If only I could stand side by side
But that wouldn't be very nice
It's better to be your important friend
Lin Shih, "The Remains of the Day"
April 2008
The full text reads as follows:
The old brick-colored school building, a **** four-story one with a barbed-wire netting on the roof, is already loose. has come loose.
It all started here.
Then I lived in one of the few old buildings in the city that hadn't been remodeled.
Every morning before I washed my face, I had to unscrew the faucet for a few minutes to let the water rust. The walls are cracked and the edges are yellow, a problem that can't be solved by painting. What I hear most every day is the sound of neighbors arguing and complaining, housewives chatting idly and squeezing, and bargaining with the scrap collector downstairs.
I've tried to see my neighborhood from a distance, and it's an earthy gray, like a crumbling ruin cut off from the rest of the city.
All I could think of then was to get away from here, fast, fast.
Perhaps that's why I worked so hard in the middle school exams to be able to choose a school across the district. The primary and secondary schools were assigned to schools around the neighborhood, and almost all of the students around me live not far away from each other. The topic of conversation was much the same as that of the parents, with a bitter and acerbic expression and tone of voice that had been cultivated in the family.
The high school, which is about an hour away from home, is markedly different. There were polished girls and upright boys, and the beginnings of maturity. The topics of conversation were no longer about trivial matters or open-mouthed begging for a loan of just three or five dollars.
I got along peacefully with most of the people in my class, nodding and saying hello when we saw each other.
It was nice, though, and not surprising.
But inside there was more impatience and discomfort hoarding and clogging up.
Mixing himself inside such a crowd was like erecting out-of-place, dilapidated and dangerous buildings in a lustrous city.
The days were just mechanical.
□
So Tsu and I met for the first time.
So means "inevitable" and "a turnaround".
Wearing a blue-and-white school uniform that didn't fit, black-rimmed glasses, and short, scruffy hair, I met Tsu for the first time. That's how you meet Atsu.
Atsu doesn't have anything attached to me, anxiety, distress, embarrassment, none of that is present in him.
Atsu and I met for the first time on a rooftop.
In fact, we had met many times before in different classes in the same grade, perhaps from the hallway. But before that meeting, I didn't have much of an impression of him.
Lunch in high school was mostly taken to the rooftop to settle if it wasn't a windy or rainy day. That day, when I pushed open the rooftop door with my lunch, I met Tsu's eyes when he heard the noise, and after being surprised, he smiled and said, "I didn't think anyone else would come here but me."
Sitting down together naturally, Atsu bit into a croissant and asked for my grade, "No wonder you look familiar."
I handed over an unopened can of iced wheat tea and asked, "Want some?"
Atsu took it, put it to his cheek and pressed it against his cheek and said, "Wow it's cold."
The other man, who was typically a self-possessed character, came over to me when Atsu touched my arm with his elbow and said, "Are you going to watch that basketball game at 9 o'clock on Saturday on Channel XX?" As I responded that I had never heard of it, he raised his eyebrows, "How come? Don't you watch the game?" While clapping his hand on my shoulder, "Next time, make sure you watch it!"
It was only an hour since we had just met.
Atsu's decent dress, his smiling face, the way he puts canned wheat tea on his face, the way he pats people's shoulders with bravado, his easy-to-get-acquainted personality.
Each of them was-
As I watched him. I could see, projected onto Atsu - my longing.
Over the next few days, Atsu and I met each day at noon on the top floor and ate lunch together. I also met Atsu a few times in the hallway, where he was with the boys in his class, who were supposed to be on good terms, joking and pushing each other around, sometimes laughing unimaginatively as he fell over, and greeting me with a smile when he saw me.
"In that case, why don't you eat with them?" I asked Atsu.
"Huh? --Ah, they won't come up." Atsu shrugged his shoulders, "Something about the top floor being boring."
"Oh, so ......"
"They love the hallway there."
"Why?"
