Sumeragi Subaru

People keep telling me to cheer up.

Most of them just mention that in passing, like saying the rain’s coming, don’t forget your umbrella, oh, and cheer up. I usually refrain from answering — why should I give more attention to this matter than they had given it?

Some people, however, are quite serious and insistent. They ask me what’s wrong. They talk to me of past and future, of dead people’s wishes, of love and of time that cures all. They worry. They keep asking, keep trying. I keep trying to answer. I keep trying to explain that either I have no future or it’s the same as my past, that love eats at your soul until it becomes equal to hate. That no one knows more of dead people’s wishes than I do (except, possibly, my grandmother). That none of us have time past this year.

There are also people who just smile at me and say breathlessly “Cheer-up-we-re-going-out-for-ice-cream”; and it works.

There are very few such people, though.

What are you like in the morning?

I am a night owl, I guess. I used to be woken up by Hokuto, in quite swift and merciless ways — twins are often rather dissimilar in such small matters, I heard. Little by little I got used to getting up early — you can get used to everything, even though the world often felt quite fuzzy in the morning.

Nowadays there’s no one to wake me if I don’t want to wake. If I don’t have a job early, that is, but most people leave it to me to choose a convenient time. So I can watch TV, meditate or walk outside for half the night and then sleep as long as I want to in the morning. Even when I don’t stay at my own place, the other seals know enough to leave me alone. Well, mostly they do: it took a long time to make Sorata remember. But now I can sleep in peace when and where I want and be left to myself late at night.

I suppose that’s a comfort.

She should have been here with me now. As long as I remember myself, she was there, poking, prodding, advising. Somehow I can just imagine her as a newborn — all newborns yell, I’m told, but her yell probably meant “Hurry up and get born, Subaru, we’ve got things to do.”

She never promised me anything. Who needed promises? We both knew things even without telling. We knew each of us was never alone.

And then she went and left me. Oh, I know she was murdered. I know her murderer, and sooner or later I will gather myself enough to settle that score. I have no other choice, after all. But…

But it was her choice, too. She went and got herself killed because she decided she had a plan. She went and left me alone.

Why, Hokuto? Why?

( One morning, too long ago... )

I sat in my room and flipped between TV channels; not because I wanted — or not wanted — to watch something particular. It was just a thing to do, an occupation that precluded thinking thoughts longer than two seconds. And suddenly I stopped, because a girl on screen wore a dress just like Hokuto’s.

Silly thing to notice, perhaps, but I spent more than half of my life being made to notice dresses. Being taught to notice the bright, the unusual.

Perhaps I forgot how, because on second look the dress was different from Hokuto’s — a bit shorter, a bit more streamlined. Still, she would’ve liked it, I felt sure.

And then there was a boy and I couldn’t help smiling, looking at him, thinking that she would’ve loved the matching outfits of bizarre colours…

They danced on ice. I knew there was such a sport, of course — or is it just a show? — but somehow I never paid attention to it. Had Hokuto ever watched it? Perhaps not, or I would have remembered. I watch it now, for her and for me, bright butterflies sliding on ice, boys and girls in clothes we’ll never wear. Nothing to do with my life, and beautiful for it.

I am weak.

I know I am weak, not in my powers, but in my heart. I learned it so very well nine years ago… And keep learning it now, when I can’t kill him.

Once I would have been fine with that. Once, I saw no reason to kill. I guess some part of me still doesn’t — and he knows it. And he keeps calling to it, exploiting it. And I keep leaving undone what I should have done long ago. What I could have done long ago, if I truly wanted it.

The weak part of me didn’t. It still doesn’t, no matter what he did to me. What he did to Hokuto. What he keeps doing as an Angel. He still has control over me, and I am ashamed of it.

I feel so helpless sometimes when I look at him. I feel as if I’m sixteen again, as if I hadn’t spent nine years fine-tuning my abilities and learning control. He makes me weak, and I hate him, and still I can’t kill him.

I’m learning to deal with this, though. I keep reminding myself that past is past. That we’re equal in strength and he cannot really do anything — except to make me lose control over my strength.

Or, perhaps, not even that. Do I fear him? Am I confused by his presence, or by the presence of memories? It is that boy of sixteen, naïve and hopeful, who comes to me when I see Seishirou and makes me helpless again. And I can send him back to the past. I did it once, after all. I just have to keep reminding myself that.

There was a period when I did not look into mirrors at all. When I passed mirror-like shop windows or any place at all where I could see my own reflection, I turned away. Because to look would be to see her, and that was too painful to tolerate. I wore drab clothes she would’ve hated. I grew my hair a bit longer, then cut it as short as I could make it and manage to stay unremarkable. Still, she looked at me out of every glass, every shiny surface. My twin, my mirror.

These days I still rarely look in the mirror, but for another reason: I just do not need to. I shaped the space around me as well as I could; I shaped myself. I know what I look like. But sometimes, when I stumble into the bathroom late at night — early in the morning — too tired to think, I look up and almost see her, watching me out of the mirror. Out of my eyes, no longer as bright as hers used to be.

I wasn’t sure I could do that. I am the strongest onmyoujitsu among the Sumeragi, and this says enough about my powers if you know of such matters, and yet I was not sure I could do what I had to do. I spent years doing things I knew, perfecting my control… building walls around myself. And in order to reach Kamui, I had to tear them all down.

Our clan’s magic is based on spirit, and as a child I never doubted particularly that my spirit was strong enough to do what I had to do. I simply tried to help as many people as I could, and that was my strength.

Nine years ago my strength of spirit was destroyed. I tried to build another one from skill and control, and yet when I saw Kamui lying there, as I felt his wounds as my own, I knew that would not be enough.

I will always be grateful to Kamui for that day, if not for everything else, because for him I managed to do what I could not do for myself. To build a new, true strength of spirit based on honesty and acceptance.

Sometimes, remembering, I wonder whether I ever truly believed him. Had I looked at him and thought: Yes, this is Sakurazuka Seishirou, my friend, someone I care fore, someone who cares for me? I try to remember and I can’t. It’s as if the boy who came to Sakurazuka clinic to play with dogs died long ago — or, probably, never existed at all, a creature of the same dreamworld that Sakurazuka-san the veterinarian.

I remember Hokuto, her words, teasing, excited, fashioning a bright fantasy for me, probably flying off her favourite manga and embroidering it with all her imagination, as much as she did when a glimpse of a boutique window brought into existence her outrageous clothes. I remember being excited too, quietly, silently, looking at the man beside me and almost unable to believe he’s real. He wasn’t. Did I even know what reality was, before Hokuto died?