Grayscale

It didn’t take me long to realize that there was something wrong with a boy in my class. He had transferred to my school in the middle of the year (foreigners tend to do that) and was making his way towards the empty desk in front of me, but I made the mistake of looking up to greet him. Our eyes met. My lungs tightened immediately and my fingers froze, pen clattering to the floor. Even then, I didn’t dare look away before I could understand what was happening. The boy’s eye was an uneasy balance between brown and maroon, and it was very, very still. Furthermore, something in that inert eye was searching ceaselessly, and I could sense it shifting through me, hands cutting through the strings in my body, pushing them aside to make space for their restlessness. It was the first time in my life that I wasn’t thinking about something-- what I experienced was an unadulterated feeling.

He looked away just a split second later, but I was already taken by then. I collapsed into my seat breathlessly, palms splayed in my lap. He had drained me, and I felt how utterly useless I was to him, how useless I was against him. It was like everything fell away until the only thing left in my consciousness was my beating heart and the memory of his eye. It was strangely freeing to be reduced so brutally, but I was too young to understand what it meant. I would always be too young. I never thought I’d get addicted to that feeling, the feeling I, to this day, mistakenly call infatuation.

In a world where one eye revealed the personality, and both eyes revealed everything someone had to offer --the person themselves-- eyes were truly the window to the soul. What that meant is that they were the object of intimacy in novels, and the accessory of danger in the real world. For the sake of privacy we were required to cover one eye at all times since birth, yet when he looked at me, I felt like he was staring into both of mine, and the afterthought made me shiver, for it had been years since anyone had. Through his eye, I had experienced a theft without the security of a bank or the intention of a thief. Please cleanse me again, I didn’t think I’d beg him seven years later, please pass through me like I was made for you. But I did, and it was as much my salvation as it would be my imprisonment.

All of us kept our distance. No one spoke about him enough for me to confirm that what happened with me indeed happened with others, but we all seemed to agree that his presence was preturbing, with his content silence and odd eye. I felt bad for him sometimes-- he would eat alone at lunch, and press himself against the wall as the teacher taught. Even when he played basketball --which he was exceptionally good at-- no one gave him high-fives, or slapped his back. It was like he was a separate entity doing ordinary things, and he never quite fit in. I don’t understand why it was me of all people who approached him, but that will never change.

A few months after he joined, I tapped him with my pencil and asked him to help me solve a question in math, for he was exceptionally good at that too. I remember the way his shoulders hitched, how he slowly turned around, confused. I quickly explained my question, avoiding eye contact, fluttering between the paper and his chest instead. When he picked up the pencil, his sweater’s sleeves pulled back to expose the silver rings he wore. I stared at them as he solved for x, and startled when he pushed the paper towards me wordlessly. “Thank you,” I said, and set to work, forcing him to turn back. The moment he did, I let myself examine the word he’d scribbled faintly in the margin, tracing it with my thumb: Why? I looked up, and I knew he was aware of my gaze, but he pretended to not take notice.

The next time I spoke to him was in early January, when the snow nested into the bare branches and spread over the field as evenly as a blanket. I was leaving school, rubbing my palms together and blowing white smoke into the air. As my breath dissipated, I noticed that boy sitting on a bench nearby. He wasn’t wearing pants meant for the snow, and I felt cold just thinking about how wet his behind would be by then. I couldn’t help myself, so I called out to him. Everyone always said that my eye --light brown, gentle, wandering-- reflected such nature without doubt.

“What’re you doing there? It’s snowing, shouldn’t you head home too?” I stopped in front of him, rolling on the balls of my feet. The snow was getting deeper, and my boots were too worn to be able to withstand it. As usual my eye settled somewhere on his collarbone. I could tell that he wasn’t looking at me directly either, and I wondered if he knew the effect he had on me-- on people. An eye reveals, not influences. He was different, somehow. I’d never met anyone like him before.

He shook his head slightly and said, “I like the view.” I was expecting something like, ‘I’m waiting to be picked up’ or ‘a teacher asked me to stay back.’ I was surprised at his response, but deep down it made sense somehow. I was always rushing to some place, absorbed in my work or in my friends, or even in myself. I saw the world as pieces of a puzzle-- I saw the patch of dying bushes on my way out, the windows of the admin building, a bird disappearing behind the roof. But I didn’t remember the view from that bench, for it was too big, too many things put together. So I brushed some snow aside and sat down beside him, leaning back on my arms as I looked for the view he spoke of.

There was nothing profound about it, save for the sparkling white, but that could have looked better without the muddy footprints. It was vast, just sheer space, the school building punctuating its potential. I knew he was seeing something I wasn’t, and no matter how long I looked, I wasn’t able to see it. I could have written it off as one of his many quirks, but I was curious enough to ask, “What do you like about it?”

His head whipped to the side, and I could feel him staring at me with that wide, unnerving eye of his. He clearly hadn’t expected me to ask-- no, he never expected anyone to ask. He caught himself and turned away, hands resting lightly on his thighs. Those metal rings were probably absorbing any remaining heat in his fingers; how was he bearing the cold so well?

“If you squint,” he began, uncertain. His voice was very low, and if he spoke louder I knew it would reverberate the way deep voices through earphones do, “the ground looks like a glacier with all those footprints. A glacier-- it’s always moving, but so slowly that you can’t see the movement until it’s already passed,” I shrugged, and he continued quickly, “It’s not about looking, it’s about absorbing. The world will... open up to you.”

“Open up...”

He nodded, solemn. Is that how he spent all his time in silence? Absorbed in the space around him? The world had opened up to him and swallowed him whole, it seemed.

My friends came out not long after, and I left with them, conscious of my footfalls. I tried not to drag my feet in the snow.

Rekha came home for dinner that night. If I considered myself close to anyone, it would be her. She and I had met all back in middle school. It was on one of the few days that I’d performed poorly in the volleyball practice matches, and no matter how much I tried I wasn’t able to succeed at a jump float serve. I stayed back to take out my frustrations under the pretext of practicing more. She walked in right when I threw the ball at the wall; it rebounded loudly and flew towards her. Instead of dodging or catching it, she had received it with perfect form, elbows straight and wrists together, and I barely had time to react and catch the ball that was then coming towards me.

