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solongsun Over the next two weeks, they became more or less inseparable.
It was like something unspoken had been resolved between them, as if an understanding had been reached; suddenly, it became only the right and proper thing that Kyo should be waiting for Ruki in the music room after breakfast, and that they should while away the morning in there together, Kyo writing in his notebook and Ruki drawing on the floor, his brow knit with concentration and his teeth clenched around a cigarette whilst little flurries of snow whisked past outside the window.
He could never have imagined what a feeling it was to have somebody by him all the time – somebody who wasn't demanding sex or entertainment or even conversation; somebody who wasn't going to just go away and leave him; somebody who seemed content to just be. It bolstered him, that feeling; he had the impression of tentatively leaning his weight against something and having it hold up beneath him; a branch that wasn't as fragile as it looked.
November turned to December and the little flurries thickened into great swirls of snow; whole loads of the stuff seemed to get dumped overnight, covering up the dull greys and browns of the hills in winter. Three long months had passed since the day Ruki and Kyo had come back late and been punished with the loss of their freedom – and they had been hard months. Finally stepping outside again and hearing snow crunch under his boots, it occurred to Ruki how very much had changed – how much those three months had cost them all; how much had been taken from them. He had stopped very still, the wintry air stinging his eyes and his nose and his throat, and with effort he had turned back to the sanatorium and seen at the windows the ghosts that still resided there; Kai's bright smile and the flash of his radio, the hiss of static; Die's skeletal body reclined in a chair or dancing dangerously close with Aoi's; Uruha's bedroom door, shut and locked.
Kyo took his hand and he turned back towards the outside, hearing his heart beat in his ears and the breath in his lungs. It might have been too late for Kai, but the rest of them – they were still breathing. And while they breathed, they had hope.
With their punishment lifted they were allowed two hours per day outside, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, schedules permitting. It was a frustration that often their schedules didn't permit it; that there was still individual therapy to attend, group therapy to slog through with Aoi's dead eyes and hunched body; there were still mealtimes and bedtimes and a hundred other distractions to get in the way. For Ruki, it felt like his only lifeline: those walks out in the frozen grounds, Kyo at his side. The privacy was as intoxicating as the fresh air and both went to his head and got him feeling drunk; suddenly there was the promise of whole hours alone, just the two of them, nobody about to barge in. It seemed almost impossible. Like there should have been a catch.
Winter up in the hills was beautiful but harsher than Ruki had ever known it; unlike in Osaka, where any snowfall was generally trampled into dirty slush within a few hours, here the snow sat and sat and formed a hard crust on its surface; it glittered in the sunlight. In some places it was more than knee deep; sometimes the crust was strong enough to support them and sometimes not, and Ruki learnt the hard was that snow liked to accumulate around the trunks of trees when he stepped close to one and promptly disappeared up to his waist. It had been difficult to heave himself out of that, not least because Kyo didn't help; the other man simply stood back and watched him, cold hands jammed into his pockets, his mouth hidden by his scarf but his eyes smiling.
'Don't be so smug,' Ruki hissed, using the branches of the tree as handholds as he staggered back onto firmer ground, and Kyo snorted.
'Graceful.'
He sank ankle-deep as he walked closer. He grabbed the scarf covering Kyo's face and decisively tugged it down, shutting up his faint protests with a kiss.
Their lips and cheeks were cold and the contrast of it, of cold skin and warm breath, never failed to send a shiver through Ruki's body. He thought from the way Kyo pulled him closer that the other man might feel the same.
Carefully, Ruki smoothed the scarf back into place, grinning at him. The air was so cold that each breath felt like it was cutting his throat, and Kyo's face before his was three stark colours: his white skin, the red of his cheeks and the tip of his nose and the dark bluish shadows under his eyes. His body was dressed somewhat messily in clothes that had obviously been donated; a knitted beanie and a waxed cotton jacket. Underneath, Ruki knew, were two jumpers, both identical and institutional grey. The scarf was grey too, and very long.
Ruki almost wished he'd been able to wear some donated clothing himself. His own winter clothes had been stuffed into a lower drawer upon his arrival and completely ignored up until now; when he'd opened that drawer and put them on, he'd been suddenly surrounded by the scents of home and for a moment he'd stood very still, breathing it in.
