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Tsuchiya Ruka. A city, a girl, a miracle. Shoujo Kakumei Utena and all characters are property of B-Papas, Saitou Chiho, Shogaku-kan, and TV Tokyo. Please do not repost without permission.
Kono Naka: Tsuchiya Ruka Ga Osaka O Omoidasu
The name of the city is a beacon, a bright sparkle on the lips, a piece of sweet cherry candy on the tongue, leaping from the throat like a joyous celebration. It is a city that never sleeps, the people priding themselves on their own individuality, their fire for life, their rough, raucous dialect that has something of Japan's ancient past in it, of the fires of the shogun's armies in the night, of daimyos in their rustic castles, of the calls of prehistoric birds through the skies when Japan was not even yet an island, cawing to each other in a dialect that only they could understand, arukahen, arukahen. I called that city home for the first eighteen years of my life, and then I left. It pains me still to speak its name, to hear other people speak of it. I do not try to hide my identity, though Emy accent gives me away, even if I were to try. And besides, it is not the nature of any native Osaka-born to hide his heritage. I would have been untrue to myself. There should be no need for that now, anyway. I call no city home, but instead my home is borne on wheels, chugging across the land with the streak of sunlight on steel and green or gold or blue or red, whatever color the train line is at the moment that I choose to ride, leaning with my head against the window and watching the scenery flash past. The inside of the trains are as familiar to me as any bedroom within the houses that other people keep, and the echoing chaos of train stations are my kitchen, my bathroom, my living space. Sometimes there is a schoolgirl sitting next to me, typing intently on her cellphone, cryptic messages with little hearts and smiley faces and stars that no adult would hope to understand. Sometimes it is a salaryman reading some manga, on the way home from a long day at the office. Sometimes there is no room at all to sit and I have to stand, squashed between some pre-adolescent boy clutching an mp3 player and an old lady clutching a shopping bag. But in the end, they all get off the train. They have a stop, a destination, a place to return to. In the end, I am always alone as the day fades into evening which fades into rich night, as the train pulls away from the station and I take my reserved seat on the faded cushions, watching. Waiting. I would break my mother's heart if she knew what I was now. Homeless vagabond, some people might call me, never knowing where I would end up on any given night, armed with only an overnight duffel bag and enough cash for a night in a cheap hotel and a hot meal, looking for someone, anyone, along the street to take me in. But my mother died when I was fifteen, and I never had a father. She would speak of him sometimes, in detached tones, and from her I gleaned that my parents had not been married when she discovered that I was on the way, that he didn't want the responsibility, and that finally, he had left. Where he was now, neither of us knew. I didn't care. I don't know if she cared or not, before she died. The doctors said it was cancer, but I think it was just sorrow. After she died, my aunt took me in. Arisugawa Makoto was not actually my aunt, but she had seen my mother through many hard times, and was more family to me than my mother had been sometimes, and I'd called her Auntie ever since I could remember. Her own husband had been dead seven years and she had raised her daughter on her own, working long hours and yet somehow finding the time to pay daily visits to my mother, to cook the two of us dinners when we had no money for food, to take me in for the night when my mother was in the hospital during those final months of her life. I never really thought much about Makoto's daughter Juri. Juri was in the same year as me and one of those perfect types, the straight-A student in school, proficient in English and French, member of the student council, president of too many clubs to count, head of the fencing team, with the voice of an angel and an unprecedented talent for sports. If Makoto hadn't been too poor to afford voice lessons or dancing lessons or sports lessons, I have no doubt that Juri would have spent the rest of her life as a professional in one of those categories. As it was, Makoto made barely enough money to scrape the three of us by. I found out later that before my mother died and Makoto took me in, she had promised to save up so that Juri could go to America as a foreign exchange student for a year, but my addition to the household changed all that. Juri resented me for that, naturally. We had never been great friends, but after I moved in, she would avoid me at school, pretending I did not exist in the classes we had together. At home, it was not much better. There was an extra room downstairs that had once been the laundry room, but Makoto had taken out the laundry machines and put in an extra tatami mat or two, and I rolled out the bedding at night and slept there. It was not exactly my room, because in the corners and stacked along the walls were boxes and tubs and things for storage. Juri would come in sometimes, rummaging through the boxes, and if I tried to make polite conversation, she would ignore me. It didn't take long before I started ignoring her too. Two could play at being childish. If I had been then what I am now, I might have tried harder to make peace, but at fifteen I was