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The world shines in light-blue, white, and gold, from the ribbons and flags wrapped around the branches of the trees and people’s wrists, to the flowers that adorn the windows and everyone’s hair. Even the sky agrees with them: its deep, vivid blue only partially hidden by light cotton clouds that let the golden sun shine through, illuminating every corner of the city and today’s celebrations.
The city sits on a hill, and the infinite sea is visible from its Main Street, as blue as the sky whose colour it reflects, calm waves crashing against the cliffs, spreading foam on top of the rocks like the people watching the parade throw white petals at the street below them. The Main Street crosses the entire town on the mountain, and by the time the sun reaches its highest and brightest point, the parade has almost reached its final destination: the temple, carved in the light-grey stone of the hills, centuries ago and untouched since then, its columns thicker than the trunks of the oldest trees, the heart of the city and the most important location in the world according to every inhabitant.
Well, not every inhabitant. Not really.
Kun was lucky enough to live in a lovely second-floor right near the centre of their Main Street, and from his window, he had the privilege of seeing not much more than only the worn-out stones of the pavement below him, the wall on the opposite side of the street, only a meter high and coated in fresh white paint for the celebrations, the roofs of the buildings on the streets beneath him (the mountain was steep enough for that), and the peaceful ocean. Everyday we woke up to that calm beauty, and if his happiness depended on that, he’d be the happiest man in town. Now, with his elbows on the windowsill and gentle eyes scanning the dozens of people that formed the parade, he wasn’t happy. Not even a single bit.
It should be the most joyful day of the year, that’s how the Duke wanted it to be, always supposedly following the sacred texts. It should be a day in which everyone says their most profound thank yous, in which everyone has something to eat and a smile on their faces, in which they should remember how much they adore their God. And yes, there’s food on the stalls that flank the street, and today no one asks the price for anything. Yes, there are graceful silk ribbons that dance with the breeze of the sea, and the sweet perfume of the blue flowers reaches every corner, coming from the wreaths that decorate the doors. Yes, the Duke's men carry a marble statue, sculpted by the most precise and talented artists, elegance and exquisiteness in every fold of the God’s stone clothes, every inch of their skin, every strand of their hair, every jewel in their crown. The men walk slowly, followed by the Duke himself and his family, then dozens of citizens, all wearing gold, white and light blue, the colours of the day. The colours of silence.
Not a word is said out loud. No songs are chanted. No child laughs, they’ve been educated that way ever since they’d learnt how to talk. No one claps, no one dances, no one cheers. As the statue is patiently carried to the temple, the only sounds Kun can hear are the calls of the seagulls that fly in circles above them, hoping to steal fresh fish from the food stalls, the crashing of the waves, and the steps of the crowd. The only words pronounced are the absolutely necessary ones, and they’re said in the faintest whisper possible, as not to disturb the peace, as not to break the Silence. Kun sighs. It’s bound to happen, in a world that worships the God of Silence, he knows it. He’s been living there his entire life, and he’s still yet to get used to it. There’s still a small pile of white petals on the windowsill, by his side, but he doesn’t throw them. Instead, he closes the window and the curtains.
His entire life he’s been chasing a lost hope, telling himself that he’s just like everybody else and doesn't need to change. That, one day, he’ll get used to the Silence. That ringing in his ears would one day fade away and the absence of something he’d never experienced wouldn’t bother him anymore. He’d open his window and his heart wouldn’t ache for more , for louder. Greeting a friend with a whisper wouldn’t hurt, hiding his laugh when a quiet joke was told wouldn’t be hard, screaming at the top of his lungs until the waves and clouds answered back with a thunderstorm wouldn’t be his biggest desire. He’d sing until his throat was dry and painful, he’d play the songs he’d spent years writing in secret, he’d feel truly and finally complete. Music was forbidden, of course, what a hideous crime, what a gross offence to our God, that has given us so m uch! The least you can do is respect their wishes, and clear your childish mind of those ideas! You’ll never sing, you’ll never dance, that’s the way things are. No one needs that anymore, and no one will ever do. Kun rubs his eyes, shakes his head, and takes a deep breath as he lets his body heavily fall on his sofa. Even after so many years, his mother’s voice still echoes in the empty walls of his heart, her words repeated over and over again until the child he was almost repressed the music he wanted to play.
