My Hiro.
“He used to smile,” I murmured solemnly. “A smile that would shine so brightly, so true and pure that it almost didn’t seem real, a plastic smile plastered on a porcelain doll. Funny because that was exactly what he looked like. A soft, tender little porcelain doll with slanted, almond eyes and creamy, smooth skin. A fleeting memory, more or less, of the boy who held my heart strongly in his skilful fingertips.”
I watched with frightened eyes upon the woman who jotted notes down on small yellow pages that were balanced across her lap, glasses perched precariously on her nose as her chocolate eyes flit over the sheet where the pen left it’s marks. She seemed completely at ease with the words I spoke as if nothing I said could possibly affect her own life in any sort of way. It made it almost feel bittersweet sitting here, spilling my heart out to her in the words that came to my lips. I just stared at her deep honey hair and her peachy-pale skin, searching for any signs that maybe she cared. I found nothing.
“I wish I could explain to you his face,” I said, frantic for words. “I’ve tried so desperately to capture it with paintings, with sketches, even with the words I sew, but none of these things could possibly make him anymore real then he was to me.”
This line seemed to spark her interest as she looked up at me curiously, resting her pen against the sheet of paper. Her lips pulled up over her immaculately white teeth. A reaction I was praying for.
“Please, explain,” she spoke, voice soft like velvet.
“Hiro was one of a kind.” I stated plainly. “An angel in the form of a boy. A boy in the form of an angel. His innocence, his raw passion, his ever persisting awe made him someone to treasure; to hold dear.”
“Sounds like a wonderful boy.”
“You have no idea,” I chuckled nervously, the thought of that smile haunting me.
“And you were in love with him?”
I had been asked that before and I’m sure this wouldn’t be the last time that question got asked but still, it seemed, it hurt more to think of it as that. To think that maybe I had been in love with him, had let his gentle soul steal my heart away and never give it back. It seemed true enough of a statement and I could have believed it if not for something he spoke of once upon a time.
“Can I tell you something I have never told anyone before?” I asked, my stomach flipping. I felt queasy with nausea.
“That’s what I’m here for.” She smiled. “You do not need to hide anything from me.”
“It’s just something I don’t like to think of. Something that never really occurred to me that I should… have to explain myself about. It seems I must.” I folded my hands across my lap, tense. “I wish to tell you of my past, that is, who Hiro really was to me.”
“I’m all ears,” she urged me on, putting the paper and pen on the desk behind her. She then looked at me with honest eyes. Truthful eyes.
“ ‘Daisuki.’ He would say. “Daisuki because I like you. I want you to know that and I want you to understand it.’
“I would blush with the same intensity every time no matter how much of a routine it had become when he spoke those words. In his culture, saying I love you was something they don’t throw around in basic conversation. It is something deep, with meaning, and is only used in the most serious of times. I love you was the greatest step. Ai shiteru… and he would say daisuki. That had always said something to be.
“Don’t get me wrong, of course. I never hated the fact that he could never love me. Due to the circumstances of our situation, it was best he never did. I hated that my existence had become a burden to his, that it made his more bearable and at the same time took an opposite effect. For God cut his time short, it seems, and for that I couldn’t believe there was a God.
“He used to play me the piano, his fingertips nimble across the silky, ivory keys, his eyes half-lidded and mouth slightly parted as if he was not longer there, lost in a world I could never reach. His music spoke of happiness, sadness, and everything in between as if he couldn’t stop it from wrenching my heart out from deep within my chest.
“And he would say, ‘Cody, what did you think?’
“ ‘I loved every second of it,’ I would reply with the same sweet tone. My heart would batter within my chest, fingers shaking rampantly as if I couldn’t hold myself still in his presence. He would just smile at me, the same lovely smile.
“I met him when I was only fourteen years old. He was sixteen and a god among men in my eyes. He wasn’t like normal teenage boys, enjoying their youth with immature flights of fancy. He was a musical prodigy, so they said, and he taught piano classes for children with disabilities or, in my case, psychological problems. He could never get me to touch the piano in the months that I should have been learning theory and notes. Everyday was the same, tortured method.
“I could still remember the smell of that room. A soft scent of freesia and lavender. The walls were creamy like his skin, and the floor was shiny, hardwood. I would often run across it in my white socks before he arrived, trying to find even the slightest speck of dirt but never would I find any. My socks were always white afterwards.
“I never spoke to him in those classes if not for a simple yes or no. I couldn’t even remember saying his name once, at least until the last day of lessons. They finally gave up on my learning for it seemed I was not going to change. To let my guard down and learn. I let him play instead and so it wouldn’t have lasted.
