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They say the only certainty in life is that nothing is fair.
That nothing is easy.
That you live through a lifetime, and then you die.
Fact is, that’s only partially true.
*
We begin at the end. On a Tuesday. A normal summer’s day somewhere in the year 592, when the roads pick up dust as the horses whinny outside. They are both long dead, but that’s not important. It’s not the how that matters. Not now, not ever. Once you’re buried, burned, completing the food chain, the troubles that got you there start to worry you less.
All that matters is that Tobio and Tooru aren’t rivals, they’re not lovers, they aren’t even friends. They’re birds, they’re rivers, they’re trees. Chasing each other, once a part of the same land, bending sideways to touch in the wind. The whatever that delivered them is insignificant.
*
It’s raining in heaven, it’s raining in hell. It’s raining on a Sunday.
Tell me the first thing you remember.
I remember the first time I beat you in the game we used to play. Tobio's laughter sounds like the shake of palms. The weep of willows. I remember your shiro, the sky and the stars and feeling tiny and tall at the same time. I remember my sister holding my hand as we clambered to see you as your carriage passed by.
Mmm, Tooru sighs. A breeze picks up from the north and Tobio leans into it. I remember you .
*
Everything is about balance: up and down, east and west. The sun rises, and sets. A man, a woman, but neither will have good without the bad.
*
The day is endless, undefined, not a Saturday or a Friday because days don’t exist. Not when you’re dead. Time is fluid like a stream. It trickles freely. It flows out. It ends nowhere.
Tobio is standing in the middle of the field, his hands brushing against the rye and its colour reminds him of the hair of a long forgotten friend from Hyogo. He could probably tell you what it was if he had any concept of whatever the hell rye really was, but plants were more of Ushijima’s forte.
As if summoned by his thoughts straying to the farmer that once lived two towns over, Tooru crosses in long strides and picks a stray kernel from his hair.
Tobio smiles, and the breeze picks up.
Hello, Tobio says, a small exaltation.
There’s a faint sound of the river rushing somewhere in a distance.
Hi.
A gulf of air is warm against Tobio’s lips. Warm like the sun.
*
Lay with me, Tobio breathes in nothing less than the biblical sense, and Tooru has long since stopped denying him. Demurring was for the living world, same as guilt and horror and abject suffering.
They come together like a vortex, fast and fuming. A naked storm of passion.
Tobio breaks them into tributaries, spins them ‘til they merge, twists in and out until they finally shimmer and collapse, and Tooru could die again. Would go through another lifetime again, if it means finding this and having this. Could die happy from the supernova heart-spark of Tobio woven around him.
*
My grandfather used to say that there is only one path to Heaven, Tobio says. They are stars, they are moons, they are a circle in the sand.
A pebble rolls in on the coming tide. A wave washes them away.
*
The night is darkness, no single point of light. It is carefully bled through blindness by the sound of Tooru’s voice.
I have no concept of infinity, but can you imagine if this was it? If we’ll always come to consciousness as something, or nothing, as anything, and we’ll never stop being together? What if we are reborn far apart? What if I’m reborn in the next lifetime and not know you? Or you to not know me? What if I don’t remember?
I’ll find you, Tobio promises. I’ll find you wherever you are.
Tooru’s hands dissolve like melting ice, ethereal, prying him from anything but Tobio’s constant gravity.
I’ll hold you to that.
*
It’s an August or November, a winter or a spring, they are cattails on a bayou.
They sway and rock, wet below their knees, sun-bright on golden, rounded shoulders. They dance together for half a day until they dance no more. They can feel it, a gentle hum that will soon crescendo into a tug somewhere in their beings. It’s almost time.
*
It’s summer and his junior high school feels small in front of him when years ago it used to feel bigger than anything in the world.
There’s a familiar sound of a volleyball being hit, the force quite strong as it ricochets against the walls. Tooru resolves not to run, but his steps become hasty the closer he gets, and soon he finds himself running from the gate towards the gym.
He may not be as limber as he once was, but he’s standing by the sliding doors before he even knows it. He extends a hand forward, the handle cold to the touch, and when he finally finds the courage to slide it open, a ball comes flying towards his direction.
Tooru catches it instinctively before he lowers his arms and sees him. His past, present, and future transposed. I’ll find you wherever you are. A taste of the stars, the weight of a crown on his head, his glacial hand melting, a stray kernel, and a tug, somewhere deep in the soul.
Tooru drops the volleyball, frozen by the entryway, transfixed by the sight.
“Hello,” He says in wonder, a holy space rising in his chest, light pouring in, then and now and forever echoing. There are hints of grey where it used to be pitch black, but Tobio's never been so beautiful. The space stretches his ribs to their very limit until there's no room to breathe.
“Hi,” Tobio says, smiling and the space expands, forcing Tooru's lungs and his stomach to make room for it.
A gulf of air is warm against Tooru’s lips. Warm like the sun.
*
“Tell me the first thing you remembered,” Tooru whispers later, resting his head on Tobio’s chest as they watch the night sky slipping past the high window, splayed open to let the wind in to help cool their bodies.
His memories bloomed late in this lifetime, and it must have hurt waiting on him from afar. The thought only aches for a second until it is chased away by Tobio’s fingers running through his hair.
“Hmm,” Tobio sighs, his breath rumbling like thunder underneath the Earth, and Tooru soaks it up like a sponge. A breeze picks up from the north and he leans into the palm cupping his cheek. “You. I remembered you.”
*
There is only one path to Heaven, Tobio says again in the lifetime after the next. They are stars once more, they are moons, they are a circle in the sand. They are mountains and the fog that blankets the trees. On Earth, they call it love.
*
They say the only certainty in life is that nothing is fair.
That nothing is easy.
That you live through a lifetime, and then you die.
But fact is: fatality has never stopped them. They are spiral bound to nothing more than their invariable rebirth at each other’s side. So when it happens, it just doesn’t make a single bit of difference.
Tobio’s the red and Tooru’s the blue in a dawn or in a dusk, their hands brushing against the horizon where the sky meets the sea.
Tobio says Everything is perfect, and when their colours blend again, Tooru quietly agrees.