-Garasu diversion-

Tuesday, 26 February 2002 11:29:39

hidoko Vladimir Matsumoto

October 3, 2001

I woke up to a phone call.
Initially the room was dark, so I had to fumble a little to gain access to the phone. However, I found myself leaning too far out and landing onto the floor. As I whimpered I inspected the bed; Tetsu was still sleeping soundly, his soft breaths gently slipping through the fabric of night.
Realizing that his breaths were too gentle to be disrupted, I lifted the receiver and placed it on the desk. I smiled; I felt my mask crack, and I climbed back onto the bed.
 

The next day when I woke up the sunlight crept across the room, tilting at an angle towards the two of us. I saw his pale face, and I saw his tousled hair.
"Tetchan," I called him, "Wake up."
I wouldn’t have blamed him if he slept on forever, really.
Yet his eyes opened; long lashes flickering across bright almond eyes, and I saw them smile like the sunshine. Perhaps the sunshine smiled because the glass was there.
"Morning, Hacchan," He yawned, and leaned onto my shoulder. "Was it Maki?"
"What?" I blinked.
He didn’t seem convinced at my innocence. "She called you last night, right?"
"Yeah, I guess so." I shrugged. "I didn’t answer."
"I know you didn’t," He smiled, and those eyes twinkled. "The phone’s on the desk. Wouldn’t she be worried and raving mad at you?"
"I don’t care."
"Hmm." He lifted his head, "Shall we go for a drive?"
I nodded, and smiled, remembering the way the sky rolled over our heads and the lush green forest of… Was it 1996? I couldn’t remember. He had long hair back then; that was the last time we went to the forest together, before all those events popped up and bashed us in the nose.
He sighed.
"Tetchan," I glanced down at my toenails, "Don’t you want to have a cherry on a cake?"
"We could have it now if you want to."
He didn’t understand, but it was fine by me. He didn’t have to, I thought. I was all alone, but perhaps another Sakura somewhere in another place—it didn’t even have to be Sakura—would understand, even if I didn’t tell him.
He voiced again after a moment of silence, which I indulged in when I watched him slip on the bathrobe. "You know what I received for my birthday?"
"What’s the point of wearing that when there’s no one else anyway?"
He gave me a look.
"Come on, don’t be so selfish," I teased, "I like your body."
This time he turned away and ignored me.
I knew what he got for his birthday. Ken told me rather voluntarily. This time it wasn’t just self-filled doujinshika trying to gain attention (most of them sent it to me anyway, not Tetsu), it was obviously a self-published English doujin. By International airmail. I’d wanted to ask Tetsu about it, but decided to wait for him to tell me instead.
Rachel had told me that she’d met an online friend who wrote stuff about me and Tetsu. …Sick stuff, she said. I wasn’t too concerned about that; fans had sick mind, and I was sick as well. We were all sick. Perhaps too many incidences with obsessive people brainwashed my mind.
Have you ever been stalked for refusing to have sex with a girl? Well, I have.
You see, obsession wasn’t just me and Tetsu. It wasn’t just about me loving Tetsu. It was something else, something deeper. I loved Tetsu, true, and I’d always admired him as a Goddess. When I gave Rachel the draft of the novel which I was writing, she had been shocked as well.
"You know, it’s like the stuff that my friend wrote about you."
I wasn’t surprised. I was more surprised about the fact that, when Rachel elaborated on her friend’s work, her friend actually wrote stuff that required substance; that required truth. It wasn’t just because she wrote about me and Tetsu. It was because she wrote about good versus evil and concepts like that that matched my viewpoint of the whole concept. Therefore when I saw her work, I was surprised. I was even more surprised to hear that she was what, sixteen? Local fans sent me doujin that were more or less of the same criteria. Violence, love, violence, love. Seme, uke, seme, uke. Love poetry. Stuff like that exploring possible avenues of "my" relationship in their various contexts.
I wasn’t surprised, really, to receive all that. In fact, immunised. When that happened to Tetsu in London, despite everything being all wrong and fucked up, I realised one thing; whatever people wanted to imagine or think was their business. Just so long as they don’t touch my Goddess, don’t try and disrupt his purity…
It doesn’t matter what they think, really.
"It’s in my car," Tetsu told me, when he emerged from the bathroom and wiped the dripping H20 from his hair.
"You know, Tetchan, I read the novel Battle Royale. I’m really looking forward to the movie, you know."
"I haven’t read it," he said, "I didn’t even finish reading the Bible."
I laughed, "You’re such a procrastinator, Tetchan!"
"Look who’s talking," he giggled, and threw the towel on my head. "You haven’t bathed in a week’s time."\
Understatement of the year. Nonetheless, I trudged to the bathroom. "Tetchan wouldn’t you scrub my back for me?"
"What?"
"I want my back scrubbed. You gotta give me a reward for, you know, bathing."
He feigned arrogance, and finally nodded.
 

