Kairos | voltron

day zero

It was getting cold again - a harsh reminder that winter has come faster than any of us have prepared for. Eighteen years in this town have taught me that the weather patterns are unpredictable at best. Sometimes it stays warm up until November. I remember wearing shorts on Halloween last year. This year, it's halfway through the eleventh month of my eighteenth year and I'm wearing my big coat again.

On the 19th, my SAT results would return to tell me whether I royally fucked up or if I narrowly made it and hit a stroke of luck. My guess was of course on the former. I was never good at math and I guessed on all of them. I bet all my chips on acing the reading and writing portions, but I ran out of time on the writing portion and started guessing on the latter half, even though I could have taken the time to get them right and be assured that I got the points. 

Of course, such an idea wasn't present in my panicked mind that morning at 9 AM. 

I stood on the edge of town, walking in the abyss of the night thinking all these things to myself, knowing that it was dangerous at this hour with myself. I was feeling sorry for myself - I was eighteen and wanted nothing more than to escape the town I grew up in all while fighting the part of me that wanted to stay. I was free to go wherever I wanted, and yet the metaphorical handcuffs of the town were still locked around my wrists.

I hadn't planned on going anywhere specific, but looking back, I believe that I was wrong that night. I knew where I was headed even if I didn't consciously understand. Why on that night, did I in my depressed state, climb the biggest mountain overlooking the town exhausted? Because. I wanted to be dramatic and have some intense self-discovery moment, but all I found was the bright glow of the pale moon and the stars.

Upon closer inspection, I saw him. 

Takashi Shirogane was someone I admired quietly from a distance but never spoke to. We didn't speak in the hallways of school or sit anywhere near each other, nor did we have any classes together. Keith Kogane, my lab partner, had offhandedly mentioned him during a failed experiment. He told me that Shiro would have known what to do. He was the walking embodiment of human perfection. At least - that's what I thought. 

I stood watching from a distance again, forgetting myself in the shadow of the trees. He stood on the edge of the cliff looking down. The LED glow of his iPhone was constant, the low vibration against the cold Earth startling me enough to worry. His shoulders shook, the unmistakable muffled cry filling the silence. 

"Don't do it-"

Shiro turned around to face me, eyes wide as pale moonlight made the unshed tears and streaks on his cheeks glisten. He was alarmed, and my heart ached and beat a thousand times per minute in my chest. I dream of the moment I would finally talk to him a thousand times, and the reality never hit me so hard. In my fantasies, I would approach him cooly at the Roscoe stand on 6th street and pull a series of cheesy but charming pickup lines to make him laugh. 

"Who?"
"I don't know you, not personally," I said, "but... shit. I don't know, things get better." 

He stared at me in bewilderment, and a shot of panic seemed to fill me. He probably couldn't even tell who I was. Maybe I could just stay here and he would never find out who I was. The thought was compelling but this wasn't the time to be a coward. Not now. This was kairos, and I was meant to be there in that moment. 

"You're really bad at this," Shiro said, "making people feel better." 

"Sorry," I mumbled, "this wasn't how I planned on this going." 

"Planned on what?" 

"Nevermind. Why are you here?" 

Shiro regarded me with a sigh. I watched him sit on the ground, reaching for his phone before letting it fall back onto the ground with a soft thud. My eyes never left his as I emerged from the treeline, gathering the tiniest bits of my courage. 

"Isn't it obvious?" 

"You're Takashi Shirogane, why are you here? Not what were you planning. What happened?" 

"Shit sucks," Shiro replied simply. 

I sat beside him, willed forward by some otherworldly force. In the morning none of this would matter. He'd go back to being Shiro, the popular boy with an award-winning smile who was going to go places and be someone, and I would be me, the silent observer, understanding but never speaking, watching but never being apart. 

We were two galaxies on the verge of collision.  Sitting beside each other, we're someone different than before. It was in a single, fleeting moment, Kairos, that it changed. Though tomorrow we'd go back to being the same people, our galaxies were different, and for the first time in our lifetime, no longer separate.

"Why are you here?" Shiro asked. 

His question managed to take me off guard, and I take the chance to look at him. In the light, I felt like I was seeing another side of him, a Shiro only known to me. His golden boy image at the bottom of the cliff, his heart in his stomach, he wasn't who I knew him for.

"I took the SAT two weeks ago," I said, taking a deep breath, "I bet all my chips on acing the reading and writing portion, but I ran out of time on the writing portion and just started guessing. Your turn." 

A small grin came across Shiro's face. I watched as he spun his phone between his fingers staring at the sleeping town beneath us. 

"I'm torn between making my parents proud and making myself happy." 

"Make yourself happy," I replied without thinking, turning my body to face him, "the way I see it, if you do this thing that'll make your parents proud, you won't find time for your own happiness. Make yourself happy and let your parents see it."

"What if they don't like it?" 

"If they love you, they'll be proud to see you happy. They'll accept it eventually."

The smile grew wider, and Shiro stood up. I regarded him carefully. He wore a plain grey t-shirt and black jeans, looking plain as ever. He picked up his phone sliding it into his pocket and sliding his jacket back over his shoulders. It was the expensive black peacoat from Burberry that cost more than my entire wardrobe. I liked his jean jacket more than though, the one with all the patches and buttons that his girlfriend told him not to wear anymore. 

"What's your name?" 

"Joanna. But all my friends call me Jo." 

"Thank you, Jo. I'm not saying you saved my life or anything, but I'm saying that I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come." 

I didn't know it at the time, but our galaxies collided into one that night, our stars moving past each other in absolute harmony. All the months I daydreaming about the moment Shiro would notice me, and that was how it happened. On the edge of a cliff overlooking the city in tears and telling each other that we were both on the verge of collapse. But on that night, we leaned against each other, and we didn't collapse. 

We collided.