Enmei rapped his knuckles against her apartment door, bags of groceries slung around his arms. The pattering of footsteps came from within. The door unlocked and swung open.
"Hey, Katsumi. I brought the food . . ."
She came rushing into him, wrapping him a desperate embrace. Enmei's eyes widened slowly. He forced out a laugh. "I'm alright. Really, Katsumi."
Seconds passed. She seemed to have no plans of letting him go.
"Really, It's okay. I'm fine." But of course tears began to sting his eyes again. He set a grocery-hung arm around her shoulders.
"Shut up. No you're not," she said, hugging him tighter.
"Katsumi, please, I–" Enmei felt his voice crack. Damnit. Not here. Not with her here.
"You can cry, Enmei. I don't care. I know I'm not good with words. I don't know how I should comfort you. But . . . I know how hard you fought. I'm here for you, even if no one else is left."
Enmei broke again, choking sobs filling his throat as he stood there in the sharp lights of the condominium hall. Tears dropped down into Katsumi's hair. Enmei held her harder than anyone before in his life. She didn't protest.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't be able to come with you to Heaven. I won't be there for you any more." He choked out another laugh. "You'll start skipping meals again."
"I'm not going to Heaven."
Enmei separated himself, holding her by the shoulders and meeting her eyes. She had started crying too, now, but she looked angry, too. Determined.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. If they won't let you go, then I won't either." She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of the wool coat she often wore to the university. Had she just gotten back herself?
"But Katsumi – you're being offered the opportunity of a lifetime. You'll be putting your genius to full use, you'll be on the frontlines of science itself."
"Don't spout that corporate propaganda at me."
"Even if it's propaganda, they're right."
"Stop, Enmei. I've realized the more I learn about the work of the university's mathematicians and researchers, I find less and less that interests me. Not that there are concepts I still fail to grasp, but I keep thinking that even if I did someday understand it all, I would find that everything interesting has already been discovered. We've perfected the medicinal fields, mapped out the brain, reached the ceiling of effective ways to kill people legally, and made illegal a thousand other technologies that would threaten society. We turn our eyes to the stars, to colonization and terraformation of Mars and Venus. But we're still no closer to understanding reality itself. The meaning of it all.
"That question is what I've always wanted to pursue. I thought that by understanding the fundamental nature of the world, I might somehow come closer to discovering it – what philosophers have argued over for thousands of years. Silly, isn't it?" She smiled faintly. "But I've come to realize we may never get those answers. And besides that basic question, nothing interests me more than . . . well . . . you, Enmei."
She was blushing now, tugging her hair down over her face with her eyes cast to the ground, darting around her feet. Enmei felt his heart flutter dangerously. His face had grown hot as well. In the years since he'd known her, she had never been this emotional with him before.
Enmei tried to search for something to say, but found he couldn't form any words. All this time he had run in her footsteps, he had thought his love had been one-sided. To find out how profound her feelings for him were, how much she valued him, was stunning.
It was an incredible feeling. Elating. But it tore at him all the more.
When he didn't respond, she sucked in a breath and continued. "I know you, Enmei, You've always tried to appear perfect for me, but I've known for years how hard you've fought to keep up that appearance. How hard you've tried to impress me. You really didn't have to try so hard. You were incredible from the beginning. Since before you came up to me after school that day, I've always thought that. Out of everyone I had met up to that point, you were the only one that I really wanted to get to know. I wanted to know why you looked so torn up inside – even when the teachers gave you complements, praised you, singled you out. You still never looked satisfied with yourself. I was so surprised when you confronted me that day. But so happy."
She looked up at him defiantly. She had grown over the years, but he was still half a head taller than her. Now it was Enmei's turn to look away and study the ground.
She continued confident now that her feelings had been heard. "I should have told you years ago, I know. But I couldn't bring myself to. I mean, if you didn't feel the same it would ruin everything. I couldn't bear to lose my only friend like that." She laughed. "But that's a sorry excuse. I knew how you felt about me. I was just too scared, always waiting for you to say something instead. Enmei, look at me. I know you feel defeated. I know you think I'm going to disappear, but I'm telling you I'm not."
They were both silent for a moment, then Enmei said, "Your parents would want you to go to Heaven. They'll be asking questions."
Katsumi stomped her foot in exasperation. "I just confessed my love for you and that's what you say?"
"I-I'm sorry–"
"Besides, I never told them about the program. I haven't spoken with them in months."
