could not put my finger on kept drawing me into this state. It was a bit suffocating, if not comforting. I didn't think I'd ever felt like this before, at least, not since being in the hospital.
I sneezed again. Physiological responses seemed at this point too hard for me to completely ignore. Disappointed, knowing full well I would not be able to enter that trance again, I reluctantly pulled another tissue out of my pocket. Or maybe it was just one I'd used already but didn't care. It was when I realized I was having trouble seeing the tissue I was bringing to my nose that I decided to look at my watch. And it was when I realized I couldn't even see what time it was that I realized it must have been very late.
"Hey," I said. I didn't speak again until I managed to rip my gaze off the sky. My eyes slightly resisted, but I forced them to my right. "We should head back. It's really late."
I saw Rin in my peripheral, as expected not having moved an inch since her last word. Her small arms were still spread out, as if the sky had never let her go. I didn't have the luxury to return to this mood tonight, of that much I was aware. I knew my own limitations or at least I thought I did. So for a while, I stood there and stared at her, relishing in knowing that any other girl would find this immensely creepy. Or maybe Rin thought it was too but I didn't think she’d care enough to fuss about it.
After what seemed like another two minutes, I walked over to her, hearing the splashes of my steps as my feet squished against the dew on the soil. I could see her face more defined now. Her eyes gazed so openly into the skylight that I could easily have convinced myself she was still feeling whatever had started us on the discussion of not knowing what the other is feeling. But something in her open stare told me that she was doing what I couldn't keep up. As if we'd wordlessly entered a contest for who could think of nothing for the longest. I'd tapped out, so she took over, or she was doing it since the beginning of the match.
"Rin?" I knew this wouldn't do anything before I saw that it had no effect on her. It still felt nice to say her name.
It was as if she were sleeping with her eyes open. I could vaguely see her body move in a slow rhythm with each breath. This was not the first time I had seen, or felt, her sleeping. Not that I had done it many times before, but something was different about this. Her breathing pattern was much slower than usual, and I saw her body move groggily but also cover more distance with each breath. I imagined it was how I looked when I started thinking about nothing. In the grand scheme of time, I had not known Rin for long, but I wondered if she had ever been able to breathe like this, even if she'd never recognize it.
I felt slightly guilty for lightly grasping her shoulder with my hand. Like a dream eater, yanking her back into the reality for which she'd felt a massive ambivalence.
Rin nearly jumped at the contact, so much that I almost retracted my hand. I was about to apologize until I saw how quickly she relaxed back into a steady rhythm. She made no moves to avoid my touch, either, and I felt her breathing patterns transfer to mine. The residue of her tears had left a stain on her shirt, creating a slightly wet sensation across my skin as I rested my palm on her back. The wetness was not enough to distract me from realizing how loose her muscles felt on her shoulder blade, making the skin under her shirt feel squishy and fluid. I could only imagine how smooth it was, since my touch was obstructed by the thin cotton.
"Not yet," she mumbled, as if she had just woken up. Her voice drew my eyes to hers. It seemed I had finally broken her interminable stare at the sky, but only a little. I could see her eyes, empty and drained of color, longing to go back to their dream state.
My hand took on the role of tethering Rin to this world. I did not relent, for fear that otherwise we would be here until morning. "I know you really want to stay here. I do, too. But we should probably both get some sleep tonight."
"I can't," Rin said plainly. "The sky is still hugging me."
"Has it been hugging you this whole time?"
"Yes. It feels really nice. I can imagine that I am a bear cub finding my way back home and seeing my family for the first time in a very long time. I usually have a hard time imagining things like that. That's nice."
I raised my eyebrow at the surprisingly clear analogy. I could imagine myself, if I were more insecure and a tad more insane, becoming jealous of the sky. I didn't think developing this kind of bitterness towards the environment was a common occurrence in relationships.
"Well, it makes me happy to hear that," I said meekly. I could make out a slight nod from the back of her head.
