Takuma

Two

From kindergarten to the end of Highschool, Kagami and I were inseparable. Even our names seem to predict the symbiosis: "Kagami" meant mirror, the reflection, and my real name, "Takuma" meant truth, the real thing; except Kagami was the full-fleshed human with characters, interests, and charisma, while Takuma was happy being the thing that trails behind. We were woven together by the soaring imaginations that used to hover above us like a shining halo so that we would never lose one another despite the differences of our characters.

Back then, Kagami did everything she could to be special and to belong at the same time; hence, her extensive list of eclectic passions. Our relationship worked as long as we both believe in the same dream in different ways. If Kagami wanted a statue to be erected in her favor, to be idolized, then I wanted to destroy my own statue, to make a martyr out of myself. If she craved to be exceptional in a way that would command the imitation of those around her, such that the world would become her, then I should become the world itself. I was always willing to do anything that could make her happy.

By the time Kagami graduated college, her philosophy major was not the only thing she had abandoned. Within the trunk at the end of her bed at her mother's house also held Kagami's' Jupiterian princess fantasies, her Hello Kitty notebook enumerating a presidential campaign, and her Breakfast at Tiffany's posters. Looking at Kagami now, beautiful and cold, I wondered if she had me stuffed in that trunk as well.

"Do you suppose I should do what you do?" I asked Kagami once I sat back down. 2 cups of coffee sat between us.

"What is that supposed mean?" Kagami stared at me.

"No, I'm serious. Do you think I should go back to college and get a degree?" I had dropped out after my first year. "I'd still do what I do now, but I'll take one of those expedited programs. Then I'll get a degree and hopefully a stable job. Maybe you could even recommend me to your firm?"

She blinked at me, trying to decide if I was mocking her.

"C'mon, I am aware that my work is unstable. Like you've always said, we're not kids anymore. One of these days I'll need to have a family of my own, and that could only happen if I start looking at a more reliable source of income now."

I saw satisfaction burgeoned from the middle of her face like a slow motion of a supernova explosion, growing until it meets the upward curves of her lips, only to be cradled, contained. Kagami bit down on a victorious smile and said, "Well, I suppose getting you in as a regular employee should be easy, especially with my recommendation."

"It's perfect then. We would be together again,"

"We won't be on the same floor as I have been working there for a while, but I guess-"

"It would be just like the old time." I reminisced.

Something snapped from within Kagami then. She was horrifically frozen.

"Time has been cruel to us hasn't it?" I asked but she was elsewhere.

She was looking through me, her face twisted into mannered neutrality I have never seen before.

"Time is an interesting thing." I tried again. "You know when I saw you again after graduation, I had this disembodying sensation. I suddenly remembered this abandoned building we used to go to... Remember how free we were?" 

But Kagami denied the connection, the memory. Squirming, I pulled out a pen and began to sketch on the napkin. "Remember this place?"  

Then pen froze in my hand. I realized that I don't remember it either. Suddenly, all that filled my mind was a dark alley somewhere. And I was there, both of me. The rust from a nearby metal bar leaks, edging closer and closer to me. Cockroaches crawl, rats lined the edges, and darkness looms. I hear the sound of slow dripping sewage water. 

"You..." 

I snapped from my daze to a trembling Kagami. "How dare you?" Her eyes glistened with tears, threatening to crawl out and devour her. She stood up abruptly so that her stool was pushed back from the momentum, so that Gel-head from table 8 and everyone else would look at me, so that she was tall and looking down on this pitiful creature she was sorry for recognizing.

"You are a coward, you know that? You are so afraid of moving forward that you hide desperately behind the shadows of others, clinging onto them, bringing them down and I would be damned if I let you do the same to me! If I let you corrupt me because that's what you do: you are so corrupted, you want others to be the same!"

Kagami was frantically organizing her bag when she knocked her cup of coffee over, staining the dark liquid all over her clothes. I swore I saw the cup fell in slow motion, saw it touched the ground, saw the way it ruptured into thousands of porcelain pieces, and saw how one of those pieces harvested Kagami's electric rage or hurt or resentment I was not sure, and bounced right at her face, missing her right eye by 2 centimeters.

"Fuck!" she cried out and jerked away, time resumed to its normal pace. Her hands went to cup the wound.

"Shit Kagami, are you okay?" I asked but it was a stupid question. I couldn't move fast enough. I was still stuck in a slower tempo. Time was escaping me.

"No, I'm not fucking okay!" her voice warped into the quiet squeak of a little girl, desperate to be louder than what her capacity allowed her. She reached behind me and yanked out some napkins to stop the bleeding. I reached out to hold her, but she ripped away like I was poisonous to touch.

"Do not touch me" she hissed, one bloodied eye behind the reddening crushed ball of napkins, the other glowered at me. It was unreal how much blood was gushing out from a laceration caused by such a small piece of porcelain. Even more ridiculous, no one in the coffee house, none of the men that have seemed to be so interested in Kagami from the beginning, seemed to care. They gawked at us, while Kagami was bleeding and I was in the perfect position to get punched. Why can't Gel-head at table 8 just take a swing of me right then, offer Kagami a fucking bandaid, and then run off with her to the fucking horizon?

Kagami was sobbing now as she used her free hand to resume gathering her bearings. I was unable to move, my world was crashing against itself. I was in a trance until Kagami crashed into me on her way out of the coffee house.

"No wait," I heard myself say and extended my arm to block her. "You can't go out like that. It's pouring outside and you could barely see. It's too dangerous!" I fumbled, trying to get all of the words in before she could push me away.

But the opposite occurred as Kagami held on to my arms with both of her hands, letting the napkins fall and the blood gush out. She looked up at me, her eyes imploring mine in a way too foreign to describe. Suddenly, all of the gravity in the world was acting on Kagami alone, tugging at her facial features. Tears trickled down her cheeks and I truly realized for the first time how utterly submitted Kagami was to her emotions, how much seething pain there was inside all the time.

Her bloodied hand reached up for face and caressed it, a tenderness that contrasted the other one that was still digging into the flesh of my upper arm. "You have to let me go," she heaved. "Please, I won't go back to that box. I don't want to go back there. It was getting hard to breathe in there, please Takuma. Please let me go," she was begging hysterically. She felt every word that she was choking out.

So I did as told. I took her hand in mine, removed it from my face, and placed it back to her side. I did the same with the other hand, and there she was again. She reemerged, standing and normal, perfect and beautiful even with blood on her face. It was as if I had never touched her at all.

Kagami walked out of the coffee house. The men were slightly disappointed that they did not have the chance to slip her their numbers, but that was the extent of their attention. I turned around to head towards the door. Kagami had disappeared. I braced myself for the rain outside to engulf me.