kodomo no hi
His dreams have always been vivid.
In childhood, they were bright, garish things, like painted toy dancers, shining from the shadowed wells of his unconscious mind. As he has grown up and grown older, however, they have become dimmer and harder, metallic creatures of cogs and spokes and wires that whirl in their own mad, mechanical harmony, forgotten as soon as he wakes. Or at least, that's the way it was in the long years that stretched between, when he and his mother lived alone and spoke of such things only in codes with their eyes... but that world now seems just another dream, and perhaps it isn't so strange that it pushed aside all others. What is one dream to the next? Can you remember what you dreamt before when you wake without waking at all?
Or maybe these past few months have been the dream.
One way or another, he dreams, and dreams vividly. He dreams more and more lately, and the dim metals are being polished and purified, brought up through meters of rusting water to reflect the light of day. These days, he remembers his dreams, or at least their general run -- but then, he's allowed to, now. Destiny has already shown him its most shattering secret, the Death card concealed in the palm of its hand; death and rebirth. It has nothing more to hide, and his dreams are his own again... and yet not his own, twisted by new memories and fears.
He has always dreamed; but now the dolls are puppeted to different music, and their made-up faces have run down into something sinister and strange. The bright spots gone, only the dark hollows remain -- and what will he find inside?
Alone, unprotected against the tide of sleep, Kamui dreams.
When adults speak of innocence, they speak of the sound of children's laughter; they call it the bright music of play, the sound of a mind uncorrupted by the ways of the world, and smile to each other, as if to say they are too old to even remember such days. However, as many children would tell you if they had the words, a laughing child is rarely an innocent thing. Children laugh in cruelty as often as in joy, prone to a casual and animal kind of violence that most adults' consciences would shrink from. Savagery is natural; it is morality that must be taught. There is no more innocence in a child's laugh than in the baying of a hunting wolf.
Even knowing this, Kamui is somehow sure that when he remembers the three of them laughing together, he remembers them happy. Or he remembers that he thought they were happy at the time. It seemed to him that all the time he spent with them was idyllic, perfect, full of the innocence and contentment every child should know and too few do. Lately, he has been wondering if he misremembers. But lately he has wondered many things.
They run, laughing, down a sunny path, tree branches blowing overhead like women's skirts, in the late-spring wind. It ruffles Kotori's hair, sending it rippling in all directions, and she giggles as she idly chases the blossoms that skirl through the air. Kamui looks at Fuuma, and the older child is smiling at him, brightly, bright enough to rival the dappled sunshine... and something tugs inside Kamui's chest, something sharp and shaky. Something is wrong, it says. There is something he's forgetting.
But nothing is wrong, is it? It's just him and Fuuma, and everything here must be right, because it always has been. Fuuma is, of all people, perhaps the one he trusts most; the older boy is always very careful with him, gentle, without the roughhousing and play-fights ordinary for boys and friends their age... almost as if Kamui were something terribly small and fragile, made of glass, and more precious to him than anything else in the world. Something he wants to protect and keep his.
Kotori runs ahead, calling Kamui's name, and he follows her without thinking; he has to stay with her, or she might get hurt, and he'd never let that happen. He promised. (And again, that nagging unease whispers.) But halfway up the path, almost losing track of her brightly-colored dress as it darts through the trees, something stops him. Kamui turns -- and now the misgivings build to a steady dry roar in his ears and he almost whimpers, his laughter dying, damped by the sudden inexplicable fear of what he might see.
He looks behind him.
But there is only Fuuma; nothing terrifying, nothing to dread. Just the older boy who stands there looking at him, smiling faintly and almost distantly, though its warmth is no less for the strange sadness in his eyes. The wind tousles Fuuma's hair, blowing soft fragments of blossoms past his small form, and for a moment Kamui just looks at him, uncertain what to think.
