メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain

So Deep Is the Night

 

I wished I had eyes that could see through the darkness of the night. Some sort of ability, like an infrared night-vision camera, that would allow me to detect obstacles. It wasn’t the darkness itself that I disliked, but rather the lights that existed within it.

 

Whenever I passed beneath a streetlamp, the light gathered in a circular pool. A shadow would appear at my feet, and although it was undoubtedly an extension of myself, it would suddenly stretch ahead, overtaking the very person to whom it belonged. 

 

I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything of the sort, but I could never grow accustomed to the helplessness of that moment, or the faint anxiety that drifted through my mind. 

 

Stepping into those hazy circles of light, their boundaries indistinct, made me feel like an animal being forced to leap through a flaming hoop at the circus.

 

There was something unsettling about it. Come to think of it, the childhood game of stepping on shadows had been much the same. Your shadow clung to the ground, following you everywhere, only for someone else’s shoe to come down upon it and grind it beneath their foot. 

 

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t prevent you from moving. Yet whenever someone invaded that territory called your shadow, it felt as though some part of you, somewhere beyond your physical body, had been pinned down and left struggling.

 

My childhood friend had been frightened for years by a manga involving shadows. They kept the volumes on the bookshelf with their fore-edges facing outwards so that the spines wouldn’t be visible.

 

I had pointed out that arranging them that way only made them more conspicuous, and that if they were so frightening, it would be easier simply to throw them away.

 

“Hmm. That’s not quite it,” they’d replied, frowning.

 

Even if their reasoning made no logical sense, it was their own way of dealing with things, and they wouldn’t change it simply because someone else objected. Perhaps it was that side of them I found so fascinating, and what had drawn me towards them in the first place.

 

But the distance between what they meant by that’s not quite it and what I understood had never truly closed. The person beside my childhood friend now could probably accept those feelings naturally, without needing an explanation.

 

It would be a lie to say imagining that didn’t hurt. Nevertheless, the relief and happiness I felt were far greater.

 

If I remember correctly, the manga was about cutting shadows apart with scissors. The protagonist had a literal shadow double, which they conveniently sent off to attend school and help with chores around the house. 

 

Eventually, the shadow developed a will of its own, and the relationship between master and servant gradually began to reverse.

 

Perhaps everyone was afraid of their own shadow. A shadow witnessed our every movement. It absorbed all the parts of ourselves that we would never reveal to anyone else: our laziness, jealousy, hatred and other ugly feelings. 

 

Given the opportunity, perhaps it might even betray the person to whom it belonged.

 

That thin layer of darkness, silently imprinted upon the ground or a wall, inspired precisely that sort of fear.

 

That was why I disliked lights in the darkness. I hated the way they contaminated the protective darkness that should have concealed my shadow.

 

At least, that was what I used to think.

 

“Ah…”

 

My shadow was moving against the wall. The bedroom in our new home had a large window, and we had positioned the bed with its head facing towards it. 

 

Naturally, we usually lowered the blinds when we went to sleep. But on nights when the moonlight was particularly clear, we took advantage of the absence of tall buildings nearby and allowed the darkness beyond the glass to become part of our intimacy.

 

Hiiragi wasn’t particularly fond of doing it during the daytime, or with the lights shining brightly. Yet whenever I asked him outright whether he disliked it, his ears would turn red and he would become flustered.

 

“It’s not that…”

 

He would trail off without properly explaining.

 

It resembled my childhood friend’s that’s not quite it, and yet, strangely enough, I didn’t feel shut out by it. Quite the opposite. There was something pleasantly ticklish about his embarrassment, and sometimes I ended up making love to him just as we were.

 

He didn’t seem to mind exposing his naked body to the natural light of the night. Even when the moon shone so brilliantly that I could distinguish every individual strand of Hiiragi’s similarly coloured hair, he would bare his skin without hesitation.

