I have no idea what exactly was wrong with me but after all these years I could still picture the look in those ice blue eyes as clearly as the day I said goodbye. Even as I lay now with my wife beside me, close enough for me to hear the soft murmurs of her dreams. Still I could not forget that period of time from so long ago. Those eyes would never open again. Cold in the earth; as I would so poetically put it. In common terms, it only meant that he was already dead and buried and possibly, returned back to the ashes we had all been made from.

His shoes squeaked under him as they made contact with the cold muddy ground. But he was oblivious to them, concentrating only on the single tombstone, situated away from the rest in the yard. Soon, he was standing before it, putting one hand on the long-forgotten stone. He then knelt down and pressed his cheek against it, his long hair shielding the rest of his face and melting into the rest of the midnight sky.

His long slender fingers went on to trace the words on the dark granite.

“Ashes to ashes,” he whispered as he traced. “Dust to dust. For the love of God, rest in peace…” He paused before continuing.

“Mikagami Tokiya…”

           God, please forgive me. I knew I had sinned to have fallen in love with another man, but although I had tried to redeem by marrying a virtuous woman and taking care of the family she had given me, I had only managed to ruin another person’s life by taking away the true love she should deserve from someone else, not me, for I could never love another woman again. Not after that fateful day in Paris.  

It was 1956 years after the birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, January 12 in lovely Paris. I was only a nineteen-year-old teenager then, who had left my homeland Japan to pursue an art career in France. I was not born rich, as a matter of fact; I was born into the servants’ class, if you would want to go according to the class system in Europe. My master was a rich man called Mori Kouran, and he had a son named Kurei. When I was nine, I was made to be a playmate to Master Kurei. He was a stoic young man, just a year older than me. It might be for the harsh treatment from Master Kouran, but now I knew better. It wasn’t until much later that I realized they were not at all related by blood. But I shall not go into that right now.

I grew up together with Master Kurei. The household was kind to me, as I was the youngest servant around. The butler was a young man who preferred to be known as Joker, the footman was a strong man named Jisho and of course, Neon the maid whose duty was to take care of the rose garden that Master Kurei had learnt to grow attached to. But when it was about time Master Kurei and I were to start our independent life as a young man in the world, Master Kouran called me to his office.

“Raiha,” he said, his fingers folded neatly under his chin. “How old are you now?”

“Nineteen, sir.” I replied respectfully.

“Nineteen…nineteen is the prime age for all young men. Tell me, Raiha, what ambition do you have?”

“None at all, sir. I would be happy to serve Master Kurei and you for the rest of my life.”

The old man seemed shocked at my words.

“Oh no, Raiha, I had always treated you like my own son. As Kurei was to be the heir to my business, I would like to at least give one young man a chance to have a future of his own choice. In other words, I am giving you a chance I could never give Kurei. Now, what do you want to study?”

“No, sir.” I lowered my head. “I thank you for the offer, but I think I should stay in the class where I belonged.”

“Raiha,” his voice took on a forceful edge. “I insist.”

“Sorry, sir—“

“Raiha, accept the offer, or else it may be bad for your health.” I suppressed a shudder and cleared my throat. I spent the next couple of minutes thinking about how should I answer the question given to me.

“Raiha?” I looked up into the deep murky depths of the man’s eyes. It was then that I realized how much I had learnt to hate the man after so many years of serving the household. Somehow, I felt that he had been too harsh on Master Kurei, to the point of cruelty even.

“I would like to study art, sir.” I answered smoothly. True, art had always been one thing that had fascinated me. I could hardly remember exactly how much of my childhood was spent staring at the murals on the walls of the mansion.

An unreadable smile found its way onto Master Kouran’s lips, forming a disturbing expression on his face.

“Fine then, Raiha. Pack your bags tonight. You would leave for Paris tomorrow.” I then quickly left the room. While the gap of the door grew smaller, I thought I saw a cruel smirk on Master Kouran’s face. Then I had thought I had imagined it. But anyway, the follow-up on this happens quite some time later, so I shall not go into that right now.

                It had starting snowing on the day he arrived in Paris. As he alight from the ship, Raiha took a good look around the harbor, and inhaled the aroma of freshly baked French loaves. Finally, he thought. A dream-come-true.

He took another look at the picture of Paris’ Eiffel Tower he had painted on the ship and smiled, accidentally missing a step and crashing into the man in front of him.

“Ororororo…” Raiha muttered as he painfully rubbed the bump forming on his head, while the person he had crashed into only stood up and briefly swept the snow off his coat.

“Eeto..so..sorry.” But the stranger only walked away coldly, leaving Raiha behind to stare at the silver back view in the snowy afternoon.

“I’m going to be late, I’m going to be late, I’m going to be late…” The purple-haired young man ran breathlessly through the empty corridors of the school, desperately trying to find the classroom he had been assigned to.

“Whoa…” For the second time of the day, Raiha had lost his balance. He struggled for a moment, just as he was about to fall at the right-angled turn of the corridor, somebody walked out from the other side of the turn.

“Watch out!” Raiha shouted, but only to catch sight of the widened blue eyes of the stranger before the both of them landed onto the ground.

“Itee…” Raiha complained, before noticing the absence of the canvas he USED to have in his hands.

Then he found it on the stranger’s neck, with a hole in it where the man’s head was now.

The man calmly removed the spoilt canvas from his neck, and ran his fingers through his long silver hair to undo some of the mess created from the fall. He pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose and stood up.

Raiha stood up too, but was desperately trying to find something to say. Oh dear, that was the same guy I crashed into at the harbor just now.

“Er…I’m sorry about just now. Are you alright?” Wait, it this a guy or a girl? Raiha thought, slowly scrutinizing the stranger’s facial features, unable to come up with an answer to his own question.

To his surprise, the man only picked up the file he had dropped on the floor and flipped through it.

“Are you Raiha?” the voice came out deep and nasal. Definitely male. Raiha concluded.

            “I take it as a ‘yes’ then.” Then, in accent less Japanese, he continued, “hurry up back to class. You’re already late and I don’t appreciate late students.”

Raiha widened his eyes at the last part of the sentence. The man turned around and walked towards one of the art studios.

“My name is Mikagami Tokiya, and I’m your sensei for visual art.”

Sensei? Him? He can’t be older than I am. Give and take a year younger.

The studio was lit with bright white lights so as to prevent inaccurate judgment of paint tones. There was only three other students in the room:   a rash-looking young man with a tekkou on his right arm and an orange cap on his head, a bimbotic-looking teenage girl with the shortest skirt Raiha had ever seen anyone wear on a snowy January afternoon, and the third one? A human-shaped gorilla, or a gorilla-shaped human…he could not tell.

But the first thing he noticed in the room was the red apple, resting in the middle of a low table.

“Here.” Raiha turned around, seeing the teacher standing behind him with a canvas in one hand.

“Draw whatever you see on the table. Charcoal or pencil, it will be your choice.”

“Sankyuu,” Raih grinned goofily, but it only served to bring about a bewildered look on the sensei’s face. Mikagami quickly replaced in with the usual cold expression and pointed Raiha’s seat out to him.

Raiha only shrugged with a confused look on his face.