Until the day he decided he’d never cut that child’s wings.
He was still a kid, not much older than seven or eight, when he snapped. He’d gone to the market with his mum, holding her hand tightly while his hungry eyes scanned sellers and customers alike, watching the way they relied on colourful signs and creative ways to form shapes with the products they sold, as they couldn’t rely on his voice to get anyone’s attention. The clients walked with light steps, murmuring their requests to the sellers, to which they replied in the same way, instinctively, that habit so ingrained in their bodies Kun knew they didn’t even notice it anymore. He knew the younger kids didn’t. Born decades after the world fell under the claws of the God of Silence, this quiet world was all they’d ever known, and Kun knew his grandparents were the last generation who had known what a song was, before they were all banned and dancing was officially forbidden. When they died, and took their memories with them, it would be another step in the direction God wanted. To Kun, hell was a world like the one he lived in, where no one read poems aloud, no one sang about the ocean or about their loved ones, no one laughed with their friends and family. And on that day at the market, seeing people whisper when he knew they should be yelling (he’d read enough forbidden books, stolen from his grandparents shelves), seeing kids younger than him play with their mouths shut, something inside him broke, and it was with the morbid thought that he’d have enough time to shut his mouth when he was dead and buried, that he let go of his mother’s hand. She didn’t scream at him when he ran away, that reflex long erased from her spirit, and her angry whisper ( “Kun! Come back here!”) was barely audible over the loud sounds of his footsteps as he ran across the market, avoiding people and wooden structures as he zigzagged his way out of the building. As soon as he crossed the doors and the warm sun rays hit his face, he screamed. Words trapped since forever inside his mouth, just pure sound, repressed for years, while people stared at him with what was both fear and surprise in their eyes, unable to move in their chock. Unfortunately, his small legs couldn’t run fast enough, and it was a matter of minutes before his path was blocked by a pair of soldiers. Sitting on his sofa on the day of the yearly celebration, almost a decade later, Kun can still trace the scars from that day on his arms.
If anything, that day only ignited his restless soul even more. The teenager he grew up to be explored every corner of the city looking for people like him (he couldn’t be alone, he knew he wasn’t), daring to say some words out loud when no one was around, humming a melody under his breath that his parents pretended they didn’t hear. They had given up on controlling that rebellious mind of his, and none of them came to pick him up from jail that time he got caught snooping around in a corner that had once been a place to sing and dance. Kun didn’t even know what they were called, but he knew he’d find one with its doors still open, one day. The alternative was far too scary to face, and he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. He needed them to be out there, singing somewhere the guard’s ears couldn’t reach, and his heart bled with longing, missing a life full of songs he’d never heard before.
As the years passed, that flame never fully died, but was forced to be reduced to a hidden, bitter sparkle. He grew up, sometimes telling himself that it was a waste of time to follow that false dream, and that burying it underground where no one else could find it was a better option than being chased and killed. Doing what people there did best, keeping his mouth shut, trying to at least pretend he was like everybody else, even if deep inside his heart sang another song. Everything around him felt fake, like a sad excuse. It's harder to raise your voice against the Duke's words when you can't raise your voice at all, he thinks, as he has to clench his fists in rage.
