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solongsun April 8, 1970: the day of the Ten-Roku gas explosion, and the day that 22-year-old Ruki attempts to end his life. Less than two weeks later, he finds himself committed to the Yamauchi Hostel, a psychiatric hospital in the Kyoto hills. Kept on a ward with a number of other ill young men, Ruki is sometimes frightened and sometimes enthralled by his new friends – and none more other than the 'untreatable' Kyo, whose hospitalisation hides a legacy of dark secrets...
Nobody ate much at dinner that night. It seemed bizarre to Ruki that they all still drifted to the table when called, and that the meal was still served on time, and that they could all still pick up their chopsticks and start stirring their food around. Three different nurses stood around supervising, but as the six men pushed their food about and took their small, unenthusiastic bites, none of them could ignore the seventh chair's high nervous silence. It sat at the head of the table and seemed to stare them all down as they poked at their food and let it go cold. Die fished the ice cubes out from the water pitcher in the middle of the table and none of the nurses bothered to tell him off as he ate them one by one. He was wearing only a stretched-out T-shirt, and Ruki could see the fine hairs standing up all over his bony arms, and the ice making him start to shiver.
Looking at him, he felt like he understood everything: how the colder Die was, the more calories he burnt; how eating the ice made him feel like he was eating real food, almost, just for a moment. He stared hard at Kai's empty chair and felt his eyes blur, because he'd understood Die, and he'd understood Aoi, and he felt like he understood Shinya and Uruha, and even that he was getting closer to understanding Kyo – but he'd never understood Kai. He'd never even tried; hadn't bothered wondering what lay behind his eternal Mona Lisa smile, enigmatic in his memory even if it hadn't been enigmatic in real life: he's smiling. But is he happy?
He'd dismissed him too easily as somebody who didn't need to be worried about, and now he was gone forever. It felt like a betrayal; like an abandonment, or even an insult. Here they were, the six of them, stuck still in the never-ending bad dream of the sanatorium – but Kai had chosen the real world, in the end, hadn't he? A world of mortuary slabs and stiffening joints, blood pooling in extremities, skin shrinking around nail beds. Puffy skin and protruding tongues. The smell of rot. Real even when you didn't want it to be.
After the meal, it seemed pointless to mill around until bedtime. For the first time since Ruki had arrived at the sanatorium, both the television and the record player remained switched off all evening; the men drifted about, mainly, more ghostly than ghosts, looming like shadows in each other's open doorways. It wasn't even nine when Ruki went to collect his bedding from the bedroom he'd shared with Kai; he couldn't figure out how, but he was so tired he thought he could die.
The door to his dorm was the only one in the corridor that was closed, and he paused in front of it, his fingers resting lightly on the handle. He felt scared, but he wasn't sure what of: scared there would be some hint, maybe, of what had happened; some sort of lingering odour, the smell of death settled into the wallpaper and linens. He heard footsteps behind him, which stopped a respectful distance away.
'Are you sleeping in there?'
He smelled cigarette smoke. He shook his head. 'I'm going to sleep in Aoi and Die's room tonight. I just need my bedding.'
He turned and Kyo gave him a slight nod. 'Are you going in?'
'Yes, of course,' Ruki said, not moving. He gave a soft, strangely harsh little bark of a laugh, dry and utterly humourless. 'I'm scared to go in.'
'There's nothing to be scared of.'
'No, I know. It's stupid, isn't it?'
'No actually, it's not.' Kyo stepped forward, his hands in his pockets as he surveyed the door appraisingly. Ruki gave a grim smile.
'I'm scared of what it'll smell like,' he admitted. 'I don't want it to still have his scent, but I don't want it to be gone, either. And I don't want it to smell like – like it did this morning. I'll go crazy if I have to smell that again.'
'Well, you're in the right place if you do,' Kyo said lightly. Ruki slid him a look.
'How do you stand it,' he said, not bothering to add a question mark. Kyo gave a shrug that was like a flinch.
'What other choice is there,' he replied, not bothering to add a question mark either. They eyed each other, Ruki furtive and Kyo shrewd.