Only then did I notice her short arms were still a little extended, her sleeves flapping wildly in the wind, at times bouncing against my torso. With a defeated sigh, I gave in and peered back into my new romantic enemy, the sky. As if to prove Rin was mine and not its, my hand began to massage the corner of her back with gentle strokes of my fingertips. For some reason, my thoughts about the sky were not facetious enough and I felt my worries about our compatibility surfacing again. I no longer had enough space to feel happy that Rin was letting me touch her. Just relieved that she hadn't pulled away or said something to make me want to retract.
I tried to resist the bad thoughts by thinking about the rough sensation as my fingertips brushed against her shirt.
And it worked. I didn't know what, but something reminded me of how unreasonable I was being. Perhaps it was just a swift memory from earlier in the morning, when we were undoubtedly closer to each other than she would ever be to the sky. I then, in one exhale, remembered why we were here in the first place. Why she'd wanted to come here, why she felt OK with being herself, and why she felt like the world was going to be all right.
I blinked again and saw no reciprocated bitterness from the sky. The dark, impassive night could not care to cause me neither envy nor pity. It was just accepting me as it was Rin. Maybe its arms were open to us this whole time, and we'd just been either too stubborn. afraid, or oblivious to realize it.
We were two broken individuals, one hugging the sky without arms, the other having an uncharacteristically relaxed heartbeat for suffering from arrhythmia, ready to start from the bottom. Our breathing had long since synced up, my lungs inflating when her shoulders steadily rose. Despite everything that came between us for the past few weeks, for the first time, everything I thought I needed to do to be better felt so tangible. Even if I didn't know exactly what that was. The gap between us was wide, but narrow enough so that I didn't think I would be afraid of trying to find her from across it anymore. I knew she would be standing there every time.
Tangibility. That was what I was missing last time, or all the other times before. And here, long gone was an obligation to have to imagine what it looked like to be better. To change. I still didn't know what it would look like, and yet, I could just reach out and grab it. I didn't know what brought upon this revelation, but I hadn't noticed that my grip on Rin had tightened slightly. I wondered if I was hurting her.
"Okay," Rin said, her voice more lively than before although it was a pretty low bar. "I'm done hugging the sky."
"I see," I said. I felt her shoulder retract as her sleeves went back to her side. Her entire torso slumped back, as if she was descending from an extraterrestrial experience. "Is the sky done hugging you?"
Rin finally looked at me with a lethargic expression, as if her exhaustion was eating away at her euphoria all too quickly. "It doesn't matter. I want to sleep."
"Then we'd better get going," I said, reluctantly letting my arm drop from her side. As always, I only started noticing the warmth she'd shared with me as it was dissipating. With a sigh, I tilted my head, gesturing towards the way we came from. "Come on, lead the way. I don't know how to get back down on my own."
"Are you lost?" Rin tilted her head quizzically. I could see her tapping her toes, still standing on the rock. I didn't have to look down to see her eyes locked on mine with all seriousness.
"It depends on how you mean the question," I said, relaxed. I really could have stayed like this forever.
"I mean the question very genuinely."
"Thanks, but I was asking what you meant by 'being lost.'"
"If you don't know how to get back to school from here, then you are probably lost," Rin answered. If it had been anyone else, I'd say the expression she was giving was supposed to convey annoyance. But it wasn't, so I just kept staring at her freely. I felt a smile tugging on the corners of my face.
"I think my answer is the same no matter how you meant it."
"What's the answer?" She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. Telling her about something without saying it might have been a cheat code to catching her interest like honey to a swarm of bees.
"I'm not lost as long as you are here."
"Oh," Rin said, suddenly looking bored. Alas, as effective as the cheat code may have been, she had a tendency to be disappointed all too easily. “You shouldn't rely on people. That means that you will be powerless and empty when the other person isn't there. Like an octopus losing its tentacle.”
"I'm not worried about it."
"You're not?"
"No."
“That makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. You’re not an octopus, are you? So you can’t lose a tentacle. I must have been trying to use a metaphor but I don’t remember why.”
“Me neither,” I said truthfully. “I meant I wasn’t worried about relying on you and then you’d leave me or something.”
