Grey.
A drab colour, neither black nor white.
Devoid of passion, a symbol of indecision and apathy.
However, grey has within it infinite shades of other colours; innumerable sounds from those that rattle the ribcage to those that soothe the soul; variegated forms of smells, aphoras and scents that can mix and find even the stench of a rotten thing pleasing.
Grey has within it the meaning of life in all its facets: from those of boisterous laughter under a cloudy sky to the desolate ones of a desperate call under the light of a festively decorated room on a gala evening.
From that of mornings where engagements lighten under the sun's golden rays to evenings where the car is stuck in traffic and thoughts are locked elsewhere on a place or a person or both other than who they are forced to meet by obligation.
He is like the grey.
Like Hades attending the place that holds the meaning of life.
Like a garden of dry branches and brambles intersecting one another.
Like a banquet of dried rose petals.
Like an incessant wailing that is awe-inspiring but then mutates into the reassuring song that a gentle voice sang to him when he was a child and he, no longer so lonely and powerful, still does not feel the cold of loneliness and the weight of responsibility that rests - with immense ingratitude - on the stone shoulders like those of the Hachiko statue of his grey queen.
Tadashi accepts everything Ainosuke will give him: good and evil, health and sickness, wealth and poverty until death do us part.
It is just a phrase marked in classical letters above the banner that wraps a stylised heart in realistic red and blue dripping with blood as it is pierced by two swords: the snake in dog's clothing has struck him as a Matador does the bull and he has marked it. He is just an eccentric symbol on the bottom of a skateboard hidden in the locker of his master's study in an election office of a young politician whose motto is:
"Our love will save Japan".
Like a devoted husband stuck in a relationship with poor communication, he ends up deciding what is best for the one he loves.
Leaving him with more serious wounds than a hair pulling received from a furious Adam in the dark of an abandoned factory.
He is Ainosuke Shindo's watchdog, the handyman secretary filled with a devotion bordering on obsession.
He is Hades who regrets having touched Persephone.
He is the Serpent who seduced Adam and now suffers, realising too late that he is actually the messenger of the angel Uriel sent by God to offer him light when the one he loves is at the bottom of the abyss.
It is the mild spring air and the scent of roses bathed in water and lemon.
It is two intertwined hearts drawn with a black marker on the bottom of a pool whose story only he knows.
Ainosuke.
Fragile Adam uncertain which is his true Eve.
Everything fell apart when he fixated on one point and centred his life on that.
Time gives reason but in his twisted mind there is a tangle in the centre of his chest that instigates him to feel betrayed by those he trusts most.
His faithful dog has never really rebelled, except that one time.
A snake ready to bring down Eden and then leave his own God in the mud until they found themselves on two opposite precipices in what love is: a seesaw of hope and despair.
Yet he knows that his heart deep inside screams like on those scheduled dates where, at a distant table, head focused on the S's App, he has to endure the ringing laughter of the next rejected suitor.
A Trinity is embodied in Ainosuke.
One side smiles affably at crowds enthralled and turned away by his awe-inspiring aura; another licks the blood left on his cheek by a young boy thrown behind him as if he were nothing in a forbidden and unruly skateboard race in a realm of which he is the star; another would like to run away from everything and everyone.
Only the snake knows the true form behind the masks.
His expert mind is a forge of creative ideas.
Like the goddess with a thousand hands, he knows how to give life to what is asked of him.
But the goddess does not work for itself, does not live for itself.
She has no other aptitude than to learn and improve for her master.
Without opinions.
Has he ever had one? Does he have a life beyond serving him? Is it really enough for him to have a drab existence with no travels, nothing worldly, no parties, no rest?
Is it really enough for him to be his faithful shadow, the white dot chained to his madness.
The tapering hand of his grey queen kneeling in front of his open legs, gently rests on his own hand - large and strong - leaving both a cushion for his cheek.
Closed eyes bathed in the sweetness of him own devotion. Lips curving just upwards in a gentle smile.
