Chapter Text
There was a grave in the forest behind his house.
Its wire fencing came just up to the round curve of his calves, sunken and collapsed from the weight of time. The small marker was yellowed with age, its post slanted to the side until the sharp corner of the placard brushed across the ground. The leaves that scattered beneath the grave marker nearly hid its dilapidated form from sight.
He’d never gotten close enough to read the sun-bleached and faded words printed over the surface, instead sitting on the leaf-pillowed forest floor a few feet away, his fingers buried in the moist dirt until it caked his nails in black.
When he’d first discovered the grave, the rusty taste of exertion and freedom sitting thick on his tongue, he’d given a name to the stranger, speaking his thoughts loudly into the empty trees, eager for the company there. The fence had come up to his knees then, his eyes still wide with a youthful excitement as they glimmered in the high sun.
He’d returned home with muddied skin and snagged clothes, his bare arms burning white and red from the harsh scrape of tree bark. His mother had scolded him then in low tones and harsh grips, hissing Keiji, you’re not to go off alone and scrubbing soap across his face until he glowed pink. The suds sat bitter in his mouth, burning his throat raw.
Akaashi didn’t name the grave’s owner anymore. He still slipped from home to speak to the faceless stranger, albeit in tentative whispers, and rip weeds from the ground surrounding him, but he remained unnamed and unfamiliar. Dirt still burrowed beneath his nails, sitting in the cracks of his dry skin like the shadows that loomed over the forest floor.
Sweat beaded at his temple under the sweltering sun, the humid air stifling his breaths until they came in shallow gasps. He clasped his hands over the grass-stained fabric of his jeans, letting his fingers tap a slow rhythm on the joints there.
He tilted his head back, watching the tufts of leaves bristling in the soft breeze, the kiss of its chill a soft relief against his skin. It left him feeling hotter, his skin stickied with sweat until he felt he’d keel over and suffocate. The forest was silent, the scraping of tree branches the only whisper that filled the air.
In the years past there had been cicadas to fill the deafening silence, the drone of their song a dirge to fill the late summer heat, humidity buzzing in the air alongside them. It was quiet then, the memory of their hum residing in the forgotten shells he’d uncovered below piles of leaves.
He rolled one between his fingertips, the thin exoskeleton crinkling lightly against the pads of his index and thumb.
It should have been him in that grave.
The scars that burned his arms were evidence enough, puckered pink skin sitting across him like the tangible shadows of memories that he still didn’t quite understand, still couldn’t quite remember.
It should have been him in that grave, it should have been his carcass rolled between the fingertips of a ten year-old boy, but instead the doctors had gotten his heart beating again, his skin stitched back together.
Instead, he sat in the heat of summer, his fingers strumming across the rough, raised skin.
Akaashi let his gaze slip over the sky, the summer day bleaching it to a dreary blue. His parents had been gone for a few weeks, the house quiet in the still afternoon, and he had slipped out to the grave just before lunch, the sandwich wrapped in plastic sitting heavy against his thigh.
Akaashi lived in a small coastal city in Miyagi, the only grocery store a simple thirty minutes walk from home. The smell of the sea permeated every crack in the old, slanted buildings, but it was intermingled with the woody scent of the forest there, earth and salt stinging his nostrils. The town seemed to lean away from the sea, the buildings pushed away from the constant blow of sea brine and storms, wind spells and bursts of ocean spray weighing against the foundations until they seemed to nearly topple over. Paint peeled off the walls lining the sea, the wood warped with the constant influx of rain. Everything metal was covered in a thick rust.
He’d skinned his knees on the cement stairs that led to his house a few too many times, the call of the forest leading him to stumble down them haphazardly. He’d learned to dodge the crack in the pavement over the years, the rugged, upturned surface catching on his toes until his hands peeled with scrapes and his knees bloomed with bruises like purple ink.
The alleyways and stairs between his house and the next were never frequented, the town bustling instead by the bay; crab-fisherman and shrimp boats dragging cages and nets through the white waves that crashed against the docks. The beaches had never been a safe place to swim, littered with rogue waves and rip currents that dragged swimmers underneath, but the few whale watching vessels that chugged through the heavy waves attracted the majority of the town.
The city had long since been built off an economy of tourism, the few occupations made up of fisherman and teachers. Akaashi made a point of keeping the forest and its lakes to himself, leaving the crowded beach front to the rest of the town.
His parents worked as marine scientists, the sea at the edge of town an open opportunity for constant work. They weren’t often home, but instead went between the next city’s university research center and the ocean, leaving his older brother to support him.