'Do you believe in an afterlife?' he asked next, as if it was most natural progression of their conversation, and Kyo gave an unhelpful shrug.
'You mean a holy place?'
'Just anything. Reincarnation even, or anything like that.'
Kyo hesitated. 'I'd like to be reincarnated.'
'Yeah?'
'I'd like to live life again and do it right all the way through,' he said simply. His eyes met Ruki's soberly. 'What about you?'
'I only want to do this once.'
'Just as long as you serve the full term,' Kyo said, raising an eyebrow.
'I'd like there to be an afterlife.'
'Like a heaven?'
'I suppose that'd be the ideal,' Ruki said a little sarcastically, and the corners of Kyo's mouth twitched upwards slightly.
'So what does heaven mean to you?' he asked. As he spoke, he placed his hand carefully next to Ruki's on the door handle and slowly began to push it down so that the latch clicked. He kept his eyes on Ruki's the whole time, and he watched the flown-apart look of panic cross the younger man's face. He shook his head slightly. 'Don't think about it,' he said in a low voice, 'Answer my question.'
'Heaven – to me...' Ruki trailed off, sounding confused, 'I – I suppose it'd be a place where everybody who ever left comes back, wouldn't it? My brother, and...'
'And Okada?' Kyo supplied quietly, and Ruki shrugged.
'Maybe,' he said weakly. 'Maybe it'd just be a place where you could make time stop if you wanted to. So you could live in any moment for as long as you wanted.'
'Right on the edge of your skin,' Kyo agreed, and Ruki nodded. He kept his eyes fixed on Kyo's as he walked into the room and started to mechanically gather up his blanket and pillow.
'And it'd be a place where you understood everything. I mean, you could have all that knowledge, if you wanted it. You wouldn't have to doubt anything or fear anything, because you'd understand it all, and it'd be peaceful. You'd know why everything bad had ever happened to you; you'd be able to see if it was your fault or not. You could see all the steps you'd ever taken...which ones were right, and which ones were wrong.'
'Interesting heaven.'
'Well, what's yours?'
'I don't have one.'
Kyo pulled the mattress off the bed. It was only a thin futon; he folded it easily under his arm and together they left the room, Ruki closing the door carefully behind him so it latched. His arms full of blankets, he did an awkward shrug.
'Thanks for getting the mattress.'
'That's all right.' Kyo paused, seeming to know that Ruki had something more to say, and after a moment's hesitation the younger man let it out.
'Heaven,' he said, 'Would be like a kind of beach at the very end of the world, where all the lost things wash up on the shore. All the objects, all the people, all the love you lost – it'd all be there.' He squeezed the bundle of blankets tighter in his arms. 'I used to go down to the bay in Osaka,' he said, 'Where you can see the big ships coming and going. And I used to imagine that I'd see a boat coming over the horizon, tiny at first, and gradually getting bigger and bigger as it got closer. And when it finally came into port, I'd see a figure on the deck, and I'd realise that it was Hiroshi. He wouldn't be sick any more; he'd be standing up and waving.' He looked down into his pillow. 'Sometimes I'd think about it so hard that I'd realise I was walking further towards the dock, automatically. My legs would be moving quickly, and I'd feel that I had this weird smile on my face. For a little while, I'd been really believing in what I imagined. That's what I think heaven would be like. Everything coming back.'
There was a silence; Kyo shifted the mattress into a more comfortable position under his arm and together they walked down the corridor to Aoi and Die's room.
Ruki wasn't altogether surprised that the nurses didn't put up more of a fuss over his sleeping arrangements: he supposed they might have been just as glad as he was to have an excuse to avoid the door Kai had died behind. It was a safe sort of feeling, stretching out on the floor between Aoi and Die's beds, sort of like how he imagined a sleepover might feel when you were a kid, or how sleeping in a pack might feel to an animal. It was a relief to breathe in the smell of cigarette smoke and incense; it left no room for any scent of death. Ruki felt his chest seem to expand slightly.