Once again, the sky rolled over my head. I watched the people; synchronised instruments of the state despite being individuals. I watched the trees, the way their leaves rustled, and I watched Tetsu’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
The forest loomed over us, like before. And this time, I anticipated the darkness; it was only in darkness that such a beauty like Tetsu would shine; without the kaleidoscope of glass, I would perhaps never have noticed the sunlight.
We were on the main dirt road of the forest once again, and in my mind’s eye I saw a long-haired Tetsu slip into his clothes and walk towards the car from where I stood. It hadn’t been just the pink jacket.
"You know what I received, Hacchan?" He voiced suddenly.
"Not really."
"Some overseas fan sent me a novel. This thick. In English." He almost sounded like he couldn’t believe it.
"Really." I was interested, "Tell me about it."
He looked offended, "Your English’s better than mine."
"Yeah, that," I laughed. Rachel had said that if not for minute Japanese-style errors I would have written like a native speaker. Well, Rachel spoke like a native Japanese speaker, and she always denied that. I didn’t think she was just being polite, though. I think it was a trait of these foreigners.
He shook his head, "I didn’t think…" And fell silent.
"Well, I sort of guessed," I smiled. "Mind lending me?"
"Yeah, sure." He shrugged. Rachel said that the Japanese (us) have strange ways of expressing frustration; in America they would simply voice it out. I guessed so, since Rachel told me that.
"What’s it called?"
"Ga… Garasu." He smiled, "It’s a strange name."
"Looked through it?"
He blushed.
Must have. I laughed and held him close. I decided, after devouring him, I would then have the cherry on the cake. As I weighed the book in my mind, I wondered how close the fan could have been to me. Perhaps miles away. Lightyears away, even.
But when Rachel showed me her friend’s work, I felt so close. Its title, I believed, was the same as my novel. Perhaps I’d read her work in my dream and she’d read my work in hers. Yet it didn’t matter. Sometimes the slightest attempt to reach the sky actually succeeded, albeit without the antagonist knowing.
"You know, Tetchan?"
"nnn?"
"When you were in New York I was dead worried about you."
He smiled, "I know."
And that time in London…
I chose not to tell him this, for fear of wrenching open a healed wound.
I tugged at his hand, and pulled him down onto the forest ground. He uttered a soft "hey", since the dirt stuck to his black pants. I leaned close, and as he knelt down beside me and lowered his head, my lips met his and breathlessly we embraced.
As I gradually, regretfully, let him go, and lain down onto the forest ground, exhausted, I saw the sky peeking through the canopy. It was like a million stars reaching at me. Yet I knew that without the Goddess these stars wouldn’t have even been in existence; surely, only the Goddess was worthy of receiving such beauty.
Yes, perhaps the sole reason that sunlight existed was to peek through the glass, and reflect in the mirror, as both of us gazed at it lovingly… The world could wait.

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