“You okay? You look really worked up,” she said, raising a brow. I was ashamed to have been caught throwing a tantrum, especially by a stranger. As she approached me, she shoved her bangs out of her face, and I could clearly see her eye-- I straightened up immediately and composed myself, “Had a rough day. Are you going to be on the team? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I just started school here, and yeah, I’ll join volleyball. Are they any good?”

I smiled a little, “Pretty darn good.”

She smiled back, “Mm. I don’t want to sound creepy, but I’ve been watching you practice-- don’t look at me like that, I was standing in the doorway. I can’t believe you didn’t notice,” she chuckled; I wondered how anyone could seem so easygoing and disciplined at the same time, “If you want, I can correct your serve.”

I laughed self consciously, “If you can help me, it’ll be a miracle,” I gave her the ball and she took a position beside me, “Your toss is perfect. The lift and all. I think there’s a minute backswing in your arm. You don’t want to create a spin or anything. Freeze at contact and don’t use your fingers as much. Use your palm more.” I tried to do as she said, but messed up, and the ball smacked the net with a dull thud. She snapped her fingers, “See? Better,” I didn’t see what was better but I nodded along anyway, “Just keep practicing with that in mind. You’ll get it.”

“Thank you...”

She laughed again, “Don’t look so skeptical, come on. You’re making me doubt myself. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Itsuki Ito. You are…?”

“Rekha.”

“Rekha? That is all?”

She smiled, “Yup.”

In a few months I went from calling her my best friend to calling her my soulmate. When she came for dinner after a week of mock-matches in Tokyo, I ushered her in as fast as I could, meaning to tell her more about that boy in my class. She always teased me about how much I preoccupied myself with him, and even told me to ask him out. She wasn’t in my class, and she hardly crossed paths with him, so she didn’t fully comprehend the way I described him. I even insisted that she come see for herself, to which she told me, very nicely, to keep my fetishes to myself.

After eating and having generalized conversations with my parents, I practically dragged her up to my room. She rolled her eyes and said, “Yes. The daily quota of the boy you’re in love with.”

“I’m not. I’m just-- you know. Yesterday he was reading the Picture of Dorian Gray--”

“That’s a classic, I think. Why is that remarkable?”

“Yes, it’s a classic, but no one reads nowadays! Especially classics! Every time I make a reference to any kind of literature, and you know I love doing this, no one responds… Anyway, it’s remarkable because, well, the book’s frivolous, vain, gay and murderous, and he was reading it in English. He knows English that well. Who would have thought?”

“I still don’t get why you’re so energetic about this. He was reading, that’s all...”

I sighed dramatically and sat back. I was well aware that my fascination with that boy had no reason, no logic. It wasn’t because he was intelligent, it wasn’t because he had freckles, it wasn’t because he read great books. It certainly wasn’t because he was strange. He was just… himself. Transparent in a world full of solid color. He fitted across spaces not meant for him, and his eye was in a place above all of us-- a realm of intricacy, of something deep and complex. I could think about him for hours, and never get bored. I hardly spoke to him, and it wasn’t like I was aching to, but I was always drawn towards him. I sat at my desk during lunch instead of clustering with my friends, I lingered around the basketball court, uncontrollably glancing in while I spoke to whoever passed by. I began to wish that he sat diagonally in front of me, so that I could see his profile during class. He was good-looking when his eye didn’t attract the gaze. Firm cheeks, thick brows, plain blond hair parted on the side. I often imagined him breaking into a smile, or shining with excitement. Everywhere I went, I wanted him to be there. I wanted him to know I was there. I wanted him to look at me the way he did on the first day I’d seen him.

I didn’t exactly know what it was about him, but he existed, and that was enough for me, somehow.

As the months went by, people began to notice that he never switched eye-patches. To keep both our eyes healthy, we alternated between them at least every day, but his right eye was always covered. Not only that, but his eye-patch was plain black, whereas the common norm was to have a customized patch with the print of your eye on it. Every day I itched to ask him about it, but asking someone about their covered eye was offensive no matter what the context. So I limited our contact to acknowledgment, and sometimes murmured a goodbye, but that was the extent of it until I found him kneeling on the road one day, crouched over a whimpering animal.

I came up behind him and, startled, he fell on his side. There was a squirrel lying in front of us, it’s tiny body rising and falling rapidly under the force of it’s petrified heart. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen something move so fast, so desperately. A part of this silent city, interrupted. I looked between it and the boy for an explanation.

The boy kept his eye on the squirrel, which was lying on its belly, frozen in place.

“What happened? What were you doing?” I asked, confused.

He sat up, rubbing his elbow, “It’s in pain. I was doing it a favor.”

“Pain--? Oh.” One of its legs was limp. It had a broken bone, “Are you going to--”

“I was trying to kill it.”

I looked at him then, and shivered. I always knew something about him was off, but I would have never imagined that it would project in that form. Suddenly, I didn’t know how to feel about him. His eye appeared to be similar to the squirrel’s-- glassy and of endless depth, like staring into a blackhole. I took a step back in shock, and he used that moment to grab the poor thing and squeeze. I covered my mouth, horrified at the dull thump of the squirrel’s body against the ground. The boy stood over it, expressionless. Repentless.

“I saved it,” he explained, but I only heard the words after I stumbled away, bile rising in my throat like fire I was forced to swallow. They continued to echo in my mind queerly, like I just heard them. Cruelty has no eyes, the government reassured us after the third scientific revolution. Such eyes had been removed from the human genome altogether, and we were born safe for ourselves and for others. But then, half a century later, there was that boy I met. That boy and his cruel eye.

I stopped acknowledging him altogether. As the days I passed, I was shamefully made aware of how one-sided my relationship-- no, my interactions-- with that boy were. I had made up everything between us. I had nodded at him, I had dawdled around him, I had been filled with eagerness to see him. I had initiated the few conversations we ever had. You’re so stupid, I told myself, being so obsessed with someone who doesn’t even look back at you, and who turned out to be a violent person. His eye told you, why didn’t you listen? But there was no end to that argument, for my gut had told me he was just timid, not hurtful. Such a conflict of impression-- was he odd, or was he mad? What kind of eighteen year old could kill something? What went on in his head? I saved it, he had said. Saved it from pain? If benevolence was the nature of his intention, wouldn’t he be horrified by his deed too? Did he go through an immense struggle to do what he did? Why would he even bother? Anyone else would leave the squirrel eventually, knowing they couldn’t heal it, hoping that it’ll survive the way it was meant to as a small animal in this world, in pain or not.