“That last day, though, was one I couldn’t forget. I bowed my head to him, my hands folded in front of me weakly, hair falling in my eyes, blocking my face from his view. I was afraid to see disappointment, betrayal, sadness in his eyes but I never did. He just tilted my head up with his fingertips and there it was. That genuine smile of his. ‘It’s okay, Cody. We can always be friends, right?’
“It’s strange to think how impacting those words had been to me and I’m sure, if it wasn’t for those simple ones, I wouldn’t have become so completely attached to him. By his side at all times really. At school, I would follow him like a dog following his master. I thought he would find me a pest, send me off. Tell me to make my own friends, really. He never did. He just let me follow him.
“After awhile he would start speaking with me. Soon enough I would speak back. It became so that I was letting my guard down without even realizing it and then, without my knowledge, he entered my heart and made himself a nice little residence there. I couldn’t get him out.
“When he graduated I had found myself quite alone and afraid but, after school, he would be there to walk me home no matter the weather. It became so routine, so natural, like breathing. His presence was to me exactly that. He was my air and I soon knew that, without him, I would suffocate. I wanted him with me always and because of his faith in me, I grew.
“My life changed. I was no longer afraid of people, of everything around me. I started making friends, becoming a real person because of his undying refusal that I was meant to be alone and afraid. That I couldn’t be changed by someone or something.
“Times were wonderful when he was there, telling me how wonderful I was. He made me feel so beautiful, so real, so alive. With him by my side I’m sure I could have conquered anything and when he…”
I could feel the tears hitting my lap now, heavy drops that fell like rain which was what it felt like. A lose of sun, a lose of light. Everything I felt right now reminded me so desperately of rain.
I looked up at her with blurry vision, the shapes around her smeared and uncertain. I could barely tell if she was looking at me anymore as I wiped at my eyes feverishly, unwanted sobs slipping through my lips. I felt so weak, so defenceless.
“Cody, breathe.”
I looked up at her again through clearer vision, sniffling. The look on her face reminded me so much of my mother, calm and assertive when she would hold me and tell me things would be alright. I never believed her at the time and that’s how I ended up here, in a psychologist’s office, wishing on someone to save me.
“I’m sure he loved me,” I mumbled. “I’m sure that, even though he said he couldn’t, that he loved me very much and for that my presence had become such a burden to his own. I made him want to live. I was his reason for living as he was my reason for living. He made me want to live. It was so ironic, so bittersweet as I watched those words… those words come out of his mouth.
“And with no fear. No remorse. ‘I’m dying,’ he said. ‘I’m dying and I want you to forget about me.’ He asked me such an impossible question, such an unthinkable task. I remember crying so hard that my eyes were nearly swollen shut, red and sore for days. I didn’t go see him and then when it became to unbearable, I never left his side. He grew weaker everyday I came. His skin grew ghostly pale and sinewy, his blue, almond eyes dim and lifeless.
“I remember crying myself to sleep every night thinking. ‘take me instead! Anyone but Hiro… anyone but my Hiro…’.
“The day came when he passed. I remember it clearly. The cancer took him from my grasps in the cruellest way and he only smiled up at me, the hope still clearly evident in his eyes. He reached out with his fingertips, grasped my face within them and kissed my lips weakly, my own tears splashing against his face.
“The place where he died was another scene that haunted my dreams. A small, comfortable little room with a soft bed and a night table where opened books lay flat just waiting for him to pick them up. To read from wherever he left off. It hurt me greatly when his mother gave me those books. She barely spoke a word of English but presented me with them nonetheless. I couldn’t bring myself to read them.
“I still have those books, you know. They lay on my night table, flat on the page he left them, waiting for his arrival home. I couldn’t close them for fear that I would forget. Not just the pages of the book but the memory of him in itself and so I never did. They always stay the same… always.
“You ask me if I loved him. If ai shiteru was really the words to describe how I felt. I guess maybe it was so but I’m sure I cannot linger. I know I cannot forget him as he has asked me so many a times to do, and for the most part sometimes I wish I could, but I wont. No, I will always remember that smiling face, those happy blue eyes of his, his coarse black hair and pale skin. His oriental features, his velvet voice. His… his everything.”
“He was your hero?” the woman‘s voice cracked as she removed her glasses. I was surprised by the sight I saw. Crystal tears fell from her eyes slowly, her brow furrowed. “I’m… terribly befuddled. Your story was so touching I…”
I smiled, my body completely at ease for the first time in a long time.
“You ask me if he was my hero?” I asked, the smile only widening at the thought. “Yes, he was my Hiro.”
So That was my short story
.~The.Dreamwalker