hardheaded, proud and willful. I resented her too, I think, the girl whose circumstances weren't much different than mine but yet had so much talent and potential, while I barely scraped by at school, was not a member of any clubs, and worked a part-time job at the convenience store so I could buy my books and my school uniforms, because I was not such a leech that I would make Makoto pay for mine too. I had plenty of friends, though none were the good sort that Makoto would want for me, but she did not know that, and so I hung around with them more than I probably should have. I never did drugs, and I never got in any trouble with the law, but there were borderline instances that I always regretted when I came home, vowing to myself that I would not do them again. The vow changed nothing, of course, but as long as I could tell myself that I was trying to become a better person, it made me feel clean again. Juri despised my friends and made no secret of it, but the only thing that came of that was that I started inviting them over to the house to spite her. There was a girl named Shiori who sometimes came along with our group. She was a pretty girl, a transfer student from Kyoto who had entered our school sometime in the middle of my sophomore year, and before long I noticed her sometimes following Juri around and sitting with her at lunchtime. I thought nothing of it - Juri was popular, and she had many followers. It would be another year before I found out that Shiori had been dating one of my closer friends, but had broken up with him because she wanted to be with me. The news startled me, though everyone also knew that I was no stranger when it came to a quick fling or two, something which Juri also despised about my character. I wasn't sure about Shiori, though, so I told her I wasn't quite ready for a relationship. She didn't buy that answer, taking to following me around school just like she had formerly followed Juri. My friends advised me to get rid of her, but I was not that cruel and couldn't think of a way to phrase it that would sound polite. So I didn't say anything. It was my last year in high school when everything changed, the year that everyone else was busy preparing for university entrance exams and killing themselves for school and then cram school and then more school and yet still more cram school. There was already an unspoken agreement between Makoto and me that I was going to finish my last year of high school and then see where the wind blew me, because she could not afford cram school, and I had no desire to go. The life of a university student was not for me, and I had no desire to become an average salaryman working fourteen hours a day, going home to a submissive wife and two children, slaving away for the rest of my life bound to some piece of paper. Juri went to cram school with the rest of them and still found time to be captain of the school fencing team, vice-president of the student council, chair of the English club, award-winning pianist and co-captain of the school festival committee. Relations between us had not changed, in public or in private. Makoto was away more often than not, working the night shift, and Juri and I would pass each other in the cramped hallways of the house, pretending that the other did not exist. I had gone on a few dates with Shiori by that time, but nothing serious had happened between us except for a night or two of casual sex, and casual sex meant nothing to either of us. I had made it my own policy to never get too close to a girl, simply because getting close meant forging bonds, meant responsibility, and I did not want that. I did not want to become my father, running out on my mother when she needed him, being part of creating a child who would grow up lonely like me. Juri called my behavior with Shiori despicable, when she deigned to talk to me. I told her it was life. That she should worry about her cram school and her clubs, and I would worry about my own affairs, thank you very much. I was sitting in the living room watching television one night when she came home. It was late, I remember, almost nine o' clock, and I was beginning to wonder if she was coming home at all. She often spent nights at a friend's house, working on some project or other, or at least that was what she answered curtly when I asked. I had been about to turn off the television and go to bed when I heard the front door open, slam, heard the click as she dropped her shoes down in the entry way and shove her feet into her slippers. "Okaeri," I said, without turning my head. I heard her come into the room through the doorway behind the couch where I was sitting, but she did not answer my greeting, simply passing me by and heading for the kitchen. "Oh ho. Not chatty tonight, are we?" "Go bother someone else, Ruka," she said tiredly, and that in itself made me turn around, because she did not sound spiteful or sarcastic as she usually did when she spoke to me. She sounded simply tired. I watched her, more out of curiosity than any feeling of being slighted, as she dropped her backpack on the floor and opened the refrigerator, looking for something. Whatever it was, she didn't find it, because she closed it again. Something flashed through my brain, a signal. "You haven't eaten, have you?" I said. She had one foot on the stairs and stopped, her back to me. "None of your damn business." I gazed at her back, noticing for the first time that her uniform was dirty and a bit torn, that the hem of the skirt was ragged, and her socks had mud on them. "You should wash your uniform," I said. "You can't