It is to him that he swore allegiance.
Not to the Shindo.
Black and White.
Black is a dual colour. It reflects colours or drowns them in its darkness.
A symbol of nothingness and the murkiest things, as well as of truth beyond hypocrisies or eternal peace, only with a drop of light can it show its macabre spirit or its breathtaking beauty.
White is similar.
White is humble, it welcomes colour and fades into it.
It is a pure and clear colour. Too perfect if it does not have a drop of black, it falls into bland hypocrisy.
Ainosuke. He is a murky black triangle that poisons everything he touches.
He has absorbed his light, thrown into his white the blood-red of violence, the ice-blue of his coldness, the smoky black of anguish, and he has welcomed he with an open heart with the extreme masochism of one who has emptiness in his eyes.
He should get away from him, no matter how happy he is to be his dog.
But they both know how difficult it will be to part.
They are Romeo and Juliet who have spent half their lives together.
They are master and handyman servant he cannot do without.
They are master and pupil in the urban world of skateboarding.
They are master and slave in an intimacy little understood by ordinary people.
Without him he would not know how to take a step into the world that is not his: the world of politics and power. The world of his father and his own family who taught him what love is.
Dark, burning, violent, obsessive, crazy, desperate.
First he hits you with a ruler on the arms and then he smiles at you happily, but only if you do what they want and he has chains where the pure white of the moon is actually the glow of neon lights on which gnats spin.
Then, on a spring night, a child older than him appeared before his tear-glistened eyes. Gentle green eyes, a mole under his left eye and a friendly smile presenting him with a symbol not of sin but of true love: light, complicit, warm, delicate, alive.
He searched for a long time for another white as delicate and caressing as the light of that full moon so many years ago.
He found it, but it was a glowing neon dream that made his heart flutter and isolated him from adult life to embrace the exaltation of the mask of a dark Apollo.
Unconditional love.
He is the one constant in his own life. He would love no one or other because he is not capable.
He is him Adam.
He is the little boy he saw crying one night many years ago and approached him with kindness asking if he wanted to play skateboard with him because his soul told him to do so.
He is his other half of the moon. Dark and invisible.
He would escape with him from that gilded cage, but he is afraid of taking everything away from him and so he endures his pain, makes it his own.
He is the Matador of Amor.
Eros and Thanatos in whatever dress he wears, he lives for the spectacle that is the art of passion.
And he indulges him, observes him, understands his obsessions and the nuances in them because he knows that he is broken and seeks a substitute for the pure joy like spring water and rose-scented air and sunshine that lived with him.
It is like swimming in the middle of the ocean between raging waves to reach the shore or giving yourself the challenge of coloring every grain of sand your color when you don't yet know what it is.
And he is not afraid of it.
Purple.
Color similar to a row of confused and ordered masks.
Symbol of balance between two extremes. Sometimes vivid, sometimes milder.
The color of infinite reds that ranged from adolescence surrounded by infinite rose petals to the colour of one's tie.
A secret accessible to few in that world of black and white truths and grey morals.
Purple is in the middle like grey, it can be between the passion of blood red and the blue of the stillness of the soul or its inner conflict in the agony of pain of three worn masks and no way out.
A union between primary colours or a small shade in the sea of pink.
There is no middle ground: either among the powerful or the common people.
Purple is the perfect union between a pure red rose blooming on a rose bush with its sweet, tangy, pungent smell and the nobility of blue.
There are no blue roses in nature just as there are no miracles that allow time to turn back and make the right choices.
People do not understand how someone as talented as him can bow down and feel devotion for such a despicable being, for a man who despised him, who had eyes for another.
They don't know everything but they want to believe they know.
At the end of the day, people are fuzzy and confused.
And throughout their lives they will try to give order to the tangle of emotions that are their feelings, even by means of a flag to give themselves hope that they are really all the same even if they are different.
![Grey - MiraKo - SK8 the Infinity (Anime) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8/h8AAvMB+NzmkbcAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)