Forever starts with a day

“What are you looking at?”

Anna’s blurry voice fishes my consciousness out of the aquarium’s depths. Above and below sharks scatter schools of seabreams and scissortail sargeants, while stingrays ebb through the water like flesh handkerchiefs, waved at groupers and eels. It’s an otherworldly beauty – cerulean, majestic, serene – though one that can’t trap my mind.

“Soldierfish,” I whisper as she slots in at my side. Silvery pink blotches with large and soulless eyes – an ugly spot of colour, but a welcome reprieve from all the white and grey. Makes for a pretty picture.

“Say cheese,” Anna beams as she lifts her phone for a selfie. My mouth curls, but my eyes stay sunken as the shutter clicks ten times in ten seconds. Lucky for me, she doesn’t notice – the lights are too dim and her screen is too cracked. “Good, good,” she nods, deleting all but one picture – the one where she’s closest to me. “Okay, let’s go. They’re feeding the penguins now!”

Sliding her arm around mine, Anna harries me down the stairs, and listlessly, I shuffle along. My feet hurt, as do my legs, but you won’t catch me complaining today.

To celebrate her letter of acceptance, we decided to spend Sunday in Tokyo. We swept the capital west to east, starting with Shibuya’s Yoyogi park and its world famous crossing, paying the emperor a visit at his home in Chiyoda, then let her get her fill of weeb from Akibahara’s markets. Now, we’re in Sumida, ticking the skytree off our list, our last entree before the main course – the Disneyland in Maihama, the place where dreams come true. And after the day I had yesterday – I’m dying for wishful thinking.

“Look at them! Anna whisper-shouts, dangling ever so tenuously over the metal railing. My hand hovers above the hood of her jumper, hoping only to hover. “Just look at them! They’re like –”

“Children in tuxedos?” I offer.

“Dapper little babies! God, they’re so cute. You think they’ll let me take one home?”

“Why don’t you change your last name to Popper while you’re at it?”

“If only Jim Carrey would marry me,” Anna sighs. “I’d never be sad again.”

“Were you ever?” I scoff and, suddenly, she turns towards me, a tender smile on her lips. She keeps staring in silence, the penguins’ squawking glee reduced to a faraway giggle. A bittersweet melancholy swells all around her, weighing her words with sorrow.

“I’ll miss you, you know?”

“Please,” I roll my eyes. “You’ll only miss not having to cook or do your own laundry.

“I mean it, you dumbass. Believe it or not, you’re more than just a butler.”

“Yeah, I’m also a live-in nurse and dietician. God knows how many times you would’ve overshot your insulin if I didn’t count your carbs.”

“You alright?” Anna asks, switching nostalgia for concern.

“Yeah,” I croak, then clear my throat. “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

“Dunno. You just seem – off. Are you feeling okay?” she continues, getting on her tiptoes for a good look at my face.

My cheeks blanch as I take a step back, “I’m fine. Just – a little tired, that’s all. Slept a bit funny last night.”

“Are you still good for Disney? We can go home if you –”

“No,” I almost yell, but manage to keep it down to the barest raise in tone. “I’ll – rest when we get to the observation deck. Don’t worry about it.”

Her gaze narrows to a quizzical squint. A short-lived one, thankfully, but not without its depth. Warily, Anna turns back to the penguins, her features relaxing as she watches them splash and swim and applaud as they catch fish midair. But her shoulders and rigid back still carry a hint of tension.

Ten quiet minutes later, we finally leave, paying the gift shop a visit– bought matching t-shirts and a seal plushie – before heading to the lifts. The platform is crammed, and when Anna and I climb in, we’re packed like sardines. My chin rests on her head, her ears glued to my heartbeat, listening for irregularities. My pulse stays level – polygraph training proving useful, for once – but once the doors open and the crowd spills out, I can’t help a yelp.

We’re so – so high up. Skyscrapers and office buildings are nothing but lego bricks and the Tower, all thousand feet of it, looks like a steel popsicle. Looming over the horizon, Mount Fuji feels humongous – and I imagine myself falling, tumbling down its crater for miles and miles on end. And I realise that you can never cure phobias. Rather you just get better at handling your fear – or hiding it, in my case.

Eager, Anna leads us closer to the windows and looking down takes my breath away. One of my hands stays in hers, the other hooks itself to pillars and balustrades. But try as I might to be subtle, keeping myself from shaking, it’s evident that I’m struggling – and my sister isn’t blind.

Without warning, she pulls me to the side, behind a concrete column. “We’re leaving.”

“Why?”

“Because you look like you’re about to throw up. Why didn’t you tell me you were afraid of heights?”

“I’m n-not…”

“You so are. And there’s no shame in admitting it. You’re not doing me any favours by putting on a brave face.”

“But – you wanted to go to the galleria, didn’t you? See the whole panorama.”

“What I wanted was to spend some quality time with my brother,” Anna says, the edge in her voice vanishing with a long sigh. “Six months may sound like a lot on paper, but they’ll pass in the blink of an eye. And when they do – well, that’ll be it for us.”