Nothing about his actions made sense, whether I approached them from darkness or light. I wasn’t a creature of his level of complexity, so I resolved to pretend he didn’t exist.

At first, he tried to get me to accept him again. Everytime I walked into class, he’d look directly at me for a change, but I never returned his gaze or even nodded back. It felt insanely childish, and left my head hanging in shame, but then I reminded myself that he felt no shame in his immoral deed, so why should I feel any in romancing the dreary truth of it all? Gone were all the stolen glances, the self-serving lingering. I closed all senses to him, for I was a simple person, and went on with my day, knowing fully well that as I laid in bed and tried to sleep, all I’d think about was how his face looked when he killed that squirrel with his long, vascular hands and their glinting silver rings. I felt inhuman for not being able to recall how the squirrel looked at all, if it had whimpered or frantically struggled before being killed, or if it was dropped on its side or its back. Maybe I should have brought myself to pick it up and bury it in a park, maybe put a flower on its grave. The act of my negligence crushed me further. I could have saved some part of it, but I chose to shove that boy angrily and run. Chose was the wrong word; I was going to punch him, but caught myself in the last moment, and pushed him with my momentum instead. I couldn’t choose a reaction like that. It was just what had to be done. There was nothing else I could do, even with a dead creature lying at my feet.

I told Rekha about it all, and she nodded attentively until I was done. Seeing my distress, I could tell she wanted to comfort me, but I already knew she wouldn’t until she was done reasoning out everything that happened.

“You know, in the old days, people used to shoot their injured horses to save them the immense pain they had to endure. If a human breaks a leg, or loses it, they can still do things. Their use of their hands and brain will continue as usual. They don’t lose out on the world they live in completely. But horses… a horse’s whole life is about running. It needs all four legs to eat, to lie down to sleep, to move. It’s whole life, in a way, stands on its feet. An injured horse, a one that can’t be saved by doctors, will be crippled forever, in every way important to it. Not only that, but it will be in pain till the day it dies. Can you imagine living like that? Some people’s hearts would break, Ituski, but they’d still kill their horses out of the compassion they have. They’ll take on the lifetime of aching guilt in knowing that they killed an innocent being, so that the animal itself won’t have to suffer.”

So that boy decided to make the squirrel’s agony his own, since he’d be able to endure it better? He did something like that out of empathy? Maybe it weighed him down, and it haunted him more than it haunted me?

“We’re the ones who are killing, and then we’re also the ones attaching the label of compassion to it. Objectively, it makes us sound like those delusional people who sacrifice animals for ‘god.’”

Rekha shook her head, “The difference is that we aren’t doing it for god, or for anyone else but the animal itself.”

“Who are we to decide if anyone else gets to live or die?”

She thought for a moment, genuinely, “When you’re the one with the ability to judge, not the horse or the squirrel or the lion, then you have power. That means you’re required to do something with it.”

“So humans are superior beings and hence get to control every other thing that coexists with them? Does that sound okay to you?”

“It doesn’t… but that’s just how it is. That’s what we do. Don’t pretend like you don’t know it.”

I sighed in frustration, “Trust me, I know.”

“Look,” she said, shifting closer to me, “What he did was horrible. It’s just that there are times when horrible things are done for something good.”

“Do you think I should forgive him?”

She raised a brow, “You guys don’t even talk. Does it matter?”

“Matters to me...”

She laughed, pulling my cheek, “You’re like a baby sometimes.”

“Hey, that’s like completely disregarding my opinions--!”

“You’re also very...” I sat up at the change in her tone. She’d suddenly grown serious, eye resting on me heavily. She took at least a minute to think of what she was going to say next, and I stared at her the whole time, waiting.

“You’re… You always think along such… difficult lines. Things which people don’t have the ability to answer. But the actions you take pale in comparison. You almost punched him, then decided to ignore him. Something anyone would have done. You think differently about what happened, but didn’t do anything differently. I don’t know what that makes you. I don’t even think it means anything. But it just occurred to me that you’re like that and… I can’t see it in your eye.”

“Maybe it’s a part of my person, and you need both my eyes to see it in me?”

“Maybe… Whatever it is, it feels odd. Don’t get me wrong, but it feels like you have a lot to say and nothing to do. No one gets anywhere with that.”

I wrung my hands together, slightly offended. He was able to kill something with his bare hands, I wanted to yell at her, tell me: would you be able to? Think, dammit. This is not about me. But I said nothing further. The conversation was beyond me and I shrugged, again, childishly. She put her arm around me, apologized, and tried to cheer me up. I went along with it but on the inside I just truly didn’t understand. She was right about one thing for sure; it’s hard to hold something meant to be put down.

When I woke up, I noticed that the snow had disappeared. I imagined watching the last lump of snow melt away-- there had to be a last, right? Over the course of an hour it would completely become water, and it would, in its reflection, finally reveal the trees’ green buds. I wondered when I’d finally make myself bear witness to something beautiful passing so freely in front of me. Not many things in life are free, but when they are then we don’t give them any value. What Rekha said came to mind again: I didn’t do anything.

By noon, I was putting on my scarf and heading out for some air. I didn’t do that often, but that day I suddenly wanted to walk outside and tell myself, look, this exists. Look beyond yourself sometimes. There’s a whole world here that you’ll miss once you leave for college. It was like I was memorising the streets and forcing myself to remember to miss them. Look at the telephone wires, look at the way they criss-cross there and crows that land on them. See the road and its width, small and compact. The uneven coloring of the slanting roofs. If everything was a solid color, if there were no shadows or no textures, would it be more beautiful or less?

Are these even my thoughts?

They aren’t, they’re his.

He’s here, I realized, and shivered.

