I heard a groan faintly in the back of my mind as I became more aware that I was awake. I could tell there was light all around me, I could feel my body against another, held safely. I took a deep breath and could smell the distinct scent of the person I loved. I felt an earthquake around me and opened my eyes to Aki turning with effort. The sun streamed in through the window, the two of us curled up like cats in the morning light.
"Everything hurts." Aki groaned again, his body coming back to life from the deep sleep he had been in. "Don't ever let me pass out on the floor again. Getting too old for that."
I helped him sit up, his feet flat on the floor, his knees bent, and he rubbed a palm against the side of his face. "You haven't slept that well since I've known you." I said. "It seemed a shame to wake you up just to move you." I crawled on my hands and knees behind him, and began pressing my fingertips into his shoulders and back to massage out the knots.
"You slept on the floor with me all night?" He turned his head to look over his shoulder. His body was slowly losing tension under my touch.
"Of course. What was I supposed to do, go to bed and leave you there?"
He laughed. "That's exactly what you were supposed to do."
I sat back on my heels, smoothing my palms down his back to the hem of his shirt and slipping my fingers underneath it to feel his skin. "I don't think I could sleep at all without your arms around me." I felt my voice was quiet, but the thought of sleeping in Aki's arms every night distracted me.
"It won't be for a while yet, but what about when we do national tours?" Aki said, dissolving the picture in my mind. "If you're studying, you can't miss school to come with us." He pulled his shirt over his head as my hands worked their way higher under it.
"You said before that you would call me every night when that happened. So I guess you'll just have to stay on the phone with me until I fall asleep." I made my tone childlike and playful, but there was more truth to my words than I wanted to admit.
He smiled, laughing low with his breath, as if he were recalling the time he had mentioned touring in the past. "Of course I will. Even if I'm on stage, I'll keep my phone on so you can hear me sing." He said. His voice was dreamy, like he was telling a story, but I knew there was as much truth in his words as there was in mine. "Come on, let's get in the shower. My eyes are burning from sleeping in this makeup."
Much of the autumn passed in the same way. School, studio time, recording, laying low with Aki at home. Our lives seemed to be on repeat but also moving forward to something great, so being stagnant didn't bother me much. I enjoyed our routines. Guardian was recording a new album under their Tokyo label and were working every day, but not late into the evening. Sometimes after classes were over I would make my way to the studio to study and watch Aki sing. I would take the train just two stops on the days it would rain or was too cold to walk. Afterwords, we would take the train home together, choosing a corner to sit in, Aki's arm around my shoulders. Sometimes the train would be crowded, so we would stand, and Aki would hold the railing overhead so I could wrap my arms around his waist to hold me steady. Simplicity like those moments in our lives came so freely, and I was doused in happiness every day.
On one of those days while I studied in the mixing room, Aki was recording through the window, and my phone chimed. I picked it up to see Kota's name on the screen, and a message. "Natsuko, did you know Aki's birthday is coming up?"
I felt a pang of urgency run through me. I quickly hit reply, looking around the room for Kota to appear somewhere. I wasn't sure if he was even still in the studio. "I don't know when his birthday is! We never talked about it."
The reply came almost instantly as I watched the screen. "It's November 30th, next week." A follow up message came quickly after. "He doesn't like to talk about his birthday. I can help you find a gift if you want."
"Good work today, guys." Aki said as we filed out the door together. "This album will be finished before we know it."
As I reached for Aki's hand to begin the walk home together, I felt arms around my shoulders, pulling me back into a body. I laughed, recognizing the arms as Kota, and he called to Aki. "I need to borrow your girlfriend for a while this afternoon."
Aki turned with a hard look on his face, raising an eyebrow. "What? Why?"
I faked a pout and reached my hand out weakly, making a show of being separated from him. "I'll take good care of her, don't worry."
