Timeless

Recollections

Kojiro POV
I was there from the beginning. I promised I would be there at the end. My first day of kindergarten I walked confidently into the classroom. Why wouldn’t I? My life had been filled with love and safety. It was before I knew rejection, heartache, pain so unimaginable it could drive you insane. As I looked over the other children, I saw him. He sat alone in the back by the window.
The summer sunlight pouring in made a halo over his head. Hair that looked like cotton candy tied up neatly on top of his head. His head was bowed. I couldn’t see what he was playing with under the table. He struck my interest. I moved toward him.
“Hey Kojiro, I saved you a seat?” my neighborhood friend called out. I laughed.
“Alright!” but I kept walking. Through the harsh grey carpet I shuffled up to him. He sat so elegantly with his delicate features. I could hardly draw a breath as I got closer. I peeked under the table to see what he was playing with. Shock radiated through my body when I noticed he was twisting and untwisting his hands in his lap.
“What are you looking at, perv!?” He screeched at me. “Haven’t you seen a kimono before?” I giggled. Even in anger his voice was like music.
“Well, aren’t you a diddly do!” it was something my friends parents called each other. He frowned at me, part of his forehead throbbing.
“You look like an ape!” He snorted.
“You look like tasty cotton candy. I could just eat you up!” I said back. Ignoring his harsh words, I pulled the seat out beside him.
“What are you doing?” his tone was more normal now.
“Sitting here.” I stated. He looked at me like I was some kind of freak. I smiled my biggest smile at him. He snorted, placed his hands on the table and looked out the window. I considered that a win. He had stopped ringing his hands.
“I’m Kojiro.” I introduced myself like my mom always made me. He huffed.
“Then I believe you have a friend over there.” He pointed to where the others kids sat.
“Yep.” I said. “But my friend here, is all alone. They have others.” I swung my feet back and forth under the table. He blinked.
“I’m the only one here.” It was just a whisper, like he hadn’t meant to say it at all.
“Yep!” I agreed smiling.
“You have a stupid face!” He snorted. I laughed.
“Yours is very pretty.” I said. Color formed on his cheeks as he turned away from me.
“You don’t tell a guy that.” He tsked.
“Why not, when it’s true.” His entire face was the color of a tomato. He never did introduce himself to me. I found out his name when the teacher did attendance. Kaoru. It was a name befitting of someone like him.
Four years later we were in fourth grade. I had refused to leave his side. No matter how much he yelled at me. I walked home with him that first day, only to discover he lived close to me. That sealed his fate. I was now his best friend, weather he liked it or not. Most of the time it was not, but I didn’t care.
We were alone on a Saturday. My mom had grounded me from my games. His parents refused to let him play games. So, we were forced to venture outside. We walked to the nearby park, but there were a lot of younger kids milling around. Instead, we walked on. In silence we appeared to be closer than when we spoke to each other.
As we came around the corner, we heard an odd sound. There were loud voices too. We sought out what the commotion was. Hiding in the trees so the older kids didn’t see us, we watched. Teenagers were on boards with wheels. They were doing all sorts of cool things. I wanted to be like them!
Being me, I didn’t hesitate, I burst from our hiding place. “Hey, cool hair, little dude!” one of them called out. I thought they were talking to Kaoru, but he had failed to follow me.
“Thanks!” I grinned my people pleasing smile. “Can you show me how to do that?” I asked. They laughed.
“Sure thing!” from that moment on I fell in love all over again! It hurt, I fell a lot. Kaoru refused to come out and learn. I begged my mom for a board. Promised her I wouldn’t play so many video games. Then I spent my days learning tricks, and my nights teaching them to my friend.
Kaoru was a quick learner. He didn’t fall nearly as often as I did. He had such grace, always. The first time he fell and cut his leg open, he saw the blood and passed out. I stood over him looking down at his unconscious face. It was so peaceful, not scrunched up yelling at me. It was times like this that I remembered why I wanted to be his friend.
By now I had abandoned all my friends in favor of spending as much time as I could with this perfection of a man. At least he was perfect to look at. He was perfectly pleasant to anyone else. It was just me he yelled at. Only me he treated like he didn’t want me around. This just made me want to be beside him even more.
I sat under the cherry blossom tree with his head in my lap, singing softly to him. Although he was out cold and didn’t know it, I had cleaned and bandaged his wound. I sat there singing to him as the sunset over our playground. Quietly I ran my fingers through his bubblegum hair. I wasn’t watching him as I sang, so I didn’t know when he woke up.