I frown, flinch, look at her as she looks at the floor. “Why are you making it sound like we’re gonna die?”

“C’mon, Luca, you know better than anyone what I’m on about. You know how it’ll go. We’ll promise we’ll call daily and we’ll keep our word for a while. We’ll talk for hours and hours about our lives and how they’re changing, drifting apart. Soon, daily will be weekly. Weekly will be monthly. And before long, we’ll only see each other once a year – twice, if we’re lucky and our holidays align.

“Dad couldn’t make it work, and we’re his flesh and blood. Do you really think we will fare any better?”

Siblings, as a rule, always try hard to stand out from one another. And sharing a birthday and a body, twins try harder than everyone else.

Anna and I couldn’t be more different if we tried; of the two of us, she’s the better. Prettier, friendlier, smarter. Our gap started out big, but only got bigger the moment she picked up the violin. It was her identity and she found it before I did mine. So, searching for my own, I chose to take after my father, in hopes I’d catch up to her. He was the man we both looked up to, after all.

That ended up going well, but not in the way I expected. Before long, I wasn’t her brother as much as I was her caretaker and our bond deepened in this strange codependence. She relied on me to do all the chores and prepare every meal; whereas I relied on her emotional intelligence to keep myself together. She was my complement in every regard. The fire to my ice, the madness to my method. And so, I thought it perfect that we never saw eye to eye. Until this very moment.

I always thought she didn’t care about father being away. Sure, she’d bawl her eyes out when he left, then once again when he came back, but in-between these two moments, she’d keep a stiff upper lip. But now, I realise that, much like it did with me, his absence ate at her and left a grievous wound.

One that only someone who shares it can ever hope to heal.

“We will,” I say softly. “We are better than him.”

“Right, sure,” Anna shakes her head, forcing a grin on her lips. “Let’s go now. Enjoy ourselves while we still can.”

“We can’t,” I murmur, drawing her closer to me. And though she is reluctant, she doesn’t resist one bit. “Do you really want to live every day like it’s your last? ”

“What choice do we have, Luca? We weren’t gonna last forever anyway. Nothing ever does.”

“Forever starts with a day, Anna.”

I take a deep breath, shutting my eyes, steadying my nerves. When I open them back up, Anna’s gaze seizes mine, her brow furrowed by panic.

“What are you saying?” she asks.

“I’m saying that I’m done. No more clean slates, no more do overs. There always has to be an ending before you begin anew. And I’m tired of ending things. Aren’t you?”

An infinite instant passes before Anna can even say anything, before she can even attempt to process a resolution to a life’s worth of trauma. Her arms fall first, then her head, then her whole body gives way and I catch her in my arms. She hiccoughs, snivels but doesn’t sob, and when she finally has the strength to speak again, she speaks straight into my heart.

“I’m so scared,” she whimpers, “of losing people to time and distance. Did you know how hard I cried last night, thinking I’d lose you too?”

“You won’t lose me, Anna. I’m your brother. Even if I’m not gonna live with you anymore, I’ll always, always be there if you need me.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“You mean it?”

“Were you always this childish? I thought you were meant to be the mature one.”

She chuckles, a broken tinkling, “Please. With how much you’ve spoiled me, I’m surprised I didn’t turn into a brat.”

“Eh… Jury’s still out on that one.”

“Twat,” Anna playfully punches my chest, getting back on her own two feet. Combing her hair with her hand, fixing up her beret and quickly blinking away her welling tears, she’s gone from close to crying to peppy in a second. Live with someone for almost 18 years and they’ll still find a way to astound you.

“So,” I say, “what now?”

“I don’t know, actually. Going to Disneyland feels extremely wrong, but I think that if I go home right now, I’ll end up spending the next six months agonising over every single choice I’ve ever made.”

“Fair, fair. Wanna see if the cafe up here is any good?”

“Find a table and I’ll be right there. Just gotta go to the bathroom real quick”

“Have fun waiting in the queue,” I wave, walking off.

“Will do, will do. Oh and Luca?”

“Yeah?” I make to turn around, only for Anna to pounce at me with a hug from behind.

“I love you,” she says. “Forever and a day.”

And with that, she skips away, leaving me with a bright shade of blush on my face that barely subsides by the time I reach the cafe. The place is pretty sleek, all glass tables and touch screen menus, but also pretty empty – I assume eating and vertigo don’t go very well together. But that only means I won’t have any trouble picking where to sit – the furthest table from the edge, right next to the bar.

But just as I fall in my chair, my phone vibrates – the short buzz of a text – and as soon as I unlock it, Hinata’s chat pops up. She tried calling me last night, probably to ask about how it went with Daisuke, but between ‘confessing’ to her and running away from him – let’s just say I couldn’t answer in a timely manner. Or at all, for that matter.

And now, more than 16 hours later, she’s not reached out to me again. It’s an unknown number, at first, but as soon as I read the message, I have no doubt who sent it to me. After all, he signed his name at the end, as if he was writing a letter.

+81494367686 (16:32): Meet me at 8 in front of the Kikuta Shrine. Don’t be late.  -Oyama