Back when I was young and carefree, I harboured a lofty idealism; I could subscribe to grand notions such as Beauty and Love and Justice almost entirely without reserve. I would now say that I was exceptionally gifted in the art of self-delusion. There’s a saying I once heard an uncle say that went something like “everybody starts out with a bright liberal idealism- it fades slowly, and soon enough, you realise that things don’t exist in absolutes and everything is coated by the murky grey of moral relativity- then, you become a conservative.” I can’t help but agree. I’d thought little about it when he’d declared it at our family reunion twenty years ago, but it now took on a startling clarity. Now that I reflect on it, there was really one major reason I am unable to escape my present bitterness: that was the curious incident of Yuno Kurosaki.
My best friend back in university was this Korean Biomed student— Dave Ryu. We found enough similarities between us to bond and we had enough differences to maintain interest in each other. He was handsome and outgoing and would flaunt his various talents— he could play the piano exceptionally well and was a pretty good dancer— to attract the opposite sex. I sometimes did the same, but he was really more of the bon vivant.
Once, in one of our shared lectures— a course on the nature of Justice, funnily enough— there was a question posed by the professor to the audience:
“Kant’s categorical imperative tells us to treat everyone with respect, as an end in itself. Isn’t this pretty much the same as the Golden Rule?”
The audience was silent in contemplation when a slender hand rose among the crowd like some pixie lifting a veil. The microphone was passed down and a tremendously beautiful Japanese girl stood up and proceeded to give the most erudite and impressive response I ever recall hearing.
“No. The Golden Rule depends on contingent facts about how people desire to be treated. Kant’s categorical imperative requires that we abstract from such contingencies and respect individuals on the basis that they are rational beings, regardless of what they might desire in a particular situation.”
The audience, including Dave and I, who were sitting only a couple meters away, were enthralled. The professor smiled broadly.
Dave and I resolved to get to know this girl, and, through a series of encounters, that is exactly what we did. Her name, as you might guess, was Yuno Kurosaki, and she was Japanese-American, beautiful in a sense that evoked a tragic nostalgia, and also the object of mine and Dave’s love. We were wholly enchanted by both her beauty and mysterious brilliance. The thought that this was going to end badly for at least one if not both of us was banished to the darkest recesses of my consciousness. I had a feeling it was the same for Dave.
The next few months passed in a blur like one big chunk of unrefined joy. Yuno, Dave and I would go on all these crazy adventures- we often did things like drive out to the lake at midnight and push out this large inflatable raft into the vast body of uncharted water (at least to us) and float for hours, talking, drinking, imbibing the night like it was some everlasting ambrosia. It was a haze, a strange period of altered reality, a three month long high. Now that I look back on it, Erik Satie’s Gnossiene No. 1 comes to mind as the soundtrack— ominous and brooding; pining for what once was and what never could be again.
At first we both resolved to be content with merely admiring from afar. Yuno was what I would call carefully flirtatious- not oblivious to either of our advances but making sure not to indicate that she preferred one over the other.
I remember clearly the night that our dynamic took on an irreparable shift.
It was April, and the Sakura trees around our campus had bloomed their delicate pink flowers. We were feeling especially happy as we ambled after class. We talked about what we should do that evening— it was a Friday, after all— and mutually agreed to throw a little flat party. I had a decent sound system with close to a thousand albums in my collection. Yuno grabbed a Ziggy Marley record and started playing it. She danced this funky sway that looked initially awkward but become more casually alluring as you continued to watch. We’d alternate between sitting at the bar area, drinking, and shuffling about in front of the speakers. At some point, I released that I really needed to urinate- it must have been about midnight or one, and we were mildly inebriated. I do my thing in the bathroom and come out to find Dave making out with Yuno. I was only mildly taken aback because it wasn’t the first time either of us had kissed her- we’d joked around a bit before. This time though it was my apartment. I was mildly displeased.
Yuno suddenly looks up and smiles- she comes over and takes my hand, pulling me into a kiss. She leads me over and I weigh it up. I embrace her for a while but decide against it. I tell them they can sleep on the couch if they want, and that I’ll be sleeping in my bed. I turn the lights out. Everything is dark.
I wake and gradually move out of bed just as I gradually recall the events of the night. The flat is silent. I check the rooms- they are surprisingly tidy- they are all empty. Yuno and Dave have both gone without leaving a message. It’s Saturday, so I don’t have class for another hour or so. I call both. Neither answer.
I become mildly self-conscious at the potential absurdity of the situation— the ridiculous histrionics involved with the love-triangle scenario. I am unpleasantly aware of the growing romantic affection with which I see her. These thoughts collectively arouse an anger at the banality of my predicament; I was furious at both my inability to ascend from this grips of my emotions and my retrospective stupidity — I should have anticipated this from the beginning and acted accordingly. Yet I am also aware that history is nothing but the folly of the emotional man, and that really there is nothing to be truly distressed about. After all, this desire I feel for her, however painfully immediate it seems, is little more than the product of a ‘love-hormone’ — oxytocin and the positive feedback loop involved. I convince myself that a few days or weeks apart will serve to let me forget this lapse in reason.
I arrive in class, preoccupied with my thoughts, when I spot Dave, sitting in our familiar area. We may eye contact and a rapport, although somewhat diminished, is once again established.
“Hey.”
“What happened to her?”
Dave’s eyes flitted between me and the nearby students.
“She’s… She’s gone.”
I scratch my chin and glance at the hardwood lecture desk in front of us both. I clench and unclench my jaw.
“Her dad died. In Japan. She found out last night just after you left. Told me she flew out this morning.”
I sat still for a few moments. There was none of the abrasive emotional intensity that had so stirred my spirit of late, but I still sought, as humans do, for some sort of climax and resolution. Yuno denied both of these— it would be a couple decades later before I saw her again— and I couldn’t help but be affected by a deep sense of dissatisfaction. All attempts to settle this sense of incompletion proved vain; I saw that this human longing for some semblance of coherent structure in our lives was borne from a place of insecurity, but this understanding did not, could not, help me break free of my self-imposed restrictions — in fact, awareness of this concept seemed to only compound my predicament. I had thought myself into a corner, and the only way out was through the heart of this hulking figure called the Ego.
As I sunk deeper and deeper into the recesses of thought, I couldn’t help but recall the words of a great poet-philosopher on the human condition:
“The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.”