梨の香り(Nashi no kaori)

High on the mountain. Well, I was high on something. Hinata was perched above the endless clouds. The sunlight broke through. Hinata drifted through the scattering light, as his smile drifted back to me. He was at peace standing in the lush greens on the top of Shioya Maruyama.

Hinata pointed proudly into the distance to his family’s farm. His smile was electric. The wind blew his black hair everywhere and it was cold enough to draw tears, but Hinata didn't notice. He grabbed my hand and brought me closer to the edge of the mountain top. Closer to him. He brought me up here with the promise of a spectacular view. I hope he knew I would have followed him anywhere.

I looked out into the distance. Hokkaido’s lush green mountains kissed low hanging clouds and then reached out through valleys to greet the Sea of Japan. In that moment, I saw the future coming. I saw a thousand dreams resting on those heavenly clouds. I saw a thousand more sweet nothings. I saw Hinata dancing amongst the clouds. His dark black eyes, tinged with sadness, but alive and electric. These were the moments. Captured in the mind of a youth in love. Endlessly staring into possibility.

I must confess, I was never good at making wishes. Maybe it was because I only half-heartedly believed in wishes. Throughout my high-school years, I often walked a lonely path to school. Stepping away from the chaos and violence of my family home. Stepping towards the loneliness and isolation of high school.

When I was 16, I put aside my doubts and made an honest wish. A lonely thought that I sent skyward as I walked to school. I wished for someone to help me put these broken pieces together. Someone to notice me. I thought this was going to be another wish that floated in failure towards an unanswering sky.

In the middle of a hot Australian summer, the Vice-Principal of my high school had called all the senior students into the performing arts building. It wasn't to dazzle us with some exciting piece of art or music. It was functionality. The performing arts building was the only building big enough to accommodate all the seniors.

The Vice-Principal lined up the senior students like a bunch of idiotic sardines while he preached his expectations for the student body. We had begun our final year of school, and he had high hopes for us. His words fell on deaf ears, but none were duller than mine. I was in my own little world, cautiously stealing glimpses of Hinata, a Japanese exchange student that had sat down next to me. Quick peeks with my thieving eyes. I saw his smile. Tiny corners that house no imperfection. I saw his eyes. Electric and dancing with curiosity.

These assemblies had 10-minute breaks to talk to the person sitting next to you about what the Vice-Principal had just proselytised. But I neither heard nor cared about the Vice-Principal’s sermon. Hinata leant towards me and introduced himself. My heart skipped a beat as he spoke. He had such excitement and curiosity about Australia. A curiosity I hoped extended to me. When Hinata finished his sentences, he had this cute habit of pulling up his lower lip slightly. Like there was a slight hesitation in what he said and his lips were trying to pull back some of his words.

As I spoke, I felt like a wolf with no sheep to clothe it. Undressed words that showed a naked ambition, a prying thirst for knowledge about him. In my head, one thought led to a thousand thoughts ruminating. I wondered everything I could about him, but all I could do was fumble through awkward pleasantries and shared interests.

Halfway through the conversation, Hinata leant closer to me and wrote something in my notebook. The heat of his body, with his body so close to mine. I wanted to burn his heat into me. Stoke the coals and heat up the home fires. That wouldn't be enough. Find a long branch and set it aflame too. I needed to remember this. This warmth.

I took a deep breath as he wrote. This was unfair. People shouldn't smell this sweet. I wanted to live in this scent of his. If it could clothe me, I would wear it forever, until I had worn every last thread out. Aching with pride, happy and content knowing every last note was for me. This sweet, juicy mixture of pear syrup anchored in an earthly note of vanilla.

I looked down at my notebook. Hinata had written his phone number and his email. His name was written in Kanji, next to a tiny drawing of the sun. I still have that page today.

We became fast friends that year. He was all I knew. Everything else faded into the background. Nothing else was worthy of my time and my thoughts. My feet found a purpose, a reason to walk to school. No longer did I dread the loneliness. I had found a companion to sit with me in that sea of isolation. I now had smiles across the classroom. I had accidental touches when we sat next to each other at lunch. I had endless hours of talking about everything we held dear, the little things we found odd, and the hopes we had for the future.

On the last day of school, we went to a party to celebrate. I had scored some weed and alcohol off my older brother and hoped to finally confess my feelings.

