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It's your last spring day in Miyagi and you miss the perfect shot of the swans.
Everything was perfect: the sky reflected on the pond, the swans’ slender necks interlocked in a lovers’ knot, your breathing so quiet so as not to disturb the scene.
Of course, it has to be ruined by a pair of heavy feet taking up the whole frame in a blur of black and purple. You are about to call after the culprit, but all you see is his receding back as he jogs away. With every step, grass blades stir and butterflies flutter away and birds take to flight until he becomes a mere blot in the distance.
At noon, you'll board the bullet train to Tokyo and hurtle to your new life of studying zoology at uni. You think about how you woke up today hoping to replace the last photo on your camera, one that was taken months before graduation, of your grandmother on the hospital bed; her hair was splayed on the pillow like a flock of egrets on the rice paddies of your childhood. You think about swans that mate for life, and how there is no one else left.
Heaving a sigh, you pack your camera, casting one last look at the swans, and walk toward home to finish packing.
But first—you exit the park and round the corner to your local convenience store.
He stands by the beverage aisle, bathed in the light spilling from the open fridge door. A bead of sweat clings to his forehead, evidence of his physical exertion and more importantly, proof of his offense not even twenty minutes ago.
In a few strides you are right beside him, eyeing an iced tea. “The swans on the pond were beautiful, right?”
Cradling an energy drink in his hand, he turns to you, face impassive. When he speaks, his voice is as deep as it is inscrutable. “I didn't see.”
“Because you were too focused on jogging, right?”
“Aa.” A faint knot appears between his brows. He inclines his head, considering you.
“And I lost my perfect shot.”
His eyes dart to the bag slung on your shoulder. “Shot?”
You almost laugh despite the absurdity of it. What does he think I’m keeping in there?
“As in, photo,” you clarify.
“Oh.” He closes the fridge door, nodding. “But the swans return every year.”
The swans return every year, echoes your mind, and you scoff at such an obvious remark. They do return, you know that, but nothing is ever as simple.
For a lack of courteous response, you grab the bottle of iced tea and turn on your heels, heading first to the counter without another word to this boy.
Never mind that he actually looks nigglingly familiar.
Packing goes by in a flash and not before long, you find yourself at Sendai Station, queueing for a self-heating ekiben, which has become quite the craze. This one contains the usual Miyagi delicacies: charcoal-grilled beef tongue over barley rice, pickled vegetables, and a side of savory oxtail soup. Vaguely, you wonder when you will taste this again. Or if there is anywhere in Tokyo which can conjure home to you.
After obtaining the ekiben, you board the train. Unfortunately when buying tickets, the window seats had already been taken. You have no choice but to grudgingly acquiesce to the aisle seat. You settle into it now, sinking into the cushions as your heart sinks further in your chest. You can only look longingly out the window, a whole seat away.
Since you got up at dawn to catch the swans, you might as well catch up on a nap on your one-hour trip, then. No use despairing over having an aisle seat.
As your eyelids flutter close, though, a shadow falls on you.
“Excuse me,” drifts a deep voice from your right.
Your eyes shoot wide open. Your spine stiffens, and it takes what little energy you have to crane your neck up his impressive height. You can't decide what color his hair is.
“Hello again,” you say, carefully snipping away at any disdain from those words.
He lowers his head in a small bow, and waits for you to move your legs out of the way, because of course, the window seat is his.
You drag in a long breath, reminding yourself that you will be a college girl soon, and your grandmother taught you manners, and that it is not befitting for a future ornithologist to be of a terrible disposition. “Going to uni, too?” you ask, perhaps as a do-over or a way to forget about the whole not-getting-the-window-seat issue.
“No. Pro volleyball.”
With that, the people across the aisle whip their heads at the two of you. Specifically, at him. Weirdly, their eyes are as wide as saucers. When they catch you staring back at them, they huddle together, whispering.
“You’re an athlete, then.” That’s why I thought he was so familiar.
“Aa.”