When I looked up, there he was, walking in my direction, his eye fixed on me. Some part of me hoped that he would take the next right, and leave me there, but I watched with a heart beating loudly in my ears as he passed by that turn and kept coming towards me. I slowed my pace and put my head down, at a loss to see him so randomly. As decided, I continued to ignore him, but when we reached each other and his beat up sneakers occupied my field of vision, he stopped and said, “Itsuki.”

I shook my head slightly, rejecting him at once. He reached out and held my elbow gently, stopping me too. I couldn’t help but return his gaze. When our eyes connected I felt a burst of goosebumps pull at my arms beneath my jacket almost painfully. Like my body wanted to run away but I was holding it down somehow. Every breath I took after that felt less like a breath and more like inhaling a void, for my head was getting lighter and lighter. I was sure, by the way he was looking at me, that he knew what effect he was having, but it didn’t deter his gaze. His grip on me started to tighten until he was holding me up when I finally collapsed, breathing heavily. I clutched his shoulders as I screwed my eye shut, struggling to gain control of myself again.

He’s so beautiful, I thought through the pain in my head, and nothing makes sense at all.

“Itsuki,” he said again slowly, squeezing both my elbows to keep me upright. His and my world, which had been moving at a slug’s pace, suddenly spun with such speed that we’d been slammed together. I had never been so close to him before, never maintained eye contact with him for so long. I could even smell his cologne; it was faint and of a typical masculine scent, but paired up with him, was more favorable, “Hear me out.”

“You’ve never spoken to me first,” I managed to say. Then: “Why can’t I look at you without feeling like I’m dying?”

He fell silent for a minute and I tightened my hold on him to prompt him, but he didn’t say anything.

I shook my head, “Just who are you, Mikael?”

Mikael exhaled, “I’m just a person...”

“But you...”

I could feel him nod, and I nodded back, unable to do anything else.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry for making you see what I did.”

“It’s not about me,” I spluttered, “You killed--!”

“But I care about y--”

“It’s not about you, either, or what you care about. I don’t know how you were able to do such a thing but the worst part is that you don’t even feel any remorse--”

“Can I show you something?” He asked unexpectedly, almost like he was begging me to forgive him without him apologizing in the first place, as if it had sharply occurred to him that he could make up for it somehow.

I kept my eye diverted, discouraged. He clearly was beyond discerning how guilty he should have been, “What?”

“Can I show you my-- my other eye?”

My eye widened, and even though I was looking at the ground, I couldn’t register what I was seeing. At that moment, if I was standing on cement or even water, I would not have known it, “Why?”

“You’ll understand if you just--” he let go of me with one hand and began to fumble imploringly at his eye-patch, drawn forward by a baseless, almost feral need to show me what he’d kept hidden for his whole life, and I could sense the unforgiving consequence of it, being caught between a romance he was feverish to have, and a bleak landscape he’d be cursed to cross. It was dangerous, and he wasn’t afraid, but I was.

“Stop it,” I said with resolve, grabbing his wrist. I was too late, and in my peripheral I watched as his eye-patch fluttered to the ground. Immediately, I placed my hand right over that eye, which he hadn’t yet opened yet. I could feel his eyelashes tickle my palm as he blinked beneath it, and the smoothness of his skin. A wisp of his blond hair fell over my hand.

“Are you crazy,” I muttered, not really committed to lecturing him anymore, “doing this in public? Let’s go somewhere else and talk this out, not here, not here...”

The only thing between his other eye and I was my hand, and it was surreal to think that I suddenly held that kind of power. If I chose, I could reveal himself to me. I could have access to a person, and I didn’t know what that was like. Everyone around me was only partially present, the rest of them hidden away inside them. What would the world be like if even those parts were unveiled? It randomly occurred to me, as most thoughts do, that we were always coming up with grand schemes to improve the world: free rations for the poor, reservations for the marginalized, laws for protecting the environment, punishment for criminals. We were always running after a thousand ways to solve a thousand problems which stemmed from one thing: the superior race’s selfishness and deceit. Our selfishness and deceit. Maybe all we had to do was open both our eyes, and look at each other. Maybe. But I wouldn’t know.

He looked away, the corner of his mouth turned up in a specific way. It only proved that he knew what I was thinking.

“Don’t ever give me a heart attack like that again,” I mumbled, taking off my shoes.

Mikael was already walking down his hall, and sliding the door to the living room open. His house was a minute away, so we decided to go there. His parents clearly weren’t home, and there was nothing exceptional to see. A standard house, with standard furniture. One family picture hung at the end of the hall, too small to be assessed. I was expecting something, I didn’t know what, but I was definitely expecting something more.

When we both took a seat opposite to each other, he said, “You’re not like everyone else.”

I hadn’t thought he’d jump into such conversation immediately, “Because I speak to you sometimes?”

“Not just that…” he shook his head, “Many people have spoken to me. But no one feels comfortable around me. I think you do.”

I resisted the urge to fumble with the crochet on the table between us, “I am. When I’m not…”

“When you’re not looking in my eye?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to admit it, for there was nothing more offensive than not being able to look at the eye someone entrusted you with. But I hadn’t meant to hurt him, it was the truth that his eye made me feel awful somehow.

I relaxed when he put his hand on the crochet, in order to give me some part of him to look at while we spoke, “When you look in my eye, do you know what you feel?”

“I know how I feel.”

There was a pause, and I imagined him smiling at me, “What you feel is called fear.”

I looked up, lingering on his throat, “Fear?”

“You’re afraid of me. Of my gaze.”

“Fear doesn’t exist anymore, I read about it. Ever since they modified the genome--”

“There’s no science without exceptions. But I guess they don’t teach that in this country.”

“I-- I don’t understand,” I said quietly, “Why would I be afraid of you?”

“Why do you feel obedient around a teacher, and comfortable around your friend? Why do you feel safe around some strangers, and weary around others?”

“The eye…” I mused, “But that would mean that you’re actually dangerous somehow…”

“You Japanese are really innocent. Your primal instincts have just vanished.”

I narrowed my eye, provoked, although not without a sense of irony, “We’re the finest species right? What else could you expect?”

He stood up abruptly, and I could imagine that the conversation wasn’t going in the direction he’d intended for it to go in. He walked over to my side and stood over me eerily, till I was forced to ask him what exactly he was doing. When I did, he bent down and grabbed my jaw.

