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solongsun That day, when it began, was a long one. Kyo was at breakfast, as he'd promised, and though neither he nor Ruki said anything much to each other Ruki sat down in the seat next to him, the one that was always normally left empty.
He felt a small sort of ruffle go around the room at that, Aoi sliding Die a secretive sort of look, but otherwise the atmosphere was just as quiet as it had been every day since Kai had died: just a little cleaner, perhaps; a little more refreshed by the little funeral they'd held.
Ruki had therapy with Sato immediately after breakfast, which he stumbled through sleepily, mixing up his words and yawning widely, and when he got back into the TV room there was a strange kind of tension around, and it didn't take him long to figure out why: Aoi was sitting in one of the armchairs with his arms firmly crossed over his chest, scowling deeply towards the sofa where Uruha sat with his father. Ruki blanked for a moment on the man's name, and had to close his eyes and quickly try and picture Uruha's perfectly arranged bookshelf before it came back to him: Takashima Hayato, that was it.
He had pulled his son into his side and was stroking his hair comfortingly, apparently oblivious to the bloody murder in Aoi's eyes. Nervously, Ruki halted in the door frame, unsure if he wanted to be a part of this or not: he was too slow, though. Die's eyes caught his and latched on desperately.
'Come and join us,' he gabbled, obviously hoping to break some of the tension, 'Uruha's dad was just saying...he's been to Holland.' He winced and rubbed his chest as if it was hurting him, his voice sounding strangely breathless.
'The Netherlands,' Uruha's father corrected, smiling at Die warmly, 'Holland is just one region in the country.'
'So did you go outside of Holland?' Aoi asked in a hostile sort of voice as Ruki reluctantly took a seat.
'Well – no, not this time. We were filming this time only around Amsterdam, really, with a small feature on The Hague, and—'
'So Uruha's dad just got back from Holland,' Aoi interrupted, sounding bored. He lit up a cigarette, slouched down so far in his chair that his chin almost rested on his chest; his knees were spread wide and his bare feet were braced on the floor. He looked so strangely aggressive that it was almost difficult for Ruki to pull his eyes away from him, and he didn't realise that Uruha's father was addressing him until Die reached out and socked him helpfully in the arm.
'Huh?'
'I was just saying,' Uruha's father said without a hint of impatience, 'That myself and Mrs Takashima are both terribly sorry for your loss. Kai was a very nice young man.'
'Yeah,' Ruki agreed quietly, 'He was.' He pressed his hands between his knees to stop them from betraying his nervousness, 'Where is...Mrs Takashima?'
'Oh, Uruha's mother—' he gave his son's shoulders a gentle squeeze, 'She couldn't make it today. She's very active in various charities, you see, and she's hosting a charity poker tournament in Tokyo this afternoon.'
Ruki's eyes focussed more clearly on Uruha: he had his eyes closed and he was tapping on his own forehead rhythmically, counting under his breath. He watched his lips twitch as he counted from one to twelve, and then started over again.
'Uru?' he said gently, but got no response. Uruha's father tightened his grip protectively.
'My son is upset,' he explained. 'As I'm sure you all are. I know Kai was very troubled, but to do something like this...' he sighed, 'And of course it places a great deal of pressure on this institution. Where he got the pills from...he must have stolen them.'
'He didn't,' Ruki said defensively, before he could stop himself. Every eye in the room except Uruha's landed on him, and he flushed. 'It's not stealing,' he muttered uncomfortably, and Uruha's father shook his head.
'You were his roommate, Ruki. You didn't have any hint...?'
'Of course he didn't,' Aoi butted in sharply, 'Don't you think if Ruki had known, he would have stopped it?'
Uruha made a soft noise, and his father gave Aoi a strangely shuttered look.
'I understand you're angry at what's happened,' he said levelly, 'But I can't have you upsetting my son further.'
'We've been doing a pretty good job of comforting him without you,' Aoi said acidly, and Uruha's father smiled at him in a pitying sort of way.