And this is where he should brag about his profession, explaining the ins and outs of this alien world to you, breaking down jargon and the rules of the game. The ongoing muted conversation of the people in the aisle across from you—as they steal furtive glances at the boy every now and then—indicates that he must be quite popular, a sure testament to his skills.
Yet he leaves it at that. A monosyllabic affirmation.
The unfortunate thing is, you are not much for small talk either, so you try to grasp at straws. Except, what do you know about volleyball? If only you can interest him in bird talk…But a boy who only looks straight ahead so as to completely miss the swans cannot possibly hold any interest toward birds, can he?
You shrug, and take out your sketchbook deciding to draw the swans from this morning from memory instead. This effectively snuffs out the conversation, which the boy does not seem to mind. In fact, he turns his head to the window, eyes trained outside as the bullet train pulls away from Sendai Station.
In fact, he keeps his eyes on the scenery most of the time.
And in the natural light filtering in through the window, you are quite certain now that his hair is a curious mix of olive and brown, like the feathers of a bush warbler.
You peel your gaze from him and return to the mostly blank sketchbook page. Then, you draw the swans to life, a perfect shot of their necks interlocking in the early morning quiet.
The boy, as still as a pond, is staring at the drawing.
You shut the sketchbook and stuff it back in your bag.
It's time for the ekiben.
A lot of the passengers spill onto the Tokyo Station platform. You wade through the crush of bodies in a synchronous shuffling of feet with the rest of them. Someone accidentally steps on somebody’s foot, momentarily stalling the exit, and as you give the man space as he issues out apologies, your back touches a solid wall of muscle. Behind you, the boy stands taller than everybody else.
“Sorry,” you tell him.
“Aa.” He nods, prompting you to move forward.
Soon, you reach the exit, and you clutch the handle of your suitcase as you bend over trying to catch your breath. Suddenly, it hits you that you are alone in this vast city, with life as you've known miles and miles behind you over mountains and river bends and towns. You blink at the sheer effort of pushing back the tide hammering on your chest, and you desperately try to find an anchor in the sea of people around you.
But the boy's nowhere to be found; he is probably on his way to pro volleyball training, wherever that is. That boy, whoever he is. You don't know. You didn't get his name. You didn't quite forgive him over the swans yet.
But at least he's from home.
Your eyes land on a sparrow hopping about the empty corner of the train station floor before it flies to one of the many signs indicating direction, and perches atop an arrow pointing to the escalator. You silently thank the sparrow and pull your suitcase behind you.
Just like the birds, you soon settle into a structured, predictable routine: You wake up at dawn to take walks in the park with your camera, attend classes later in the day, and spend hours at the university library in the evening. On the weekends, you indulge sleeping in, but head to a library outside campus in the afternoons to sketch birds and agonize over homework for the following week.
It is on a sunny June day that you are hunched over your sketchbook by the large window, the library as quiet as it is loud in the turbulence in your head that someone folds himself on the seat beside you—even though this spot is usually empty on account of how harsh the sunlight can be these days.
(You are used to the sunlight, though, and think back to that time in high school: your math teacher was breaking down a very crucial formula to an impossible equation when you spotted a rare paradise flycatcher landing on a tree branch outside the classroom.
“Excuse me, sir,” you had said, already sneakily taking out the binoculars from your bag and stuffing it in your blazer, “may I use the toilet?”
Your math teacher waved his hand, giving you permission.
When he announced a pop quiz the next day, you barely scraped by, but it was fine: you got to observe the flycatcher uninterrupted despite the anxiety of missing the rest of math class and the sun hurling its rays at you as you stood a ways away from the tree, melting in your out-of-season blazer.)
A movement, a page being turned, and a flash of olive-brown hair like the feathers of a bush warbler, and you almost startle. You bar the shock from leaving your lips, in consideration of the other library patrons.
Instead, you pitch your voice in a whisper, “Hello again.”
He casts a sidelong glance at you, and nods.