Ah, right. Katsumi had her own past, her own familial traumas. Enmei wanted nothing more than her to remain with him in Tokyo, commuting to the university each day while he finished high school. But something in him couldn't accept that. To have an opportunity to go to the moon and decline it . . .
She exhaled, deflating against the doorframe of the apartment. That exchange of feelings had been exhausting, no doubt.
"It's my choice Enmei. You're more important than Heaven. It's as simple as that."
She moved closer to him again, placing her hands on his face. She squished his cheeks.
" . . . why? Stop that."
"No, it's fun."
Enmei laughed. The tears had subsided now. His heart was a mess still, but at least now he felt that murky despair from before seeping away. Katsumi, so socially immature for so long, had worked wonders. So many of his fears – of her fleeing overseas on some research offer, leaving him behind, alone in a city of fifty million – were in a moment washed away. He took her hands away from his face, suddenly feeling the weight of the groceries on his arms.
She smiled, laughed, wiped at her eyes again. "Wanna make me dinner now?"
*****
Enmei had become a decidedly good cook over the last three years. It had begun with boxed lunches, of course, but the cooking options afforded to him in an apartment provided a much wider variety of possibilities. He had taken to studying cooking just like everything else.
The yakisoba was complete in under a half hour, complete with sliced pork, stir fried pepper and carrots, mixed sauce, packaged noodles, and all sprinkled with spring onions.
They ate together at the dining table, Enmei studying the myriad of lights out the floor to ceiling windows that carved away two sides of the combined kitchen, dining, and living room area. He had never learned much of Katsumi's familial situation.
Only that she had gotten out of her parents' eyes as soon as was reasonable. Her apartment was significantly nicer than Enmei's own, her view looking out from the 60th floor of the high rise. Whoever her parents were, they certainly weren't in need of money. She could probably have full meals delivered straight to her door each day if she wanted to.
She guzzled down her noodles with unnecessary haste. For someone who loved food, it seemed strange that she was skipping meals all the time. Enmei washed the dishes quickly, almost breaking several in the process. Shit. I'm exhausted, aren't I? he thought, chuckling.
Katsumi appeared beside him, pushing him away meaningfully. "Interview must have really taken it out of you." She shrugged her coat off onto the floor, then rolled up her sleeves. "I'll finish. You get some sleep."
Enmei gladly relented, feeling like he could collapse then and there. He moved to the couches facing the TV, but Katsumi called after him. "Not . . . not on the couch."
"Oh, okay. You mean–"
"You know where my room is."
Enmei stood dumbly for a moment. "Oh. Are you sure that's okay–"
"Enmei!" Her face was bright red, and she was pointing a finger down the hall to her room.
Enmei obliged. He found her room down the hall, bothering only to take off his socks before crawling eagerly into bed.
He woke sometime in the night to a whispering voice above him.
"Katsumi? Are you there?"
"I'm here, Enmei. You were crying again."
Enmei felt the wetness of his cheeks. He said something unconsciously, still half asleep. "I'm scared. I love you, Katsumi. I don't want you to go to Heaven."
"Stupid. I already said I wasn't."
She pressed her forehead down against his, her long black hair pooling around his head. A tear fell from her eyelid down onto his.
"We'll be alright, Enmei. We don't need to go to Heaven. You'll finish high school, get into university. I'll introduce you to my colleagues, get you the good professors. After that the job offers will come rolling in. We'll get positions at whatever company we choose, climb that dreaded corporate ladder like it's the easiest thing in the world. We can buy a bigger apartment together. Maybe in Roppongi. I've always wanted to live in Roppongi. Wherever we are, we'll be fine, because we'll be together. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. I don't care if the entire world judges me for it. I'll be next to you." She lay down beside him in the darkness, her hand playing with his hair. "Always."
The memory distorted suddenly, the calm joy of that moment violently clouded with a sick, harrowing despair.
War.
Genocide on a planetary scale. The heavens opening up, billions screaming as fire rains from above. Gargantuan metal machines trudging across a barren land. Nuclear missiles crashing into cities, the stink of flesh burning, melting, ripping away from the bone. Shards of sparkling Glass filling the air, shattering bodies, minds, rending apart the sky itself in vast, glowing wounds.
And for what?
" . . . to bring about a new world."
Who had said those words? Who had forced this suffering onto the world?
A voice in Enmei's head, screaming its presence in two, searing words. Over and over and over.
SHE LIED SHE LIED SHE LIED SHE LIED SHE LIED . . .