It was like a time capsule; the small array of garments from happier moments – here was a scarf that still smelled faintly of the cigarettes he and Eiji had smoked together; here were his gloves with Eiji's studio smell of paint and turpentine and coffee being brewed around the clock. He had pressed them to his face, eyes shut as he let the memory wash over him; he remembered Eiji picking them up where they'd been abandoned messily on the floor and stuffing them into his mouth as he fucked him, muffling all the little sounds Ruki was making; he remembered the tight grip on his hips; how sore and weak he'd felt afterwards. He'd cum, and in the position they were in he had been able to see it splatter the floor below him, and he remembered how Eiji had grinned at him and gripped the back of his head and rubbed his face into it like he was a pet that had made a mess.
He'd laughed then, but his whole body seemed to sting with humiliation now. He had thrown the gloves away.
'It's strange, out here,' Kyo said to him.
The day was a clear one with a high, flat white sky, and they had struggled up to a ridge where they could stand and, far off in the distance, see the city of Kyoto glittering silently. Cold, Ruki slipped his hand into Kyo's pocket, feeling a little thrill in the pit of his stomach when the older man took his fingers and squeezed them.
'Strange how?' he asked, and Kyo gave his head a small shake.
'Being here with you, it's like it's not real,' he said blankly, staring down at the city. 'Like something out of somebody else's life.'
Biting his lip, Ruki turned back to look at the sprawling city.
'I know what you mean. With everything that's happened, I feel guilty having moments where I feel happy.' He sighed a soft cloud of white mist and nodded at the view spread out beneath them. 'Think you'll ever go back there?' he asked, and Kyo gave a rough shrug.
'I don't know what will happen.'
'D'you ever think about it?' Ruki asked curiously, and Kyo glanced at him.
'Do you?' he asked, and Ruki gave a small nod.
'I do want to go back,' he said haltingly, 'To art school. I want to finish. I guess I just...I want to prove that I can.'
Kyo slid him another look. 'To Okada?' he asked, and Ruki smiled at him.
'To everyone.' He paused, fighting the urge to light up a cigarette. 'Is it different for you, to get out?' he asked. 'Is it...' he caught Kyo's look and flushed a little, 'Is it – possible for you?'
'Theoretically.'
'So...' Ruki tailed off and Kyo sent him an amused glance.
'My situation is about the same as yours,' he said. 'I can petition the board for release. Being here isn't considered a punishment; I don't have a sentence.'
Nodding, Ruki absorbed that. In the back of his mind a tiny picture was forming no matter how firmly he tried to push it away: imagine if the two of them could get out at the same time; imagine if maybe they could see each other on the outside and do normal things together – walk through the city parks, see films, drink in bars. If they could cook a meal together and eat it only with each other; if they could go to bed together afterwards and know that no nosy nurse was going to come checking up on them.
'What happens when you petition the board?' he asked.
'Your therapist writes a letter of recommendation for you either way, and you meet with the board for assessment. If they think you're not dangerous, they release you.'
'But I'm not dangerous. I was never—'
'To other people or yourself,' Kyo added lightly, and Ruki fell silent.
For a while, the only sounds were the occasional muffled noise of snow falling off trees and, somewhere nearby, the high shrill cry of some lonely bird. Kyo frowned at the distant city.
'Too harsh?' he asked at last, his voice casual but a tenseness visible in the line of his jaw, and Ruki elbowed him lightly in the ribs.
'No, I was just – I don't know. Thinking. Spacing out. So what happens if they think you are still dangerous?'
'You can appeal, but you need a lawyer and an independent evaluation, which takes time.' Kyo shrugged loosely. 'Beyond that, I don't know.'
'If you petitioned, do think you'd get out?' Ruki asked, and Kyo slid him another amused sort of look.
'Are you asking if I'm dangerous?'
Ruki snorted, but eyed Kyo a little nervously. 'I'm just thinking about the future.'
'Yeah?'
'Sometimes I feel like you're the only sane one here,' Ruki said, 'And I wonder how you can stand it, not being crazy in a place where everything else is crazy, and it feels like it wants you to be crazy.' He paused for breath. 'But you have this tenacity. You have this will. You have something I never had; and it's just like this sort of – this sort of rage, to...'
Kyo was very still, looking at Ruki's face.
'To survive,' Ruki finished lamely. He sort of shuffled where he stood, shaking snow from his boots.