The night was hot and dry as we walked to our classmate's home. There was a wind that burned as it pressed against your face. We arrived at the party dry and thirsty, ready to drink and smoke to tomorrow. I didn't know how to start things with Hinata, so I started with a toast. As the party went on, I found myself getting drunker and more stoned and staying inside the house. My thoughts and feelings were curled up inside my vodka bottle. I just needed to drink enough to find them before everything, myself included, sunk to the bottom of the bottle.

I saw Hinata hanging with this girl from my modern history class. She was leaning against him, with her hand on his shoulder. I hated her for the first time that night. She was stealing his attention away from me. He was laughing with her. It was supposed to be my night.

On a moment’s notice, the night changed. A cool, calm breeze. Around the house danced a wandering torrent of leaves picked up from the ground the sun had scorched earlier. I found myself outside with Hinata. He wanted to go home, and I wanted to leave. We decided to walk home together, an adventurous 15 kilometres to where he was staying. Along the way, we joked and laughed. He threw his arm around my shoulder. I would have given up a thousand wishes to know what that meant then. Such intimacy. Such warmth. But I didn't have to courage to ask. I just threw my arm around his shoulder as well and enjoyed the moment.

When we walked past a shopping centre, we found a stray trolley, and he pushed me for about 15 minutes in the trolley until we hit the beginnings of a hill. We walked to the top of the hill and collapsed behind an old bowling alley.

Hinata lay flat on a bit of grass with the soft of his belly exposed. I laid my head on his bare stomach and looked up at the stars. I couldn’t quite find the courage for my true feelings, so I talked about how I would miss my friend when he left. Hinata chided that we weren’t friends. My heart sunk. I sat up. I didn’t know what to say. Tears found their way to the corner of my eyes so quickly. Hinata reached out his hand, put it firmly on my shoulder and repeated himself. We weren’t friends. We were boyfriends. His lips were soft as he kissed me, and my heart turned up the dial for this welcome punchline.

After that night, we had two more weeks in Australia together before he went back to Japan. My foolish wish had lacked specificity, and I paid for that. I never wished for someone that lived in Australia.

On his last day in Australia, we spent every minute together. The day started with a small moment of joy, when I woke up next to someone I loved. I saw his eyes flicker open. He saw me and smiled. The first smile of the day. Without a moment's hesitation, he made me promise I would visit him in Japan. See where he lived. As we laid naked next to each other under the covers, Hinata talked about all the sights he would show me, the food he wanted me to try, and his friends that he wanted me to meet. It was like our own little world and it was interrupted by his host mother knocking at the door to let us know breakfast was ready.

As we said goodbye outside the airport gate, Hinata rummaged through his bag and pulled out a carefully wrapped present. He lowered his head slightly and presented it to me with two hands. I waited until I got home to unwrap it. Hinata had given me a Japanese face cloth and this little ornamental bag of wood shavings soaked in pear oil. The bag had something in Japanese written on it and it smelt like Hinata. I closed my eyes. Took a depth breath of pear oil. Pushed everything else away. And he was there.

Love had given me a purpose, and I would visit Hinata less than a year after he left Australia. I was in my first year of university and I had worked two jobs to afford 8 weeks in Japan. I didn't mind, because it felt like every moment of work and study brought me one step closer to Hinata. One step closer to feeling such happiness again. To surprise him, I had been twisting my tongue back and forth, learning as much Japanese as I could.

It was an uneventful journey from Australia to Japan. I arrived at a busy airport outside Tokyo. Crowded with people. I wasn’t sure where I was going. As I burst forth into the big welcome hall of Narita airport, there was crowd upon crowd. I felt lost.

In the suffocating noise of the entrance hall, there rested a beaming set of black eyes. His head darted around so he could maintain eye contact through the busy crowd. His black hair had grown longer and his skin was a little more tanned, but that smile, it was everything that I remembered. Everyone else disappeared, and somehow we made our way through the crowd to each other. My awkwardness sent out an odd attempt at a handshake, but Hinata batted away my hand and embraced me with everything he had. He radiated warmth and I could feel his heart beating through his chest. His scent lingered after he stepped back. That sweet smell of pears. With my feet back under me, I greeted him in Japanese, much to his delight. He hugged me again and whispered in my ear.

We traversed the island of Honshu from Tokyo to Shimonoseki via the Shinkansen. We snuggled next to each other on the train, as he quietly read Manga to me. I would share a headphone so we could both listen to music, while we played Hinata's endless supply of Gameboy games. Along the way, we would hop off at various cities and stay a day or two before hopping back onto the Shinkansen. We stayed in a mix of hotels and Ryokan, the rooms were always small, but we didn’t care.