Curiously, he is going through an old magazine. Judging by the fonts, the color saturation of the graphics, and the faces of the page, this must be an American magazine dating back to the late 1990s to early 2000s. The boy, though, does not appear to be interested in any of the articles. He instead locates a very specific section—the adverts—and stays there, totally absorbed. You note the Nintendo Gameboy Color, the then new Nokia phone model, and an mp3 player attached to a pair of wired earphones.
The boy’s face is as blank as the summer sky, but there's something about the set of his shoulders, slightly hunched at odds with his typical ramrod straight posture, that unspools something in your chest.
Just like you, he must miss home, too.
Whatever that is to him.
You give him his private moment of reminiscence or longing or some unnamed thing and go back to your drawing: that of a black kite, soaring over a river. You have seen some of them back in Miyagi, and are comforted to have seen them in your early days of uni. Reading about them, you learned that although they prefer open spaces near water, they can adapt well to both city and town, as long as food is available. As birds of prey, black kites occasionally feast on carrion. This may seem disgusting to some—even outright ghastly behavior—but how else are they to nurture themselves?
You think about all the folders on your hard drive, full to bursting with memories of people you weren't able to keep, who flew to their elsewheres whether it be in another country or literally crossing over from life to death. Without you, a girl of carrion, who will be the keeper of their memory? How will you soothe yourself?
Blinking tears out of your eyes at the sudden wave crashing on the back of your throat, you snap the sketchbook shut.
Time to do homework.
You take out your textbook, workbook, and notepad, and begin to work on anatomy.
The boy stills beside you.
“You…switched to using your left hand,” he says, breathy and low.
“Aa,” you say, a sort of a joke on his signature monosyllabic response. And you wish you said something else instead.
Because in the harsh June light, his olive eyes are ablaze with a nameless flame you don't quite recognize. His eyebrows are drawn up, his lips slightly parted. “You can write with your left hand,” he says, earning a head turn. He bows in apology to the library patron.
You clear your throat, certain another head has turned your way, and nod. Leaning to the boy, you tell him, in the shell of his ear, “I taught myself as a child.”
“Why?” And the breath of his whisper tickles your collarbone.
“Birds can't fly with just one wing, right?”
You wait for something, but he draws away, still looking at you like maybe you've grown a second head or you're a bird descending from heaven—you don't know yet, but he doesn't have anything more to say—so you go back to your anatomy homework.
A few hours later, you pack up your things and he tidies the short stack of magazines he read.
He opens the library door for you, and the sky outside is a swirl of pinks and oranges and lilacs.
You hold on to the straps of your backpack, bracing for the goodbye you never got to say at Tokyo Station, but instead—he walks with you. Is he perhaps heading in the same direction?
“Do you stay near the University of Tokyo?” you ask.
“I’m in Hongo.”
Your jaw goes slack. “That’s about five kilometers from here.”
“I heard they had old American magazines in this library.”
You stop by a street cart, drawn in by the aroma of the takoyaki. As you wait for your order, you turn to the boy. “I was wondering about you reading the adverts.”
He shrugs. “I wanted to know what my dad would've used in the 2000s when he first arrived in the US.”
“Not much different from what we used here back then.”
“Aa.”
“Your dad's in the US?”
“Aa.”
The man behind the cart hands you your order and the boy his. In a moment of hunger from staying for hours in the library, you finish the takoyaki in a few quick bites, scalding your tongue in the process. But the boy is still blowing on his first one. You roll your eyes, although smiling at him nevertheless.
“My parents aren't in Japan either,” you tell him, as you look at a small flock of fork-tailed birds crossing the sky. At their trail, deep blue creeps through the splashes of the coral sunset. “Are you going to see your dad?”
The boy blinks at you, like this is entirely new to him. After a while, he smiles, like a blade sheathed for too long in its scabbard, rusty and unpracticed. “Aa. I think I might,” he says.
When he discards the paper plate, you resume your walk. “My father…fought to let me keep my left-handedness,” he says, a nugget dropped out of the blue.
“He loved you.”
“You learned it.”
“Learned what? Oh, writing with my left hand? Yes. I always envied birds’ wings. Both are designed for flying.”
“But we can't fly.”