go to school like that." One of her hands curled into fists. "Shut up." I started to get up off the couch, a little concerned now, and she whirled to face me, her eyes angry. "Mind your own business!" Maybe it was just me, but I thought I saw fear under the burning anger. "Whatever you want," I said quietly, lowering myself back down to the couch and turning on the television again. She stood there for another moment, glaring murderously, then clattered up the stairs with a little more force than was necessary. I left the television on longer than normal that night, because I did not think she wanted me to hear her cry. Makoto came home half an hour after that, and I assured her that I had been waiting up for Juri, that she had had a project at school and she'd been a little late. "I'm glad you two get along so well," Makoto said, and I didn't have the heart to inform her otherwise. She worked hard to support us, and she deserved a little white lie. And it was not as if Juri and I were mortal enemies I wondered to myself at my behavior. I had never thought I would actually try being kind to Juri, and I suppose I should have expected her rejection, but it stung a little. Later, after Makoto had gone to bed, I thought about going upstairs and checking on Juri, but decided against it as she would probably kill me if I tried. Whatever had happened tonight was something she wanted to keep to herself, apparently, and I would have done so if I had been in her place, after all. She did not know me, despite having lived in the same household with me for all these years, and as far as I could tell, she and Makoto did not ever talk about things either. It was the first time I realized that Juri might be also feeling alone, just as I was alone. I'd never thought about it that way; she was so popular, had so many admirers, was so talented. She would never be unwanted, bright, shining Juri. But yet... With that profound realization, I lay down on my tatami mats, but found that I could not fall asleep. I was lying there, checking my watch to see that the time was three minutes past one o' clock, when I heard footsteps. I pulled the blankets over myself, breathing deeply and narrowing my eyes to slits as the door of my room slid open. I saw the dim gold of the hallway light casting weak rays over the entrance, and then hesitant footsteps. Slippers over the tatami. I heard her creep softly over to me, bending over to check to see if I was asleep, and I squeezed my eyes shut until she sighed, very quietly, and stood up. A rustle of cloth, a crack of the top of a box opening, and I opened my eyes to see her bent over one of the boxes in the corner. I heard a clank of metal, and then she pulled something out from behind the pile, something that glittered faintly in the soft light. A sword? Believe in miracles, so that... Alarm bells went off in my head, quietly, and I sat up. She whirled around, clutching the sword to her chest. "What are you doing with that?" I said. "I thought you were asleep," she hissed. "What are you doing, watching me like that?" "It's my room you're standing in at one in the morning." "None of your business," she muttered, moving the sword away from my line of vision, as if I could steal it simply by looking at it. I followed its movement with a slight turn of my head, feeling somehow lightheaded. There was something about a sword, I knew. Something strange. "Since when has the fencing club started using swords?" "It's none of your business, Ruka." I swung one leg out of my bed coverings, and she backed away, though I did not endeavor to get out of bed. "You seem to like that phrase. Why are you always insulting me like that?" "This is not a conversation that we need to have," she said roughly, and turned to go. "Juri." She stopped. "You're not-" I swallowed. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" Silence, a tensing of her shoulders, and I thought she was actually going to say something. Then she strode out of the room, slamming the door behind her, and I sighed, then had a thought and reached over to the phone. Shiori sounded sleepy when she answered, but not asleep, and she did not sound surprised either that I was calling her at that hour of the night. "What's wrong, Ruka?" she said. "I'm not sure," I confessed. "Juri's acting funny." It was the first time I had talked to Shiori about Juri, and I wasn't sure what she would say. Maybe a word of sympathy, maybe some advice, maybe telling me to stay away from Juri, because I wouldn't understand. Whatever the case, I was not prepared for her low laugh. "That's all right," she said, sounding, to my ears, a bit smug. "Don't worry about that." "Shiori?" I said, a little alarmed. "What do you mean?" "Listen, get some sleep. It's nothing to do with you. I'll see you in the morning." "Shiori-" The line was dead. I dropped the phone back onto the hook, feeling more confused than ever. I did not sleep much that night, and the next day, I spent school alternately dozing in class and casting strange looks at Juri when I passed her in the hallway, looks that she pretended not to see. Shiori and I had lunch together, and I tried to bring up the subject of last night, but she turned it aside so deftly that I began to wonder if I had dreamed it all, until she said brightly, "You don't need to wait for me after school, Ruka. I've got someone I need to talk to." "Someone you need to talk to," I echoed. "And who would that be?" She smiled sweetly, but there was something ugly behind that smile that I had never seen before, or maybe had seen but had pretended was not there. "No