“What are you--”

He squeezed, “Do you feel afraid?”

My gaze danced across his chest as it often did when I was looking for an answer whilst avoiding his eye, “What--”

He tightened his hold to the point where it was almost painful, but not really. I grabbed his wrist, but didn’t push him away, “Mikael...”

“Do you?”

“N-No...”

“Why?”

“Because I…” I loosened my grip on his wrist so that I could see the web of veins more clearly, “I know you won’t hurt me.”

“How do you know? Is that what my eye tells you?” He sounded desperate again, and all that energy I felt in him when he removed his eye-patch on the street came out again, but at full force, slamming into me with such intensity that I had no idea what to do with it, with him. He was looking to be comforted, I could tell, but was it really my place to be comforting him? Why was he treating me like I was the only one in the world who could do that?

“No… it’s not what your eye tells me. It’s what I feel. Makes no sense, right?” Suddenly, I understood why he was playing rough with me, and smiled, “‘It makes sense precisely because it doesn’t,’ that’s what you’re going to say, am I right?” I tapped his arm and he let go, still standing over me like he was frozen there, “And don’t grab me again, I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry,” he rushed immediately, “I won’t do it again. I was just trying to prove my point.”

I nodded and he sat down again. The fabric over his knee brushed my leg. My jaw pulsed with the memory of his fingers pressing into bone, holding me there. What do we do now? Should I go back home? This was a mistake, wasn’t it? He tells me I’m afraid of him. Is it right to be? He’s not saying anything. I watched him fiddle with his rings nervously, head bowed. He’s bursting with impatience and a need to prove something to me. That’s why he’s so jumpy. Otherwise, he’s just a really quiet boy who doesn’t know what to do with his emotions, who doesn’t have any friends to talk to. Who people run away from at the first glance.

“Can I show you my other eye, please?”

I tugged at my ear, feeling awkward at the request which was meant for someone close to him, like a lover. Not a classmate. But it was inevitable, it was what we were here for. Was I ready to get to know him so intimately? Was I okay with having the privileges of a special person when I wasn’t special to him at all? There was no going back from this. I’d have the entire responsibility of protecting his person with my silence. If I revealed anything about him from that moment onwards, even by accident, then I could put him in harm’s way, and be taken to court. But even that was the stretch; the real question was: was I going to find something that would send me running in the opposite direction? Hell, I had no idea. But we were young, we were curious. It didn’t matter back then, as much as it should have. Back then, I didn’t have my entire life, I only had that moment.

“Yes.”

He reached behind his head to untie the string, and pulled it away gently. He shook his hair out of his face.

His other eye was gray.

“Wow,” I whispered, leaning forward to have a closer look. A cloudy gray, still lighter than his other eye, I was able to see the texture of his iris, and flecks of yellow around the pupil. I looked at him, square in the face, something I hadn’t been able to do before. Somehow the gray eye balanced out the effect his visible one had on me, so I was no longer out of breath by staring at him, but there was a vague dizziness collecting inside my head and my unnerved jitters were ever-present. My whole life I was led to believe that I’d see his person when I’d look into his eyes, but I hardly felt like I saw beyond what I’d already seen. It was nearly the same. The genuine magic was absent, but the props and setup, and even the sense of wonder, was definitely there. As I was able to take in his whole face, including his eyes, I finally saw just how handsome he really was. With his strong, broad facial structure, mismatched eyes settled on a vulnerable expression. There was nothing in particular I stared at, for it was the whole that I ultimately got to see.

He didn’t say a word. I watched his furrowed brows relax into a laugh. His eyes were completely closed as he did, and I blinked, leaning away again, “What?”

“Your face…!”

I scowled, “Shut up. You’re the one who has two different colored eyes.”

“You like them, though,” he fluttered his eyelashes suggestively, and I smiled a little, shocked at his sudden playfulness.

“But I can’t see your person. I can’t make you out at all. You’re just as unintelligible as before.”

He put his chin in his hand, looking at me sideways. His eyes were magnetizing; I didn’t know whether to focus on his gray or his dark one. Needless to say, I didn’t bother being shy, and stared openly.

“You won’t be able to decipher who I am through my eyes, because my eyes themselves are inherently different.”

“Like they could belong to two different people.”

He smiled again, “Yeah, exactly. That’s what makes people so uneasy around me. They just know they can’t categorize me. There’s no tangible reason for that, it’s only a feeling. They don’t get any real impression of me by looking into my eye. If you ask anyone about me, they’d say I am a delinquent, and then they would backtrack, realizing that they never saw me doing anything suspicious. They’d say I have a tendency to isolate myself from society, but then they’d realize that I take part in as many events and competitions as any other student. They’d think that I’m talentless, and then they’d see my certificates, my grades. They’re never able to judge me at a glance. I don’t fit into any of their binaries. I never will. And that’s what makes me so terrifying. You haven’t been able to judge me either, even though you observe me more than anyone ever has. To you, the single act of breaking that squirrel’s neck either makes me a killer or a compassionate person, and you cannot make up your mind about it. Why? Why can’t you choose, if it seems so simple? Tell me.”

“Because… oh,” I realized with a start, “you were both.”

Again, he smiled at me and said, “Exactly. I can be two contradicting things at once. If you ask me if I’m happy when I’m laughing, then I don’t know how to say ‘yes, I am’ because every time a laugh begins its end becomes inevitable too. I am never purely happy, or purely sad. I am both, at the same time. I can laugh and feel miserable as it subsides, I can cry and feel a release-like happiness somewhere. When I was younger, I used to get bullied a lot. In those times I thought of hitting back, or striking them in the face, knowing it was justified. But when I was actually standing in front of them, I didn’t even feel like responding. So tell me, am I a violent person because I had violent thoughts? Or am I not violent at all, because I never did anything? So how are you supposed to judge me? Can anyone?

“My grandmother realized this the moment I opened my eyes, because she’s from the time before the third scientific revolution. She lived in a world where she looked into both the eyes of strangers she passed by on the street. Where there were court proceedings that spanned over entire years, and sometimes decades, because people had different views of the same deed. She always tells me that I’m a threat to the new ways. My ambiguity-- that’s a word from the banned texts, by the way. It means something like inexactness… ambivalence?-- is a residue of the ambiguity of human nature, which the revolution removed from people. She says those scientists we think highly of today actually robbed us of a part of our humanity. Just so that they could have power and money.”