His brother was home just as little as Akaashi’s parents, disappearing to the dilapidated corners of town until he’d reappear, eyes bloodshot and hair matted down with grease.
Akaashi didn’t much mind being home alone, the creaking floorboards of the house ringing in the soft silences between his breaths. It never got cold enough to feel lonely there, and the window to his room opened onto a view of the stray cats that stalked back and forth along the alley, trudging through the puddles that remained there permanently with the constant torrent of afternoon rainstorms.
Akaashi pressed his cheeks onto the knees he held tucked into his chest, letting his eyes fall shut. The sun burned his neck to red and he could smell the pungent scent of sweat clinging to his clothes. The top of his head felt hot from the sunlight that sunk into his dark hair, warming it until it stung to the touch.
“Dad’s coming home,” he whispered into the silence of the forest, heat buzzing over his skin. “Mom, too.”
He let his fingers slip into his pocket, tugging the warmed sandwich out and letting it sit heavily in his palms. It was slightly flattened from his pants, the plastic having embedded itself into the grains until it seemed mold together, sticking as he peeled it away.
He’d never been very good at making sandwiches, could never decide on what was the proper proportions, and a bit of mayonnaise slipped from the bread onto his pinkie, warm and wet like sludge on his skin. The bread stuck to the roof of his mouth when he chewed, grinding to a tasteless mush against his molars until he felt nauseated.
“Nii-chan’s been gone a while, so I had to make dinner last night. I burnt myself.” He pulled a sticky hand off the food he held, surveying the red skin on the edge of his palm. “The stove gets really hot.”
He wiped his hands on the front of his jeans, letting the smearing of white slip across the rough fabric of his pants. He set the bread onto the wrinkled plastic wrap and rested his jaw in his hands.
“It’s gotten kind of boring, but I like the quiet. Nii-chan yells a lot, it’s kind of uncomfortable.”
The grave marker didn’t acknowledge him and he let his eyes rest over it, the tilted rectangle burning into his eyes as the sun glinted off it.
A sharp inhale brought the sting of salty air into his lungs, the humidity clinging to his lungs like a vice. He pushed upward, his knees aching from the effort, and bowed his head slightly. The leaves crinkled below his torn sneakers as he turned away, pushing the thick underbrush from before him.
Akaashi had always been a quiet child, as an infant existing merely in the comforts of eating and sleeping. He’d been raised on his parents’ research boat, the constant company of the ocean sloshing playfully against the ship’s flank until it carved his own personality to resemble the still surface of its rippling water.
He’d fallen overboard once, when he was merely two feet tall and could barely totter on two stiff legs.
But the ocean had embraced him in its gentle, sun-warmed current, submerging him in its heat with the familiarity of family and pushing him nearer the vessel. The heaviness of his sore muscles and awkward, childish limbs had disappeared, wrapped instead in the silken fingertips of salt water.
He’d cried when he was hoisted aboard.
Akaashi didn’t get to swim in the ocean very often, he didn’t like the constant crowds that loomed above him and the walk was a long ways away. His parents didn’t like the risks the waves imposed.
He strummed his finger along the bark of a tree, his fingers catching on the vibrant vine that twined upward as he slipped out of the tree line. There was a small hill that led downward toward his house, the steep decline overgrown with tall grass that hid various snakes. He let his toes curl in his sneakers as he trudged through.
The grass came up to his thighs, the scuffed form of his sneakers disappearing below him. He left his imprint behind him, the long yellow stalks matted down in his trail. His hands itched where the tall blades slipped across them, cutting into the skin.
A cat brushed against his calf when he stepped onto the paved stairs, pushing its weight heavily into him. He stumbled slightly, lowering a hand to scrub at its haggard coat of fur. It felt hot beneath his palms, the thrumming of its heartbeat tangible. It let out a purr and followed after him up the steps, mewling against his shins.
The stray cats didn’t often approach Akaashi, keeping instead to the shadowy patches beneath the bushes, and he found himself inclined to do the same. It was odd then that the cat trailed behind him then, pawing at his heels and weaving between his ankles until he nearly tripped. He reached down and patted it again, his nose tickling with a sneeze.
When he straightened, the door to the house was ajar.
“Keiji?” a woman with hair a similar shade of black to his own slipped her head out of the doorway, her shoulders remaining inside the small house. “Where have you been?”
“Went for a walk,” he lied, his voice, pitched high with youth, calm. He stepped into the house as she swung the door further open.
“Did your brother go with you?” his mother asked, watching as he slipped his muddied sneakers off in favor of a pair of house slippers.
