Once Upon A Time
It was the first time he was coming back here in years. He never thought he would set foot here again. In this city. In this street. In front of this door. The last time he had closed it behind him, he had sworn to himself that he would never come back. Yet here he was, one hand gripping the handle and weighing up the pros and cons of whether to lower it. Because this house wasn’t just any building and the pale imitation of the others forming the residential precinct. It was the only place he could call home. And he didn’t really know what he was doing here today. Why he had bought a train ticket at the last minute. Why he had spend hours sitting on an uncomfortable seat last night to be standing in front of this door.
Sighing and wiping away with an invisible hand any thought that could make him turn and run away from this place, Hinata opened the door and stepped inside. He might have been surprised at the atmosphere that suddenly wrapped him or the odor that covered the walls of his nostrils. But a draft hit him violently like a gust of wind in a storm. The humidity and mold of the time didn’t fill the place. The mixture of floral perfume and chemicals from fresh paint wasn’t floating in the air. After so many years, the house still had that same smell of fresh laundry with a hit of citrus. Hinata smiled when he recognized the subtlety of the fruit. Tangerine.
“Why did you buy tangerines? You don’t even like them!”
“But you do. Moreover, just because I don’t eat them doesn’t mean I hate their fragrance! Besides, I fell in love with a big, sweet and at times sour tangerine. So how can I hate them?”
A snort crossed his sealed lips when the last bits of memory evaporated from his mind and from before his eyes; jumping at the same time at the sound he had just made. How long had it been since he laughed with such innocence? With such fondness? With so much love? How long had it been since he actually laughed?
It had taken him years to start over after that day. Yet a few seconds in this house seemed to cure all his sorrows and heal all the scars left open within him.
Hinata went further into the house. Nothing had moved or changed. He didn’t know why this fact surprised him, because, technically, it was normal for everything to stay as its righteous place if nobody lived here. If no human presence animated this skeleton of concrete, wood and plaster. Still, he couldn’t prevent his heart from squeezing painfully in his chest. He couldn’t help sliding his forefinger along the edge of a piece of furniture to collect a thin layer of dust. Or his eyes to fall on one of the photos placed here and there throughout the house. The picture painted an immeasurable happiness. An unconditional love. A loving home.
With a trembling hand, Hinata took the frame. His already tight throat constricted even more. He gulped past the lump in the middle of it. His eyes glazed from the tears that had created an opaque curtain over them. He gently stroked the cheek of the second man who was frozen on the glossy paper. In the halo of sunlight, the man with ebony hair and midnight blue eyes (which no one could see because he had closed them), so dark that Hinata had always had the sensation of drowning in the depths of the ocean, was smiling like Hinata had never seen him smile. His lips were stretched to his ears and his straight white teeth were visible.
“Why did you develop it? And why did you put it here on display?”
“Because people need to know you can smile!”
“I look stupid!”
“No, you look beautiful!”
The photo pressed against his chest, right on his heart, Hinata found himself on the engawa. Sliding slowly down the beam, his gaze lost in the vastness of the garden, which didn’t look like a wilderness, as if someone came to maintain it regularly, Hinata wondered how things had turned out that way. How the light could have given way to darkness so quickly. How the sun, the cloudless azure sky could have been chased away so that an eternal night settles over his head.
“I came back. You begged me to and I told you I would. But where are you?”