"Secretly, oh," Atsu brought his face to my ear, "because there's a couple other girls there that they have a crush on."
Warm breath sprayed against my ear. It tingled a little and I let out an 'ah'.
He resumed his seat, "Can't help it, I like it here again."
The sound of Atsu saying "like" made my movements slow down.
Like.
□
One month, two months, almost three months had passed. Atsu and I should already be considered familiar. I already know that Atsu's family is well off, but because of his father's work problems so he changed schools frequently. Like girls are also quite a lot, like now, have a good feeling can be counted nearly five or six names to. Atsu was like every normal handsome boy, who had always lived a life that left him without trepidation, and the loneliness of changing schools so many times could have been filled by making more friends.
But like laughing together and pushing each other in jokes.
We hadn't gotten to know each other well enough for that.
This reminds me of the time I burned two of my own journals when I was in middle school. The reason for doing so was because it was discovered that my mom had gone through my journals more than once while I was in school. Very angry feelings of being snooped on and deceived, but that's not what I want to talk about now. I'm trying to say that when I went downstairs with two large diaries in my arms and lit up the pages with a match, it went out several times. Finally it burned, and I crouched down next to it, the firelight baking on my face and sizzling a little. I tentatively put my hand over it, getting as close as I could and shrinking back.
Can't get too close to the warmth.
□
The air conditioner made a rumbling tractor-like sound, stopping with a sighing end, and I got up from the bed, opened the door to my own house and ran out onto the balcony, coming in with a drying pole and aiming it at the snapping of the air conditioner's mainframe twice, and then the rumbling sound of the air being sent outward resumed.
Put the drying rod back on the balcony, passing through the living room, I heard my mother say, "Upstairs, Wang's family just replaced a vertical air conditioner yesterday, but the voltage in our building can't bring it up at all, and it tripped the circuit breaker just as soon as I turned it on."
"...... Is it."
"Well, your father and I are also discussing changing our house in a couple of years." Mom shook her head, "Unfortunately with that job your dad has it's going to be difficult."
Mom said, "You'll have to work harder too, you know?"
I could only nod.
Drawing the curtains, although I live on the fourth floor, but looking out, the view is not far from the dense high-rise blocked a solid, if you look down, not far from a garbage collection point.
What if it was Atsu? He'd just moved here two years ago and probably didn't even know the city had places like this. He also didn't know the prices of the various vegetables at the grocery store, and he didn't know how to fix an old air conditioner.
He didn't have to know any of that.
Thursday night hygiene was done late, and the girl I was partnered with left first because she had a date. It got dark early in the winter, and it always felt heavier than the dark days of summer.
As I was picking up my backpack and making my final rounds, the door was pushed open and Atsu poked his head in, "I saw the lights on in your class, I passed by and came in to see, I didn't think you were really there."
"You haven't left yet either?"
"Got held up on something." Atsu asked, "Are you leaving?"
"Uh, uh, gotta go."
Azu suddenly said, "It's Christmas."
"Huh? Is it?" Indeed, I didn't know.
"Yeah, I heard there's fireworks going off in the plaza at 7:00," Somewhat disappointed expression, "Definitely won't make it."
I nodded my head in agreement, usually having been unconcerned about such days.
"By the way," Atsu stopped suddenly, "I can probably see it from here too."
Before I could react, he took my hand and ran up the stairs. The fireworks were already going off when I pushed open the door to the top floor, and with some excitement, Atsu took two steps forward and said, "I can really see it," then, "It's not a great venue, but it's a good location." He turned his head to greet me, "Come on over here."
I didn't come forward, and Atsu didn't care because he was concentrating on looking up. The fireworks were still the same shape they'd been in for years, and the colors were just the same. But it was enough to make Atsu happy, even if I was a little surprised by how happy he was.
Shining and glittering, they rose into the air. Those colors, together, glowed in our eyes as a different experience.