You laugh. “Yes. Our hands can barely even hold.”
The boy falls quiet, either with nothing more to say or wrapped up in confusion at your words.
Unexpectedly, the initial resentment you held over him has melted away. When he showed up at the library earlier, you actually realize now that what you felt was mostly relief upon seeing him.
You ascribe this to the fact that you miss Miyagi, after months of being away.
After the boy drops you off at your dormitory near uni, your weekend routine in the succeeding weeks gets rewritten: you spend afternoons in the library side by side. You, drawing birds and biting pen caps over tough homework. Him, paging through American magazine ads.
You learn his name, Ushijima Wakatoshi, as a robin memorizes a song to sing in the early morning air.
He is not the only friend you make in Tokyo, but he's the only one from home, and that counts for something.
Little by little, you share bits and pieces about yourselves as he walks you to your dorm: your love for birds, your parents migrating as far away from each other as possible and leaving you virtually an orphan, your grandmother who was your best friend in the whole world. In turn, he tells about his father, the dreams he passed on to Wakatoshi-kun, how Wakatoshi-kun works hard to make him proud.
“I’ll be visiting him in summer,” he says, his breath misting in the early winter cold.
Growing aware of the soft fabric of the scarf around your neck and the knitted hat on your head, it belatedly dawns on you that you and Wakatoshi-kun have known each other for many months now.
You aren't sure why you keep on thinking it's still June.
“That’s great, Wakatoshi-kun!” you exclaim, throwing your arms around him, and you surprise even yourself at this spontaneous gesture.
Your grandmother, who was reduced to skin and bones on the hospital bed, was too delicate to be touched. You had said goodbye to her without holding her at all.
Wakatoshi-kun stiffens at the contact, initially taken aback, but slowly, a hand comes to rest on your back. “Aa,” he says into the crown of your head.
Slowly, you close your eyes, your cheek warm against his chest.
By the tail end of December, snow has painted the entire city in white. Most of the students in the dormitory return to their home prefectures for the winter break. You bundle up in thick layers of clothes and trudge out to the gloomy dawn, headed to Kasai Rinkai Park, hoping to get beautiful shots of birds wintering there.
To stave off the cold, you grab a cup of hot coffee from a bakeshop down the street. Every now and then, the gray dawn is punctuated by a pair of headlights rushing past you. Perhaps a family going camping together somewhere or trying to catch the morning bullet train, just like yourself.
The trip to Kasai Rinkai Park is a short one, the people on the train as quiet as the snow falling outside.
Just as you have expected, the park is a desolate blanket of white, without another soul wandering in it. You smile despite the biting cold and relish in the solitude, ignoring the dull, distant ache in the locked chambers of your heart.
You get your camera ready; you equip the telephoto zoom lens, adjust the settings, and wait on a bench for any winged friend.
Weeks ago, Wakatoshi-kun had asked you if you’d ever held a bird before.
“I just take pictures of them,” you told him. You were at a coffee shop near the library, and your camera was cradled in his hands as he went through your photos of birds.
“And learn about them,” he added, “and draw them.”
“Yes.”
“But you never hold them.” If that were you from April, you would have been perplexed by the flatness of his deep voice. That time, though, you had become something of a scholar of Wakatoshi-kun that you could tell a slight upward inflection in the last word; you knew he was—in his own way—puzzled.
You laughed. “I mean, I would love to hold one. And I will, eventually, in our classes at uni or when I study ornithology. But honestly, I never felt the need to. I just really love looking at them.”
“Aa. You love them simply by looking at them.”
Wakatoshi-kun was never one for poetry, but every now and then, he would make scarily astute observations they bordered on the poetic. You loved this about him.
You sipped at your coffee, allowing several moments of contemplation to pass. Eventually, you told him, “Yes. I mean they always fly away when I try to get close.”
“I read there are ways to let them get close to you.”
You raised an eyebrow, because in all your library afternoon sessions, you had never once seen him read anything other than the adverts in American magazines.
“I know there are,“ you assured him. Of course, you knew. “I just…don’t feel the need to.”
