Asunder

What is Lost

"You and me, we're meant to be together forever." Satoru mumbles into Getou's neck. The man he shares the bed with simply hums before running a hand through his hair. Satoru smiles sleepily and leans into Getou’s hand.

"Oh? What makes you think that, Satoru?"

"I dunno. There's just something about us. It’s like when I’m with you, I’m lost in paradise." He answers honestly. Getou chuckles as his other hand lightly trails down his spine before stopping in the small of his back.

“I suppose you’re right. We are-”

 

Satoru awakens from the dream with a smile before it slips away. Where the bed in his dream was bathed in the soft golden rays of a rising sun and his legs were twined around Getou’s. Now, as he lays awake in the darkness of his room with cold sheets tangled and knotted around his legs like chains. Swallowing thickly, Satoru presses the heel of his palms against his eyes.

“Let me go back.” He whispers, already missing Getou’s soft touch. “Please.”

It's almost funny.

Satoru is no stranger to the passage of time, he understands the ins and outs and he accepts it for what it is. There’s nothing that can be done to halt the sand that trickles down the hourglass and he’s long since learned to just go with the flow. Yet, he still wishes that he could alter its course. That he could reach out and pause time.

If it was anyone else, Satoru would pity them for being so foolish. When it’s him, it’s just almost funny that he thinks that he’s good enough or deserving enough to ask for something. That he would dare to be selfish enough to want. He had, for a long time, been content with everything because Satoru had cast himself far away from anything to do with emotions.

In the metaphorical liminal space that he had created, shaped and morphed with his own hands, he was happy enough. In his bubble, he was eons away from everything. An infinite stretch away from humanity and civilization and nothing could hurt him. Not words nor attacks could touch him.

This, unfortunately, had shifted from his saving grace and into a prison. Long ago, Satoru had forgotten how to open his mouth and ask for anything.

He feels like he’s fighting the currents of a fast moving river that pulls him under. His lungs are filled and he’s left light headed as he continues to beg and plead with himself to just stop.

Satoru has never been a sentimental man. He has never held a love for the various homes he’s lived in. There’s no nostalgic feeling for a long passed childhood spent in the dying sunset’s light on a muggy summer evening. There’s no want for forgotten friends and teachers.

Yet, something continues to yank him backwards.

There is a void in his heart, it aches and yearns for something that he finds himself often out of breath. No matter how many times he asks himself ‘What am I missing?’ he never has an answer and his heart continues to feel so empty.

Satoru sits up in bed and glances out the window. He knows what’s missing from his life. Who’s missing from his life.

 

One day after class, Satoru frowns, feeling the crevasse in his heart crack further. Standing up abruptly, he leaves the first years’ class and heads down the silent hall. He’s walked down this hall so many times that he’s sure his path has long since burned its way into the ancient floorboards.

Turning at the end of the hallway, Satoru’s eyes fall on the closed door. Stopping just in front of it, he rests a hand against the wood. Taking in a deep breath, he slides the door open and takes in the empty classroom.

It’s just like how he remembers. Three desks pushed together at the center of the room, facing the old teacher’s desk. Numbly, he walks forward and halts at the middle desk. A small smile flitters over his lips when he sees his own graffiti carved into the wood.
Getou’s horrible caricature will most likely forever be there unless the desk gets completely replaced but Satoru doubts that’ll ever happen any time soon. So, until then, there’ll still be a piece of Getou here that hadn’t been sullied yet. Tracing the deep gouges of the carving, he sighs before taking a seat at the desk. These desks are smaller than what he remembers and his knees rap against the desk’s underbelly, paying the pain no mind, Satoru takes off his shades with a drawn out sigh.

He remembers back to when he was a teenager, reading about how in some cases, people can die of a broken heart. At the time, he had romanticised the idea as all young teenagers do. How oddly poetic and grotesquely beautiful it would be to slowly wither away like they often do in those old English novellas he had to read in school.

Now, Satoru knows the true pain of a broken heart and the painful void it leaves. A part of him was torn away and there’s nothing he can do about it but cry and relive memories of happier times. Now, he understands and it hurts so much.

All around him are countless reminders of his first love. From the full moon that reflects off the lake where he had his first kiss to the deep red and gold sunrise as he walked home from his first night at Getou’s. A faint smell of a cigarette’s smoke and the flickering neon sign of a movie theater. A crowded outside market and a silent library. The glittering stars and a raging storm. Everything between from a hot summer day to a blustering wintery morning- they all speak of Getou Suguru in some form or another.

It leaves such a bitter taste in his mouth and the salty tears that run down his cheeks remind him of the ocean by Okinawa.

They say time heals all wounds, Satoru ponders as he glances over to the empty classroom, but how can time heal him when he doesn’t want to let go?