With the window closed, Kun can barely hear the sound of the heavy doors to the temple being open, when the procession reaches its final destination. The Duke keeps the hinges well oiled and in good condition; breaking the Silence on the most important day of the year with the sound of their screeching would be unforgivable. Kun glances at his desk. All the drawers are unlocked except for the third one, and he always carries the key in a chain around his neck. The raids had stopped a few years ago, when the Duke decided that people had learnt their lesson, and even though he still had a certain reputation, he knew he didn’t need more than a healthy amount of care. The more he hid, the more obvious it would become, and claiming the songs he wrote were simply poems meant to be read in silence should be enough, or so he hoped. What he was about to do was far more risky. So dangerous, in fact, that he felt that fire burning in his chest as he got up and walked to the desk. His fingers tingled as he removed his necklace and twisted the key in the lock, the anticipation of doing something he’d done several times before only adding to his restlessness. If he got caught and they somehow found out that it wasn’t the first, second, third time he did it, he’d be a dead man, but he didn’t care enough to stop. And, hell, he certainly wasn’t planning to go down with his mouth shut.
His heart throbbed in his ribcage, so full Kun thought it would burst, as he opened the drawer and quickly counted the pages. They were all there, thankfully. He wouldn’t need them for what he was about to do, simply seeing them was more than enough to revive his memory of the words he’d written with both his pen and his soul. The celebrations would last the rest of the day, but if the statue had already reached the temple, he’d better hurry and catch the few moments after the crowd that followed the Duke was concentrated in front of the building, and before everyone else who watched from their windows came down to the street. A window of a few minutes only, but this isn't his first time, he knows his way around this city, which streets and alleys to avoid, which avenues to take as he runs up the mountain and reaches the fields on the top. He's not scared, he lives for moments like this.
As he goes up the hill, the houses grow more sparse and Kun only allows himself to slow down his pace a couple kilometers after what he knows is the last house. He takes a deep breath, much deeper than the one he’d taken back home, one that comes from somewhere deep inside him and clears his mind, taking some of his worries along with the air. The breeze is colder up there, and carries the fresh smell of pine and wildflowers, instead of the salty scent of the sea. Kun would go there everyday, if he could.
The field he’s in is one of his favourite places in the world. It sits by the edge of a cliff, with only the breathtaking view of the infinite ocean in front of him, and with the woods behind his back, the leaves on the trees whispering their soft secrets and the birds singing without fear. As much as he likes to contemplate the ocean, he quickly turns his back on it and enters the woods. After all, he can see the water from his own windows back home; the forest, he can’t get anywhere else.
He takes his shoes off, like he always does when he comes to his sanctuary. It’s a ritual to him by this point, and it brings a smile to his lips. Where he is, on the edge of the forest, the trees aren’t too dense yet, and their canopies allow the sunlight to reach the grass and the flowers to grow among their exposed ancient roots. He sees a butterfly, a type of red flower he’s never seen before, a careful squirrel that stares at him for a brief second before it disappears again as it climbs up the tree it calls home. To him, it’s everything. It’s peace. It’s the only place he can sing. So he sings.
Kun chooses his favourite song, as he aimlessly walks through the woods, feeling the grass and the fallen leaves under his feet. If this is a day to celebrate, he’ll do it the way he prefers, and right there where he stands, no one can take that away from him.
His voice is light and clear, like the breeze and the plants around him, as he lets the words flow without much thinking, after so many hours perfecting his songs, lying awake at night as his brain tirelessly constructed lyrics and melodies even when he wasn’t thinking. By now, it’s natural, it’s part of him, it’s right. Humans had been doing it for millenia, music and dance bringing them together when they barely had any other way of connecting with others and communicating, and he plans on carrying on that legacy, even if he’s the only one out there that thinks this way. Letting it all die to appeal to a lonely God goes against everything he believes humankind stands for, so he sings, with his eyes closed and a smile on his lips.
“Nice tune. Did you write it yourself?”
