This is the story of Ayame, a young artistic gymnast who, due to a stroke of fate, can no longer practise her sport. In search of a new purpose in life, she comes to Sendai from her home town of Sapporo by chance to work in the house of a famous fig...
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Ayame had taken his hand. They were alone and she sensed that he might need the connection between them now. He held her very tightly and she felt confirmed in her assumption.
They walked the few steps to the lakeside without saying a word and sat down next to each other on some low rocks that jutted out into the water.
Ayame spontaneously took off her shoes and carefully slipped her feet into the water. "Oh, this is pleasant," she hummed contentedly and leaned against Yuzuru's shoulder.
"Yuzu... please..." she asked him suddenly. "If it's too much closeness for this place or this moment, then tell me and we'll move away from each other!" she was suddenly worried about all the stories he had just told her. After all, they were in public, even if there was no one around.
In fact, Yuzuru had flinched a little when she had leaned her head against his shoulder.
"You know I'd love nothing more than to undress you right now and make love to you right here, right?" he said, but moved away from her a little at the same time. He looked at her with the demanding eyes she knew so well now... and stood up from the rock.
Ayame was confused... what he said and what he did were very contradictory...
Yuzuru now took off his shoes as well and carefully stepped into the water. His arms hung limply at his sides before he lifted them all at once and hugged himself. He took a few more steps into the knee-deep water and then just stood there, looking out over the lake.
Ayame could see that he was pulling his arms tighter and tighter around himself, as if he was clinging to himself.
"I can't handle all these feelings, Aya!!!" he exclaimed all at once.
"And with what's about to come!!! I'm not a normal man that you can just love like that..." he sounded infinitely desperate.
Ayame swallowed noticeably.
"Yuzu, I feel the same way... I can't deal with it yet either, not at all..." she replied worriedly. "But we mustn't suppress what we feel! We would do ourselves too much harm!" she said more calmly and very firmly.
Yuzuru listened to her. His eyes were still fixed on the water, clutching herself desperately.
"It's like I said last night," Ayame continued behind him. "We don't have to find a perfect solution right away, if you should even call it a solution..." she reasoned. "Our life shouldn't be a solution, it should be a fulfillment! Fulfillment of everything we desire and see. We must not treat this lightly at all!"
This woman got to the heart of what he was unable to express at the moment, even though he was usually so good with words - but not in this situation, which was agitating him so much.
Yuzuru slowly turned around. He loosened his arms, lowered them and closed his eyes briefly. Then he calmly walked back to the shore, stepped out of the water and walked a little towards her before stopping again.
"It seems you see much clearer than I do! So what do you suggest?" he finally asked her.
Ayame thought about it. This moment was too important, she felt.
He had just been like a fish that was about to swim away in the lake, slipping away from her. She didn't want to lose him. Everything she said now would decide whether he went back into the water or stayed on the ground. Stayed with her.
She pulled her legs out of the water and turned towards him, still sitting on the rock. She gazed into his eyes for a long time and he held her gaze. She smiled delicately.
"I never intended to fall in love with you, Yuzu, when I took the job," she began, "I want that to be perfectly clear. I didn't even know very much about you, I knew how successful you were and I noticed you in the media from time to time, that was all," she took a short breath. "Then when I saw you for the first time, just before I went to your mother's for the interview..."
"That gaze... in front of the house," Yuzuru interrupted her.
"Yes... that gaze!" Ayame hesitated a little, realizing now that he might have recognized her from the beginning.
"That gaze, your gaze, in front of your house, seemed so strangely familiar to me. I don't know... but it seemed to me as if that gaze wanted an answer from me, an answer to all the questions that were tormenting and bothering you. That gaze never left me, Yuzu, and when I saw you again just hours later... you can imagine how shocked I was!"
"And yet you stayed, facing this strange situation. Without knowing if I recognized you!" Yuzuru added. "Did you?" "Right away!" "How could I doubt that..." Ayame nodded a little.
"I... saw you in the laundry room too, when you..."
"Yuzuru! What kind of confession is that now?"
"Ayame! I... I just want to prove to you how much I noticed you too, from the very beginning." Yuzuru was a little embarrassed that he was now throwing this little secret at her feet all at once. But somehow it wanted to come out of him now. He no longer wanted to hide anything from her.
She understood.
"It's... it's all right. I'm glad you told me. No secrets..." she smiled at him.
"So was there something between us from the beginning?" asked Yuzuru.
"Hm... it almost looks like it...", Ayame said.
A moment of silence.
"I want to reassure you with all this, Yuzu, that I won't just run away when things get difficult!" she fell silent again.
"And the solution?" Yuzuru finally asked her.
"There isn't one! We have to find out for ourselves, slowly," Ayame replied. "We can only experience it day by day and feel how we feel about each other and whether it's love... And we actually have the best conditions for it! I already live in your house, we... well... we've already had sex, which - admittedly - has just complicated things a bit... But, no, it hasn't! Because, who knows how long we would have been sneaking around each other like cats in heat otherwise!"
They both suddenly laughed freely at this image!
"Yuzu..." she finally added when they had calmed down again. "I think I fell in love with you very, very quickly, with the private, non-public Yuzuru... not with your successes, your shows or your great photos. No, the Yuzuru who sits tiredly on the couch in sportswear, with messy hair and headphones, scribbling in his notebook. Who is in a slightly different mood every single day. Who loves my food. And in the Yuzuru, whose eyes want answers to all his questions." She added in a whisper: "And the Yuzuru who suddenly looks at me like I'm everything to him!"
He stared at her and was by her side so quickly that, once again, she could barely see how he had managed it.
He didn't care if anyone could see them. He took Ayme in his arms, still sitting on her stone, and hugged her for minutes, silently. They held each other tightly and let time pass.
"And I fell in love with you and your eyes the first day I saw you... I... I somehow thought I saw in your gaze that you understood me..." whispered Yuzuru. "And now I know that it's true!"
Ayame trembled in his arms and began to cry.
"I didn't realize it right away. But now I know!" he continued. "And I don't run away from trouble either... I never have, and I won't now! ... So let's just try it together!"
