Komorebi (木漏れ日): Short Fiction

Komorebi (木漏れ日)

Sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. Interplay between light and leaves.

Naoki has heard that Arne’s mother is Japanese but he still can’t bring himself to believe it. Under the cherry blossom tree at the school gate, with sunlight making dappled patterns on his skin, Arne greets him with a smile. Light catches in his hair, turning it a colour that Naoki has only ever seen on snow and jasmine.

On their way to the bus stop, they are stopped by a group of foreigners looking for direction. To where, Naoki doesn’t know and neither does Arne who insists that he doesn’t speak any English, even though he looks like someone who does. So the tourists give their best stab at Japanese, and Naoki is the one stuck figuring out whether it’s the train station they are looking for or somewhere to copulate. Arne does his best to suppress his hysterics; his shoulders shake when the tourists shout ecchi, ecchi, ecchi over each other. 

It comes belatedly to Naoki (as most things do) that the likelihood of these grown men asking them for sex or direction to a brothel is significantly low. First of all, Naoki and Arne are in school uniforms, which should act as a form of deterrent in and of itself. Secondly, they are in Hikone, a clockwork town where the only attraction is a feudal relic on a remote hilltop with a gift shop that closes at five. This is hardly Shinjuku.

｢They must mean eki, not ecchi?｣ Arne says in a voice that trembles, breath hot against Naoki’s ear. 

Naoki directs the foreigners to the closest station with jerky hand movements and chopped-up verb forms. He pretends he doesn’t notice the way Arne is watching him, eyes glittering like pools of water in the sunlight. 

After the tourists are gone, laughter bursts out of Arne’s mouth, a stomach-clutching, full-body kind of laugh that Naoki has seen Arne do often with his friends. Even though Naoki knows that Arne has always been like this—beautiful and heartless, boastful about his own happiness—his gut still twists painfully at the sight.

｢You are especially cruel today,｣ Naoki says and is surprised when Arne’s face falls.