I stood slightly back, recalling the warmth of Atsu's hand, a different, bony hand than mine. I turned on my Walkman and placed the headphones inside my ears.
The song, a thick, long female voice, "If only I could hold hands, if only I could be side by side."
"But that's not good either."
"It's better to be your important friend."
"...... Just be friends."
The girl sang this, repeating it over and over at the end.
I was on a dark rooftop, with Atsu a few steps away from me, with a life too big for me and a bewildering amount of confusion straddling the middle.
"Look at that just now ......" Atsu turned his head and gesticulated excitedly, and I watched as the inside of his eyes glittered with an infinite sadness that wrapped itself around me.
□
I felt like some part of me was out of whack and off track. Irritability, restlessness, anxiety, I was filled with these. At the same time I received a letter that fell out while I was getting a book from inside my desk in class.
A letter from another boy.
I can't tell you how I felt holding that letter, unable to steady my mind. But there was something to be confirmed in a hurry, and I couldn't put it off any longer. So I followed the time inside the letter and went to meet the girl.
At the end of the school's long corridor, the other person was already waiting there when I arrived. He was very nervous, rubbing his hands together.
After a few laps around the school, in the back playground, the other held my hand very hesitantly. I hadn't been inclined to do so, but didn't refuse because I wanted to make sure of something.
It took about an afternoon of not slowing down at the same time for me to realize.
Holding hands and skin-to-skin contact with that boy wasn't disgusting or resisting.
Rather, it was unfulfillable, unreleasable.
A great emptiness.
Turns out it wasn't anything else, nothing to do with any of this.
It's just that the other person isn't the one who evokes "like" in you.
Not him.
So that's all it was.
□
After that, it became clearer to me.
I felt very empty, empty because my feelings could not be fulfilled or responded to, empty because my expectations could not be realized.
I felt empty because Atsu's presence was too great.
Not thinking about saying it.
When I had dinner with Atsu on the rooftop, I confessed to him that I had received the letter, and after hearing it, he asked me repeatedly why I didn't agree to it, and he often teased me about it in the future. At the same time, Atsu also talked about the person he once liked in junior high school, the other person was Atsu's classmate at the beginning of the school year, once sat behind him, so more or less a little friendship. When she couldn't answer a question, or when she forgot to hand in her homework, she would talk to her a little more than usual. At the end of it she'd also throw in a thankful glance or whisper a thank you.
The girl was one of the best faces inside the school, her hair was long and even in her school uniform she looked very good. From the side only a thin slice, like her boys can be discharged ABC, continue to Z, and then count back down no problem.
I asked, "And then."
"Later?" Atsu thought for a moment, "Then I went on to like another girl. ......"
"......"
"That girl was the winner of the ballet competition!"
"......"
Then changing the subject, Atsu talks about his childhood, saying "Once when I was a kid, I was forgotten and ended up locked inside the house for two days. "
I said "Huh?"
Atsu sipped his wheat tea, "They were busy at that time, I was really scared that time, I thought they didn't want me anymore." There was still a palpitating look on her face.
"And then?"
"Then I cried when I saw them. They kept apologizing and saying they'd never do it again and stuff." Atsu said, "But it still left a bit of a shadow."
"What was it?"
"The constant fear of being left behind." Atsu smiled.
I patted him on the shoulder, "Why yes," and tightened my grip a little, "It won't happen."
"Yeah?"
I nodded without pausing, "Yeah."
"That's good." Atsu scratched his hand through his hair and smiled "I'm relieved you said that."
The bright side of her face, the way she could speak easily and openly about the things she was afraid of, the things she had been unhappy about.
The girl I like is uniformly thin and graceful, and has some kind of mastery.
Saying that, I don't want to be like that.
But in my heart, I am not without envy, not of each other, but of being "liked" by Atsu.
□
My great longing for him, the feelings that cannot be released.
At one point it became a drenching fire in my body, spreading to all my limbs.
But because it was impossible, unsatisfying. And it burned cold.
