Work Text:
Dear Fuji Kiseki,
I can’t believe I wanted to do this. I don’t believe I have the balls, even as the pen glides across my notebook paper and uses up the pages.
I don’t write much anymore. This notebook you bought me for Christmas with your chore money all those years ago has stayed cold and empty. I haven’t written an essay for class, or a report. Actually, I got an D in literature last semester, but my trainer talked to the teacher and I got it bumped to a C. There’s no reason why I should start now. But I’m headed for Hong Kong, and I’m sitting in the airport, so I decided it was worth my time. I have things I want to get off my chest, even if this letter never reaches you. Fuck, I don’t even know where the Hell you’re living these days. Do you know where I am? Well, it won’t matter soon.
Manhattan Cafe admitted herself to the loony bin. I’m sure you know this because you two reconnected and all, but when you left you made me responsible for her, so I feel like I need to tell you that I guess I failed. I tried, every day I did, but Cafe’s demons were ones I couldn’t understand. Mom treated her well. She got everything she asked for, even though she didn’t ask for much from mom. I don’t remember her ever having a hand landed on her or taking a blow. Maybe some unkind words, but no bruises you could see. I was so fucking jealous of her. I wish I was so crazy that mom coddled me. I wish I had her face, her mannerisms, her long, pretty hair so she could dote on me. Such bullshit.
She had tried to kill herself before she admitted herself. She got a TV deal where she was supposed to play mom in a shitty drama. Something about her arrival in Japan and her car accident… no clue, I didn’t watch it or read the damn script. I just drove her to the studio every day. It was at the wrap party where she tried. She mixed alcohol with benadryl, and went to sleep in the host’s bathtub, filling it with water and laying in it with a wine glass. I should have been watching her. I went to the party with her because I was worried about her getting cornered by some douchebag or ironically, something like this bullshit. I got… distracted. I was smoking outside and cutting it up with Oriental Art. I thought she looked so pretty, she was wearing this long white dress that dragged on the floor and I was making fun of the fact she didn’t have a bra on, not that she needed it. I’m a such a pig. Just like my mother, right? My sister was upstairs filling her coffin and I was flirting with some mare. Then I was fucking her in my car while Manhattan Cafe faded away. I went to that bathroom when I was done with Oru because I had seen Cafe go up the steps. I never thought she’d still be in there. I never thought my shoes would splash when I entered the bathroom. I never thought I’d see her black hair creeping over that porcelain tub. I never imagined how pale she could be, especially when she was floating in a bath with her black dress consuming her thin body. I never imagined myself performing CPR on a bathroom floor. I was screaming for a sister I didn’t…
…I did love her. I think I did. I want to say I loved her a lot, actually. I cared for her. I held her in my arms until I could hear her wheezing, until the paramedics arrived. I went to visit her as soon as I was allowed, just to find she had requested to be moved to the mental hospital the moment she was able. My arms felt empty for days after, like I should’ve been holding her the whole time.
Mom didn’t give a fuck. She acted like Manhattan Cafe was never her daughter, never my sister, after Cafe had moved out. You know this part but she moved right into that Agnes Tachyon’s home when she won the Kikua Sho. Guess they were fucking or something, right? Mom threw out all her pictures in the outside trash in a day, her room cleaned and rented out the next. I saved some of the stuff, some of the pictures. I tried to give them to Cafe that Christmas but she turned it all away, said she wanted to start fresh. They sit in the back of my van right now, parked in Oru’s family home. She’s been kind to me. She made me keep tabs on Cafe even when I didn’t want to. That’s how I ended up as her last resort for that party.
Cafe doesn’t take calls. Doesn’t bother with letters. She doesn’t want to see me, doesn’t want to talk. Fine. Neither do I. She can turn her back on me just like mom did. Just like you did. It’s what I must deserve, right? Because I can’t win like you guys. I’m a blight, right? Something that needs to be thrown away. Something that needs to be forgotten and stop draggi
I almost threw this whole thing away. I took a break and wandered around the airport instead. While I was waiting in line trying to buy myself some food, I got a phonecall. I answered it. Turns out, I’m going to be a sire.
A sire. With Oriental Art. Can you believe that? I’m the first one of mom’s kids to actually do what she wanted for once. I’m terrified to fucking tell her. Honestly, though, she might find out somehow on her own. That will be fun when I get back to Japan, whenever that is. I planned to travel for close to a year and now I gotta rush home when Oru decides to go pop.
