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I knew Tooru like no one else. I knew he was jealous, stubborn, and loved volleyball more than anything in the world. I knew he cried and didn't tell me why. I knew he was a mystery even to himself.
Some nights, I climbed the tears he shed in a desperate attempt to reach somewhere. Perhaps I was aiming for the top of the tower where he seemed trapped by suffocating anxiety, unable to breathe. But I wasn't a hero, and despite my strong physique, that tower felt impossible to scale.
There were nights when he didn’t sleep at all, his deep, empty eyes resembling the starless sky over the city where we spent our honeymoon. They looked like a stranger’s eyes, not those of my Tooru. He wandered through the early hours, restless in bed.
"Do you think you'll still love me in twenty years?" he asked casually as I brushed my teeth, as if it were as routine as asking, 'Did you see where I put my socks?'
He never knew where he left his socks, just as he seemed oblivious to how deeply I loved him.
"Seems likely," I replied and spat out the toothpaste.
“Hm,” he mumbled.
He was probably expecting a straightforward Yes or No. Tooru hated assumptions.
With a sigh, he turned away and bit into his apple.
· · · · · · · ✦ · · · · · · · ·
"Can't sleep?" I asked as he tossed for the fifth time in bed.
"Retirement is killing me, Tobio" he murmured without looking at me. It was agonizing not being able to see his eyes. Even after all these years, I still needed them to gauge the sincerity of his words.
"You have several job offers, honey. All volleyball-related," I said, trying to comfort him.
"It's not the same," he whispered.
"Nothing stays the same forever.”
"I know. That's what's killing me!"
His eyes were on me now. I didn't need him to elaborate further to understand the weight of his words.
Do you think you'll still love me in twenty years?
"We're not just talking about volleyball, are we?" I asked as he turned towards my side.
"I love two things in life, and one of them is already gone," he murmured.
"I love you. I'm not going anywhere," I declared, gently holding his cold hand and conveying my certainty with a soft squeeze.
"You say that now, but what about in a few years? If you were to leave, the world would go on as usual. The dollar would rise and fall, church bells would ring, and people would still catch the subway at 7 a.m,” he said, his voice merging with the weary sigh that escaped his lips. "The world won’t end just because I’m falling apart, and it’s so unfair. Why do I have to keep going even when I’m broken?"
It was a rhetorical question, a reflection for himself. Since childhood, the world had seemed different to Tooru, always too demanding, too pensive. An insatiable hunger for life; he would swallow galaxies and still ask for more.
"Tooru," I said, turning to him and finding his eyes red and teary. "Did you know that giraffes can’t do a pirouette?"
He sniffled and furrowed his brow. "What?"
"The giraffes," I repeated. "They can’t do a pirouette."
I brushed a strand of his hair aside. After three months without a haircut, his bangs covered his eyes, and he was already stubbled.
"When I was a child, my grandfather had a music box. He said it belonged to my mother. Every time you opened it, a giraffe in a tutu would pop up, and music would start playing. It would spin ten times and then stop. I loved making it dance every day. It made me feel closer to my mom."
Tooru looked at me curiously, his eyes still empty.
"One weekend, I begged my grandfather to take me to the zoo. He didn’t like going out much, but he eventually agreed. I wanted to see the giraffes. I needed to see them."
I slid my thumb across his cheek, noticing faint lines forming beside his eyes.
"When we finally got close to the giraffes, I started crying. They didn’t have tutus. They were big, slow, and clumsy. My grandfather picked me up and asked why I was crying. I said I wanted to see them do a pirouette. That’s when he said the saddest thing I’ve ever heard: "Tobio, giraffes can’t do a pirouette."
"On that day, I learned something," I said with a smile, tracing the curve of Tooru's eyebrow as he looked at me, more confused than ever. "There are things that exist only in our minds."
I gently held his face and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
"I know you think I'll stop loving you, but I’m here. And I intend to stay until the end. This chaos is just in your mind. You are my first love, darling. Even if I leave, even if we never see each other again, I could never forget you. This place is yours, and no one can take it from you. Not now, not ever."
Tooru smiled, a smile that showed all his teeth, lighting up my soul like fireworks.
"I love you, Tobio," he said, kissing me through his tears and smile. I asked if Tooru, now retired, was ready for an ordinary life, in an ordinary house, with an ordinary job, in an ordinary city. In the ordinary, it was easier to recognize the extraordinary. It felt like a second proposal, and he said yes. The most extraordinary man I had ever known agreed to live an ordinary life by my side, and that was the greatest declaration of love I had ever received.
“Did you mess with my books again? They're all over the place,” he asked as undressed me with his eyes and hands.
"I like reading your notes. I'm not a book fan, but I'm always interested in the quotes you highlight."
He just groaned in response as he pushed himself into me, my legs wrapping around his waist amid quick kisses and passionate gasps. I could smell his scent, feel the scratch of his stubble, and see his skin covered in goosebumps under the lamp light.
Tooru was beautiful. I adored him as if he were my personal Apollo.
The light of the sun itself.
· · · · · · · ✦ · · · · · · · ·
“Baby,” I said as he rested his head on the curve of my neck, still breathless on top of me. “You should consider going back on your anxiety meds, at least for now.”
With his naked body pressed so warmly against mine, revealing a vulnerability only I knew so well, Tooru sighed heavily. His eyes met mine, a mix of gratitude and resistance, as if weighing my words with the seriousness they deserved.
“Alright,” he smiled and kissed me. “I’ll make an appointment.”
Tooru didn’t like me going through his books, but I did it anyway. Now, as I look at him, one of his highlighted quotes keeps echoing in my mind: You are the knife I turn inside myself; this is love. This, my dear, is love.
Like a dagger twisting in my guts, Tooru's love was initially painful but had become deeply intimate, embedded within me. And I couldn’t remove it. I would bleed to death if I tried.
During moments of anxiety, Tooru would try to remove the blade from me, but I would hold it firmly, driving it back in again and again. We weren’t perfect. We were shaped by the scars of a journey only we understood. We were a choreographed chaos, a storm that refused to dissipate.
Loving Tooru meant enduring both pain and glory.
And I, who was never the heroic type, knew I couldn’t save him, but I had always been a persistent man. As persistent as the tide returning to the shore, even after a thousand retreats.
The probability of me stopping loving him was as unlikely as fire forgetting how to burn, the universe losing its vastness, Tooru finding his lost socks, or a giraffe doing a pirouette.
“I’m not going anywhere, baby,” I repeated year after year, and I would keep repeating it as many times as necessary. Where else would I go but by your side?