☆ | I, Rhys Kakyoin: Mamoritai | Jotakak

★ MAMORITAI [IV]

"But when he walks in, I am loved;
I am loved."

— Me and My Husband, Mitski

★

What good would I do, speaking like this any further? Do tell me, do tell. Because if I scream into a void, the only thing that holds any answer at all would be the returning echoes of my faltering voice, if oblivion is so kind as to give them back. What good would I do, telling you this story, as fragmented as it feels, as polluted?

Maybe it's my way of self-preservation, my way of being heard. To know that what I will do, and what I've already done, would be stored in memory, kept alive, even in murmuring little heartbeats. Otherwise, without all this nonsense, I would be nothing. I would not even be on the same level as the standards I should be appeasing, because I am set apart from everything else. I would be so much lesser.

I would once have been afraid of it, of this flawed image of myself without wax to fix it. But it's as though the fear in me enters and leaves, enters and leaves, when it feels like it, or when it assumes it's the right time, convenient. So I don't feel afraid, not now. Not yet, that'll come later, when things have become true, or when things have become broken lies.

So I'll keep telling the story. Imagine your hands, tearing me apart nerve by nerve, I don't mind. Having secured a place in the generosity of your thoughts would already be enough, because I am worthy at least of being conjured in your imaginings, of you.

This is how it goes from here, then.

A flight to Singapore in the earliest of hours is due in a few days time. Jotaro Kujo has last texted me a few seconds ago, and my eyes quiver, trying to tear away from those words on the screen. I want to will him here, will him somehow to come back. Not for him, but for me entirely. I want to forget all of this, let him have me, let myself have all of him, where we're all alone. He asks me if I am okay, if I'm feeling fine, such a darling he is.

I'm not sure whether I'd prefer indifference over ire. Mom's words to me each day have reduced to only depthless questions as she passes by, hardly acknowledging me. How was your day, do you have homework, let's have dinner, dear, and make sure you sleep on time. There's also the occasional, anything else you're hiding from me? which she asks with a smile, a guaranteed curve of her lips, an almost amazed lift of her eyebrows, as if she was in admiration. And during these times I'm so stupefied that I don't even open my mouth to speak. Not even Dad speaks to change the subject, glancing at me like I have an answer.

There's also the times she would leave work in a state of rage, where only I am in the house. She would find me reading a book, her fists crushing. She would almost slap it out of my hands.

  What else? Are you having sex with him? she would say. Fifteen years old, Noriaki. Fifteen. Do his parents know?

I'm not, I say, hastily, feeling dirty on my hands all of a sudden, feeling exposed. I'm not.

  She's treating me like a criminal, a sinner beyond her in my own little furtive youngster's world. Now I feel befouled, polluted for the thoughts that had pulled across my mind. I imagine she knows about that fitting room, the invisible smears on the mirror that don't exist, or that night Jotaro had tried to undo my shirt. And at the same time, I'd like to give in. I'd like to make my way to his house, his room, fuck him until all the breath in my lungs runs out if she truly insists upon this version of me, distorted and disgusting and warped to her liking. I can be as loud as she wants, too, trembling like a leaf.