As if this whole exchange - not including the yet another aquatic metaphor - had been some sort of test, Rin looked at me with a degree of surprise in her eyes. “How do you know I won’t leave you?”
I may have visibly reflexed at this question as if the frequencies coming out of her throat were trying to tackle me. I turned my head, nearly averting my gaze because it felt like the only thing I could do to feel a little bit more comfortable.
“Erm…” I trailed off to wonder if this was Rin throwing me an underhanded warning. I almost wouldn’t have put it past her to try to warn someone about a ticking time bomb stuck to her chest, without actually telling them about it. But I suppose the better part of me knew that it wasn’t in her nature to be elusive. Well, yes it was, but for as many vague moments she had, the ones where she came off as blunt were deliberate. I allowed myself to come to this theory’s conclusion before I continued my thoughts. “I just don’t think you will.”
Now it was her turn to reflex. I saw her eyes searching my entire being for a deeper meaning that didn’t exist. “You are acting very strange, Hisao. You usually worry about things like this."
"Guess I'm trying to turn over a new leaf." I tried not to beam with pride but I felt my chest pouting out a little. I couldn't be sure if it was performative. Rin likely would not notice.
"How are you going to do that without any leaves?" Her eyes darted around the area of my hips. It didn't take me very long to realize she was looking to see if I had a leaf hidden in one of my hands.
"Nevermind, let's just go." I was glad she had taken my expression literally. If I'd had to explain to her that I was trying to change, it would have turned into a deep discussion that I had neither the will nor energy to have.
I wanted to grab Rin by the sleeve to help her out of the trance she'd let herself fall into. I wouldn't have been able to say it was all from impatience. Before I could, though, she let her shoulders slump and started trodding down the steady incline in the forest. The dewed soil did not fail to splash against our steps, unfettered by any breezing airs that had long burdened the warmth of our bodies during dusk.
Unsurprised that Rin did not wait for me, I kept as close a pace as I could from behind. I could not see her gaze, and no such moonlight would shine bright enough to betray where her eyes might be destined to look. I noticed her head cocking back and forth, as if she were keeping a rhythm with her walking instead of looking where she was going. Resisting the urge to ask, I tried to make our steps synchronize, using the soft squelches of the underfoot moisture to my advantage. Whether I did this because I had nothing better to do, or because I wanted to pretend that it would bridge the gap between us a little, I could not have said.
With my struggles to keep up with her scurried pace, and her unwillingness to keep her head straight, we probably looked like stray marching soldiers to any passerby. Doing everything we could to keep in a straight line despite our instincts obfuscating any passable effort. As if keeping formation was the last we could do to save our dignity after losing the rest of the band in shame. As uncoordinated as we were, I imagined that we'd dare not break this alignment between us.
It really was a pitiful sight: two confused people, no direction in life, walking from the mountaintop back to bed to sleep all the uncertainty off. And then we would wake up just to be uncertain again. I couldn't tell if our maybe being in love was the best or worst part of the spectacle. Whether for the sake of filling my mind with a seemingly wholesome memory, or trying to compare it to this dreadful thought, the radars in my brain swept and located a similarly bleak night. Another night where it seemed like for a period of time, both of us could be on a little private planet. As much as I'd wanted to say it was making me feel warm, it didn't feel as comforting. Certainly not as cozy as when I'd felt Rin's presence on my being. This one felt a bit more like a blaze of anxiety. I began to feel unnerved, and then pathetic at having felt it, that I didn't bother to remind myself of what exactly I was remembering. Whatever it was had done enough to solidify whatever dread I didn't know had swept across me.
It seemed that I had used all my energy to be present back on the mountaintop. With a burdened sigh that betrayed a hint of my gravelly voice, I felt a sulk come over me even though I knew Rin would not see let alone acknowledge. For once, I was glad she did not, for I believe I was embarrassed. I had begun to let her down, even on a day where none of this would have counted. Our only assignment: to make love and then watch the sky. Nothing else. Just be. I guess somewhere along the way I decided to do mental gymnastics, though.