Kyo's hands, when they touched him, were cold as ice. Slipping past his coat, nudging under the hem of his sweater, they moulded themselves to his bare skin and made him shiver even as he leant into them. He felt his heart start beating faster, rushing the hot blood around his body, and he pressed himself hard into the touch as Kyo leant forward and their lips met; he thought, wrapping his arms around the other man's shoulders, that there was enough heat inside of him to keep the both of them warm.
The thing about time, he found himself thinking later, was that it never worked the way you wanted it to. The two of them had arrived back at the sanatorium only just within their hour limit, their clothes powdery with the fresh snow they'd found themselves lying in, and the nurse on duty hadn't said anything but she'd given a meaningful look to the clock as they'd signed themselves back in with chilled, clumsy hands.
The ground had been so cold that Kyo's lips and tongue had seemed to burn. Everywhere they'd touched him, he could still feel his skin smouldering; he wouldn't have been surprised if it had been giving off heat. When he stripped off his clothes to take a warming shower before lunch, he was almost shocked to find that those soft kisses had left no marks on him; part of him had been expecting smooth, shiny scars, like burns. His own hands traced over the places where they would have been, as if he was remembering.
He was still feeling pleasantly light and dreamy when he pushed open the door to his bedroom, and there was a strange flurry of movement as – Ruki's footsteps stopped dead – Uruha's father got quickly to his feet. His face was a little flushed, and behind him Toshiya was sitting on his bed with a strange expression on his face.
'Ruki!' Mr Takashima said heartily, 'How are you?'
Nonplussed, Ruki just stared at him.
'I just made the acquaintance of your new roommate, here. Toshiya, is it?'
Equally silent, Toshiya gave a single nod.
'Well,' Uruha's father said after an uncomfortable moment, 'I should really get back to my son. Toshiya, good to meet you. Think about what we talked about, won't you? It's...' he checked his watch. 'Lunch in five minutes, boys.'
He swept easily from the room, his steps long and confident and quietly Ruki closed the door behind him. Warily, he sat down on his bed and watched Toshiya light up a cigarette.
'You got a letter,' the other man said, and leant forward to toss it across the gap between their beds. Ruki saw Eiji's handwriting on the envelope and, a little self-consciously, he dropped it on the floor and used his bare heel to push it back under his bed. There was a small, scattered pile of them there, still in their envelopes; three altogether, though he would have had four if he hadn't ripped the first one up.
Maybe there was something wrong with him, and that was why he was writing so much. Maybe he was sick or dying, and all the time Ruki was ignoring him without knowing that it would soon be too late. Whenever he touched them the letters felt gritty from their thin film of dust and their thick envelopes were cool to the touch, like something dead.
'What was he doing in here?' Ruki asked, and Toshiya leant back against the wall.
'He said he wanted to say hello,' he said, but there was something just a little off about his voice; a sort of tightness, as though his words were trying to come through too small a gap.
'Right,' Ruki said awkwardly, and Toshiya met his eyes.
'You can stop looking at me like that,' he said drily. 'He touch you too?'
Dumbly, Ruki shook his head. 'Uruha,' he said, and Toshiya looked down at his lap as he flicked ash from his cigarette.
'Bastard,' he muttered. 'Anybody ever tell?'
'Lots of times.'
'They don't believe you?'
Ruki shook his head, and Toshiya sighed. 'He didn't get far with me,' he said. 'Just over my clothes, you know.'
His voice was calm, almost matter-of-fact, but there was an edgy kind of look in his eyes, like he'd been rattled. When he raised his cigarette to his lips, his fingers trembled a little around it. 'We should go to lunch,' he said, getting to his feet, and Ruki chewed on his lower lip as he followed him silently out of the room.
In the dining room, the atmosphere was tight, and it wasn't difficult to see why: Uruha was at the table with Aoi next to him, and opposite them both was Uruha's father, sitting in Die's old chair and holding out his hands as if welcoming all the men to his table.
'Sit,' he said jocularly, and Ruki fell into the chair beside Kyo like a stone. On Kyo's other side, Shinya had an intense look in his eyes, and he was staring at Takashima Senior with such force Ruki was amazed the man was still upright. He was chewing on the back of his wrist, too, biting at it agitatedly no matter how many times Kyo attempted to guide it away from his mouth.
In his own chair, Aoi's body was as tense as razor wire, but he looked tired. There were dark shadows under his eyes and his hair was stringy and unwashed, straggling messily around his face; his lips were chapped and his face was pale and there was a sort of sunken quality to his cheeks and arms, as if he had lost a fair amount of weight rather more quickly than was healthy.
