tôi yêu bản dịchThe key hit the bot

tôi yêu bản dịch
The key hit the bottom of the mailbox with a dull metallic clunk.

Takaba slung his backpack over his shoulder, picked up his duffel bags, and headed out into the cold, windswept streets. Winter was fast approaching, but he wouldn't be here to see the snow fall in his hometown. He wouldn't be here to see the sakura trees bloom in spring, raining down its petals. He wouldn't be here to ever hear the temple gongs that shook him to the marrows of his bones.

No regrets, Aki. Don't look back. Don't ever look back.

That's what he told himself, but he could only feel his acid tears, burning flesh and carving a path down his cheeks as he swallowed the urge to cry, to break down and collapse to his knees. After all, it was time to leave. There was not second to spare for petty sentimentalities or goodbyes.

He had no one to say goodbye to.

The taxi he had called was dutifully waiting outside in the empty neighborhood.

"Hey, kid!" the driver peered out through the car window.

Takaba swore he could feel phantom hands clutching at him from behind, begging him not to go, but he ignored them. There was only one thing, one person, that could convince him otherwise, and he wasn't here.

He never was.

"You coming or what?"

The handle felt icy and steely under his fingertips as he tugged the door open. He took one last look at the apartment, the unlit window where his bedroom was, or at least, what used to be his bedroom, and he ducked into the cab, sinking heavily into the old leather seat.

"Asami-sama," the blond bodyguard looked around the empty apartment, holding his ear over the ear set. How could he possibly report to his boss that his lover had left him, deserted him.
"Where is he?"

"He's… gone," he paused, then added, "sir."

"Of course he's gone. He can't settle down for ten minutes."

"That's not…" prepare yourself, "his apartment's been emptied out, sir."

Silence.

He had expected some incredible raging, Hulk-style, to begin, but this was even worse. There was nothing worse in Asami-sama then his silence. Or rather, what silence signified, what brewed beneath the exterior.

"Wait there."

Fuck...

His muscles tensed and constricted as the plane tilted upward and took off, its wheels retracting into its steel womb and plastering him into the plush seat; fingers tightly gripped the edge of the armrests. He didn't mind flying part, the high altitude cruising. The occasional storms didn't bother him either, but the takeoffs and landings always unnerved him a bit.

Outside the window, the runway was becoming smaller and smaller, a narrow, illuminated strip of flat concrete, and the nocturnal metropolis of Tokyo and its majestic display of lights faded into lumps of sporadic light, haphazardly prepared fireworks that refused to diffuse into the sky and die away.

Takaba fixed his eyes on them, mesmerized by the sheer beauty. He had lived and died there. Died. Perhaps not completely though, for somewhere in that human labyrinth of 13 million, he had locked away a good part of his humanity. And his capacity to love.

When the plane climbed higher and penetrated a layer of clouds and Tokyo was no more, he fixed his eyes instead on the red blinking light attached to the end of the steadfast wings, drawn by its consistency, the tacit promise that it would flash in rhythm the entire twelve hours of the flight. It was reliable and it was reliability that he sought.

Goodbye, Asami.

Asami stood in the center of the empty living room. The improvised darkroom, the stained sofa, the cardboard box coffee table, the empty beer cans, canisters of film rolls, the ashtray, week old takeout boxes. Gone. Even the smell of fixer had faded, covered by cheap air freshener.

"Have you found him yet?"

"No, sir. They're still checking his usual spots."

"His cell phone?"

"Canceled two weeks ago."

"Credit card. Bank account."

"The same. All money withdrawn."

"What about his employer?"

"The editor found the letter of resignation two days ago on his desk."

"Do his friends not know where he is? Acquaintances, relatives, parents? There has to be someone that knows where he's gone."

"He told his parents that he'd be gone for a while."

"Where?"

"He didn't say, but out of the country."

"What about the airline companies."

"We're still doing inquiries, but so far there has been no record of him purchasing any tickets out of the country. There are also companies that we do not have leverage over."

"I don't care. Find him." Asami whispered, his voice deadly and frigid. The threat would do no good, however. Takaba had slipped from his grasp.

By a mere two hours.