one you need to know," she murmured, and then smiled again, showing a flash of white teeth. "It's not as if we're an item, is it?" "Shiori-" She got up from the table. "I need to go to class." And left. I made a noise in the back of my throat, maybe of frustration, maybe of confusion, I didn't know. But I chafed the rest of the day till the last bell rang, and I packed my books, waiting till the hallways were semi-clear before standing up from my chair and walking out of the room. The main school doors were down the hallway to the right, but the fencing gym was to the left. Today, I went left. I am not sure to this day why I did so, why I knew that Juri would be there, and that Shiori would be with her, and maybe it was simply fate. Or maybe it was some intuition of mine, some sixth sense. Whatever the case, I was halfway down the hallway that led to the gym when I heard voices. Female voices. I scooted to the side of the hallway next to the door, setting down my bookbag, listening. "-and what's it to you?" one voice demanded, and I knew it was Shiori. It shocked me how spiteful she sounded, how cruel. She had always been sweet with me, sweet and syrupy, even. "I just want-" Juri's voice said, and I stiffened. "Don't tell me what to do," Shiori spat, coldly. "I've beaten you, haven't I? I've gotten what you wanted, and you're just the fool for it." "You stay away from him!" Juri said, and I blinked. Him? Shiori's next words were smooth, poisoned honey from her tongue, and I shivered. "Ruka is mine." There was a clang, magnified by the acoustics of the gym, metal clattering to the floor. "Don't. Touch. Him." A smug laugh." Aha...Juri-san. Threatening me, are you? I had no idea you were that in love with him." "I'm not in love with him!" A growl. Juri sounded almost feral. "But I'm warning you - stay away from him, or else!" "Or else what?" Silence. Shiori laughed again, a high-pitched, chill ringing, and I shrank into the wall, as if simply by standing there, I was in danger. "You keep your hands to yourself, Juri," she snarled, the laugh breaking off suddenly. "I want nothing to do with you." "SHIORI!" There was no answer, her footsteps clicking to the door, toward me, and I had a sudden panicky moment when I realized I could be caught like this eavesdropping. Fortunately, the row of lockers next to the door was lined far enough away from the wall that I could squeeze behind it, and I did so, hurriedly, before the gym door swung open and Shiori sailed out, bookbag over one shoulder, looking very satisfied and very smug. If I was not hidden, I believe I would have tried to wring her neck. I waited till her footsteps had faded away, and then I slid out of my hiding place and slipped through the gym doors without a sound. Juri stood where Shiori had presumably left her, the sword that she had taken from the storage room last night limp in her grasp, swinging down by her side, her head bowed in defeat. She didn't seem to notice my approach, and I debated whether to call out her name or just touch her gently on the shoulder, but then neither approach seemed very appropriate, when I thought about it again. So I simply stopped, set my bag down by my feet, and waited. Something must have alerted her to the presence of another human being, because her head swung up at the same time the sword did, her feet planted lightning-quick into the stance of a fencer, and the sword was at my throat before I could blink twice. "You EAVESDROPPER!" she hissed. "Juri, what's going on?" "You BASTARD!" I raised my hands very carefully, taking a step back, but she matched every step I took, and I found myself backed up against the wall suddenly, with nowhere else to go and the sword still at my throat. "Juri, look-" "You've no right," she ground out, a fury in her voice I'd never heard before, her eyes narrowed into slits. "You've screwed up everything in my life since I met you, and you think you can screw this up too! I won't let you!" "What are you talking about?" "You think you can control everything in my life! Well, you can't! You stay away from Shiori, or - or I'll...I'll kill you!" The tip of the sword dug into my throat, and I felt something warm slid down my neck. Blood. She really was going to kill me. My hand fumbled out to my side, straining to keep my balance, and my fingers brushed something. A fencing foil. I was no fencer, and I had never held anything resembling a foil or a sword in my life. But it was either fight or be killed by a Juri that seemed like she had been possessed, a Juri who I had never seen before, so I grasped the foil handle a little desperately, brought it up and over and with one quick move. It struck the sword, whiplike, with a dull ringing noise, and the shock in Juri's eyes told me that she had not been expecting this as I forced her weapon downward towards the floor, away from my throat. "Juri, stop this!" "You bastard," she growled again, and lunged. I don't know exactly what happened then, but I felt my arm rise almost of its own accord, match her blow for blow. I saw her movements almost before they happened, predicted where she would strike with a deadly certainty. I felt as light as the glittering rays of sun sparkling through the stained-glass windows of the gym, as fast as the rushing wind shrieking past my ears, and everything was red and gold and Juri was dressed in a strange uniform, with an orange rose on her chest, and she lunged past me as I shouted her name. What are you waiting for, Juri!? She jerked to a halt as if she were a puppet, stumbled, propelled by some invisible force into the wall which