'Oh, Aoi,' he said in a soft voice, 'I know it's difficult, but I have utmost faith in you and in the exceptional staff here. One day, you'll conquer these...unnatural desires of yours.'
Die took a wincing little intake of breath, and Ruki could see why: Aoi's fingers had given an ominous twitch around his cigarette, and the look in his eyes was so intensely venomous that Ruki couldn't see how the older Takashima could look at him without choking on it.
'Dad,' Uruha muttered reproachfully, the first word Ruki had heard him say. It seemed nobody had been expecting it; Die's eyes blinked wide and Aoi smiled disbelievingly. Takashima Senior gave his son a very sudden, very strange kind of look.
'What, Uruha?' he asked, his voice dangerously gentle, but Uruha shook his head hard. He touched his chin to his right shoulder twelve times in a row, turning his head painfully, and then switched to the left shoulder. Nobody said anything until he was finished, when his father repeated: 'What, Uruha?'
'Don't,' Die protested uneasily. A sort of shadow passed over his eyes and he gave another rub to his chest.
'This is between me and my son,' Uruha's father said, not bothering to look up at him; he took a firm but gentle hold of Uruha's arm and as one they both stood up from the sofa.
'Where are you going?' Aoi blurted, the small smile on his face replaced with a look of alarm. Uruha's father's hand was around his son's upper arm like a cuff, and for some reason Aoi's eyes seemed mesmerised by that.
'The atmosphere in here is not good for Uruha at present,' Uruha's father said, 'And I'd like a private talk with him. We'll go into his room.'
'But—' Aoi clambered to his feet, looking strangely panicky, 'Don't. Stay here. I'll be nicer; I'm sorry.'
'Aoi, I need to have some privacy with my son. Some matters are family only; you must understand that.'
'Please,' Aoi said, his teeth gritted, 'I won't listen in. Or we'll go; Die and Ruki and me, we'll go—'
'No disturbances, please, Aoi.' He gave Aoi an inscrutable look, 'You know your treatment might be changed if you start acting up.'
Still gripping Uruha's upper arm, the elder Takashima steered his son from the room. Sick, Ruki tried to catch his eye, but he saw that Uruha's eyes were closed again, and that he was back to tapping his forehead with his free hand, although he was doing it harder than he had been earlier. Aoi hurried to the doorway, watching over his friend as he was taken away; his fingernails made little crescent marks in the white-plastered walls as he saw Uruha steered blindly into his bedroom and the door close with a decisive snap behind them.
As soon as it did so he seemed to slump, his eyes oddly empty. It wasn't just him; Die too looked strangely defeated, his gaze directed firmly down at his lap, and Ruki had to keep swallowing past the thick feeling of nausea that kept rising in his stomach. Slowly, Aoi trailed back to his seat and sat down heavily.
'What do we do?' Die said, and Aoi shook his head helplessly.
'There's nothing we can do,' he said, his voice listless in a way Ruki had never heard it, 'You know that bastard has a key to all the doors here. Even if we tried sending somebody else in...' his voice faded and he shook his head hopelessly.
'He has keys?'
'He's the main benefactor of this place, remember? He gets everything he asks for, including the nurses' trust.'
'How do you know all this?'
Aoi looked at him tiredly. 'Uruha.'
'But can't we tell—'
'Would they believe us?' Aoi snapped. 'Have they ever believed us, when we've told?'
There was an uncomfortable atmosphere between the three of them; even though they were all on different chairs they had the air of being huddled up very close together, like animals in a pack trying to keep warm.
'We can't just sit here,' Die said in a hollow voice after a long moment had passed, 'This is crazy.'
Aoi just directed a despairing look at the both of them, because of course it was crazy: everything was crazy. They were crazy, and their lives were crazy, and Ruki hadn't thought about it much before but he was pretty sure the world outside might be crazy, too. The sanity, when you found it, was precious – was something to be hoarded, to be stored away in little pockets of memory; the times when life was lucid and things made sense. The pure times.