I covered my mouth with my hand, the creeping feeling of unease intensifying at his words, “Your grandma says horrible things! I’m sorry you have to listen to such--”

“No, Itsuki, it’s not a sorry thing. Think about it. Why is the majority of the literature banned, if humans have been writing for centuries? Why do we all know only the same set of events in history if there have been millions? Why do people distance themselves from me without knowing a single thing about me? Clearly they --the scientists and governments-- stole something from an entire species, but somehow they weren’t able to take it from me.”

I frowned, “Why are you telling me all this? Ambiguity? Robbery? Even if whatever you’re saying is true, it is still beyond me.”

“Give it some thought, that’s all.”

“Okay... I will. I have one request, though.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up and let me look.”

It’s easy to look back in life and regret some things, but if being painfully young is a regret, then it is quite hard indeed.

A romantic relationship bloomed in my last year of highschool, and we had quite the time together. I spent my weekends with him, talking and having sex. We went out to different shrines and parks, and ate out together once a month. In the beginning I was reluctant to accept him as my lover (“You can’t go around falling in love with the one person who treats you like you’re real.” “What else am I supposed to do, really….”) but I came around. My friends started blanding in comparison to Mikael’s enigmatic scrutiny of the world. Without me realizing it, he was shaping the way I thought. Having conversations with other people became frustrating, because I was aware of more than them. I often sat at my desk, head in my hands, half-listening to their trivial chatter and aimless complaining. Who cared if the English teacher was balding rapidly, or if the captain of the basketball team was dating a college student? Why was that joke even funny? Was I expected to smile politely anyway?

Small happinesses which had made up my life were slowly crumbling away. I couldn’t even remember why they made me happy anymore. They were all born from my ignorance, my desire to keep my eyes closed. Mikael’s truths were so jarring that I had to capitulate my peace of mind to them. If it weren’t for them, I thought during history class, then everyone would be as three-dimensional as Mikael. They’d see everything clearly. They’d understand how purposeless their lives were, how empty their aspirations were, and strive to improve on that. The only true happiness I was blessed with remained the one I got from him, the one full of knowledge and acceptance of the truth no one spoke about.

“Itsuki...”

“Yes?”

“Can you at least come to the court this saturday? We haven’t played in a while.”

“Sorry,” I muttered into the phone, “I have other plans.”

Silence. Then: “Itsuki, I’m coming over.”

I rolled my eyes, “Chill, Rekha. You have an exam tomorrow, don’t do that. If there’s something bothering you just tell me now.”

“Do you no longer like hanging out with me?”

I frowned, “Don’t be like that. We’ve been inseparable since we met.”

“Then why are you being so distant?”

“I have other friends too--”

“No, you don’t. I mean, you do, but it’s not like you’re going to spend time with them either. You just want to see Mikael.”

“And why is that alarming? He is my boyfriend.”

“I know but… something about him is so off. I know you hate it when I say this, but I don’t think he’s right for you. My mom always says you have to choose your partner very carefully, and that if you pick the wrong one they’ll ruin your life--”

“You don’t know Mikael, or what goes on between us. So I don’t understand how you can judge. There are lots of things which you won’t even be able to comprehend, because there won’t be any distinction of good or bad, or of right or wrong.”

“Hasn’t he said things which don’t sit right with you?”

“I-- Well-- yes--”

“Itsuki.”

“You all just dislike him because of his eye.”

“Yes, that is the point of an eye.”

“Well, I’m saying his eye is misleading, and that he’s a very kind person--”

“His eye is misleading. Think about it. Think about what you said--”

I groaned, frustrated, “That’s not what I meant. Okay, my mom’s calling, gotta go.” I quickly hung up and tossed the phone onto my bed. Everyone hated him because of his eye, but only I knew how sweet he was, how intelligent. I didn’t mind being the only person who could cherish that, because he deserved it.

As the year came to an end, he reluctantly told me that he and his grandmother were relocating back to Sweden. He got into a college near her old age home, and was going to attend it keeping in mind her deteriorating health.

“She wants to go back to our country and live the rest of her days there. She doesn’t have anyone else but me. But don’t worry, Itsuki, your life is just beginning. You’ll meet many wonderful people, so I hope you won’t miss me too much.”

I nearly choked to tears as he held my face in his hands gently, gray eye shining brighter than the other, “There won’t be anyone else like you, ever. I’ll miss you everyday.”

He smiled at me softly, like that was what he was expecting to hear. People are so plain and blind, I wanted to cry, don’t leave me alone in this world. You keep me sane. But eventually that hands that held also became the hands that let go, and my life continued moving forward, inch by inch.

My life was not particularly lacking as a young adult. As my seditious conversations subsided, the ordinary began to fill up their space once again. I went to a good university, got a good job. My enrage at the injustice done to humankind quieted down, soothed over by material success. I didn’t have time to sit around in thought. I did what I had to do, enjoyed the flow of my deep work. The last year of high school, which was supposed to be my beginning as a new person, turned out to be a year of exception, that’s all.

“Is this absolutely necessary right now?” I looked up from my desk only to see a colleague striding up to our boss, a pile of papers bursting from her arms. Her name was Furukawa Yua, from the HR. A pencil she dropped on her way clattered audibly to the floor and rolled my way, stopping my feet. I didn’t spend a lot of time around her, but I had definitely seen her a couple of times, and the only impression I had of her was that she was incredibly confident in the way she carried herself. Her eye was a sparky, dark brown, and though her features were small her hair went all the way down to her mid-back, tied in a fashionably loose braid.

“Well, of course it is...” came the boss’s reply, stunned at her blatant question.

“Alright, tell me what to deprioritize then,” she responded, not unkindly, making a show of pulling out her planner. She reached into her pocket for, supposedly, her pencil, but when she didn’t find it she looked around and saw me pick it up. I got up to offer it to her, and she smiled, thanking me. She had a nice, friendly smile too. When she turned back to our boss she didn’t bother explaining further, and simply waited with patience.