Flame is clearly a symbol of hope and warmth.
Why can it also be the burning of despair.
□
When Atsu was talking to me about transferring to another school during my senior year.
I, however, was particularly calm, as if I had known it in advance, and answered "Oh, when?"
"After this semester, I think." Atsu replied, his expression troubled, "I'm not transferring until the second semester of my senior year, I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with ...... when I get to another school."
"Huh?" I laughed exaggeratedly and slapped him on the shoulder, saying "Don't joke if you're 10th in age!"
Atsu seemed a lot more relieved to hear it and said "That's true."
I slapped him again with a serious expression, "Hey, at least be humble."
Atsu laughed out loud.
If only I could hold hands.
If only we could be side by side.
It's friends, it's been friends for as long as we've known each other, as long as we've been connected.
I've also been thinking that it would be nice just to be that way.
□
The next morning when I brushed my teeth, I took a sip of water and spit it out with a "wow" sound, looked at the cup, and there was a yellowish-brown substance settled at the bottom, and my mouth tasted like rust. The bottom of my eyes were full of acid.
Not really good.
□
And then later.
And then later means that we spent a lot more time apart than we did together. The time we spent not seeing each other was several times longer than the time we saw each other.
I had a dream about Atsu.
Inside the dream was my high school classroom, the teacher was speaking English, and there were characters on the blackboard that I couldn't read.
The whole classroom was very quiet, only the sound of breathing, writing, and the sound of chalk rubbing against the blackboard. The sun was baking my cheeks, and the broken ends of my hair rolled into my collar
A very complete dream that lasted the entire class.
There was me, and there was Atsu.
It's probably because I can't fulfill my expectations in reality that I would have such a dream.
□
--Last night I dreamed about high school, when Atsu and I were both still high school students.
-- Last night I had a dream.
-- Technically, it was a dream about a long time ago.
--In that dream, we were only sixteen or seventeen.
-- A blue sky, a red school building, and Tsu and I sitting inside the same space.
-- Quiet, quiet, for a few minutes.
--I wish I could dream like this again.
--I looked forward to it with renewed, unquestioning anticipation before my eyes opened.
--To be able to dream, again, such a dream.
□
Atsu's multiple transfers such that he could easily integrate into a new environment, and over the next year, two years, the contact diminished until it was then simply broken.
I think of him again with diluted affection.
Later I came to realize that whether it was a burning flame, or fireworks blooming in the sky.
They are all the same in nature.
Once lit a prairie fire in the sky. After a few days and nights, only bits of sparks remain, called embers. And then finally, even these embers will be extinguished.
Turns out it's not something peculiar, something wrong, something you can't let go of.
It's just the most simple and ordinary feelings of admiration for a person. The most important thing is that you have to be able to get the best out of your life, and you can't do it without the help of the people you love.
□
The last time I met with Atsu, my memory made some mistakes.
I don't remember clearly the time we parted, but on the day before, it was very clear.
The first snow fell in this southern city at the end of my senior year of high school, and every piece of it fell thickly, as if covering the whole earth. Atsu and I came out from inside the school, our feet stepping on the snow making the sound of being squeezed. The moon hanging in the night sky on our way home was as pale as day, reflecting the stray clouds in the wind and casting the black silhouettes of the two of us on the asphalt. Looking up, the power lines cut across the full moon's center. Walking together for a while. There were no words, and even our breathing became light.
In the middle of it, I thought about how nice it would be if it were spring, so that we could get through that winter and welcome spring safely, live in the same city, and see the peach blossoms like that on our way home. It would be nice if it were that kind of season.
If only I could hold hands.
If only we could be side by side.
And yet we just asked each other.
"Is it cold?"
"Why yes." Atsu replied lazily.
The memory, so clear and mercifully lingers.
It was as if I was the only one left in such a world, parallel to him.
All the confusion and anxiety seemed to be forgiven and released.
No later spread also gentle unbearable to touch.