inui/yanagi! : yanagi lyrics - "answer"

[cimorene]

i've been desperately craving inui/yanagi lately. (it's very sad when you're desperate for a rather unpopular pairing, isn't it?) so i asked kyuuketsukirui to translate the lyrics to yanagi's recently-released single, "answer", and she did. o.O translating tenipuri lyrics is sort of a gamble that they will turn out to be gay - they often do, but they're not usually this gay. they surpassed my wildest expectations!


yanagi renji - answer
translated by kyuuketsukirui; kanji & romaji from crosswithyou.net

You can hear my heartbeat, can't you?
You can feel this love, can't you?
I can't shake off these old memories
Still twined around my heart

Those words, those gestures torment me

I don't want to break anything
Even if it means lying to myself
Is it cowardly
That I can't answer?
Please tell me

Though I pull you close, in my arms
I won't entrust you with my heart
What do people fear?
What do they pray for as they sleep?

What can I wish for that will save me now?

Though I try talking of love
There's nothing that's certain
Is it cowardly
That I can't answer?
Please tell me

I don't care if it's fate
I just want to stay like this
Is it cowardly
That I can't answer?
Please tell me

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

nooo don't say spamming! i would love to chat with you about it! i think only aja even comes close to my level of wanting to talk about it, but i'm not sure how much is her just humouring me - she doesn't get nearly as enthusiastic about her secondary pairings, at least not for very long.

i'm right with you on the confusingness of these lyrics! 'i hope it isn't about kirihara' was the first thing i thought too, after the first two read-throughs where i was just too excited to think anything at all. aja suggests that it's all about inui/yanagi and not a third person, though, and i think she's right on some more re-readings.

in fact i agree with you on practically every point. inui's obsession is so clear from canon - but because of the seigaku pov thing, we don't really know how yanagi feels, aside from how he felt when he was a child, and his love there (and his consciousness of it, i think) is very clear. but i want to see their ongoing relationship as a two-sided obsession. i am going to take this song as permission to take that intepretation as canon now, thankyouverymuch. :)

it's hard to separate timelines since any song about them practically has to be both about the past and about today. but i think the narration is in the present - i mean, it does kind of seem like the 'now' of the song is lying in bed somewhere, or someplace else where he can hold someone (inui) close and contemplate the afterglow. of course it could be a figurative holding, or holding hands, so it doesn't have to be now, but the words and gestures that still haunt him - those are probably the events from when they were children still haunting him now. that line is so close to the one about memories still twining around his heart that i think it's meant to refer to events in the past from the pov of the narration.

it's almost heart-breaking, but also really heart-warming, how difficult it seems to be for renji - his struggle with expressing what he feels, his ambivalent (and unreliable-narrator-like) behaviour what with repudiating love and then talking about it as a given in the same song. even his delivery speaks to me of that, the way he over-enunciates everything, although that could just be my wishful thinking.

[happiestwhen.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yeah. I'm usually stuck bouncing my plotbunnies off of a fervent InuKai shipper. :P

I have so much trouble with YanaKiri, but that's another story. Even though it would split Rikkai up into nice little pairings... it just doesn't make much sense to me. Mostly because Renji is, in my head, still so wrapped up in Inui. And because Kirihara doesn't have the data to his heart. *___* And Kirihara seems more like someone Renji might have a fondness for as a teammate, but as more than that? :\ I just don't see it.

I really want to write fic from Renji's PoV that fills in the gap between the flashbacks we see and their match. Because there's so much missing and so many questions. I would pay to find out why Renji didn't tell Inui he was moving, but I wonder if it's for the same reason he's stuck singing his love into a techno song rather than just stating it plainly. For all they're so in tune with each other, Renji seems to have trouble expressing what it is he's feeling, but I don't know why. The ball's in his court and Inui's giving him all the right signals... One of them needs to start pushing.

(I really like Senbatsu because it means lots of interacting for them... and maybe rooming together, or at least seeing each other regularly in the common space. And then Renji can realize he was being really stupid not saying something earlier or, you know, picking up the phone and giving Inui a call.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

aja has more data pair icons than i do, so perhaps i am wrong and she ships as fervently as i do, in her heart.

i kind of like splitting everyone into neat little pairings because i want them all to be happy, and i love kirihara, but... i will just have to find someone else that i like pairing him with, because i have a difficult time looking at yanagi and not seeing the inui/yanagi, although in canon yanagi's feelings (in the present timeline at least) are more hidden than inui's. based on what i know, i find it easier to imagine yanagi and kirihara's relationship sort of mentor-ish.

i really hope you do write this gap-filling fic you mention. i can hardly express how happy i would be to see what you came up with. i've thought about that empty space too. when i watch the anime, it kind of feels like that question of why yanagi didn't tell inui he was moving almost isn't meant to be answered. there must have been some slightly more immediate explanation, but my first reading of the events on-screen was, just as you say, that he couldn't express what he was feeling. there's such a poignant atmosphere of dramatic irony in that sunset-tinted flashback of love in canon that it almost makes me cry. baby yanagi's love seems so clear to me, and while you see how much baby inui loves him too, his affection is untainted while baby yanagi's is already flavoured with angst. it might be just that which makes me imagine baby yanagi is a little more conscious of the romance in their attachment, but he does seem kind of yearning to me, while he's pained. i can't even talk about his desire to play against inui in singles coherently. i just devolve into a mess of talking about that little tezuka-golden pair-silver pair bit where we learn about how doubles partners playing all-out against each other can be the purest form of love and öalksjfdölaksjdöfa. (see?) i get the feeling that inui is naturally more emotionally open than yanagi, that he already was as a child and that during their match in the semi-finals he still is, even though yanagi's leaving changed him and hurt him so much.

i love the senbatsu part, too. that little exchange on the court about their petnames where yanagi tells inui not to call him that on the court because he can't concentrate (!!!!!) - that suggests to me that he hasn't really finished making his realisations about inui then, even if he thought he had.