At that, he stared at you—into you—before turning his attention back to your camera. “I see,” he said, intently studying a photo of a bush warbler.
You shake your head now, warding off any reminiscences to focus on the task at hand. Already, you spot a few species in the distance. An eye on the viewfinder, and a finger on the shutter button, you take the perfect shot of a Daurian redstart, perched on the roof of a glass dome.
Soon, though, the temperature sharply drops that you have to make the trip back to your dormitory. You all but burrow under the sheets while checking today’s shots.
Content, you surrender to sleep, spending the rest of the day in complete idleness.
In the spring, you see Wakatoshi-kun again. He slides on the library seat beside you and for some minutes, the two of you stare at the flowering tree outside the window.
“Hello again,” you whisper.
“Aa,” he says.
In the next hour, you hunch over the photos you took at Kasai Rinkai Park. It doesn't escape your notice that this time, he has not taken any magazines from the shelves.
Summer, after all, is only a few months away. He will fly to his dad who is in the US, reunite with him for the first time in years. With humans, you think, whoever leaves isn't always the one who comes back. Sometimes, the one who is left behind goes after them.
You think about your parents and if they will still remember your face. You think about all the bird photos, just mere pixels now, the actual reality of them you never got to hold. Lest they fly away, you convince yourself, somewhat poorly.
Of course, there are weekends when you do not see Wakatoshi-kun at all. He must be in volleyball matches when this happens.
Five days before his departure, he invites you to watch a match.
And you don't know much about volleyball, but you spend the evening prior poring over Internet articles on starting player positions, rules, and the scoring system. You don't read Wakatoshi-kun’s profile when it comes up, because you had already done so months ago. You know he is brilliant.
It turns out, words pale to the reality of him on the court. Brilliant is a severe understatement, so—you start thinking about bush warblers, whose plumage is the exact shade of his hair. You think about these plain-looking birds, often difficult to locate, but can fill the sky with their melodious song. How they inspired poets and musicians of old. You think about how even from your untrained eye, you can clearly see that Wakatoshi-kun is a once in a generation talent. When he moves, the whole gym erupts with melodious cheer for him. When he blasts a spike through the wall of blockers, his opponents seem equally frustrated and inspired.
Afterward, his team approaches the coach, bowing deeply to him in thanks. The team bows a second time, to their supporters on the bleachers. When he straightens up, Wakatoshi-kun scans the crowd, so you wave your hands, and he immediately spots you.
Your lips are a crescent moon in full view, and the corners of his mouth tug in what seems to be a ghost of a smile. Perhaps it is a little lopsided, but he'll eventually get the hang of it.
Five days later, he departs for the US, and you throw yourself into schoolwork.
At some point, your mother calls, only to show you a gorgeous beach view on her weekend trip with friends. She does not ask you how you are. You play the good daughter by laughing at everything she says, and later ignore the smudged ink blots on your textbook and the stuffiness in your nose.
You have never felt so alone.
Second year of majoring in zoology is even more of an uphill climb. You are swamped with animal taxonomy, habitation, behavior, and breeding habits. You mostly sleep in on Saturdays and Sundays, waking only to wolf down food at the nearby ramen shop run by a couple bowed with age.
Blinking through the grogginess, you consider the way they move behind the counter, so practiced it almost looks choreographed, and think of the swans from last spring.
You wonder how Wakatoshi-kun is doing.
You pass the next two and a half months like this.
It is now almost the end of summer break, and schoolwork is still a mountain piling high, and you despair about the leaves soon turning russet and having to miss viewing them.
Not to mention the geese that will make their autumn migration.
You scowl at your empty bowl of ramen, and stalk back to the dorm, switching the pen from right hand to left until both of your wrists ache from writing on the notepad.
You work double time because you don't really want to miss seeing the geese.
Soon enough, September rolls around with a draft of cool breeze, breaking the fever pitch of summer. Every morning, you push yourself from bed, to resume your routine of walking in the park before class. You witheringly eye the stack of papers calling to you from the foot of your bed. But your heart yearns to see the wild geese that will make their trip south anytime now.