After I finished a song I looked down. He was gazing up at me with a look of wonder on his face. Not wanting to break the mood, I sang another song. Looking directly into his shimmering golden orbs.
When the song ended, he smiled. It was the first time I saw a tender expression on his face when he looked at me. “You have a wonderful gift.” He whispered. For now we had created a circle of caring. A bliss filled moment in time.
“Thank you.” I could have been sarcastic, in fact my first thought had been, even if I am a stupid ape. But I had bitten my tongue. Anything to keep him looking at me like that.
“Sing one more, please?” He softly begged.
“Any requests?” I asked. A gentle smile curved his lustrous lips. He shook his head against my legs. This left me to pick another song. Before I was singing rock songs, now I chose one I had heard him play many times. His face opened up in a look of audurious appreciation. As the song ended he sat up.
Today had been a first for many things. It was the first time he had bleed, the first time he had passed out, the first time I had sang in front of him, the first time he looked at me with anything but disdain on his face, and the first time he had hugged me. It was the best day of my life.
Kaoru and I continued to skate. We found others to teach us various tricks and moves. In middle school it was all we ever did. The rivalry between us deepened. Yet we couldn’t escape each other, or we just didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure about him, but I loved the arguments. To me it was our way of showing each other we cared. Still, who could have a friendship if they fought all of the time? Not even we were so sadistic as that.
I learned in middle school that the stronger you were, the better you could skate. That was when I began lifting weights. It was also around the end of middle school that, in Kaoru's eyes, I went from being an ape to a gorilla. Honestly, as long as he still talked to me, I didn’t care.
The late summer nights when it was just the two of us, were my favorite. We would skate along the coastline watching the sunset. Side by side just the way we always were. No one got between us. With his intellect and my brawn, no one could defeat us. We were the perfect duo. In everything except communicating with each other.
In high school I found out that Sakura, in English meant Cherry blossom. With Kaoru's last name being Sakurayashiki, along with his flowing pink locks, I began to call him Cherry. At first, like always, he acted like he hated it. Even when I explained my reasoning for it, he would yell at me to not call him that. Until one day when he thought I couldn’t see him.
We were skating with a group of other kids at the new skate park. I had just taken my turn, doing an awe inspiring trick flip. The kids were cheering for me then he came up. I sort of had my back to him. “Go, Cherry!” I called out. He hide his smile in the scarf he wore. Yet, I had seen how pleased he looked with the name. I never told him that.
It was also around this time that my world began to crack. We had both chosen to go to the same high-school. I was sure Cherry wanted to follow me so he wouldn’t be alone. He was never great at making friends. Well, ok he could make a friend, as in he built his own AI. Yet he wasn’t good with the human friendships. So when he began to talk about this guy, Ainosuke, I was surprised to say the least.
Ainosuke invited Cherry to a road skate. This was an illegal skating adventure. Many people would gather and block of a road, then kids would skate on it. You never knew how long you had until the police showed up, which just added to the thrill of it all. It was here that Cherry first introduced me as Joe. It surprised me, but I hid it. Apparently this guy Ainosuke didn’t know Cherry's real name either.
In hindsight, I wondered if Cherry was trying to protect me from Ainosuke.  In his own way, that is. Joe and Cherry began to mean something on the skating scene. Our names would be screamed out as soon as we arrived. I began to be known for my powerful kicks turns and sick flips style. Where Cherry was known to have a gentler approach. Even if it was just as deadly as mine. We hardly lost a race.
We also were hardly ever caught. One night we weren’t so lucky. Cherry had just raced this guy Shadow, some joker looking clown. He won, but the cops were waiting at the finish line. Shadow threw some exploding things in Cherry's face. It blinded him and he ran right into a cop.
I had come looking for him, not knowing the trouble he was in. I tried to get away. That failed miserably. I couldn’t leave Cherry sitting alone in the back of that car. When they put the cuffs on me, they put me in beside him.
“Do you have any working brain cells?” He demanded of me before they even closed the door.
“One or two.” I smirked back.
“You could have gotten away!” He snarled.
“And leave your pretty face in here looking so miserable?” I hissed. “Not too mention what a pretty face like that would get in a cell without a body guard!”
We yelled like this all the way downtown. The cops were laughing at first. Then they tried yelling over us to shut up. In the end they just let us out on some random street since we were giving them a headache.
All of this led up today. The day Cherry came into the restaurant where I worked. He was with Ainosuke, they were holding hands and smiling lovingly at each other. I felt my chest explode. My Cherry was cuddled up into his chest. A black rage began to boil in my veins. It only got worse over the following months.