Before settling down Die sat perched on the edge of his bed, a cigarette propped between his lips as he brushed out his hair. He was being careful with it, but even so Ruki saw the brush grow clogged and matted with red, and he heard Die's gentle sigh as he cleared out the bristles. Sticking his skinny arm out of the window, he fed the clumps of shed hair to the wind.
'Why d'you do that?' Ruki asked, and Die blinked sleepily.
'Birds make their nests with it.'
'Oh. Is it...?'
'Falling out?' Die said shortly, 'Yeah.'
Lying on his own bed, Aoi stretched out a leg over the top of Ruki's head and poked Die in the ribs with a thin, pale foot. 'Will you brush mine?' he asked. Die sighed, but yanked a few more strands of hair out of his brush and allowed Aoi to sit on the bed next to him. As Ruki watched, only feeling mildly confused, Die started separating Aoi's hair into sections and brushing through it. He was just as gentle as he had been with his own hair, but Aoi's was stronger.
'I know it's super gay,' Aoi said with his eyes closed, 'But ever since I was a kid, I've always loved having my hair brushed. It makes me feel all sleepy and quiet.'
'You're never quiet,' Die said absently.
'Says you,' Aoi retorted, giving a loud, fake snore. Die rolled his eyes.
It was weird, watching them bicker. It was like their usual spark had gone out of them – they were just going through the motions; putting on a performance for Ruki's sake, like parents that stop arguing the minute you enter a room. It was a nice sound, though, the brush sort of crackling through Aoi's hair, and after a few strokes the harsh line of his shoulders did seem to soften slightly, and the tension started to leave his face. His eyes closed, and his lips parted very slightly. It made Ruki feel sleepy just watching.
He'd have had to have been blind not to see it, though; the careful way Die's hands moved as they handled Aoi's hair and the look of tenderness on his sad, thin face as he smoothed it out.
Feeling somehow lonely, Ruki slipped under his blanket, curled up and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, he felt Aoi carefully step over him as he turned the light out and made his way back to his own bed.
With the lights off, it became strangely apparent that nobody was sleeping. The atmosphere in the room was all wrong; Die and Aoi seemed to be taking it in turns to shift about and sigh and fidget, the blankets rustling noisily in the quiet, and the tense energy coming off the three men seemed to fill the room all the way up to the ceiling. It had begun to rain, though not heavily, and Ruki could hear it making soft pecking noises against the window. He thought of a bird padding its nest with Die's thin, weak hair. He wondered if Die's hair would still be there, woven in amongst the twigs, after the birds themselves had abandoned it.
Finally, Aoi sighed loudly into the darkness and turned onto his side, staring out across the room.
'Where d'you think he is now?' he asked quietly. There was a long silence.
'Kyo and I were talking about whether there's a heaven or not,' Ruki said.
'What do you think?'
'I don't know. I don't think so.'
There was the sound of shifting blankets from Die's side of the room, and he spoke up sleepily: 'Why not?'
'I don't know. I just don't see why there would be one.'
'I think there is one,' said Die. 'For good people, like Kai.'
'Yeah?' Aoi said softly from across the room. 'You think I'd get in?'
Die didn't hesitate. 'Yes.'
Aoi snorted. 'How's that going to work?'
'I plan to get in,' Die said decisively.
'Yeah, so?'
'So it wouldn't be heaven for me without you there,' Die said, as if he was talking to an idiot. 'You, and Kai, and – everybody. And none of us would be ill.'
'He always felt like the youngest,' Aoi said. 'It's weird that he's gone before any of us. It feels like he's gotten ahead. Like he's left us all behind.' His voice sounded a little thicker than usual, and Ruki heard him sniff lightly. 'I always worry when people die like that, so young, how will they know you when you die? How will they recognise you when they're still so young and you're so old? They won't believe you when you say you're you. They'll think it's a lie.'
'Kai would believe you,' Die said.
'But he's gone to some place that none of us know anything about, and he's had this experience that none of us have ever had. I'm...' Aoi paused, staring out into the darkness. In the dim light, Ruki could just about make out the shine of his eyes. 'I'm worried he'll feel lonely,' he said at last, in a small voice.
