She's In Scotland
She’s in Scotland.
...
This is okay. She’s in Scotland.
...
I help Rin unbutton her shirt, as I’ve done countless times. She usually stays quiet when we get to this point in the night.
Tonight is different. Rin arches her back, looking over her slender, bare shoulder to look at me. “Hisao. Do you still miss her?”
I sigh, finishing the last of the buttons and revealing her torso. Such strange, yet alluring curves... I like to run my finger over her ribs, soft skin stretched over hard bone. I know she isn’t one to show it, but I think it tickles her... I can guarantee I’ve seen a slight curve of her lip when I explore this area of her body.
I give her bellybutton a light kiss. “Of course. Sometimes I wish she’d never left...”
Rin’s body convulses as a response to my lips. Her voice, however, remains calm and unwavering. “Will this make you happy?”
I ponder her question as I ease her onto my bed. She asks every time, and I always give the same, terrible answer. “Maybe.”
....
They never talk about this side of love. The terrible, evil, animalistic, biological requirement side. I’m not talking about ‘sex.’ It would do my feelings no justice. I’m not talking about ‘love.’ It would legitimize something that has no right to exist in a word as meaningful as ‘love.’
It’s what I feel at the tip of my finger, as I run it through her ribs. Her ruffled, soft hair. I feel it as I’m taking off her uniform after such a long walk to get to this bed. But I also feel it when we wake up hours later, waiting for her to open her big, green eyes. That’s not physiological.
At the same time, I can never seem to answer her question, either. Will this make me happy? No. She had taken that with her on the plane.
...
“Rin.” I call out to her, no longer able to wait for her eyes to open up. Sometimes it feels like I just need to see them.
Her eyes open lazily, hesitant to follow my voice. And yet, they open up for me. “Yes?” she says, more ditzy than usual. It’s rare for her to simply answer a question like that.
“I don’t think I love you.” I say to her, reeling her into my arms at the same time. Her hair smells like a flower garden.
She nuzzles into my embrace, lining up her nose with the scar on my chest. She has it memorized. “That is okay. I don’t understand love.” she says, closing her eyes.
She pauses, opening her eyes and moving her face away from my chest. As she moves away, her breath tickles my bare skin. “I do not remember what I want to say.”
I shift my position, facing upward toward the ceiling. The bottom of my vision can just barely make out the various clothes strewn about the room. “Isn’t that like always?”
She mimics me, looking up at the ceiling from her side of the bed. “You say it a lot. Sometimes too much.”
I take her clue into account. “Oh, I know. ‘If you’re happy, then I’m happy.’ Right?”
“Yes. That.” she says sequentially, as if she was still deciphering my phrase even as she confirmed it. She has a great ability to get lost in words.
I’m a bit taken aback at what she said. Is that ‘love’? Maybe she understands it far better than I do.
I turn to her, letting my face sink halfway into the pillow under me. “I don’t think I understand what love is either.”
She blinks, her neutral facial expression growing slightly happier. “That is good.”
I wipe my eye. “Good? What makes you say that?”
A long breath comes from her chest, hidden under the sheets. “Love would be a definition, and I do not want to define anything. It would confuse me more.” She takes a side-glance at me, wiggling her lost appendage near me. “I do not think you would want tha-”
I pinch her cheek, which she takes rather curtly; it ends her sentence and leaves me with a smile. Rin is only left confused, but not angry as any girl would have been. She always responds to actions carefully and in her own way, not worried about what the ‘right reaction’ would have been.
Rin has always been that way... I remember the first night we spent together. It had been just a few days since Lilly left.
There have been two times in my life; my time with Lilly, and any time before or afterward. When she left, I found a certain nothingness where my heart used to beat.
Eventually, all of my activities were just distractions. I did schoolwork to forget, to believe that I can move on to greater things. I tried to talk with Hanako, the one kindred spirit in Yamaku, the one I was sure felt the same amount of pain when Lilly left; but we fell apart quickly... it seems missing someone is not a way to connect to another.
Rin, in a way, is my greatest distraction. I never truly met her eyes until I had nothing to lose. I was walking home, and there she was, calmly sitting under a tree like a wandering spirit, wondering where else to go. I invited her to dinner, just a few minutes into town. The sunset reminded me of the day I walked into town with Lilly.
We took the bus, at my request. I led her by the empty sleeve where Lilly’s arm would be. It was slowly turning into night when we passed by the restaurant... I remember how beautiful her outfit was that night. Red dress. Bright, blue eyes, a glass swirling in her hand.
I took Rin by the sleeve again, promptly walking past it. Rin followed me wherever I decided to go. I let her sleeve droop back down to her side; I realized I was afraid of nothing. She wouldn’t just leave me for no reason. Not like-
I distinctly remember leading Rin into a hotel that night, my previous thought too much to bear. I couldn’t remember the location even if I tried. I was on auto-pilot.
Rin didn’t say no when I led her to that hotel. She didn’t resist as I unbutton, unhooked, and undid every article of clothing my hands could reach as soon as we were alone. She simply relented, letting me be selfish.
...
It’s still the heaviest night for me, in both mind and body. No one thinks they have it in them, to commit; I also think that’s the greatest sign of guilt, to use that word. “Commit.” Admission of wrongdoing. I committed that night, and the sheer weight of it? Crushing.
That’s what nobody likes to talk about. ‘Love’ denotes nothing but the sweetest, most saccharine thoughts. ‘Lust’ denotes nothing but the most bitter, cruel actions. Where is the in-between, where sour actions are done for the sake of sweet thoughts?
If love is black and white, and the world is a stage, and three is a crowd... We are dancing the grayest of dances, missing our footwork, stumbling... this stage is meant for two, and this song is a duo... and yet, we continue. The grayest dance is still a dance, a stage of two is still a stage, and a song of two can be done with three.