He kept on running his mind through what he had just done. For eight months, he had pondered on this, driving himself to insanity and back in a constant internal controversy, a chaotic roundtrip. His dreams had been the battleground for his doubts and certainties. After three months without a single word from Asami, his half-serious ideas of just dropping everything and leaving Tokyo crystallized from its saturated solution, the seed crystal sown, breaking the surface tension, the lattices forming methodically around the germinating idea.

Then, he changed his mind to leave Japan altogether.

Wait another month, he told himself, wait longer. Wait forever, another part of him whispered. Then there was that embittered devil, the Diablo unknown, inside him that urged him to take the next flight out of Japan. Pick one, it whispered to him, pick any flight, it's a Russian roulette, either way you lose…so does it matter?

But goddammit, it did matter.

It does matter.

It was terrifying sometimes, wondering if Asami had dropped him altogether, afraid that the man would lose, or perhaps already had lost, interest. His soul trembled in trepidation. That was, after all, the reason Takaba ran from him. If he played this game of hide-and-seek, then maybe, just maybe, Asami might toy with him, as a cat would with an already trapped mice.

After six months, his doubts became certainties. Sure, Asami always said that Takaba belonged to him, but how many other lovers had he whispered that to, how many others had been used and abused? Received then deceived? Discarded like empty boxes, orange peels with its tangy excitement dried and withered. With his mind set in what seemed like stone at the time, he began making preparations over the next two months.

He arranged for a passport, one that had a different name. Tanaka Sei, nothing too flashy, rather mundane and intentionally boring. He emptied his apartment beginning with furniture, and every time an article disappeared in the black trash bag, he felt as though he were carving out a piece of his heart and throwing it to the dogs, to be devoured, feasted upon by loneliness.

In the middle of the night, around two or three, he would walk out to the balcony to stare at the sky, stars overshadowed by the Tokyo night light, and watch the truck pick up what used to be his. The plan that at first seemed so certain felt fragile then as it still did now. He could have taken a hammer to the stone hard resolution and shattered it to jagged pieces, but he hadn't. He carried on, his desperation mutating into a twisted, fragile determination.

Now, with his eyes still fixed on that blinking, unchanging light fixed on the metal wings, he wanted more than ever to feel anger, for despite how much of his heart he had carved away, he still felt the ache, the pain, the intense, unforgivable, unforgettable throbbing he felt whenever Asami wasn't near.

Asami was 9000 meters below, probably not knowing that his lover was slipping away. For the moment, Takaba closed his eyes and noticed that there was no weight lifted from his shoulders with this cowardly escape. Instead, it grew heavier and heavier as the plane cruised from Tokyo to London, nonstop.

Two years later.

Wispy strands of smoke climbed its way to the high ceiling of the luxurious flat overlooking Tokyo, only to be smothered by cruel hands into a crystal ashtray then left in its ashy grave yard, crushed and deformed.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure of your unexpected visit, Mr. Merrett?" Asami gently twirled the crystal glass filled with golden, amber liquid. His counterpart was an Englishman, well into his late fifties with gray hair and creases around his aging face.

"There will be an event in London next week; I would appreciate you to make your presence known. It is for your very presence that I have come to request. It's an event, with exhibitions and performances. What is most crucial, though, is the dinner the second evening, but of course it would be indiscreet for you to show your face only on that day. Also, there will be many of the contacts in London the week before for possible negotiations and agreements."

"You realize, Mr. Merrett, that a week is an incredibly long span of time for me, do you not? Add the traveling time and I will be gone nearly two weeks from my foothold here in Tokyo."

"Which is why I came personally, Mr. Asami. Two weeks in indeed a very long time."

Well, he had a point. The man did take a thirteen hour plane trip all the way to Tokyo, but he would have to do the same to London if he agreed to this. Things had been relatively stable lately anyhow. Surely he could spare himself the time; it would help cement his relationship with the European contacts to have a firm English ally. "Very well. I expect the finest accommodations then."

"Only the best, of course."

Asami's lips turned up at the corners. This Englishman at least knew his way around the underworld. "Of course."

"Gyles, you can't just expect me to add five more photos to the gallery like this! I don't even know if I have one other decent shot worth displaying." Takaba slammed his hands down on the mahogany desk of the gallery curator. "I'm a photographer! Not a printing machine! Do I look like I have "hp" stamped to my forehead or something? No! Besides, most of the exhibit