I did not need to listen again to know our steps were asynchronous. The galloping of my dress shoes and the slides of her sandals against the grass. Maybe they'd been in sync for a moment, amidst my thoughts? I tried to pretend that I knew they were, like that would have made all my brooding worth it.
"Have you been outside this late here before?"
She had broken the silence, and the curse of my ruminations.
"Ever? Well, yeah, of course."
"No, here."
"Like, since I've been at this school?"
Aided by my expanding night vision, I saw the back of her copper-colored hair bounce in a small nod. It would have been easy to miss. I winced at the strain in my throat, likely from feeling like I had to yell for her to hear me. As I tried to clear it out with a curt cough, I blinked and noticed much of the distance between us had been my imagination. Literally, of course.
"Erm, does the night at the 22nd Corner count?" I silently chided myself for even bringing that up. The night my radars had been relentlessly sweeping over as if trying to detect an incoming missile from Rin's art teacher.
Rin did not stop walking, but a silence ensued. I figured she was closing her eyes in that pensive mood, as if I had just asked a really hard question. I realized this could have been a predicament, and glanced at her immediate surroundings to check for any trees she might walk into. Fortunately, she answered before I could find any in our distance. She really had picked the clearest path for us to traverse. "I don't think that night should count. If it did, then to be fair and just, you would have to expand your counting range to many places outside of the school. This would create many places to count, which would become a difficult challenge."
I didn't see why it was so complicated, but I wasn't complaining. "Then no."
"Never?"
Her tone sounded weirdly surprised. I felt forced to elaborate. "I mean, I've probably stayed up this late to do homework, or study, or something. But I've never taken a walk around the campus like this before."
Rin swiveled her head, as far back as she could without interrupting her brisk pace as we approached what looked like glimmering in the distance. It must have been the campus outskirts. "Didn't you ever want to try?"
To her point, I probably should have. If the nurse was hearing this, he probably wouldn't have been too happy at my negligence towards my health. No thanks to the girl interrogating me now. Before I could answer as tactlessly as I could manage, I noticed Rin had slowed her pace down measurably. I was sure it was probably just so that she could look at me without having to twist her neck as much, but it made me happy nonetheless.
My voice lowered to a whisper that I knew she'd hear. I heard the slight breeze breathe quiet life into my phonemes. "Yeah."
"Then why didn't you?"
Ah, that same confused tone. The one that would have come across as more judgemental if it'd been from anyone else. This was strangely becoming blissful and I didn't want it to end. "I must have just gotten distracted with things. Exams and stuff. I didn't think to do it."
"Actually, we have." Rin spoke as if I'd cut her off. It was so sudden that I couldn't follow her train of thought, to no surprise.
I had to ask when I realized she wasn't going to elaborate. "We have?"
"Yes."
"We have what?" Well, at least I knew this conversation wasn't going to turn awkward. I just couldn't be sure I wasn't going to bang my head against the wall when I'd get back to my dorm.
"Done it." Her reply was mesmerizingly automatic, and her added phrase made this no clearer. "In the rain."
I didn't think her metaphors could get this bad, if it even was a metaphor? "I don't think we have?"
"We have." Her confidence was astounding until she almost coincidentally continued as if on cue to completely kill the bizarre moment. "Walked in the rain."
"Oh." I sighed. Walked. The time when we and Emi walked to the park for a picnic, got rained on, and ate at the Shanghai cafe instead. Well, Rin had taken just a straw. And then Emi, against our - or maybe just my - warnings, scurried off ahead of us to squeeze a run into the evening. With the loudest mouth having scurried away, Rin and I had then shared some kind of strange walk where we tried to talk about rain and then ended up speaking about nothing. We'd just ephemerally existed under the same umbrella. Par for the course. "You should really work on your phrasing. Also it wasn't that late, either."
My comment made her frown a little, but I did not become the smallest bit dismayed. I had no uncertainty that I was being reasonable, and somehow I felt like Rin wasn't as offended as I'd thought she was. "How do I work on it? I have always wanted to say things in a way that makes sense."
