Red light

24. Last summer (Izuna)

Come on, I told myself. It won't get warmer by the fact that you just wait here.

"Come on, Izuna!"

"Shut up!" I yelled back. "You haven't even undressed yet!"

Egged on by the catcalls of my university friends, I started running, jumped off the cliff. For a few seconds I was in free-fall, feeling a surge in my stomach that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

And then, I hit the surface, the ocean enclosing itself around me.

It only took a second because I got used to the cold.

I re-surfaced, laughing, the salt in the water making my short, bleached hair stick to my skin like chewing gum.

"No way!!" my friends were screaming.

"He actually jumped!"

I grinned. I hadn't been afraid of the height at all, one of many things I'd learned about myself since moving to this new life of mine. I was, however, incredibly hesitant of the cold. The first time I'd jumped into the ocean had a terrible shock; I hadn't even considered the fact that it could be cold.

"Now, we have to jump as well..." I heard one of my friends say.

"Why, because you can't be worse than a faggot porn actor?" I screamed back.

They all broke out in screams of complaints, but I laughed; I knew they loved me for who I was. I had decided to just be brutally honest.

"Hi, I'm Izuna, and I'm a gay porn actor", I hadn't introduced myself, but I hadn't been far from, either.

They hadn't shunned me, as I had prepared my heart that they would do. Instead, they'd displayed a mild curiosity about me, and quickly adopted me into their guy-gang. No insensitive jokes about not trying anything with them, no nagging about them not being gay, no nothing. Just a deep, genuine friendship with studying, lunches on campus, evenings in the bar, summers at the ocean, and travelling together. And now we had all graduated, we wanted to enjoy the last summer together as university students. Most of us were staying in the city, but some were moving back to their home cities or somewhere else. One of us came from abroad and was going back.

And I was happy. So, so happy. 

The next day, we met up at dawn and split up in two cars. We were doing a field trip to the capital to sightsee, eat and, let's face it, drink. It was there, in a cobble street a way away from the busy shopping streets and restaurant quarters, that I saw the sign.

An actual, physical sign.

Karnblad Art Gallery.

I had heard of it; it was the country's most famous art gallery.

And beneath it...

Ceramics.

That was it. That was the name of the exhibition. Nothing else, just the two dates between which the exhibition would be offered to the public.

"Guys..."

"What's up, Izuna?"

"I'm going in here. You go ahead."

"You sure?" they asked.

"Yeah, yeah..."

"Should we get an ice cream for you?"

"Soft serve, liquorice sprinkles. Thank you."

I walked in tentatively. On a Thursday morning in the beginning of June, you would expect the gallery to be empty, but it was actually quite full of people looking at the exquisite pieces. It was vases and urns in incredibly interesting shapes, impossibly well-made, so perfect I could hardly believe they were made by a pair of hands and not a machine.