It was shocking, how quickly he had visibly fallen apart. He was wearing the institutional clothing provided by the sanatorium – his own clothes had been taken away – and they drooped around his bony-looking frame in an unclean kind of way. There was a few days' worth of stubble around his jaw, and it looked itchy.
His real punishment, Ruki knew, was yet to be decided; the threat was hanging over his neck like a guillotine even if he didn't seem to care that much. It seemed like as far as Aoi was concerned, the worst had already happened to him, but Ruki wasn't convinced. Situations always had a limitless capacity in which to get worse.
He was jolted out of his worried thoughts by his tray landing in front of him, and silently he nodded his thanks. Other trays clattered down around the table, but nobody seemed to be in a great hurry to pick up their chopsticks: Shinya was still staring at Mr Takashima, apparently unaware of his food; Uruha was yanking tightly at his own hair; Aoi was watching him with edgy concern.
Toshiya hadn't made a move to pick up his cutlery, either. As Ruki watched he rocked back in his chair, a sharp sort of look in his eyes.
'Is that watch new, Uruha?' he asked clearly.
As soon as he'd brought it up Ruki couldn't imagine how he hadn't noticed it; the watch clasped around Uruha's left wrist was so new it looked raw, so shiny it could have been wet. Uruha didn't respond, just pulled harder at his chair, but Mr Takashima leant forward peremptorily.
'It is new,' he said. 'I was filming in Switzerland recently; I brought that back for him. Piaget,' he added proudly.
'Right, right.' Toshiya rocked his chair back on two legs, that sharp look still in his eyes, 'That makes sense. Because that's what serial molesters do, you see; they give gifts.'
There was a sudden and dangerous silence that was only broken by the sound of Uruha knocking over his cup and the water glugging slowly out of it over the tabletop. Nobody looked at him, though; every eye around the table was fixed on Takashima Senior, and Ruki watched as Uruha's father slowly took in all of them, assessing every dark gaze for a hint of understanding or sympathy. He didn't find any.
'What a silly, careless thing to say,' Mr Takashima said finally, his voice quite calm. 'I can see that you've been talking to Aoi.'
'No, actually, I haven't,' Toshiya said. 'He's not in the habit of saying anything civil to me.'
'One of the others, then,' Uruha's father said, a tight-lipped smile on his face, and Toshiya leant forward in his chair.
'No, it's not that either. It's more about what happened between you and I just now – you know, back in my room, when you tried touching me up and then said if I let you go further without telling, you'd see I got out of here faster?'
Uruha's father didn't stop smiling, but the expression did get tenser on his face.
'You're telling lies,' he said.
'He's not,' Uruha mumbled.
There was a stunned sort of silence.
There was an expression on Aoi's face as if he'd just woken up from a deep sleep, and carefully he reached out for Uruha's hand. Ruki was almost surprised Uruha allowed it – Aoi's fingernails were dirty – but he clutched Aoi's palm hard in his.
'He's not,' Aoi agreed, his voice hollow and sort of rusty-sounding from lack of use.
'He's not,' Kyo echoed.
'He's not,' Shinya nodded, half smothering the words in his own palm. Ruki swallowed hard; thought about Uruha's locked door and the strange, intense look on Shinya's face; thought about Kai saying Uruha's dad is a bad man; thought about the way Uruha had stamped on his father's books until the spines were crushed and the pages were torn beyond repair.
'He's not.'
The five of them stared at Uruha's father, and for the strangest moment, Ruki had the sense that Kai and Die were with them and adding their silent voices; Kai smiling his bright smile and Die skinny enough to snap, ghosts at the feast. It wasn't exactly a good feeling, but it was a strong one, and he took Kyo's hand under the table and squeezed it fiercely.
'Uruha,' Mr Takashima said, his eyes fixed on his son. 'I don't know what you mean by this.'
Uruha looked up silently, his dark eyes strangely shuttered-looking, as if he'd closed something off. There was something unusual about him, Ruki thought, and he realised that the other man was still, for once – completely still. He didn't think he'd ever seen him that way.
'Uruha,' Mr Takashima said again, 'Answer me.'
Uruha swallowed, but stayed silent.
'Uruha.'
Uruha's hands were trembling just slightly, Ruki noticed, as with slow, careful movements he unfastened the watch from his wrist and set it down neatly on the tabletop.
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