"I don't know. Maybe you can ask the language teacher this summer when you make up for the classes you missed."
"I forgot about that. Also I don't like asking those kinds of questions. That is probably because I don't like it when people ask me questions. I don't like it when people ask questions of each other. It would be a triple-standard. I would be a triple hypocrite."
My mind rewinded back to try and remember the countless times she'd ask me about my perspective on the sky. I'm pretty sure I've asked her my fair share of stupid questions, too, though, so we were likely even. "That would explain why your phrasing is bad sometimes."
"The triple-standard?"
I shook my head calmly. "You never ask the teacher questions so you don't learn how to phrase things better."
"Do I have to?" Her question speared itself through the peaceful air. It was like she'd yelled it out of sheer frustration, but I was not so deaf to know she was just a little confused if not disappointed. I offered a smile I hoped would come across as genuine as I slowed my pace to look into her lost eyes like my face was a giant net. Like a moth to a light, she robotically halted her steps so as to not accidentally pass me.
"No. You should only do it if you want. You just said you wanted to say things that made more sense to people, so I made a suggestion."
It took a moment for her eyes to stop wandering, but I caught her gaze and it seemed to coincide with her frown flattening a little. "Do you care if I never do?"
I shook my head, rather vehemently, although it did not stop me from thinking of the alternative. To be able to unconditionally understand Rin would be quite convenient. Maybe it'd solve some problems between us, bypass a few bizarre, cyclical exchanges that to others would likely be comical, but this I knew was not the key to her heart. Nor would I put it past myself to have unwittingly found some enjoyment from her mysteriousness. As frustrating as it was, I could be unwaveringly certain that Rin, when mysterious, was truly herself. And I was done with telling people what to do. People were in charge of their own future, as was I.
My head stopped after about four or five shakes. I felt dizzy as my vision refocused on the girl in front of me. I did not need to see her frame crystal clearly to see her muscles had relaxed drastically. The tension in her jaw oozed out of the corners of what seemed like a newly formed smile. It all happened as my vision began to fully return, creating a pristine moment as if she'd been the first thing I'd seen after a really bad nightmare. I thought I was mirroring her smile but was too occupied to know for sure. I didn't have to say anything so I didn't.
"Okay." Her voice was soft and quiet. For a moment of this aftermath, I saw the remnants of uncertainty on her face, but no later did it disappear behind one of her lifeless stares. "That reminds me. Emi is coming back tomorrow."
I tried to resist myself from feeling whiplash, if that was even possible. "She is? You made it seem like she had left for vacation already.
"No, I didn't." Yes you very well did, Rin. I remember you saying as much this morning before we started unceremoniously undressing each other. Although to be fair, the tension of intimacy probably came as soon as you knocked on the door but whatever. "She just left for today."
"Oh." Well that was nice, anyway. Good to know that Rin wouldn't be the only person I'd see in the next few days before graduation. The prospect of that felt warm and chilling at the same time. At least Emi would be there to stop us from flying too far away from the stratosphere of the everything else in the world, and onto our own planets. And no, I couldn't be certain we would land on the same planet.
"She left on the train last night with a boy." I began to notice that Rin seemed more loquacious than usual. Had it been this way because she'd finally begun to trust me? To be OK with her being herself? Amidst all these confusing thoughts I nearly forgot what Rin had just said. I nodded with uncertainty and as I expected, she continued as if she'd never even paused in the first place. "Emi does not have siblings, so I don't think this boy was a sibling of Emi's."
Well, that helped. Nothing like Rin's redundant sentences to push me out of whatever mental circle I was trapped in. If I hadn't known any better I'd have said she did it on purpose. "Did you know him?"
Rin shook her head. We'd started at a slower pace than before. I realized I knew how to get back from where we were, so I felt at more of a liberty to keep her in my peripheral vision. "I still don't know him, actually. He has said a total of five words to me. One and a half completed sentences. The other half was not complete. Uncompleted." Her eyes widened at the utterance of that word, as she was surprised something so complex had escaped the confines of her aloof self. "Anyway, I don't think this counts as knowing someone."