We watched him flail for an answer, and I smiled into my shoulder, seeing how wonderfully she had played him. He never hesitated to load us on with more work than we could deliver on time, and she had addressed that indirectly, in an irrefutable manner. We also watched him finally reduce her workload, and she became our lunch-time talk’s star. Half a year later I told her about that incident (“that’s the first time I saw you”) and she couldn’t even recall it, despite the applause she’d received. “It doesn’t sound as grand as you make it sound, Itsuki,” she laughed as I put her straw in her drink, “I just said what needed to be said.”

I hadn’t dated anyone after high school, and she not only managed to fill that void in me, the one which craved affection and dedication, but she also became an extension of me. When I spoke to her I felt like though I hadn’t seen both her eyes yet, and some parts of her were unknown to me, she could never be a stranger. Furukawa and Rekha had also grown close to the point where their relationship had become independent of me. I remember feeling like the luckiest person in the world, for my best friend and my fiancée were as much by my side as I was by theirs.

What I loved the most about Furukawa was her boldness, and her rejection of romantic ideas. Metaphors and what-ifs never interested her; she would always act on what was in plain sight. I don’t indulge in the complexities of life, she had told me once, when I went on a tangent about what materialism reflects about a person’s character, because I pay attention to what matters to me, even if it’s insignificant. Who cares? I certainly don’t. Needless to say, she always shut me down, not by attempting to refute my arguments but by accepting them nonchalantly. And I adored her for it.

The next day was supposed to be our day. It was supposed to be just me and her, smiling at each other, walking hand in hand, sipping at the cup of love leisurely. I was supposed to revel in my fortune of having such a wonderful, caring, empathetic partner with such strong boundaries, such straightforward devotion. The sounds around me were supposed to cease, and I to be lost in her smile, her twinkling eyes, how her hair was illuminated against the sky. To forget that it’ll never be enough.

The sailor floats ceaselessly on a calm sea, the ball of deep water flattened by virtue of their eye which amounts to nothing in the world, and there they are at peace, but also in turmoil in anticipation of turmoil. There is only so much one can do with peace. People need more. More feeling, more movement, more conflict, more waves. That’s what it means to live, to be pushed around by the waves. And suddenly, I felt them. Not welling up and growing to dangerous heights in their destructive delicacy, not breaking against the shore. I felt them encircling me instead, and the waters moved faster and faster and faster. The calm sea was broken, and there was the spot my humanity has been looking for. There it was, the cauldron of emotion so strong it sucked me into its merciless depths of which I wanted no mercy. There was not much difference being on the brink of that whirlpool, or being inside it. Everything was changing around me, and I was dizzy. I didn’t know what I felt, but I knew I felt, and that was enough. That was all I wanted. That feeling.

“Mikael?”

The black veil draped over the counter was pulled aside by a pale hand weighed in silver rings, and he was before me, ducking his head with a playful smile which said more than he meant to. He was a man now; he was taller, and broader, and more angular. Certainly more handsome, more concrete than I remembered him to be. I kept my eye averted, even though I was overcome with the itching urge to reach out and pull his eyepatch aside, and check if his gray eye still held the color he’d always promised me. I sighed, and my eyes fluttered off their own record, like a bird suddenly left out in the open. Furukawa’s gaze fell like a heavy cage against my wings, and I sighed again, to myself.

“Itsuki,” he said finally, “It’s been a while.”

“I-- yes. Yes, it has been, hasn’t it?” I moved to gather myself, to pack my whirlpool away; I turned to Furukawa, who was looking at me with lively caution, “Yes, this is the Mikael I told you about.”

She smiled politely at the introduction, and shook his hand, “Ah. I’ve heard a lot about you.” The standard dialogue I’d heard my whole life suddenly seemed like mockery, and my mouth filled with ash which I spoke out of in mild puffs, following up with my own standard of, “This is Furukawa, my fiancée.”

No lovely words ever spoken felt so ugly as those did, under his gaze. Yet, he was unmoved. He smiled back, politely, only confirming the nature of that conversation. I wondered what we’d be saying, if we allowed each other to speak. This is the questionable bastard you had a crush on? She’d mutter defiantly. Not a crush, I was in love with him, I’d say back, noticing that I had denied only a part of her words, and then I’d be filled with shame, the kind of emotion that almost polluted my memory of him. And then, the words which she’d never allow me to say, even if she genuinely wanted to know: I still love him, maybe, followed up with I know it’s childish, but it’s the truth. Maybe. What would he say, though?

I looked at him (his chin, precisely) and he just continued to smile as he congratulated us. He reached for my hand, and if it weren’t for my sleeves Mikael would have-- no; Furukawa would have seen the string of goosebumps that went up my arm, and they’d have run into her sense of betrayal, dying there without any further meaning. I had done nothing, said nothing, but the cost of feeling was already making me a poor criminal. Why are you still smiling, I wanted to ask him, just tell me what’s behind your smile already. Can’t you, if you’ve shown me what’s behind your eyepatch, that gray eye I buried inside me somewhere, in a place so perfect it blended in with my own grays? Do you see my pitiful state, are you somehow in this whirlpool with me? Is it my fault that I haven’t noticed you until now? Is it even a fault? Are you even here, where I feel you are? Have you been this whole time? Are you welcome to stay?

Are you welcome to stay? I asked again as he lifted my hand to his face. I didn’t feel connected to it, like my hand was a token which belonged to a time long gone. He examined the ring on my finger, skimming its top to glance at Furukawa. I wondered what the view was from his eye, what he saw. Was she still stuck in a stranger’s smile, or was she frowning decisively, the way she did when she knew something that I had taken too long to realize?

“Our Itsuki is all grown up,” he continued. My Itsuki, I remembered him saying to me all those years ago, as we sat together on my parents’ kitchen-top. The air smelled like a foul mix of flowers and chemicals, for I had cleaned the gas stove and it was still drying. My Itsuki, always so obsessed with cleaning, he had grabbed my waist, pulling me to him boldly, come here--

Furukawa laughed nicely, “Yes, very. It’s such a surprise to have met you here!” She turned to me, dropping the baby of a conversation off on my doorstep, and I sunk within myself, already dreading having to care for it.

