Alone in Kyoto by Air

The wind was fierce on Alfred's face as he sucked in a large gulp of fresh, heavy air.

The window in his taxi was now rolled down all the way, beckoning him out into the static night. The lanky American slowly perched himself on his knees and clung to the sill as he leaned out, body blasted with a chilled gust as soon as it emerged.

The city lights all around him gave him what he asked for, intoxication of the mind, nothing any amphetamine or spiked lemonade could ever make you feel. The florescent hue of foreign signs, advertising gibberish he could not, and did not care to, understand hit him like a passenger car rolling at the speed of sound, engraving into his electric blue eyes the shallowness of the fast-paced modern lifestyle. Consumer society was his addiction, the largeness of it all, inflating him until he felt as if he would roll out of the cab and splatter onto the liquid street below.

But at the same time, it deflated him to the size of a needle and tossed him into a haystack. The noise, the never-ending bombardment of honks and screeches and tourism chatter, degraded him to nothing, reminded him he was nothing compared to this. All of these people, so close, so ignorant of each other, had wants and hopes and dreams, had families and friends and nights where they sat alone on the verge of unanswered tears. He was nothing; they were nothing, not until someone cared about them, not until someone pulled them out of the commercial and showed them the actual, leaving them dangling out a taxi window dangerously, jittering in an attempt to be alive.

A long time ago someone had shown Alfred the actual, shown him that he was not a chess piece to be moved across the board, that he was not a pointless flyer floating in the air, waiting to hit the ground and be treaded into dust. But this person was too real to exist any longer, they were so alive all the time, they felt what Alfred felt at this moment every time they breathed, so they burnt out and left him alone to figure out what exactly the actual was and why it mattered so much, why he wanted it so bad.

The oxymoronic mix of nothing and everything is what Alfred craved, what kept Alfred always moving, never in a place longer than a year. It's what made him travel the world and run out of money and what brought him here, to Kyoto, hoping that maybe under a discarded tissue or grimy street drain he would find exactly what it was he was looking for. Whatever that might be.

From the front of the taxi a simple Japanese man with a wife and a daughter in school and a father who sometimes forgot who he was, watched his customer dangle precariously with disinterest. They did not train him for this, they did not teach him how to say, 'Idiotic American get back in the car before you die.' in English class, so he did not care, he did not worry. This boy was merely a nothing stuck in the great something of it all, a passing face with no backstory, lost in the flashing lights and assault of turn signals.

On the opposite side of town, a not-so-simple Japanese businessman by the name of Kiku loosened his tie and fell to the bench with an impolite thud. He was alone, hidden from the city lights, protected from the January wind by a small glass bus-stop that let him see everything around.

He hated it, he hated feeling alive. This city attacked his mind, left him fried and up until 3 in the morning wondering what exactly went on inside every other room in the tall hotel he currently inhabited. Kiku wanted to be home, under the endless dull of the white sun and sound consuming cover of cherry blossoms. He wanted to wake up in the morning and see no one around, to feel isolated, to shut off all his senses and accept everything as it was, neither big nor small; not pushing a sales pitch he knew he would not get in a city he knew made him feel dangerous things.

He wanted his lifeless little fiancé to pack his lunch every day, wrap it in the bland white paper, an emotionless attempt at emotion. He wanted to open it at work and take one bite of the plain white rice before tossing it away, because it tasted like nothing in his mouth, a solid rock of reminder to feel nothing. He wanted to ride the subway home and watch the blabbering high school girls pretend they felt something, empty eyes betraying their speak of love and adventure, showing them as the real faceless creatures they were.

All Kiku wanted was to crawl back into his cave of black and never exit again, to be swallowed by the darkness he could not seem to grasp when he sat in the middle of the city, bright lights seeping into his skin and setting his nerves alight.

The raven-haired blob of nothing was aware of the tall boy stalking up to him, but continued to stare straight ahead, watching a cat jump from trash can to trash can, empty belly meowing for attention. He did not speak to strangers; he would not speak to strangers, especially strangers in this city, especially exotic strangers like him.

Alfred stopped underneath the glass shelter, hands burrowed in his pocket, hair ruffled from the windy ride before. He waited for the other to acknowledge him, eyes expectant and questioning, met only with nothing.

"It's hard to get a cab here, isn't it?" He said after a while, watching no change cross Kiku's face, still a dull-eyed puppet on dead marionette strings. Alfred was not deterred however, and positioned himself against the glass wall, relaxing without a care, waiting for his silent word parasite to grow.

Kiku watched 4, 5, 6 cabs roll by before the itching in the back of his throat consumed his mind, forcing his mouth open to cough, sentences bubbling out instead.

"You could just get one here, if you wanted," His perfect English surprised them both, Kiku more by the fact he let himself speak than anything else, Alfred gazing at him in smug joy.

"Oh no, none of these will do," He shook his blonde head, glancing back out at the street, watching two people, each with their own story, each with no value, skitter by, hands connected in an attempt to have something that mattered. Kiku didn't ask why like he was supposed to, merely wiring his mouth shut, falling back into familiar, comforting silence. Alfred was not one to give up without a fight however, so he continued, each word scratching at Kiku's skin like a coin on a fruitless lottery ticket, bringing disappointment and regret.