"Probably not," I affirmed. Impressive that she'd managed to remember the number of words they'd exchanged. I wondered how genuine Rin's assertion of not being good at remembering things really was. "Did you get his name?"
"No. I do not have his name. His name is not mine." Her reply caught me off guard, and I momentarily stopped to furrow my brow in confusion. She seemed to take this as a cue to continue, ever so observant she was despite not being willing to admit it. "Actually, I don't remember his name…this poses a rather strange dilemma, now that I think about it."
She stopped elaborating on her own accord so I just said something to indirectly remind her that I had no idea what she was talking about. "What?"
"If we do have the same name, then if you said my name, or you said his name, we would both answer you. This does not work well if you are trying to only say something to one of us, especially if that thing is about the other. Problematic."
"I don't think you two have the same name…" I said, trailing off as I tried not to end my sentence with an uncertain mumble. "I thought Rin was mainly a girl's name, anyway."
"Is that true?" Well, her eyes had been wandering, but somehow whatever I'd said managed to catch her gaze again. She frowned in slight disappointment. "I've thought about what it might be like to be a boy sometimes. I guess I can't now though."
"Why not?" I asked. But before she could answer I corrected myself. "So you don't know his name?"
She shook her head wordlessly. I mentally allowed my brain to pass a sigh of relief for not having to go down another strange rabbit hole of Rin's thoughts. A Rinbit hole, perhaps. I thought better than to say this out loud, and vowed to keep that phrase to myself forever. "He told me but I forgot. I was much more interested in why he was at the school. Tried asking him but he was having problems answering with Emi's tongue in his mouth."
"Oh." I didn't know what to say, if I'd even wanted to say anything. With how Rin was telling this whole story, I'd managed to never put together that Emi had found someone. Or maybe she was just having a sort of train-fling?
Rin did not look the least bit surprised. I didn't think she ever once was, at this whole revelation. She spoke again, in a pensive tone as her eyes shut, a barrier between her thoughts and the sensible ones. "It looked like a centipede burrowing its way into a honeycomb apple. Maybe a millipede. Not sure. I will need to think about it further."
"Either would mean that her tongue is pretty thin."
Rin nodded, allowing me to see her eyes in the dark that my own had long-since adjusted for. "Emi is a pretty thin person so I guess that makes sense."
"So what, that was her boyfriend?"
"I don't know. That's a really hard question." Rin looked slightly disappointed in herself, turning away from me at an angle and sporting a frown.
It made me feel a little guilty, for I did not mean to cause her any more distress than I already had. "You don't have to answer. It's not a big deal."
That seemed to calm Rin, but my reassurance did not stop her from continuing. I noticed her dark, reflectionless eyes were staring at me with reserved intention. "People are friends when they like each other, right? But when they start to do those kinds of things, are they boyfriend and girlfriend? Are they still friends?" I noticed her dark, reflectionless eyes were staring at me with a hint of desperation. "I don't think I understand it. Can you help me?"
"I don't think I can, Rin. I don't think anyone would have the answer."
"That's horrible." Her bleak tone and helpless observation startled me. My body released a relieved breath when she edited her response. "Actually, maybe not all that horrible. Just a little. This might be one of those things that people can't agree upon."
I returned by way of an indecisive shrug but hopefully a decisive response. "Basically, yeah. You're not alone on getting confused by it. That's why I asked."
"Asked what?"
"If Emi and that boy are in a relationship."
Rin thought about this for a while, as if our conversation had made her privy to secret information that might lead her to the ultimate answer. The guilt started to pang in my heart again, but only for a short while until she piped up. "I don't think it matters."
I blinked, hard. Maybe even twice. I guessed it didn't, but something about her answer didn't sit comfortably. I didn't know what it was either so all I could do was ask, "Why?"
I got those dark green irises staring back at me as a present. I almost didn't notice the shrug against her bumpy walking rhythm. Her not being able to gesticulate with her hands never helped in these situations, although I wasn't sure she'd care to do so if they magically grew back, either. "It's just a label. It doesn't change anything."