After a sojourn to Fukuoka in the south of Japan, we made a long train journey up to Hinata’s home island of Hokkaido, a luscious, green and sparsely populated island (in comparison to the rest of Japan). We played games on a notepad to kill time and stole kisses when we thought no one was looking. We hopped off an old train at Yoichi, a small town by the sea just near Sapporo. Hinata’s mother greeted us at the station, and we drove a short trip towards their orchard. As we got closer, I asked Hinata which farm in the distance was his family’s. He smiled and said all of them.

His family grew strawberries, plums, grapes, peaches and apples, but all the trees around their family home were pear trees. This part of the holiday was like resting back into family life. Hinata's mother seemed to give no second thought to the relationship between her son and me. She seemed so excited just to see Hinata smile.

Hinata and I helped out around the orchard and at times I started to see Hinata’s disguise. It was like a heavy veil hiding hurt eyes. Was it loss or grief? Or was it just some thought with no memory to house it?

I couldn’t sleep much. There was too much excitement being next to Hinata. But there was also a tiny sadness knowing that I would go back home in a few weeks. In the early mornings, I would watch Hinata slumber in an easy sleep. Sweet smiles lingered on his face, just free from the burden of his waking hours. Nothing in me wanted to wake him from such a peaceful place. After half an hour or so, I would escape to the orchid outside.

Hinata often found me outside at the end of the orchard staring into the sky. He didn't know it, but the months between when he left and when I came to Japan had been hellish for me. I often found myself dwelling in some deep, grey despair. My sadness was like a den of wolves trying to hide. Their grey shadows cast on the ground. Tooth and claw stretched out. Eyes dripping with loneliness. Hinata would find me staring off into the distance with this sadness on my face. A sadness I think he knew all too well. He would sit down beside me and drape his warm arm around my shoulder. Rest his head on mine. Look out into the distance with me.

One week before my holidays finished, Hinata found me again amongst the pear trees in the morning. He sat down behind me and wrapped his arms and legs around me. He told me how he wished he could get lost in my field of slumber. This waking dream I had every morning. Thoughts dancing in the green pear leaves.

He asked me to stay.

Hinata told me his family were wealthy enough and his mother wouldn’t mind. It was a perfect offer and I was too stupid to realise. I think at that moment I wasn't ready to leave Australia and live somewhere else. I should have said a thousand different things. That this was perfect, being here with him, and of course, I would stay. But for some reason, I couldn't say what I really wanted to. I said I had to go back home, finish university, but I would come back. He could come to visit me too.

He asked me to stay again.

Unlike me, Hinata was good at talking about his feelings. He told me there was a warmth he just couldn’t feel in the day. Like he was standing naked in the cold, shaking and shivering in the world around him. He told me the days didn’t seem so bad when I was there. When he had something to hold onto. Someone to keep him warm. He asked me again to stay with him. He whispered in my ear.

The next day we tore down a dying pear tree at the end of the orchard. He glistened in the sun and pushed me to the ground before giving me a kiss. Covered in sweat and dirt, Hinata hugged me tightly. I returned the favour, but I didn't want to let go. These are the moments of happiness. This is what I’m not sure I deserve. I would give anything to make this happen again. But I forgot how to.

We made plans to see each other again, and I returned home to Australia. Despite leaving Hinata, I felt safe. I felt loved. I felt excited about the next time I would see him. Next time, I would stay, and I would tell him that as soon as I landed.

As soon as I got home, I called his house, but no one answered. I checked the number and rang again. I tried for the next two days, and on the third day, his mother answered. My meagre Japanese did not do justice to the grief born by Hinata’s mother, but I did understand that he was dead. Over the next few weeks, I managed to gather that Hinata had hung himself from one of the pear trees at the end of the orchard, the morning after I left.

It’s hard to write this without crying again. That first night I spoke with his mother, I cried so hard I could taste the tears. I ran throughout my apartment looking for the small, pear scented bag Hinata had given me. It should've been an easy find, but I was crying so hard it was difficult to see.

No amount of drinking or smoking made him come back. I sat there shaken on the front steps to my apartment, crying and getting stoned. I closed my eyes, smelt the scent of pears, and I saw him. His long black hair danced in the wind. His eyes chased me. I opened my eyes, and in a puff of smoke, Hinata disappeared.

All I see now is a distant memory of a land far away.

I see lush green trees reaching out to the sea.

I see lonely clouds on the mountain top.