There was a terrible tightness to Aoi's face. His hand fisted a handful of his own hair repeatedly. Ruki watched his eyes grow darker and darker, and at last, with an awful sort of tiredness, he got to his feet. Hesitantly, a wary eye on his friend, Die did so too. He was moving funnily though, Ruki thought; his face went pale as soon as he stood up and and he clutched at the back of his vacated chair weakly, his arms trembling.
'Die?' Ruki asked quietly, but Die simply shook his head.
'Just stood up too fast,' he said breathlessly. He coughed, huge dry coughs that seemed to shake his whole body, and Ruki's eyes and Aoi's eyes met looking at their friend.
The most painful thing was that Ruki could sense the conflict in Aoi; the feeling that the two people he cared about most were trapped on opposite sides of a burning building, and because there was no way to decide which one he should try to save first, they were both at risk of being overwhelmed by the flames. Careful, Ruki stepped forward and took Die's arm.
'You should lie down,' he said, surprised by how firm and authoritative his voice came out. He'd never thought about that before; how he had a voice that could do a lot of different things; sound a lot of different ways. Almost meekly, Die nodded. Carefully Ruki guided him to the door, slightly shocked by how much the taller man was leaning on him; he glanced back, trying to send Aoi a reassuring look.
A fat tear was coursing down his cheek, and as Ruki watched, he clenched his shaking fists. Completely silently, he grasped the back of the chair he'd been sitting on, hefted it up on its edge and shoved it over as hard as he could. It was as if it was happening in slow motion; Ruki saw the tense flex of his muscles; the miserable contortion of his face. The chair made surprisingly little noise; it fetched up against the sofa, upended, and Aoi crumpled to his knees. His body sagged forward, his face against the floor as if he was kowtowing, and his elbows stuck out at ungainly angles as his hands made two hopeless fists before him.
Die coughed, his whole body doubling over with the effort, and Ruki walked him to his room.
That afternoon, he received a letter. It was contained within a thick, expensive-feeling cream envelope – quite unlike the cheap thin paper Ruki liked to draw and write on, almost foreign-feeling – but addressed in a sprawling hand. He held it gently.
Outside the window the world was cold and brown-looking from the dying autumn leaves; the sky was hazy white and everything looked further away than usual, as if Ruki was looking at it through the wrong side of a telescope.
He went and sat in his own room, tapping the envelope against the palm of his hand restlessly.
He would have known who the letter was from even if Eiji's return address hadn't been printed on the back: it seemed to scream of him. The chaotic handwriting – because creatives never have neat handwriting, he could hear Eiji opining in his head – and the fancy stationery. That voice again: if you want to make quality work, you have to use the best quality materials. That just makes sense, doesn't it?
It only occurred to him now, sitting on his bed, how strongly he disagreed. He turned the envelope over and scrutinised it with something like distaste. Absently, his hand reached out and he pulled the most treasured of his postcards from the wall; Eiji Okada's The Student At Work, its beautiful blends of light and dark and the soft, strangely abstract hues, like something seen in a dream.
But it wasn't Ruki.
He understood that now. It was him, in that it was very obviously supposed to be him and that it was a good likeness, but it wasn't him at the same time, because the real him would never have been working at an easel like that; he'd never chosen to use an easel in his life; he found them awkward. It was only in recent years he'd managed to talk himself into working at a desk; his comfortable place to work was on the floor, flat on his stomach, the way it always had been.
And the real him would never have worn an expression so delicately pensive; so ethereal. Whenever he worked on something he felt passionate about, he would come up from it with his jaw aching from where he'd clenched it; he understood that his expression at those times was fierce; was aware; was focussed. Not soft and pretty: hard. And why were the hands so classically posed around a paintbrush, when he always preferred to draw rather than paint; why were they so clean when he always found them spotted with ink and smudged with charcoal, great black bleeding stains over the fingers?
It was him; it wasn't him.
In a single decisive motion, he ripped the postcard in two.