Kun’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest, and he has to take at least three steps back to avoid falling as his scared eyes scan his surroundings searching for the source of that unexpected voice. Damn his carelessness! That’s what his parents would have told him; that one day, the challenges he took would end up getting him into serious trouble. Damn his tendency to get so lost in his music he completely shut down everything around him, seeing no colours and hearing no sounds but his own voice! In a day of celebration, of all days! He should have been more careful, he should have…
His breathing is still erratic and his heart still beats so loud it could almost serve as an instrument to his interrupted song, but his mouth falls open when he looks up at a tree near him and finds a figure staring at him from one of the branches. A man, maybe around Kun’s age, sitting several meters above the ground, with his legs dangling from the branch and a tiny amused smile on his pink lips. His hair is shorter than Kun’s but just as dark, and he wears red . Not light blue, not white, not gold. Red, like a northern cardinal in all its glory. The Duke’s soldiers never wear red, and they certainly never… speak out loud?
Kun’s breath gets stuck in his throat when he realises it’s the first time in years he hears another human other than himself speak louder than a murmur.
And with such carelessness, such lightness, such grace and such sweetness in his honeyed voice. But then again, he wasn’t the one too busy singing to check whether he was alone or not, he wasn’t the one who should be afraid. And yet, Kun wasn’t. After the initial shock and surprise had faded away, they’d been replaced by curiosity, so pure and simple he has to remind himself he doesn’t know that person, and that for all he knows, he can be in great danger.
“Who are you?” he keeps his voice in a half-tone, not as loud as the man’s question but a little above what’s usually considered as being correct and polite. It doesn’t hurt to be careful, and in moments like this, he’s going to need every ounce of care he can find within himself.
The boy’s smile grows a bit stronger as his feet dangle and he cocks his head to the side.
“I could ask you the same thing, Mr. Singer,” he doesn’t give Kun enough time to answer before he continues, aloud. It’s almost dizzying the way he talks like the world doesn’t exist past the woods where they found each other. “I rather liked your song, by the way. Your voice isn’t bad, not at all. Makes me think they were made for each other, your voice and the song, you know? One built thinking about the other and such.”
It’s musical, it’s light, it’s round and fills up both Kun’s ears and his heart. It’s real, it’s human, it’s right . It’s how it’s meant to be, and Kun runs out of adjectives to describe it. His hands shake, he wants to grab the man by his arms and beg him to tell him everything he knows, but he forces his body to stay still.
“You know what they’d do to you,” the man says, “if they heard you sing that way.”
Kun’s smirk carries no humour. “The same thing they’d do to you if they heard you talk like that. Only worse.”
“Much worse.” the man nods. “And yet, you still sing.”
“It’s the only thing I can do.”
The man moves so fast he almost startles Kun again when he abandons his branch and jumps to the ground, landing safely with the posture of someone who’d done so a million times before. Now standing much closer and directly in front of him, Kun can finally note all the details previously lost in the shadows of the leaves. He’s a few centimeters shorter than Kun, but the elegant curve of his nose points upwards as he raises his chin to stare at Kun in the eyes. That mysterious smile persists and the way his dark feline eyes sparkle hints at both intelligence and mischief. If Kun feels his cheeks heating up under the man’s gaze, no one needs to know. If he finds him gorgeous, he can keep it to himself.
“You’re brave,” the man says. “I do like that in a boy.”
Kun tries and tries again, but that stubborn smile always finds a way to reach his lips. His pulse has calmed down, and as safe as he’s starting to feel, there’s still a tingle in his fingertips that keeps him grounded to reality.
“So are you,” he manages to say. For a man so used to the art of searching across books and dictionaries in order to find precisely the words he needed for his lyrics, he’s sure finding it hard to come up with something clever to say. The stranger seems to notice, and Kun’s heart melts a little when his smile forms wrinkles around his eyes.
The man steps back, arms crossed and slightly leaning forward.
“Tell me your name,” he asks, and Kun can be a little reckless when he gets carried away, but not that much.
“Tell me yours first.”
A smile, a shrug, a playful eye roll. It’s mesmerizing, captivating. Kun finds it hard to look away, and the idea of going home and never hearing that voice again almost drives him insane right there and then.
“One condition,” the stranger says instead of replying.
Kun raises a careful eyebrow. “Tell me.”