This oddly began to feel like another conversation we'd had. Ah, that was it, the one where Rin was explaining to her teacher's colleague why she refused to name her paintings. I couldn't be sure the colleague was so interested in Rin's principles as she was just getting Rin's art properly titled for the impending exhibition. "I think labels can help sometimes. Sometimes it makes me feel better to know what things are called."
"Maybe it helps you, but not all." Well, at least she acknowledged my perspective instead of just rambling. No worries, though: she kept going soon enough. "That would be like deciding one day to call a squirrel a squid because it makes you feel happy. It is good if it makes you feel happy, but it doesn't mean anything. It is still an animal."
Yes, not a false-equivalency to romantic partners at all, Rin. And rather ironic considering a big part of why people don't understand you is because you can't find or don't bother to use the right words to describe things. It was as if she knew from the very beginning that I didn't have a very nuanced idea in my mind, like I was just saying things to fill the air. I had no idea how to convince her otherwise, if she even was thinking this. I couldn't tell if it was that or her disagreement that was making me bitter.
I voiced my next observation dryly. The sound of my voice scratched against the calm breeze, the only thing between us as we walked through the night. "Wow. That makes a lot of sense, you know."
"I think it does, too. Perhaps my explanations are becoming clearer."
"That's not what I meant." My clarifying remark seemed to startle Rin from what looked like a silent, personal respite. Now her eyes just stared back at mine, as she quizzically anticipated my elaboration. "It's just that, you've always seemed to be so confused about this. Always asked me if we could still be friends even though we were always friends. And you never really understood what I meant when I'd ask to be more than friends."
"Is that that?"
"Is that what?"
"That. Is boyfriend or girlfriend the word for when you are more than friends?"
"I guess so." So now she was interested in labels? Times like these reminded me that I would never fully understand her, and sometimes I forgot that that would be all right.
"What is more?"
"More what?"
"More than friends. What does that mean?"
I turned away from her. I thought I knew the answer, or at least I believed I was perfectly capable of coming up with something to her that might make sense, but I did not fail to remember she'd asked me this many times before. And every time I tried to explain it, she just shoved me down the cliff she was standing on so that I'd be back at square one. Funny how every time I landed I hadn't died yet.
All the tension that this afternoon and night relieved, and yet still so many unsolved mysteries. Unanswered questions that neither of us wanted to answer as if not knowing things about each other was some sort of game we couldn't stop playing. Our promises to change or accept ourselves for being ourselves really didn't hold much weight when the shadows of doubt racing in my mind would blanket over them, showing them for what they really were.
I took massive advantage of the fact that Rin would not repeat her question to me. I was also smart enough to know that my answer wouldn't change anything. And if she had a problem with my suddenly ignoring her, maybe she'd know what it feels like now.
My night vision began to fade as I noticed faint flickers beyond the Yamaku park's pond. It was the first time in two days that I had seen any other sign of civilization. I begrudgingly reminded myself that this world did not only belong to the two of us. When the denial eluded my captivity, I became able to discern where the light was coming from.
I almost saw the silhouettes before I could begin to hear distant cheering. At times the voices heightened in volume, as if the students were laughing at a joke, or some scary campfire story. I saw the handful of figures extend some sort of appendage above the fire. Some of them came dangerously close to the flame, and few of them retracted quickly, followed by what sounded like frustrated shouts of profanity.
"Look," I said aloud, just to hear what my voice would sound like against the chattering that was becoming louder every step. "It looks like they're trying to roast marshmallows."
"How can you tell that from here?" Rin did not seem to notice, let alone be angered by, the way I'd killed our last exchange.
I almost broke my gaze at the ever-growing blaze as we approached the end of the park and the entrance to the main campus. I realized the entire grounds were becoming covered by an expanse of orange, my eyes no longer able to make out the images of the trees and the concrete road itself. I had not been expecting myself to start a conversation with this, let alone Rin to respond to me. "It's just a guess. Maybe I'm just thinking that because I'm kinda hungry though."
(cont in reply)
Now, to the actual story.