[happiestwhen.livejournal.com]

i have a difficult time looking at yanagi and not seeing the inui/yanagi

Exactly. I was thinking the other day that we see so much of Inui outside of the 122-23 match that you have a lot more wiggle-room with him as far as shipping goes. But Renji's characterization is developed almost exclusively through his match with Inui and their shared history. And so it's hard to separate Renji from that, in my mind, and I don't really want to. :P

Yeah, I always have gotten the impression that, even when they were wee, Renji was always one step ahead. In the manga, he acknowledges that he's the one who taught Inui all the data tennis strategies in the first place, so it's like maybe his perspective on other things was wiser, too, and he could see below the friendship on the surface.

slk;fdsaklf;fsal I love their match so much. In the manga, Renji says, "Just once, I'd like to play against you until my heart is content," and I think that really fits with what you're saying about the singles played by opponents vs. doubles played by partners. It's a whole different expression of feelings between them, even more emotionally charged than their perfect cooperation while on the same side of the net. (Eee, I am excited for you to read the Rikkai arc in the manga. So good. *___*)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

renji, at least, definitely thinks he's always one step ahead - that's why he's so surprised when inui surprises him in their match in the semi-finals (that part is so ... affecting!). i think it's clear he's accustomed to it from when they were children. but as much as they have in common, they aren't exactly alike, as inui's ability to surprise him there showed. it wasn't that he outwitted him, exactly, it was just that yanagi didn't predict his behaviour because it was foreign to him (at least, as i see it). it also showed him something new about inui, i think. you say yanagi was wiser, and inui was kind of more... innocent and artless in the flashback, which goes with that.

(i find it so hard to talk about this in complete, reasonably-intelligent sentences instead of just wibbling. gosh. there is something about this pairing and its story that really pushes my buttons, or something.)

"Just once, I'd like to play against you until my heart is content," and I think that really fits with what you're saying about the singles played by opponents vs. doubles played by partners. It's a whole different expression of feelings between them, even more emotionally charged than their perfect cooperation while on the same side of the net.

yes, yesyesyes. doesn't he say that in the anime? wasn't it something similar? or maybe i picked that up from a piece of fanfic along the way. god, i want to rewatch all of it right now but i can't. :(

that scene where eiji teaches the silver pair that little fact about doubles and the true meaning of partnership seems so important to me in canon - i definitely think that is what yanagi is thinking. just the way he says it even - until my heart is content! it's almost poetic, and so romantic. playing against each other is different and, in a way, more intimate than playing together the way they usually do, for a doubles pair. guh. aöslkdfjyaalksf. of course part of the reason yanagi asks then, when apparently it's something he's been thinking about for a long time (which also makes me want to wibble - it's like everything about them does), is because he knows he's leaving and he wants something to fill his heart and... sustain him, sort of the way tezuka cleanses his palate and centers himself in the hyotei arc by playing ryoma in warm-up before the match with atobe. but while inui doesn't realise the match is goodbye, perhaps doesn't really understand the nature of their affection, he's not as innocent as yanagi thinks. as evinced by the way he obsesses over it and after all that time, is able to force yanagi into an exact re-enactment of it when yanagi doesn't even recognise what's happening. (... guh.)

i am afraid it will be a while before i get to the rikkai arc. i am kind of impatient. :/

[happiestwhen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the lines in the manga vs. anime are very similar (and might be exactly the same in Japanese and the fan translations are just different). I want to rewatch too, now. Every word out of Renji's mouth during those eps. God. :(( I wish he'd opened his eyes, though. :\

he wants something to fill his heart and... sustain him

:(( That's the saddest thing. That he knows, and wants to play that one last game to "see which one is stronger", and also to give himself the closure he needs. He says in the manga, "as I expected, Hakase is a singles player", which gives the whole thing this awfully sad, fated sort of quality. But also just the fact that Renji can recognize that and wants to give Inui just the push he needs by going against him rather than with him is very <333.

I love the way they're able to dance circles around each other with their minds. Renji's able to read into Inui back then just like Inui's able to read into and through him now. And dfj;lklkjfdsjkafdjka;s Renji's reaction to the whole manipulation of the game, that smirk. Like he should have seen it coming, should have known that Inui wouldn't let things slip so easily. It's like this satisfied sort of acknowledgment of all Inui's overcome, and all he's remembered. And then they can come together (quite literally in that slow-motion flash-of-light end of the game) as they were meant to four years ago. :((

[cimness.livejournal.com]

:(( That's the saddest thing. That he knows, and wants to play that one last game to "see which one is stronger", and also to give himself the closure he needs.

it is sad. it's all so poignant! i think he says that about inui being a singles player in the anime too, although i don't remember where. i really NEED to rewatch obviously. :X it does have a fated sort of quality - he expected that? back in primary school? (it's also a bit unfair, isn't it - he's a singles player too now, and they're both exceptionally strong ones, yet somehow they still make a good doubles pair. i think in the tenipuri language of tennis symbolism that is probably very significant and romantic.)

i loved renji's reaction too. not just that he was pleased, but that he was really surprised, and that pleased him! which also seems kind of romantic to me. of course that is why it's romantic (or, more precisely, sexual) for doubles partners to play against each other in singles, because they can go all out in a contest for dominance and... ahem. and that's why it's so freeing and meaningful and why they're equally pleased to lose as to win (generally speaking, anyway. i'm not sure yanagi is completely resigned to losing, but i guess that has more to do with his responsibilities to rikkai than with his feelings for inui).

aja told me your ym name so i am going to add you, if that's all right? although i may have kind of lost the thread of squee somewhat.