"That's exactly what I'm worried about." Aki reached to wrap his fingers around my chin, lifting it to kiss me. "Call me if he tries anything." He smiled coyly as he released me, giving me a wave with his fingers as he turned. I glanced back over my shoulder as Kota and I began walking in the other direction, seeing him talking to Fuji and start heading toward his car. He looked back over his shoulder as well.
"Where are we going?" I asked Kota as we walked. He reached for my hand, but it was a brotherly, watchful hold in comparison to Aki.
"Just onto the main street." Kota pointed straight ahead to the end of the street we were on, only a few blocks from the recording studio building. "I know the perfect gift you should get Aki for his birthday, I'll show you."
Turning onto the main street of Shinjuku was like entering another world in comparison to the quiet of the side street the recording studio was on. Even during the light of the early afternoon, the neon signs were bright, commanding attention. The people on the streets walked with intention, knew where they were going and what they were looking at. I felt lost and alone in the crowd, but excited that such a world was only steps from a place I spent my time in. I could get to know it, I thought, if I made it my goal to swallow my apprehension.
Kota pulled me with the grip he had on my hand and I realized I had stopped walking to look around me. "Shinjuku is a big place." He said. "There's a lot to see. We should really all spend a day here and look around."
"Aki took me to a few spots, but they were all in tucked away areas." I said, recalling the bathhouse, and Daichi-san's tattoo shop.
Kota nodded, smiling to himself. "Aki loves to go out and explore when we tour. He finds a lot of cool spots and tells us about them later. He knows places all over Japan."
"That's how we met." I said. "He was just out by himself, walking around." I thought for a moment about the night Aki had taken me on a tour of his secret favourite spots in Tokyo, all out of the way, difficult to find, but they all suited his needs perfectly. "Aki is so interesting. He's a very deep person but I feel like I don't know very much about him even though we're together all the time."
"Aki doesn't make it easy to learn about him." Kota agreed. "He is a very open book, and a very genuine person, and he thinks that everything about him is obvious without him having to talk about it. He'll tell you anything, if you ask."
We stepped inside a shopping centre with a towering circular pillar entrance, the sign glowing neon pink high on the building against a white gloss background. The hallways were lined with small shops in an open concept fashion, and it reminded me of the market on the shrine grounds in Kamakura. I could see every different type of clothing, every style of fashion, and shoppers weaved their way in and out of the rows of shops methodically. We descended a flight of stairs to a floor that was bathed in blue neon light, most of the walls painted black. The shops took on a vastly different personality, with most of the items I could see catering to a Punk audience. Kota stopped us in front of a shop, holding out his hand to gesture to it.
"Aki's favourite place." He said. "I guarantee he will love anything you pick out in here."
He released the grip on my hand as I wandered into the shop, and stood watch while I looked slowly over every item. There were things to look at everywhere, and true to Aki's style, I had to look carefully to see even the things that were tucked away and hard to spot at first. Though the shop was small, there was a diverse mix of clothing items, and accessories, and everything I saw reminded me of Aki. He had already given me so many gifts that were so meaningful without even an occasion, and I wanted to chose something carefully that reciprocated as much meaning.
I came to a glass display case in the middle of the shop, housing rings, pendants, necklaces, and a variety of other jewelry. My eyes came to rest immediately on a small silver pendant in the shape of a dragon, the details of each scale and whisker stood out among the other pendants it rested beside. I thought of Aki's silver chain, a permanent resident of his neck, and I hoped my cheeks wouldn't flush at the thought of how he always grabbed it to throw it over his shoulder so the pendant wouldn't dangle in my face. As I recalled, the pendant was a simple sphere with some carved patterns, and I imagined the dragon on the chain beside it. The dragon, along with the Phoenix, were both Guardian's namesake, and Aki had a clear affinity for both motifs.
I returned to Kota with a small bag in hand, the dragon pendant inside and in addition a single hoop earring with a small dragon head. He smiled as he held out his hand for me to take once more as he lead us to exit the building. "Did you find something good?" He asked.