Neither of them knew much what to say to that, and the room was quiet for a long time until a gentle tapping on the door interrupted the silence. Aoi frowned, sitting up to turn on the light, but before he could get there the door opened and a shadowy figure stepped into the room, head bowed.
The light flared on, and Ruki blinked rapidly against its sudden brightness. All the men in the room looked suddenly weirdly defined: the redness of Aoi's eyes, the exhaustion on Die's face, the unusually rumpled appearance of Uruha's hair and clothes. He was dressed for bed, and his posture was apologetic. His eyes jumped between the three of them.
'Can I sleep in here,' he said bluntly, his voice very flat, 'I can't – I can't get to sleep in my room.'
'Sure,' Aoi said, but Uruha was looking about miserably.
'I won't fit.'
'You'll fit.'
In the end, it wasn't that difficult. The end table that normally stood between Die and Aoi's beds was shoved unceremoniously to the front of the room, right by the door, and Ruki's bedding was moved out of the way so that Die's bed and Aoi's could be shoved together. Then, Aoi fussily lay out Ruki's mattress and blanket on the slightly dusty patch of floor where his own bed had previously been – 'Unless you want to try and sleep up here with us,' he said with a cracked sort of grin. 'You're only small, after all.'
Smiling tiredly, Ruki shook his head. Whatever weird situation existed between the three of them, he didn't feel like figuring out where he might fit into it; his head ached slightly, and though he didn't want to be alone exactly, he didn't think any of them were the right people to be curled up next to him. He wasn't sure if anybody was, really – if anybody would be able to look at him and see that what he really wanted was to be squeezed, and held onto, and not let go.
It looked all right, though, the three of them lying in the pushed-together beds. Die was nearest the wall, Aoi in the middle, and Uruha on the edge, and Ruki couldn't quite figure out what was felt strange about it, apart from that they all looked so comfortable. Once he was settled beside Aoi, the tension quite visibly left Uruha's pale face, and as his friend slipped a hand over his waist, he even managed a small smile.
'We all in?' Die said in a muffled sort of voice. He, too, looked more relaxed; his skinny body was curving gently around Aoi's shape next to him, perhaps drawing some warmth from his skin.
'All in,' Uruha said.
'All in,' Aoi repeated. He shuffled around slightly under the blankets, and Ruki got up to turn off the light, filled with an odd certainty that the three of them were holding hands under the covers. Standing at the switch by the door, he looked at them briefly: his three strange friends and how oddly right they looked together; the tangle of different hair colours, red against black against honey blond; their matching skins, white as the corridors from spending so much time indoors; even the difference in their bodies – Aoi all slender lines and peculiarly hinged joints, more fluid than most people with his flat belly and skinny hips; Uruha stiffer, slightly more muscular and less androgynous in his frame, one hand untangling itself from the covers to stretch over and start smoothing Die's hair flat against the pillow; Die himself gaunt and hard to look at but peaceful finally, a skeleton come softly and gently to life.
They fit. Ruki couldn't see how, or where exactly the joins were, but – Uruha touching Die's hair, Aoi stretching out so his feet made little tents in the blanket, Die smiling fondly at them both – they fit. It made him understand, suddenly, why the doctors were so worried about Aoi's friendship with Die and why they had moved Uruha into his own private room: there was some power in it, somehow, in fitting that well.
Ruki turned the light off. 'Good night,' he said, settling back down under his blanket in the darkness.
'Good night, Ruki.'
'Good night, Aoi,' Die imitated, and Aoi snorted.
'Good night, Die.'
It was quiet then. The thought between them was clear enough that nobody needed to say it aloud: good night, Kai.
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Meanwhile, the discussion with Kyo and Ruki about the afterlife was really interesting. I'm so glad they're continuing to open up to one another. I'm definitely with Kyo in that I'd like for reincarnation to be true - a chance for us all to live life better than we did before. Though Ruki's version of heaven where everything/one we lost coming back to us sounds pretty good too.
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