“We exchange our gifts,” the man says. His limbs don’t stop moving for a second even though he’s still standing in the same place, like an invisible underwater current trying to take an algae along with it. “You teach me that song, and I’ll come up with a dance for it.”
“You dance?!” Kun’s lips fall open for the second time, but the boy laughs.
“Yes, so what?” he asks. “Are you about to tell me it’s forbidden, like you weren’t singing with your entire soul five minutes ago?”
“No, it’s just...” Kun bites his lip, not even caring if he looks silly in all his excitement, “I had never met a dancer before.” He watches in awe as the man giggles in response, twirls around and offers him an exaggerated bow.
“Well, nice to meet you then, my lovely singer.” Lovely?! Kun’s starting to feel lightheaded. “Do we have a deal?”
The word ‘lovely’ still spins around his mind at such speed Kun almost struggles to remember what he’s referring to, but he nods, not without having to lick his lips before he’s able to answer.
“Of course.” his voice comes out a little hoarse, but he’s beyond caring. This person he just met, and somehow ended up sharing his biggest, most dangerous secret with, has to be trustworthy, he just has to. No one would dare to speak like that for that long, and offering to dance would be an offense grave enough to earn him a few scars like Kun’s. It’s not a risk many would take, not a blasphemy easy to commit, and that’s how Kun knows it’s real.
The stranger smiles again when he hears Kun’s confirmation, this time even more brightly. Kun didn’t think that’d be possible.
“Very well then,” he says, “My name is Ten.”
“Kun. It’s my pleasure.”
They shake hands, eyes still locked as Kun feels the rough skin of Ten’s palm under his fingers, the result of his most definitely frequent trips to the tops of the trees. His mind refuses to stay still, there’s a thousand questions he wants to ask, a million possibilities he can think of, all that excitement mixed with fear, all the songs they could share, all the dangers that could await them. His heart sings too, and so loudly Kun had never heard it more clearly before. And if he had to guess, he’d say Ten feels the exact same.
“Tell me,” Kun asks, unable to keep his questions to himself anymore, eager to let some of them go now that he finally has a chance to set them free, after all those years, “do you know anyone else like us?” When Ten nods without hesitation, there’s a delicious pressure on his chest, nothing like the one he’s used to feel.
“Several people, in fact,” Ten says, and it’s like that whole silent world is finally smiling at Kun, for the first time in his life. “Ironically, we have to keep our voices down, but if you know where to look, you’ll always find someone like yourself.”
“Last time I tried, I only found these scars waiting for me.” Kun says it lightly, but he immediately regrets his words when he sees the sparkle in Ten’s eyes being replaced by concern. When he instinctively looks down to show Ten that they’re old and healed, and that everything’s alright now, Ten follows his gaze, and that’s how they found out they never broke the handshake. Their arms are lower, which only means their bodies stand closer, and their hands have stayed linked without them even realising. It only hurts a little when Ten quickly pulls his hand away, but Kun can’t blame him for that, not when he sees he’s not the only one blushing, and that Ten can’t seem to stare into his eyes in the way he’d been doing before, all that cheekiness from the ‘lovely’ is long gone. Kun’s sleeves aren’t long enough to hide everything, and before he can reassure him that he doesn’t need to worry, Ten talks again.
“I’m really sorry.” his voice is now a whisper that Kun wished he’d never heard from him. “I’d never actually met someone who was caught before. None of us did.”
“It’s alright, I was a kid,” Kun says, and he swears he's just turned into a different person than who he was yesterday, because it’s against everything he used to think he was that he gently grabs one of Ten’s hands again. “I’m not ashamed of them.”
Ten finds his eyes again and he’s the one who holds Kun’s hand tighter and pulls him along with him when he starts walking towards the grassy field and the cliff.
“Did you know that God didn’t want any of this?” he suddenly says.
“What do you mean?”
Ten shrugs but Kun can tell there’s no lightness in that act. “I’ve read the sacred texts and all of that,” he says, “and it doesn’t say anywhere that there must be Silence at all times. It just teaches us to respect it when it’s needed.”