Oru says she wants to get married. I remember when we were little, really little, and my dam asked our sire if they’d ever get married. I remember how mom laughed. She never laughed like that in our lives again. She never threw her head back like that and showed that much raw joy. Her mouth split in a smile that didn’t have a hint of intimidation, or a snarl, or a hiss. That was the last time she picked up my mom and spun her around, and they giggled together with their foreheads touching. Cafe was just a baby. She got jealous from her baby pillow and whined over their laughter, begging to be held. I remember what our sire said to my dam:
“Maybe if you’re good, my cuddly bunny, maybe if you’re good!”
I used to think my mom died because our sire wouldn’t marry her. That she died of heartbreak and grief like in the storybooks. I remember how she wasted away in her bed, growing thinner and thinner each day. I remember when mom stopped visiting her for a little while. She went on some… “business trip.” And Aunt Soccer Boy came to live with us along with my grandsire. Soccer Boy was younger than me, too young, and I had to explain to her that my dam was dying and she’d never see her big sister again. My grandsire didn’t speak much Japanese, barely any English. Instead she often just got frustrated with Cafe and I and casted us from the room in frustration. I slept on your bedroom floor during a lot of that. I was too young too. I wasn’t supposed to be the one playing the unaffected. My mommy was dying of grief, and I had to keep my chin up?
I didn’t mean to ramble. My point was, I shouldn’t put Oru through something like that. She’s a good girl. She takes care of me. She’s deserving of love. She should have a wife, and a house, and her wife should take good care of her. Luckily I have just enough put away for her while I’m gone from the races I placed a little higher. It’s enough to buy baby supplies, like clothes, maybe a few months of diapers. Not sure what I’ll do after its gone. I don’t know how to work.
What do you think of it all? Your mother married a good guy, right? Will you? Don’t you have that girl you like to hang out with? Or… wait, was that your ex? I don’t remember. You dated so many girls in school that I lost track. People used to gossip about you all the time. Used to tell me how hot my sister was. I always thought you could stand to get a little more serious. And I still think you look like a butt, like I said at your 9th birthday.
I think I have to marry her. I want to take care of her. I’ll be ready after this trip. I’ll figure out how to work.
There’s this… plant I’ve been hearing about. It’s called the “Mother of Thousands”. It’s an invasive succulent that they have in China. The way it reproduces, from what I can tell, is growing little bumps on the leaves that break off and plant themselves around the mother. They’re almost forced to stick together their whole lives unless the wind carries them away. They bloom these droopy flowers that look like dewdrops to me. Like the flower itself is weeping because its stuck to the prickly bastard. They call it the “Devil’s Backbone” too, since it looks stiff and like it could cut you with a look. I think I’ll bring one back for mom.
Alright, I’ll admit it. I haven’t spoken to her either in awhile. Not since she threw me out. She threw me out for a dumb reason, at least I think so anyway. She kicked me out for “wasting her money” when I placed second to Silence Suzuka. She thought I was a pussy for letting it happen, especially when my “boyfriend has googoo eyes for her”. She was talking about Okino, if you remember him. I hope you don’t. Here’s a refresher still:
Human kid who lived down the street from us, brown hair pretty pale. Followed us everywhere, my mom used to feed him when his parents couldn’t? Came to the funeral and shed more tears then I did. Remember when I had just debuted, and we hadn’t spoken in years, and he was at the race with his little group of “junior trainers”, and he begged up down and sideways for me to let him be my trainer. Said his parents wouldn’t let him pursue it as a career if I didn’t. So I told him “fine” just to get him off the porch… actually, maybe you were gone then. It blends together these days.
He’d been my trainer for awhile by then. He was… actually kind of skilled. He had good advice. He was a smart kid. I found him weirdly handsome at some point, like how certain dogs are cute but absolutely are not at the same time. I had him to myself so I got greedy. I know, I know, dating your trainer is a dumbass move, but I just… folded. I don’t know. Or maybe he wore me down. I just wanted him. I wanted him under me, over me, beside me, watching me, cheering me on. All of it. I liked his eyes on me. I liked that Okino cared about me, even if I lost, even if I was shitty, or an asshole to him, or thought he was an asshole when he was just trying to
Scrap the last part. He IS an asshole. He’s a big asshole. Because when Silence Suzuka suddenly knocked on the fucking office door, and they made eye contact for the first time, he fell flat on his fat dick. He gets all giggly like he’s a fucking teenaged mare. He goes, “Oh yeah, come in, we aren’t busy” like I’m not sitting there with my hands gripping onto my training plan he insisted we go over. He insisted we read it again, and again, and change things I felt iffy on.
She sits on the chair next to me and mumbles a hello. And I’m thinking, this “baby” attitude on a stud is fucking ugly. Because I see her hair clip on her ear caps and I know she’s got a dick under that skirt she keeps pulling on. She acts all shy with her hand on her breast, curled in. That long mane of red hair tells me everything I need to know. I felt myself getting hot the longer they talk.