"I found two things. I hope he likes them." I said, holding the bag out to show him. "Thank you for taking me here. There is one more spot I'd like to stop on the way home, if that's okay."
There was a small shrine tucked in between high rise buildings on a side street close to the recording studio. The red Tori gate fit perfectly, nearly touching the buildings on either side of it. The shrine was thousands of years old, and it had remained the same, with the city built around it to preserve the grounds. I walked up to the right side of the gate, patted it three times with my palm, and looked over my shoulder to Kota, who leaned against a sidewalk barricade and crossed his arms. "I'll be just a minute."
I ran down the narrow pathway, through a canopy of thick trees until they opened to a clearing. In the middle, a fountain stood proudly with a traditional clay tile roof, and just one bamboo cup for a guest to purify their hands with the running water. I took the cup, filled it in the stream of the fountain, and poured it into one hand, letting it fall into the stone drain. I poured the water into the other hand, and raised it to my lips to sip some into my mouth. I spit it out into the stone drain as well. Last, I tipped the cup upward, letting the remaining water spill down the handle, and set it back into place. To the left of me was a wooden structure with rows of woven silk charms displayed in the front. I scanned them until I found what I was looking for, a red silk charm with a woven symbol on it, the character for 'success'. I dropped some coins into the payment box, and quickly walked up to the little structure that housed the god of the shrine. It resembled a little birdhouse in this shrine, as small as it was, but it was spared no expense in the decoration it wore. I clapped my hands twice to wake up the god, and held the charm between my palms.
"Please bless this charm with the power of success for Aki and for Guardian, and reward their hard work." I said quietly. I bowed deeply to the little house, and turned to run down the pathway to meet Kota.
"Ready to go?" He asked me.
I nodded firmly. "Ready to go. What's our story?"
Kota thought for a moment. "Aki is probably too sharp to believe anything we tell him." He said. "Let's say I needed a woman's advice to impress a girl I'm interested in."
"You don't need my help for that. You're the guitarist of Guardian, all you have to do is take your pick."
He put an arm around my shoulders as we walked, like Aki always did. "We should hang out more often, you and I." He said. "Your compliments are so good for my ego."
We arrived at the apartment, catching Aki off guard as we both walked through the door. He had been seated cross legged on the couch with a guitar on his lap and sheets of music spread out on the other cushions. "Welcome home. I got busy composing, I didn't realize it was getting late." He said, getting up to meet us in the entryway. He gathered me in his arms and quickly squeezed me tightly. "What were you doing?"
Kota pat Aki's arm as he walked past toward the couch, picking up a sheet of music and studying it. "I needed Natsuko's advice. I was trying to decide on an outfit to get this girl's attention."
Aki looked at me to back up Kota's story, but I had already decided on telling my own story. I smiled and shook my head to indicate he was making it up. "Thanks for keeping her safe. Did you figure it all out?"
Kota strolled back to the entryway, indicating he was ready to take his leave. "Your girl is tough, Aki, she doesn't need me to keep her safe. See you tomorrow." He waved as he pulled the door closed behind him.
"Okay, what was that actually about?" Aki laughed, looking to me for an explanation.
I held out the bag. "I asked Kota to help me find a birthday gift for you." I said. Aki's expression softened. "I know you don't like to make a big deal about your birthday, so I want you to have it now."
He took the bag from me, pulling me into a tight embrace. When he released me, he held up the bag, holding it to his chest with both hands in a mock hug. "Are you sure I can have it now? I'll wait for my birthday if you want me to."
I shook my head. "Open it now, I'm excited to see if you like it."
I had tucked the charm from the shrine into the bottom of the bag, resting the pendant and earring atop it, making sure it was the last thing he saw. He pulled the top open, peering inside before reaching in to take each item out one at a time. His expression was excited, but when he took the charm in his hand, his expression changed. I wasn't quite sure what it was that I saw on his face.