“Yeah, as far as I know you were in Sweden--” and you didn’t even text me after that; the last message I ever had from you was ‘I reached, love,’ but even that bitterly occurring thought faded rather quickly, like cocoa in hot milk, and as I beheld his face in the middle of my sentence, it already seemed more altered than before, “--so what brings you back? How’s your grandmother?”

I was a stupid question because of course she was dead. It was written all over his face, the saddened wrinkle at the corner of his mouth where a smile used to start from, the heavy drag in his voice. He was wearing an extra ring on his pinky, presumably too small for him, and thick, old-fashioned. He had lost someone. It was probably her. I still asked, though. I didn’t know what else to say to him, after all these years. I couldn’t even tell if there was anything left to say.

He told us that his grandmother died, and that he decided to relocate to Japan after that.

“Your native country is Sweden?” He smiled lightly at Furukawa, as he did every time she spoke. He was so different, I marvelled, he was no longer the cowering boy in the corner, the quiet during the rain. He was confident now, and courteous; it managed to dim the effect his eye had. He was so average. Like a stranger was expected to be.

“Yes, but there are so many wonderful things I had to leave behind here. I just came back for them.”

Upon being asked, he began to explain how much he’d missed Japanese cuisine, and I stood there, on the stage I had set up for myself, staring up at the bright lights. It was Mikael’s que to reach out for me, hold me to him and whisper in my ear, I missed you. See, I’m back for you. I’ll only leave if you no longer want me. Where was his familiarity, the unprecedented warmth reserved for me? Why did I crave it, when I hadn’t seen him since school? I was an adult, I was engaged. I had moved on from the highschool romance everyone had moved on from. So why was I still standing there on that stage, the dialogues going on and on without me?

“I’d like to catch up with you sometime, Itsuki. It’s been very long. When are you free?”

“I--” I couldn’t recall what I had planned for the weekend. Were Furukawa’s parents coming over? Did I have a deadline due? Did we have to go pick up that puppy from a shelter? I looked at Furukawa, helpless. She chuckled, “My parents are coming on Sunday. You’re free to meet up on Saturday.”

“Saturday,” I confirmed dumbly.

“Works for me. Can I have your number?”

‘Can I have your number?’ Mikael had scrawled in the corner of my notebook, turning back to curl into his seat abruptly. He was being so shy and jumpy, it was cute. I smiled into my palm, scribbling my number down and tearing the corner off. As the teacher turned to write something on the board, I watched his hand tentatively fall beneath his desk, palm up. I placed the chit there with utmost delicacy, and smiled again.

I recited it to him, and he typed it in mechanically. We didn’t exchange any smiles. It occurred to me that he could have just been very considerate of Furukawa, and so was holding back. Maybe he didn’t remember such small details. Or, he didn’t really feel for me anymore-- and that was how it should be. I hung my head, ashamed of looking for a teenager through a teenager’s eyes. Furukawa was giving me a weird, concerned look. I didn’t have the courage to face it.

By the time Saturday came by, the snow had become a hot waste, creeping down the slopes of roofs and roads, and into the drains. The sun danced in and out of the clouds for the first time in days; Furukawa, who sat with a book at the windowsill, glowed and dimmed at its mercy. I was pretending to be asleep, alternating between watching her and thinking of what was to come. My heart, unlike my eyes, rested soundly in its place. The day hadn’t begun, and I was trying my best to pass time before it did.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to see Mikael today?” she asked, removing her glasses. I rolled out from under the covers, not at all surprised that she knew I was awake. She had a keen eye. My head hung off the bed as I looked at her, “Sure. Why?”

“Well, you guys were lovers. And you seemed a little stiff around him. I just don’t want it to be too awkward for you.”

“Oh, we’ll be fine. It’s bound to be a little awkward; I’m seeing someone I knew as a kid.”

“Rekha doesn’t like him,” she said persuasively, as if that was enough reason to move me.

“She never did, because of his eye. But he’s not bad at all.” I felt like a child again, defending him.

“I mean his eye was a bit odd but not as alarming as she told me it was...”

I was supposed to claim my triumph, but I, too, wondered what had happened to his eye. It hadn’t even left an impression on me.

“See? He’s fine,” I said anyway, “He’s totally fine.”

We met in a hotel’s lobby that evening, and I didn’t quite register the chandeliers or the shining buffet like I used to. I rushed straight for a table, eager to get a hold of something in order to keep my hands busy, like a spoon or a menu. To feel appropriate by sitting across from him in a room full of strangers, instead of standing devilishly close to him as I was before I got a move on, our shoulders nearly brushing, collapsing closer to each other. To politely ask him about his work, his life. To order the cheapest dish available and get over with the awkward phase of sitting in a restaurant with no food on the table, staring at each other, wondering. Lost. Drawn. Dangerously persisting at the edge of something unending, staring down into its abyss and thinking: yes, if I don’t go there then no one else ever will, because this place has been made for me.

It’s too noisy, we could go up to a room and talk at length there, I heard Mikael say to me. There it was, that rope of confidentiality which my relationship with him had always made me seek. The source of my shame, my guilt, my surreptitious desire. Somehow, I was lowly proud that my company enabled him to be so bold with me, that a part of him looked at me, that gray eye steadying beneath its cover, and felt like such a thing could be asked of me. That I might say yes. My fluidity, my ability to act on my feelings and renounce the worldly restrictions which meant nothing in the face of life’s transiency. What were the chances that I’d have met him again? Close to none, yet there he was, before me, changed and almost average, hardly with any of his prior brilliance, but it was still him. And I had never let go of him, not really, not for the decade we spent in abstinence from each other, so why would I start then, when he was before me again? Even if he wasn’t like how he used to be? My memory of him was glorious enough that it would wash over his new dullness and give it a similar sheen.

Yes, I said and then thought: yes, if I don’t go there then no one else ever will, because this place has been made for me, by me.

He closed the door behind me just as my phone rang with Furukawa’s number. My own consent to our passion never scared me as much as that tiny coincidence did. My heart filled with alarm, and my smile continued to smile, to smile as it had always. That constancy didn’t escape him, and I allowed him to salvage whatever he could from it. Maybe it was happiness. But behind that closed door, I had nothing. I gave up everything to walk into a room which was empty. I didn’t even have the color of his gray eye. I never got to see it again.

fin.