"I called every cab company in town, just to get one with a sunroof. Do you know how many cab companies there are in this city? I don't, but it was a lot."

Don't answer, don't answer, don't answer, won't answer.

"Why?" Kiku was a failure, he was weak, his mouth was a demon he let possess him, convince him this was better than nothing, than the silence.

Alfred had won, he knew that, so he turned and finally met Kiku's eye with his own, burning like a distant star in the darkness, mouth consumed in a smoky smile. "Because, I need to feel something."

Well, this was simply a statement Kiku could not relate to, and he resisted the urge to guffaw or snigger or smirk at the crude and childish remark, checking his watch instead, blinking in earnest disbelief. The bus was 15 minutes late, something it never was. The bus was dull and gray and a solid rock that was always there, and now at the appearance of this hideous feel-something boy, it was not.

"When was the last time you felt something?" The words did not fit his young voice; full of future and shallowness, and for the first time Kiku wondered.

Had he felt something when proposing to his fiancée? No, it was a business affair.

Had he felt something when he was promoted? No, always business.

Had he felt something when he won the science fair? No, not even when his father told him he was proud, still a void.

Had he felt something on his 8th birthday when his Grandmother died? No, unless you count a cold, wrinkly hand in yours as something.

Had he felt something when he watched the shiny black car pull up in front of him, the strange westerner sliding in the backseat, door open like a new frontier never explored? Maybe, maybe he felt something. Maybe that's why he got in and slammed the door behind him.

They rode in nothing for a while, the word 'something' hanging in the air like a cloud of noxious gas, a fruit fly that would not die, no matter how many times it was swatted. Maybe, it was because something was stronger than nothing, and Alfred's will to feel something was stronger than Kiku's want to retreat into nothing.

All that mattered was when Alfred stopped giving directions to the driver, Kiku felt a hand on his arm, pulling him to stand in a low squat.

"Stop…" He whispered, voice rocked with fear, and it was fitting, because he was scared. Kiku was scared of the never ending something that could exist on the other side. He was scared to stand up and stare the actual straight in the face, scared to be hurt by the something, scared to feel anything other than monotonous nothing that had swallowed him whole, convincing him that this is the way it should, and always will be.

"Shhhh…" Alfred shushed him, opening the sunroof with the click of a button, eyes alive with anticipation. It was his turn to show someone the actual, his turn to pay the world back, to pull someone out of the ignorance that threatened to overtake everything.

With a push by Alfred, Kiku began to slowly stand, soft hair whipped back by the wind grabbing onto the newly protruding object. It stung his eyes, brown disks leaking liquid as he stood up in the cold, something whispering around him and licking the tears off his cheek.

It was something alright.

He had never seen anything like it before, the streets crowded with people who all meant something, the lights all flashing something, the stars all twinkling something, the cars all honking for something, everything was something around him.

But he had been too one dimensional before to see that the nothing wasn't gone, it was still there, shrinking the people to skittering ants, sweeping up garbage into the air, keeping eyelids heavy and self-worth low. But it was the nothing mingling with the something of it all that created a whole new thing, a thing Kiku could have never figured out on his own.

The actual.

Alfred slowly squeezed into the sunroof as well, squeezing them both until the glass cut into their skin and the wind pushed their chests together. Alfred's hair was blown back completely, glasses wavering in the light, absolutely nothing compared to the movement of his eyes, pupils dilating in ecstasy, never focused on one particular thing.

For this one moment, Alfred F. Jones was not the wandering bohemian whose father kicked him out of the house at the age of 17. He was not dirt poor, an idealist with no real ideas or plans for the future. He was not the kid whose best friend Arthur killed himself in the 9th grade, his only message a note that read, 'I've shown you the actual because you deserve it. You're strong, I'm not, and it ate me alive. Be careful. - A'

For this single moment, Honda Kiku was not a genius trapped in the mindset of a perfectionist, living his whole life to please. He was not the person who had attempted suicide 3 times in the past year, receiving nothing other than disappointed looks from his family. He was not the man on depression medication, dulling his senses to nothing, because feeling nothing was better than feeling sadness.

The actual was all around and it kept them alive, it kept them free from sadness and pain and hope and responsibilities, it kept them watching the addictive landscape roll by, not the meter ticking on below. It kept them breathing, bodies electrified, blood rushing to every nerve, starting a fire, a fire that would never stop once it started, that would keep the blood pushing through their veins until the day their heart decided they had had enough of the actual, and that it was time to move onto to something even greater.

The actual was all around, and it had the power to change everything.

Hello.

Aaaahhh I was listening to the Lost in Translation soundtrack when this track came on and I couldn't help but imagine sticking my head out a window and watching time pass to it.

This is actually my first time writing for this couple and my love for it is growing, so hopefully I'll get more used to it and continue to experiment!

Please review, favorite, and have a good day.