He looked up to me, reaching an arm out in front of him to invite me into his embrace. "Natsu, thank you." He said, his voice soft with contentment. "Will you help me with these?"
We sat together on the couch, and he used his palm to hold his hair up at the back of his neck so I could unfasten the chain clasp and add the dragon pendant. I guided it down the chain, reaching over his shoulder until it sat in the centre of his chest, joining the sphere. He held up the earring for me to take it from him, and I smoothed my fingers through his hair at his temple to tuck it behind his ear. He had three earrings, the top most a small silver stud, the middle one a small silver ring that hugged the curve of his ear. I suddenly became nervous as I took both sides of the earring in my fingers, ready to pull the hinge apart to remove it.
"Scream if I hurt you." I told him.
He laughed one syllable. "What do you want me to scream?"
The hinge easily opened, and I carefully guided the earring out of the piercing hole, replacing it with the new one before I lost my nerve. I clicked it closed and pressed my lips to his temple. "Done." I said. "What do you think?"
He closed his hand around both pendants on his chain. "I love them. And I love you. Thank you."
"Aki, I-" I began, but he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me to meet his kiss before I could say the words.
"I know." He said with a smile. "Don't say it."
He got up and walked to his backpack hanging on the coat rack by the front entryway, and tied the charm onto one of the front zipper pulls. I watched as he held it between his fingers for a moment longer as he finished tying, seeming to examine it. I wondered why he would always stop me from telling I loved him. Only one occasion, the very first time we exchanged the words with each other, did he let me speak them. Every other time he would stop me, but that time was the most abrupt. I could recall he would always have an excuse as to why I shouldn't say the words, but that time was simply a request not to.
"Aki?" I heard the kettle beginning to boil, and knew he had retreated to the kitchen to make tea.
He came out from around the corner when I called. "Natsu."
I looked at him hard for a moment, but I saw nothing different about his demeanour. He wasn't dwelling on it as I was, he had simply gone about the rest of his evening. "Why don't you ever let me say it?"
He disappeared around the corner into the kitchen again without a word, and I heard water pouring. Only a moment after, he strode back to sit with me carrying a tray with the teapot and two cups. He set it on the table and sat heavily onto the couch, crossing his legs to sit facing me. He used one finger to beckon me closer to him, and I matched his position, moving closer until our knees touched. He placed his palms atop both of my legs and took a deep breath. "Since we've been together, I've found out I'm still grieving." He began. His voice was flat, but his tone was gentle. "I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want you to think about it every time we go somewhere or do something. And I didn't think it was going to take me so long to work through it." He lifted his gaze to look at me finally. "I know you love me. You don't have to say the words, I can see it in everything you do."
"I want to be able to tell you, though." I said, hoping I wasn't interrupting his train of thought.
He nodded in agreement to my sentiment. I could tell he felt disappointed in himself, almost embarrassed that he had to tell me, but I felt equally embarrassed that he had been carrying such heaviness alone. "I want you to be able to." He said. "Believe me, I want to hear you say it. Hearing you say it somehow makes me feel like my grieving should be finished. But I can't just put that part of my life behind me and forget about it."
Before he could continue, I interjected, speaking firmly and quickly to catch him off guard so he couldn't stop me. "Aki, I love you." I said. "You shouldn't have to just forget about the girl you lost because I love you." I saw his eyes start to shine, and while I had seen the expression on him before, I had not yet seen him cry. "You can grieve, and you can tell me about her if you want to, and I'll give you space if you need it. Whatever you want, I'll support you."
He stretched his legs on either side of me and hooked his hands around the backs of my knees to pull me closer to him, letting my legs rest atop his thighs. His hands around my back felt desperate to embrace me quickly, and his sharp inhale of breath told me he had started to cry as he laid his head on my shoulder. "I won't stop you from saying it anymore."