Day 5: Part VI

The orange sunset whizzed like a dragonfly as my body swayed from side to side. We were following another canal with houses not quite so refined and even a few abandoned with missing doors and piles of decaying wood. I was experiencing a minor episode of vertigo. That is not to say that I was a sickly person, only irresponsible, for I suspected it was brought upon by dehydration. The last time I had a drink was the single bottle of milk Sean had offered me and even then I wouldn’t have claimed it quenched my thirst. I veered off the walking path to the grass, and in my attempted recovery, slammed my foot into the wood of a community garden bed and knelt on the ground with a restrained wail.

“Are you okay?” Sean asked, offering me his arm. I nodded and tried to raise myself upright but fell slightly back. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me upright. “Are you feeling sick?” He said, placing his hand on my forehead; his thumb brushing the gap between my eyes as my hair hugged his fingers.

“No,” I said and swatted his arm away like a fly. “Sorry. You surprised me.”

“I guess I got carried away, huh.” There was a chill in his voice which he clouded with a faint smile that begged no impressions of anguish or regret, but of the understanding one feels scrolling through the internet and coming across some fanart that, while enjoyable, one inherently knows will not be seen again.

“No, it’s fine. Look. I’m fine.” I grabbed his arm with both hands and pressed his hand against my forehead. “See?” He nodded. I lowered his hand to my waist and clung to his wrist. “I think I’m just dehydrated.”

“Alex,” He was covering his face with his free hand. “C-can you stop?”

I looked down and saw that my hand had slithered down to the tips of his fingers. “Oh.” They snapped apart.

A crow fluttered from a temple gate across the street to the power lines that dangled through surrounding trees like laundry from apartment balconies. There were some picnic tables underneath. “Wait over there and I’ll bring you some water,” Sean said, then jogged back up the path to a vending machine. I took a seat. He returned with two bottles, the sides lined with condensation. “Here.”

“Thanks," I said and started chugging.

“Don’t drink so fast." I stopped halfway and took in a gasp. “I heard that’s bad.”

“Really? I didn’t know.”

“This other one’s for you, too.” He slid it across the table and I stuck it in my backpack.

A raked pebble path guided us through the temple grounds; lanterns made of stone, bulletin boards of wooden talisman, and copper statues long since rusted green depicting a man exhibiting obi tied to swords. An orange bridge beaconed at the center of the grounds over a moss-lined pond filled with koi fish. We crossed it together, slowly, our feet like the clunks of a shishi-odoshi.

At the center of the bridge, I leaned across the railing to see the trees crowding the water’s reflection. A carp stripped white and red swam under the bridge. It shot out on the other side, along with another, perfectly white, and they joined together in circles, swapping who was following the other until the white one departed to the other side of the pond while the stripped one stayed in the center, then circled back from where it had come.

“A soaring white carp / in the water nebula / ripples the full moon,” Sean recited beside me with a devoted smile. I hadn’t noticed that he had been watching but by then I had picked up on the more personal thematics of his haikus and was able to finally, after many disappointed responses, give a comment which, I felt, would convey my comprehension and admiration.

“Like an astronaut,” I said, however, after a moment's pause, realized I had accidentally uttered five syllables and, not wanting the chance to pass with lament, continued. “Like an astronaut, / I transverse the garden bridge-- / the maturing sun.”

Sean didn’t utter a word. I sipped some water. The embracing shade had given an illusion of twilight which had then come to fruition. The shrine lost its tender silence as teenagers, couples, and some old folks manifested like the evening insects allured by whatever callings nature instilled to their cores.

“We should start heading back,” Sean said, embarrassed, “it’s getting dark.”

The opposite exit led to the main road and from there we could find our way back to the bus terminal. No buses would run that night. We had to ignore tissue solicitors on our way to the station and waited fifteen minutes for the local line. Adults and teenagers boarded with an expression that suggested a confrontation with the longevity of history and the vastness of the stars that confirmed one’s place is nothing more than a collection of circumstantial meetings and acquaintances that if one is removed from the equation, it is easily balanced if at all dented. An expression that paired too well with the accessory of a sailor uniform or navy blazer enforced by their ramrod cram schools but felt an almost necessity on any man of maturity. It was depressing.

Luckily, neither Sean nor I adorned such an expression.

When we got back to town, it was rather late. Instead of bothering his grandmother for dinner, we walked to a different convenience store that was closer to the pond and brought it back to her living room, returning to the same luxury of the previous night as we put on the television, though muted as though what we truly wanted were the varying colors tinting the room.

We spent the rest of the evening talking. Sean had been reminded of a sleepover we had in the fourth or fifth grade when I stole a horror movie from his sister’s room. We watched the whole thing through and didn’t get scared until we turned the TV off and found it impossible to sleep. We got caught because that following morning his parents got suspicious of our unusual weariness and he confessed. There was also the time when, on the first day of middle school, I’d gotten confused about my schedule and followed him to the wrong classroom. “I just assumed,” I sulked as he giggled, “that I’d be in the same class as you.” Or how once, in a math class we did share, we spent the whole time drawing a stick-figured cartoon on each other’s notebook paper, always a parody of one anime or another, and then I was called to the board to work out a problem to which my answer was so egregious our teacher asked to see what notes I had taken.

And as the night wore on with other recollections of our younger years, neither of us remembered our promise for a second moonwatching. We were so occupied by the present that the promises of the past and the responsibilities of the future had vanished like the stars behind a full moon.