Does he dream this? Does he remember it? He could not honestly have said... but neither would surprise him, and in the end, it probably doesn't matter. If not this moment, then surely any other like it. He believes that Fuuma loves him, now, and that's what matters, the important part; he accepts this fact with a nine-year-old's calm, unthinking clarity. He does not think about what he should do about it, or whether it's right, or even whether he loves Fuuma in return. He doesn't really think at all, mostly because it is hardly a surprise. Fuuma loves him, so that's all right. There is no other way it could be.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the moment ends; Fuuma's eyes lighten, and he laughs brightly at Kamui's pause. The older boy starts forward then and breaks into a run down the path, catching Kamui's hand as he passes, and they run together, Kamui panting as he tries to keep up on his shorter legs. They run and they run, Fuuma and Kamui, and somewhere Kotori is calling, and the trees spill down their blossoms like all the love in the world...
And then the love and the world melt and run and create a new image from their bleeding colors, and now it's just the two of them alone, and the hand resting on Kamui's is older, stronger, and yet the same. As he watches, it turns his palm up in its grasp, and lifts his wrist to the touch of soft lips and the tickle of breath, making him gasp just a little. They are stretched out together somewhere, in darkness and quiet, entombed in some vault under the world; the only sound is their breathing, entwined, and the soft dripping of water somewhere off in the shadows. In a shaft of light, he can see the glitter of Fuuma's eyes (but isn't Fuuma... what?), and in their regard he sees, he understands...
Two boys stranded somewhere in the path to being men, they cling together, kissing like trying to swim or to drown. Fuuma's lips are hot and gentle and ungentle, his hands everywhere on Kamui's body; the two boys roll like a single wave, tidal union. Hands in his hair, on his neck, a thigh pressed between his legs, a slow burning friction that could make him crazy or make him whole. Fuuma tastes like rain and shadows. Fuuma is with him, in every part of body and soul, here in this dark place and the enclosure of its dripping unseen walls; Fuuma is touching him, is holding him, is everything he wants and needs. Fuuma is...
...is...
Why can't he remember?
Then something tumbles, startlingly, off in the darkness -- something that sounds wet and meaty, like a falling body. Only Kamui jumps, but there are hands holding him down, and his yearning... But now there are more of those cracks of light, letting the thief daylight break into this tomb, and it is easier to see now -- but Fuuma is kissing him, and not letting him escape the covering of his body; he whispers love, and Kamui shivers for no good reason but joy. Yes, Fuuma loves him. And he is Fuuma's; and Fuuma is his. And this is how it should be... isn't it?
And then Fuuma draws back, to stare into his eyes, and he sees in the new light that the drips were not of water, but of blood.
Eyes wide, he looks up at Fuuma; a sword flashes in his mind like a name on the tip of his tongue. And he sees that now Fuuma is smiling, and that his gaze is dead as stone.
And Fuuma is --
Gone.
And, alone in a sea of blood, Kamui finally remembers.
When he was much younger, he used to wake up in tears and not know why. Nothing can really make it easy to cry yourself awake, but at least in those days his mother would come for him, and hold him and ease the pain he didn't understand, and make it right again the way only a mother can. She'd always known when he was hurting, and when he needed her. She'd promised she would always be there when he did.
But though his pillow is soaked when he opens his eyes, she doesn't come to him now.
No one does. No one can; no one will. He's still a stranger in a world that makes no sense, and his mother and Kotori are dead, and Fuuma might as well be -- never mind the corpse-puppet he is now, with strings pulled by some sick, awful master into a cruel parody of the Fuuma Kamui knew. He's never been more alone, or more aware of the fact.
Finally, the tears stop, and Kamui just lies still for a while; when it becomes obvious that he's not going back to sleep, he sighs, sits up, and pulls himself out of bed, going to the window. Before tugging the shade to one side, he silently begs the sky not to be dawn-colored already. It doesn't listen, though. It never does.
So he just sits down on the edge of the bed and watches for a while, as the world gives in to the light.