Kun’s not surprised, not even a little bit. It’s the confirmation of an idea that he’d been carrying for years, after all.
“It’s the people,” Ten continues, his eyes now lost in the waves, dozens of meters below where they stand, “it’s always the people. They take what they find and twist it until it suits them. It was never meant to be like this.”
“Maybe one day it won’t be,” Kun says, pulling Ten only a heartbeat closer to him. “If we do something.”
When Ten faces him again, there’s that faint smile taking shape again, one that curls the corners of his delicate lips. This time, Kun does find a word to describe it, and it's ‘hopeful’.
“What’s the name of the song?” Ten asks. Kun’s happy to notice his eyes shine a little braver now, and that his calming voice is back to its normal volume.
“Well… ‘Untitled number thirteen’, I believe,” he admits.
Ten stares directly into his eyes, eyebrows furrowed slightly, but he doesn’t let go of Kun’s hand for a single second.
“You’re joking.” it’s barely a question, but Kun still feels himself forced to shake his head.
“Not really,” he says. “I’m not very good at naming things.” Like what I’m feeling right now. I don’t think I’d find a word for this in any dictionary or in any of my books. “Maybe you can help me,” he continues, “You could find good titles for my songs.”
Ten laughs, and it’s better than any song that still survives in the world.
“Hey, I’m already giving you my dancing skills, that was the agreement! Don’t you think you’re asking too much?”
“Then we could do it together.” It’s all scaringly similar to writing songs. When Kun sits down with his pen in his hand and a brand new idea in his mind, the words flow like a river until Kun has nothing else inside him, nothing else to give to the paper, to the music. The raw verses come out easily, like a second nature, no filter, no restraints, nothing that could ever keep them from belonging to himself and himself only, a fruit grown in his heart. He fixes the details later, tweaking the rhymes and the lines, erasing words and sentences that no longer feel right to his eyes, but in that very first moment, it’s all instinct, it’s all human. That’s what talking to Ten feels like. “I think we can come up with something quite interesting together.”
Ten’s smirk is as delighted as teasing.
“Don’t tempt me, lovely singer, I might accept.”
“Please do.” Kun returns the smirk. “I mean, if you actually turn out to be a good dancer, that is.” It earns him a smack in the arm from Ten’s free hand, but he regrets nothing. It gives him the chance to see that playful fire in Ten’s eyes, what more could he wish for?
“Don’t you dare doubt my skills!” he complains.
“Show me, then,” Kun says as they pass the last tree. From the field near the cliff, he sees how the sun still shines hot above the ocean, with its waves reflecting its light like a mirror, but it won’t take long before it starts to fall down and hide behind the waves. He opens his arms, feeling the breeze mess up his hair and the sunlight caress his face. Somehow, Ten looks even more stunning under direct sunlight, and his red clothes shine like a bonfire. “You’ve heard me sing, now it’s your turn.”
“Gladly,” Ten says as he removes his jacket and throws it unceremoniously to the ground. His arms are bare without it, uncovered by his sleeveless shirt, and Kun tries not to stare. “Sing me a song, and I’ll give you everything you could wish for.”
Kun pretends he needs to cough and warm up his voice before he can start, but he’s weak to the fact that it’s all an excuse to buy time, to let Ten’s words fully sink in inside him. His breathing is unstable again, and he knows it will only get worse when Ten’s already fluid and free movements go from casual and natural to coordinated and precise, and if Ten’s sly smile is anything to go by, he knows exactly what he’s doing to Kun.
He picks a song, one of his earliest works and one he still holds very close to his heart. It’s about hope and about the future, he finds it nothing but fitting. As he starts the first verse, it takes Ten a moment to follow him. Instead he closes his eyes, letting the melody soak him, closing his eyes and tilting his head to hear Kun better, to fully understand the song and the paths it follows. Then he smiles, and when he finally starts dancing, Kun could have sworn they’ve known each other their entire lives.