Legs leaden, as if pinned in place by gravity, you drag yourself outside, to the trees and the birds and the early bustle of Tokyo, just woken from sleep.
Of course, you forget your camera. And your binoculars.
Of all days to forget them.
But it's too late to turn back now: if you do, you might not have enough time to view the birds or to even hear their song.
The park is empty, save for old people taking their morning walk and a dark blot faraway jogging rhythmically. You sit on the bench by the lake, basking in the tranquility of early autumn.
Already, some tree leaves are starting to turn color, and every time you exhale you produce a cloud of mist. Since you brought neither camera nor binoculars, you close your eyes, content in hearing the birds instead.
This way, you can still identify them despite not being able to see them.
You hear waterbirds and black kites and buzzards. You strain your ears, awash in a world reverberating with their sounds.
This is you loving them, only from afar.
Not long, though, their songs are interjected by the pounding of rubber shoes on fallen leaves. More than a year ago, this might have annoyed you.
But you know better now.
Your eyelids flutter open, and Wakatoshi-kun stops before you, huffing from his run. More than a year ago, he would've whizzed past you without a backwards glance.
But he knows you now.
“Hello again,” he says this time, perhaps his own attempt at humor.
You break into a smile. “Aa,” you say, copying his usual response.
He stretches his legs for some moments, before settling on the bench beside you.
“How was your dad?”
He smiles, much better this time. It's a kind of smile that changes the topography of his face. “He was doing well. He’ll visit next year.”
He tells you about his dad’s job, about meeting an old high school rival there, about the wild geese you're waiting for.
“The geese?”
“Are they not why you're out here?”
And here you have been so convinced that Wakatoshi-kun only ever has room in his heart for volleyball and his father.
“Oh, yes. And I don't have my camera.” You laugh acerbically.
“Is that too bad?”
“The worst.”
“They will return next year.”
This takes you back to your confrontation at the convenience store in Miyagi: you, incensed over the swans; him, impassive and infuriatingly logical.
Now, though, his words are oddly comforting: it's true, as long as the earth spins on its axis and the seasons change, the birds will return.
So unlike—
Suddenly, gingerly, Wakatoshi-kun takes your left hand, his calloused palm spreading warmth to your fingers all the way to the locked chambers of your heart. The deepest parts of you that fear holding anything lest you scare it away.
“I like you,” says Wakatoshi-kun, so typically blunt that your hand jumps in his palm like a startled bird. His gaze is steady, unwavering, as the leaves fall around you.
Overhead, the geese call as they cross the infinite sky in formation.
You tip your head up, and he does too, and for a moment you scramble for the right words to say. You think about Wakatoshi-kun and his lack of inclination for the poetic. If this were a movie, this would qualify as a terrible confession: plain, uninspired, and dull.
But Wakatoshi-kun has only ever been candid, never one for words beautified and adorned.
And you realize you don't need a profound response; you only need to borrow some of his candor, in your own fumbling way.
Still, the words fail.
Still, all you can do is shakily slide your fingers across the expanse of his palm.
Wakatoshi-kun, steady as the ground beneath your feet, locks your fingers with his. Not tightly, just loose enough for you to let go. If you want to.
“I’m not a bird,” he tells you, drawing lazy, assuring circles with his thumb. “But I will always return.”
You swallow. “Even when you take to foreign skies?”
“Yes. Even the birds have to land eventually.” He smiles again. “How much more so humans, who are without wings.”
Above, the geese have disappeared from view. But it's alright. They will return next year.
You still have several semesters to study zoology and you will eventually take up ornithology. Wakatoshi-kun still has the world stage to climb in volleyball. Perhaps he'll even play for a foreign team someday.
But it's fine: he's still that boy from Miyagi, and you're still that girl who's lived most of her life there. As long as the earth spins on its axis and the seasons change, you'll both eventually come back home.
You tighten your fingers around his, reminiscent of swans interlocking in a lovers' knot that one spring day.