Akaashi shook his head. “Dunno where he is,” he spoke as he headed toward the kitchen, dropping the mashed sandwich and plastic into the trash can. His mother followed him, her mouth twisted upward in a pained smile. She slipped her fingers into his hair, her nails catching on the sweat-matted tangles there.
“You should take a bath,” she said, her voice soft with fondness.
Akaashi’s mother understood his love for the water, had seen when obsession bloomed within him as a babbling, young child on a ship anchored miles from shore. She herself had taught him to swim, and had encouraged him to do what he loved. When his cheeks were still full from youth and fat ringed his small legs, she’d held him in the soft drifting of water and said, “We rely on the water for everything, you know. It’s its own world of unknowns, and the only thing we can’t truly control. You’re lucky you can appreciate it.” She dunked him below the surface then. “Something so free is the root of us all, how wonderful.”
Akaashi didn’t quite understand what she’d meant then, still didn’t, but her soft ramblings to him had embedded into his thoughts. He thought he owed it to her to remember it, to cherish whatever words she tried to reach out to him with. She talked to him a lot more then; her eyes weren’t so tired.
Akaashi stood on his tiptoes to grab a small glass from the cupboard above the sink, watching the stream of water from the faucet fill it gradually. He set it on the porch outside, his mother trailing after him, and let his gaze skim the bushes for the cat.
“Where’s Dad?” he asked.
“Looking for your brother,” she said, pushing him gently toward the hallway. “Wash up for dinner.”
The sun was still high in the sky when he stepped into the bathroom, shining onto the floor through the glass window above the bathtub. He stood on the edge of the bathtub, reaching upward to flip the lock open and shove the frosted glass pane open. He teetered slightly, catching himself on the wall.
It was much too early for his mother to make dinner, the sun still marking hours left in the day, but Akaashi still turned the bath’s nob, watching the water poor rapidly from the faucet. It was cold on his toes when he stepped in, pricking his skin with pins and needles and ebbing away at the heat exhaustion that had sunken into him through reddened, flaking skin.
The house was quiet and he slipped beneath the bath water, watching the surface lap at the porcelain tub’s side, his vision foggy. His eyes stung and he stayed below the surface until his lungs burned with them.
He stayed under a little longer.
He could hear his mother in the next room, the sound of movement foreign in the empty house. It made his fingers twitch unconsciously, the water wrapping around his sore knuckles and pushing his arms to float, weightlessly, above him. His mother walked past the bathroom, the plastic bottoms of her slippers scraping across the hardwood flooring, and Akaashi lifted himself back up, turning to train his eyes on the shut door.
The sudden noise that rang through the house was strange—largely off-putting to Akaashi who had spent the past few weeks alone and in silence. His only prior company had been the white noise of summer bugs chirping and small mewls of the kittens that scampered through trash cans. Now he could hear the soft sigh that pulled from his mother’s lips like deafening laments of woe.
It only made the yearning that sat like a lump in the pit of his stomach grow heavier.
Akaashi preferred the quiet if only because he could pretend he’d never known loud.
Akaashi let himself sit unmoving in the bathtub long past the moment the pads of his fingertips began to prune, only adjusting his position to get away from the white-hot blaze of the sun that shone painfully into his eyes. The water he’d first found cold had warmed to a tepid temperature around him, the humid sea breeze filtering through the window and heating the bathroom mercilessly.
He heard them before the door opened.
The window above the bathtub sat above the cement stairs outside, the noises slipping through the air and resounding clearly in the bathroom. Akaashi had always been a small boy, and in the years before he could reach the windows, when he’d still await his parents’ return eagerly, he’d sit in the bathroom listening for the bustle of their return.
He still liked to listen to the sound of passersby as he lazed in his bathtub on occasion, curiosity urging him to envision other lives than his, but he found himself less enthused for the return of noise to his quietude.
“You’re acting like a monster.”
Akaashi shut his eyes, slipping below the water until the sound of evening crickets chirping had warped into the soft beat of bath water against his cheeks. He was still small enough to sit supinely in the tub, his toes just barely reaching to slip across the smooth end of the bath, but he still pulled his knees to his chest, his spine pressed against the hard wall.
“Do you know how worried we were? Your brother is only ten and you left him here alone.”
Akaashi hummed to himself, the sound in his throat growing louder under the surface of the water. He stuck his nose out, breathing in the air above slowly. A bit of water slipped down his nostril, burning in a trail down the back of his throat.
“Did you take our money to buy drugs?”
Akaashi let his eyes stay squeezed shut, his fingers fiddling together in agitation.
Beneath the water was another world away from here.
Beneath the water he was free.