“I need a better trainer. I just want to run. She doesn’t understand that.”
“Really? That’s interesting. Sure. I don’t see why I can’t take you on. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
I got this pit in my stomach. It hit the bottom and rolled around in my intenstines before coming back up. As we walked to his car that night, I felt venom burning in my throat. I looked up at him and he was all smiles. We had fought many times before but the argument that night was unlike any other. I shoved him into the door. Threw my bag on the ground. I kicked his tire. I ran off in a flurry of stupid anger. I had already jumped a turnstile when I realized I wasn’t like that. People who act like that over a romantic partner, let alone a human guy, are absolutely pathetic. I rode the train to the end of the line, and took a bus back towards the school. I got back in time for first period and when I got out that night, he brought me flowers. All yamabuki.
I think yamabuki are some of the ugliest flowers around here.
It got worse as we started partner training. Praise for her and never a glance at me, a pat on her shoulder and a waving hand in my face. I was sent away to get water while they went over her results, being promised the same chance, juuust to come back and discover they went off to the cafeteria without me.
Meanwhile, I started to see you accompany Her to the racetrack. I saw her run in circles and kick up turf, and how you’d laugh like she was the funniest person you met. I wanted to come over so badly. I wanted to wave, say “hey” and “how are you”. Yet you never saw me. So I left you alone.
I considered killing myself. I know, what’s with all the suicide talk? This got depressing. I’m just trying to be honest with you for the first time. Honest with myself.
I found them fucking for the first time in his office. Up on his desk. He took me the same way once and my first thought when I realized was that I was a dumbass for letting him degrade me like that. I didn’t say anything. I instead went out to his car and kicked the back tire until it burst. The rubber, flying at such a speed, cut me pretty bad. It looked like my leg had been dragged across the road. I threw his keys in the Goddesses fountain on my way to the main office. I requested an emergency trainer exchange and lied through my teeth that he tried to grab my ass when I didn’t want to. I was angry. I was alone again.
He tried and tried and tried to convince me it didn’t happen. He hadn’t seen me in the door.
It was when she tried to apologize to me that I felt like a fool who was being pranked. She had seen me. She had made eye contact with me when her head rolled back, her orange hair falling in her face, her cheeks red and legs around his waist. She got embarrased and hid her face. He hadn’t even told her that we were together. That he spent so many nights in my bed and I did the same to him. I was an idiot, just like mother always said I was. I can’t be surprised.
I was there when she had that accident. I was right behind her. I wanted to beat her so badly that I was going blind from the slipstream. I wanted her to feel my breath on her neck. I wanted her to be afraid.
Silence Suzuka stumbled and nearly took me out. I kept running, dodging around her and looking back over her shoulder. She stumbled off to the side until she got close to the rail. Too close was my first thought. I looked away for just a moment. That faulty distraction resulted in Offside Trap overtaking, and we crossed the finish line at 2nd and 1st. I didn’t look at the screen, though. Instead, I looked back, and watched her body crumble beneath those slender legs. She cracked her skull on the railing. That girl who followed her around, the country girl with the human mother, she went leaping onto the turf and ran over to try and catch her. She cradled her in her lap, sobbing and shaking her. I looked then to the crowd and saw him. He looked horrified, sick, maybe even broken. The paramedics took her away before any of us knew what happened. Instead of going to him, I followed behind that girl and her friends towards the hospital. I waited with them in the waiting room, and comforted one who had thrown up from the stress. We all stood at attention as we were told her parents were being called. We all stared as my mother walked through the door.
She ignored me. She walked right past me. She nodded at the doctor, listening as she was informed that Suzuka was braindead. That there was nothing they could do for her that wouldn’t result in cruelty.
I wanted to hit her when she spoke so bluntly.
“Then just pull the plug.”
Maybe it was a rare act of kindness. She saved Suzuka from suffering in a life where she’d never run again. Or she saved me from suffering more humilation from losing to her yet again. Maybe, when I’m a mother, I’ll understand what it means to ruin someone else’s dream for your kid’s. Or ruin your kid’s dream.
She did drive me back to the dorms. I didn’t ask her about Suzuka. I could never.
Things kept getting worse. That country girl, Special Week, beat me at the next Tennho Sho. I got fifth. Then it was the same at the Autumn Sho but I managed second there. The next spring belonged to the Overlord and her “Sweet Doto”. I was growing tired. I was so tired. I wanted to quit, but I saw that sister of yours get fucked at the Satsuki Sho, and I felt an urge when her rival quit. I thought to myself that… I could replace Agnes Tachyon. I could become the rival Jungle Pocket needed and was clearly about to crave.