she hit with a dull thud, and I stumbled forward too, the foil falling from my hands and the sweat trickling down my neck and my back. Her eyes, wide and frightened, gazed up at me out of her white face, and I only faintly realized she was still holding the sword as I fell forward, hands hitting the wall on both sides of her face. "She doesn't realize that her miracle is standing atop someone else's sacrifice," I rasped through a dry throat. "But...she's the sort of person that receives them..." Her breath was warm on my neck as we sagged there, staring at one another, almost afraid to blink, and then I leaned down and kissed her. She made a muffled noise of shock, but her mouth was so warm and moist against mine and I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. The world was spinning and I heard voices in my ears, rushing around my head faster and faster. Listen, can you hear? Juri's hands creeping up to my shoulders, one wrapping around the back of my head. If your heart has not truly given up...you'll be able to hear it... She tasted like cherries and summer, innocence and rain, and then I realized she was crying. ...that sound resonating across the ends of the world... A flash of pain, and I stumbled backward, my hand to my lip where she'd bit me, and my ankle slipped. I heard a crack, fell to the ground with a sharp cry, and too late I tried to slow my fall. My head hit the wooden gym floor. The memory ended. I heard, as if through a storm, Juri's sword falling to the floor with an echoing metallic crash, like the tolling of a bell. I remember Makoto's face bending over me, swimming in and out of the darkness, and I thought I smelled Juri's perfume too, the unique scent that she wore, wafting through the nothingness. There were headlights, I thought, headlights and a car...a red car? A blue rose? But when I tried to focus, they were gone. Believe in miracles. Miracles
The wind through the window was the first thing drifting into my consciousness, I remember. I struggled up through what seemed like layers of cobwebs and disused memories, and finally I opened my eyes to find myself lying in bed, surrounded by machines, my nose and mouth covered in some sort of apparatus. A respirator machine? The wind smelled like roses. The rest of that day is a blur also, a constant stream of doctors and other medical personnel in and out of my tiny, cramped hospital room. I remember searching the sea of people for a face, that one face that I wanted to see most, but Juri did not come. Something told me that she would not come, something nagging at me that there was something different, something wrong with this world in which I had woken up, but that did not stop me from forcing my tired eyes to wander from face to face. It was two days before they let me off the respirator, and the first thing I wanted to know was how my family was faring. How was Makoto? I demanded. Juri? The look on the doctor's face would be patronizing if I did not see the real veil of sorrow behind his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "Your aunt died two months ago, and your friend Juri is married now." Dead? Married? "I don't understand," I said, and he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. "You've been in a coma for five months, Tsuchiya." I had my head turned away from the door that night when she came in. At first I thought she was just another doctor, and I sighed heavily. "I don't want it," I said. "No more medication." "It's me," her voice murmured. Something seared in front of my vision then, and I felt temporarily blinded as if I had looked directly into the sun. And then the feeling passed. "What are you doing here?" I said. She didn't answer, and I twisted around weakly to look at her, not being able to do more than turn my head so that I could see the shadows of her face in the unlit room, glowing with only the light of the lamps outside. I thought of that time so long ago when she snuck into my room late at night to retrieve the sword, the day before life as I had known it ended. "I'm sorry," she said, her words almost inaudible. "I'm really sorry..." "Don't say anything," I said roughly. "Just...don't." "Everyone's gone now," she offered, as if that was any comfort. "Shiori moved away with her family. I don't know where she is now. My mother...she was overworked, I suppose." There was only regret in her voice, no sorrow, no grief. "She had a heart attack - the doctors couldn't save her." "Why aren't you at university?" I said. "You were the one with the bright future...everything. Why are you still here?" She bit her lip and said nothing. "The doctor says you're married now." "I was in love with Shiori, you know," she burst out, and I only stared up at the ceiling, feeling the shadows crowd around the bed. "I know," I said at last. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it?" "I was in love with her. I was so jealous of you. And she knew it. She was only after you to spite me...she didn't care about you at all, you know. Everything she did was to throw the fact in my face that I could never have her. That I was something horrendous, a monster..." I thought she might be crying, but there were no tears on her face. They were all choked up in her voice, and I just wanted to lay there and let her talk, let that voice drift across my ears and wonder why I had never realized how beautiful she was, before. "You're not, Juri," I said. "You could never be." "She didn't care about you at all," Juri repeated, as if reaffirming that to herself. "When she heard you were in the hospital, the first thing she did was get herself a new boyfriend. She never asked about you, never came to see you..." I was not surprised. I remembered Shiori's cutting words to Juri, and wondered how I could have ever even thought of being her friend, much less having any kind of romantic relationship with her. She was the kind of person who couldn't care about anyone but herself, the kind of person who lived to hurt others. I had been taken in by it, as had Juri - but Juri much more than I. She doesn't realize that her miracle is standing atop someone else's sacrifice. But...she's the sort of person that receives them. "And then there was you and that day in the gym, and then you ended up in the hospital and I felt so horrible...I tried to kill myself but in the end I didn't have the guts to do it." She laughed, a strident, coarse sound. "But I couldn't go back to school. I was too depressed. I never graduated, Ruka. I dropped out." I stared at her. "What?" "I met someone. He's not rich or famous and he'll never be anyone high-up in any company. But we get along, and he takes care of me. And so we got married..." She trailed off. "Juri," I whispered. "You..." "I was selfish, wasn't I? I shouldn't have done that, should I?" Her voice rose, shrill and a little frantic, seeking, wanting. "I was wrong, wasn't I?" Believe in miracles...so that your wish comes true. Who had said that? I couldn't remember now. "The power of miracles," I whispered, not able to get the words out of my head, and she gave a low laugh. "There are no such things as miracles, Ruka. Everything is just a sham in this world. Everything is just..." "I love you, Juri," I said. She pressed her hands to her mouth, gave a low sob, and I felt my heart splintering, breaking in two, the pieces falling away from each other like the ruins of a castle falling from the sky, stabbed by a million swords. "I-" she gasped out, her eyes twin beacons of light in the darkness, and I summoned all my strength, rose from the bed on one elbow, straining to hear her next words. "Juri?" I whispered. But she shook her head violently, took two shaking steps backwards to the door, and fumbled it open before the words came. And then she was gone. I never saw her again. I waited, day after day, while the doctors tracked in and out of my room, taking vital signs and giving me medication and gradually the machines were wheeled out of the room one by one until none were left and I was simply just lying there, weak but getting stronger. I had physical therapy every day after the last machine had gone. I thought sometimes I saw her hair or her face or heard her voice through a crowd, and I would break free from the hands of my therapist, stagger weakly to where I had seen or heard her, but she was never there. They released me, finally, but it had been three months since I had seen Juri, and the first thing I did was go back to Makoto's old house where I had spent most of my high school years. There were new tenants now, though, and they informed me politely that they had never heard of an Arisugawa Juri, nor knew where she now lived. I had a small stack of cash at the bank from my conbini part-time days, and I used that to rent a small room. I got a job as a local construction worker. It was a month after I had been released from the hospital that I was bent over the tiny table in my tiny apartment, eating a bowl of instant ramen, when I realized I hated Osaka. It is painful, the thought of hating the city through which my lifeblood runs, but even now, the thought of Osaka stabs my heart. The next day after that epiphany, I packed my bags and boarded the train, and I have never looked back. I have seen sights that few other people in Japan have ever seen, traveled to places so exotic that most people do not know that they exist right here in their own country. I have seen mountains and valleys, vast coastlines of concrete and the beaches of Okinawa, ancient castles and the glittering skyscrapers of Roppongi Hills, rice paddies in Sendai and the snow sculptures of a winter in Sapporo. I keep moving. I must, because if I stay for too long in one place, the memories start to return and I begin to be afraid of what could happen if I would find someone, settle down, start a new life. I don't want a new life. The only life I want now is with her, and if I cannot have her, I will have nothing. I am happy, I suppose, riding the train across Japan. I know people look at me and see only a man who is free, burdenless and living his life to the fullest. But I don't mind that, because then I can almost pretend to myself that I am burdenless, light and free. I dream sometimes that I am returning to Osaka to rescue her and take her away from the life she knows now to a new life with me, but then I wake up and realize that she would just be as miserable with me as she is now, perhaps even more so. I am a man without a home, without a steady income, with nothing to offer her except my name, and she deserves better than that. And perhaps she still loves Shiori, and who am I to take her away from that memory? Still, I believe in miracles. She does not, but there is the word, tantalizing me, just out of my reach. A miracle would be all I need, for both of us. Until that day, though, there is only the sound of the train's wheels on the tracks, the blue skies and starry nights of Japan, the long rides across nowhere and anywhere, and that one city in Japan that keeps calling my name, no matter how hard I might resist, no matter how much it hurts, the city where she is. Osaka...
8 February 04
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