He paused for a minute to figure out how it made him feel, and he realised that he didn't feel anything at all, so he layered the two halves on top of each other and ripped again, and again. Methodically he tore it into confetti, and when he was finished there wasn't a single scrap of paper that could have betrayed the original nature of the image. When he was finally done, and before he could stop himself, he did the same thing with Eiji's letter, not even bothering to take it out of the envelope before starting to rip and rip and rip. The pile of paper on the bed before him got larger, and little ribbons of words made their way up to him but he ignored them; love and art and work and you.
When he was done he opened the window and, crooking his arm awkwardly through the bars, placed the paper scraps in a little pile on the ledge outside, leaving them there in the still, cold air. He thought if birds could make their nests with Die's hair, maybe they'd want to blend in a little expensive paper, as well.
Then, he went off to knock on Kyo's door.
It was odd how he felt. Everything was falling apart, that much was obvious from Uruha's closed door and the splintery silence from the TV room and the sickroom hush coming from Die's, but he felt powerful. He couldn't stop any of it; there was hardly anything in the world that he could stop; but he thought he could stop himself – that much he was capable of.
It wasn't something he'd ever acknowledged before: the idea that he didn't have to run after somebody just because they were walking away from him. That just because they'd traced a track for him, that didn't mean he couldn't walk to other places, instead.
When Kyo answered the door, Ruki could see that same distorted view from the window in his bedroom; everything far and sort of bleached of colour, paler than normal, as if reality was inching back from them. But Kyo was the right colours. Against that backdrop he looked almost violently alive, and Ruki was aware that he probably looked the same: eyes dark, cheeks flushed, hair messy.
'I got a letter from Eiji,' he said, walking into Kyo's bedroom. He waited for the other man to shut the door behind him, studying his face carefully.
'Oh.' Kyo's expression was unreadable. He didn't say anything else and Ruki hesitated, feeling the way his breath was coming higher and faster than normal in his chest.
'I didn't read it,' he said. 'I ripped it up. I...' he trailed off, losing steam; Kyo was staring at him and his expression was completely neutral, but his eyes were warm and soft and intimate. It was those eyes that distracted him, and that forced him to trip over his words and change direction: 'Can I sit in here with you?'
Kyo blinked at him. 'Always.'
'Thanks,' Ruki said, feeling strangely breathless, and he thought he caught the shadow of a smile passing over Kyo's face. The older man settled himself on his bed in his familiar way – his shoulders braced against the wall and his weight resting on his lower back, his legs bent at the knee before him and slightly spread. He pulled his notebook into his lap and jumped only very slightly as Ruki sat down on the bed next to him. He gave the back of his neck an uncomfortable rub and then extended an arm towards the younger man, his face hesitant.
'Do you want to...come here?'
Ruki's lips twitched a little. 'Yeah.'
'Don't laugh,' Kyo warned, but the corners of his mouth were turning up, too.
It wasn't all right, Ruki thought, moving carefully towards Kyo and nestling in under that outstretched arm, feeling it curl cautiously around him; nothing was okay. Kai dead; Uruha, Aoi and Die all, in their own ways, dying too.
Die starving.
Aoi burning.
Uruha drowning.
He slid an arm around Kyo's hard belly and glanced up at his face, wondering how he did it: wondering how he stayed so determinedly alive after all these years. The older man rested his cheek briefly against the top of Ruki's head and then opened his notebook, smoothing the page down before he started to write. Up this close, Ruki could see that he held his pen kind of awkwardly, his angular fingers crooked around it like a bolt around a screw; he wrote quickly, a small frown of concentration on his face.
Bit by bit, Ruki felt his body relax. His arm softened around Ruki's back. Gradually, the movements of his pen slowed to a stop.
'Do you regret what we did?' he asked in a low voice.
What it really came down to, Ruki thought, was anger – turning your sadness into anger. That was how you lived; how you stayed alive. There was nothing Kyo had to live for except for his rage; a terrible, terrible rage to survive. Whilst he still had that he would always be here; sane, and whole.
'No,' Ruki answered. 'Do you?'
'No.'