 

Perhaps it wasn’t simply a question of how much could be seen. Or perhaps the unfiltered night reminded him fondly of the mountains where he had spent so many years living.

 

“Mm… ngh… ah…”

 

I pressed myself deeper into Hiiragi and began moving within him.

 

The shadow of my arm, braced beside his pillow, crossed diagonally over his face as his brows drew together. He looked as though he were suffering, but that wasn’t all. As though he were in pain, but that wasn’t quite right either.

 

It was an expression he showed only when we made love, an intricate layering of emotions folded together like the countless layers of pastry. Its nuances changed with every breath.

 

Fear, excitement and impatience passed through his eyes one after another like shooting stars. Yet in every fleeting moment, I could feel with absolute certainty that Hiiragi loved me.

 

The happiness of that made me call his name. The eyelashes framing his green eyes trembled.

 

“Ah… no… ah…!”

 

Shadows stirred across the sheets and blurred against the white wall. It was impossible to distinguish where mine ended and Hiiragi’s began. No matter how tightly we embraced, we could never cross the physical boundaries separating our bodies.

 

And yet our shadows could become so completely one.

 

Their outlines mingled in the darkness, silently indulging in an intimacy entirely their own, without sound or substance.

 

That was how it seemed to me. I couldn’t think of them as mere copies of our lovemaking.

 

“Ah!”

 

We changed positions. Now above me, Hiiragi writhed from the intensity of our union, arching his back. The silhouette projected upon the wall resembled a solitary tree bending beneath the force of a storm.

 

Hiiragi was more uninhibited at night than during the day. No matter how intensely I caressed him, his body responded with such vitality that it seemed clear water was flowing through every part of him. 

 

Perhaps he was somehow photosynthesising beneath the moonlight.

 

Beautiful.

 

That was what I thought.

 

A door that never budged in ordinary life opened with Hiiragi as its key, bringing unfamiliar emotions into my heart. A tightly closed seed began to sprout, blooming into flowers I had never known existed.

 

I reached out my arm. My shadow imitated me. The shadow of my arm effortlessly melted into Hiiragi’s. Sometimes I envied how easily our shadows could merge. At other times, it made me appreciate all over again that it was precisely because we possessed separate bodies that we could touch one another.

 

The texture of his bare skin, the way it gradually grew damp with perspiration, the pulse that answered beneath my fingertips.

 

Every part of Hiiragi, alive and breathing, was unbearably precious to me.

 

“Ah… ah, ahhh… Kazuaki-san…”

 

We were both approaching our limits.

Climbing higher, then falling. Entwined together, we descended towards the deepest place in the night, carrying our united shadows with us.

 

I was no longer afraid of my own shadow.

Because now, it was inseparable from Hiiragi’s. When I was with Hiiragi, the nights were short. It almost seemed impossible that I had once spent so many endless nights writhing in their depths.

 

Our nights were shorter now, yet I sank into a darkness far richer than anything I had known alone. A place beyond the reach of moonlight, utterly black, soft and gentle.

 

“…When I’m with you, the night passes in no time.”

 

“Eh? Am I wearing you out?”

 

“That’s not what I meant.”

 

Our voices were heavy and drawn out, as though they were dragging long shadows behind them.

 

I loved those trivial conversations we shared while struggling against sleep. I even loved the way we could never agree, when we compared our memories the following morning, on exactly where the conversation had ended.

 

I had always thought I disliked ambiguity and uncertainty, and yet now I treasured those hazy, unreliable memories that belonged to no one but the two of us.

 

We exchanged vague, drifting words like bubbles passing between us, sinking ever deeper towards the midnight waiting beyond them. I couldn’t see a thing. But I no longer wished for eyes that could see in the dark.

 

The body I drew towards myself by touch alone was far more real. 

 

When morning came, we would rise to the surface again. I would open my eyes. Hiiragi would be beside me. There would be light beside me. On sunny days, on days of brilliant sunshine, and on rainy days.

 

Always.