I trained harder then I ever had. I cared for once. I felt amazing, I felt strong, I felt a sense of direction. I ate a good diet, I spent hours studying tracks. I got a nomination for the Japan Cup even when I got fucked over at the Takarazuka Kinen. I was ready for the Tokyo Turf stage.
Easily I can still imagine the smells, the sounds, the excitement. I remember trying to talk to her in the hallway before the show, but she was consumed with her own excitement and didn’t hear me. I decided it would be after that I told declared us rivals instead. I can still remember lining up at the gate as one of the first. I remember that seconds before the start, I saw you.
Did you see me?
I swore you saw me.
My heart started to beat hard. I felt clammy. I felt unwell. I had a thought that if I won this maybe, just maybe, we could be sisters again. That you would come home. Then I realized I didn’t just need to do well and declare war on your new sister but I needed to impress you enough to love your old sister again. Manhattan Cafe regarded me with disgust higher up in the stands. She understood my intention. She found it pitiful. To be pitied by someone as lost in the mind as Cafe is…
It doesn’t matter. I believed for the first time that I could win it all back. Cafe, you, mom. With this win, I would reclaim my life.
But she stood in my way, the way she always does.
I won’t write it again. You know how it went. I had a late start. I couldn’t recover from the panic. I didn’t win. I got fourth. The star of the show was the roaring Jungle Pocket, who dominated the stage thereafter. I didn’t have a chance to embarrass myself further by declaring war. I was giving up. I watched you hug her and you both spun around. Watched him rustle her hair. Watched you three walk off, and Cafe suddenly appear with another girl to congratulate you all and I watched her kiss both her cheeks. The tears blurred the scene from there, and all I could look at were my knees and my feet.
I was alone again. Figures, right?
You didn’t see me. I know you didn’t. If you had, you would’ve cared. I’m sure of that. You probably didn’t even hear my name called. I let you go.
I should’ve known good and well that needed to be my last race. Yet I ran again and again, growing more bitter with each loss. They called me “Silver Collector” like I was some joke. My so-called fans loved to chant it when I lost. I felt like my skin was cold and I wasn’t there when I would race. I would enter the track and reneter my body after another loss.
There was one race where I had had enough. A girl named Narita Top Road told me “good luck” before the race. She was a snake, a fake motherfucker who cried after every race. I hated her. I was sick of these girls I hated beating me. When we turned a corner and she wouldn’t get out of my way, I shoved her. When she wouldn’t go down, I did it again. We tumbled together, bodies trampled by the Umas who couldn’t stop. I lifted my fist when they were gone even when I saw the cleat-shaped cut on her face.
I punched, imagining she was mom. I punched again, thinking it was Cafe. I punched her harder and saw Okino. I slammed her head into the ground when I was sure it was you. I stopped when her face changed to Silence Suzuka. I got up when she sobbed and begged for me to stop. It was never her fault. It was never her that I hated.
I’ve been banned from racing for a long time. It’s been over a year since I saw the track, felt the wind in my hair and heard the crowd. I was banned from the Twinkle Series, and asked to leave Tracen. I’ve sent Top Road flowers once a month, per Oriental Art’s advice. I’ve been staying with her.
That whole business reminded me of a conversation I had with Suzuka, before she died but… after things were ruined. It was the last day I attended class. I walked out of my room with the attendance report clutched in my hands. She left her classroom too, on the same mission. Her leg was wrapped in fresh bandages, the white cotton signed in colorful markers by countless names. She froze when she saw me coming. I chose to ignore her (can you believe it?) until I made it past her. She followed behind me. We dropped off the reports at the office. I snuck outside for a cigarette and for some reason she followed me. She caught the door, staring at me with those emerald eyes, looking ready to cry. I had half a mind to growl.
“I’m sorry.”
She spoke it, her voice shaking with each syllable. Not in a way that told me she didn’t want to say it, but rather that she really did mean it.
“I’m so sorry. I ruined your life.”
She broke down right then and there. I stood with her, watching, feeling sorry for her instead of myself. All I could do was… offer her a cig, and hoped she accepted. She took it although she was surprised. We stood together and smoked through first period in silence. Then we went back to our classes and never spoke again.
I wanted to go to Hong Kong to clear my mind. Too much has happened, too much Hell was put on me. I want to see the world. I want to travel and find out what exists beyond the Tokyo racecourse. Go beyond the standard distance. I don’t want to stay stuck in this box mom’s kept me in.
Today, I break out. When I board that plane, I am free. I might not come back because I’ve always been set to be a deadbeat, so if I don’t, take care of your niece for me?
Hah. That’s a joke. I know you won’t. But I will, and that’s what sits right with me.
Rot in Hell, my most selfish sister,
-
~Stay Gold
I love you.