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solongsun 'These are your best works, then, you think?'
Standing back, Ruki scrutinised them, frowning a little. The light that streamed into the room was harsh and white from the snow. He stood beside Sato and the doctor was bundled up in a cable-knit sweater and scarf beneath his white coat, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the papers spread out below the window.
'I think so,' he said, his voice slightly doubtful. 'It's been a while since I've really done anything, I—'
'I think these show a tremendous amount of promise, Ruki. You shouldn't be making excuses for them.' Sato paused. 'You're very lucky, you know. You have a gift, and you've managed to turn that gift into a coping mechanism.'
'It'd be luckier to not need a coping mechanism,' Ruki muttered, but when he met the doctor's eye he accidentally gave him a small smile.
'Be that as it may, you've been doing extremely well, Ruki. Toshimasa seems to have settled in as your roommate, and I believe you're having a positive effect on some of the other patients, too.'
Ruki's smile slipped a little, wondering why he would say the other patients when he really meant Kyo. There couldn't have been any confusion, he thought irritably: Uruha was more withdrawn than ever, Aoi had been banished upstairs, and Shinya might as well have been living in a bubble for all the notice he took of anything.
Counting them up like that, he realised how few people seemed to be left around him, and he felt something like a deep bruise in his chest.
'So, you're happy to send off these five?' Sato gestured at the drawings, and Ruki tried to force himself to snap back to reality.
'I suppose so. I mean...' he hesitated. 'They're not exactly very pretty, or anything.'
They weren't. Lines crossed through all of them like a tangle of veins, scribbly and obscure; portraits that were actually maps; maps that were actually portraits. Facial features and limbs, codified and classified, the environs neatly sorted; here was Toshiya asleep, Shinya bowed over, Kyo draped over his bed in his habitual way, sitting on his lower back with his chin resting on his chest; just elements of the three of them, hidden behind the lines. Pieces of men, to be assembled. Like flat-pack furniture. Ruki blinked and gave his head a small shake, trying to stop his mind from rambling.
'Let's let my acquaintance Mr Iwamiya be the judge of that,' Sato said gently. 'I know—'
They were interrupted by a sudden shrill beeping sound, and Sato frowned, pulling a pager from his belt and squinting at it. Ruki hadn't even noticed he'd worn one, before.
'Ruki,' he said in a calm voice, 'Do excuse me; I'm needed upstairs.'
'Upstairs?'
'That's right. I will be perhaps ten minutes. Could I ask you to look over your work, decide which selections you'd like to send, and perhaps make a few notes explaining them for Mr Iwamiya? You'll find a notepad and pen on my desk.'
'Sure,' Ruki said woodenly, and Sato gave him an abbreviated smile before disappearing. Ruki heard his shoes squeak away down the polished corridor.
So. He wandered idly over to the doctor's desk and seated himself in the big leather chair behind it tentatively, as if it was going to recognise his lack of credentials and suddenly eject him. It was so large it felt like it was swallowing up, and he sat forward uncomfortably. He already knew which five he was going to send; Kyo's eyes, the barest lines of light in them, seemed to catch his from across the room. Toshiya's sleeping face could have been carved from marble; Shinya's frail shoulders seemed spun from glass. He eyed them all a little uncomfortably before fixing his gaze on the desk, running a finger over its polished surface. It was empty but for a pack of cigarettes and the doctor's lighter, a pen and notepad, Sato's nameplate, Ruki's open file and – a new addition – a small anglepoise lamp. Ruki clicked it off. His own file wasn't a temptation; he figured there shouldn't be anything in there he didn't already know: suicide attempt, medicine, behavioural issues, slow improvement. He propped one of Sato's cigarettes between his lips and lit it.
Aoi had been gone for three days, and the silence still felt so acute. It pressed in against his ears like deep water.
Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, he moved smoothly into action; bending down, he opened up one of the wooden cupboards set into the desk. There were rows and rows of dusty files in there, and with an edgy glance at the clock, Ruki began to flip through them. Most of the names written along their tops were unfamiliar, but every so often he came across the file of somebody he knew and felt a kind of kicking sensation inside: Aoi's file, Shinya's file. They seemed to be organised not by name but by intake date; the earliest was 1961. He flicked through the heavy folders twice looking for Die – he thought the file would surely say if he was still alive or not – but had to give up; it seemed that Die had been the patient of another therapist.
Ruki wondered if Sato might have been better; if he might have been able to help him.
He opened the cupboard on the opposite side, and the first name seemed to blare at him: Kyo. Just Kyo, that single character, no last name.
Carefully, he pulled the file out and flattened his hand over its surface. It was plain manilla, giving nothing away.
A strange sort of unease seemed to nag at his gut, and he sat up a little straighter. Gently, as if the file was part of the man himself, he laid out the folder over his own on the desk and opened it. It was thick; much thicker than his own was. The first page was an intake form, similar to the one Ruki had signed but with INVOLUNTARY COMMITTAL stamped across the top, and different wording – some legalese transferring the responsibility for a fifteen-year-old Kyo from the Kyoto Prefectural Police to the sanatorium, signed with a smudgy swirl of fountain pen ink and a rubber stamp. He turned the page and discovered a photograph; a mugshot of a lost-looking teenager, eyes inscrutable. Ruki bit his lip, resisting the urge to touch it in case he left a smudge or a fingerprint.
He let out a long, slow breath that seemed to leave his lungs empty and hurting.
Kyo, before he'd known him. The hair was much longer and more ragged; the face was thin and haunted. He held up a placard with a booking number on it but not much else; the spaces for his name and date of birth had been left blank.
He looked at the picture and tried to examine the feeling rising up within him; the meaning of the burning in his chest. The wave of protectiveness he felt was fierce enough to make him want to bare his teeth. The teenager in the photograph was emaciated and filthy, his face strangely blank, as if he wasn't really there behind his eyes.
The hairs on the back of Ruki's neck prickled as they stood up, and be stroked the picture carefully. It was glued fast to a form titled Intake Assessment, and Ruki felt his cheeks flush slightly as he started to read, as if he was being watched. It wasn't typewritten, and the script was hard to read at times: it wasn't Sato's handwriting.
There was a section headed Initial Observations, and Ruki rubbed his forehead worriedly, tasting a hint of blood where he was biting on his lip too hard. He read that the first observations of Kyo had included an acute psychotic episode, as well as lack of visible remorse, evidence of physical abuse, evidence of sexual abuse, malnourishment and difficulty focussing; each speck of diagnosis followed by a series of untidy bullet points beneath. He turned the page, feeling horribly breathless, and his eyes dropped to a point halfway down that seemed to be screaming up at him:
Delusional – Kyo has fantasised the existence of a younger sibling (female); maintains sibling is dead and buried beneath floorboards. Becomes aggressive when the delusion is contradicted.
Ruki's hands shook as he closed the file. Unsteadily, he bent down and put it back, exactly where it was, nudged in between two other meaningless names; they were little more than blurs. His cheeks felt hot and his eyes were stinging; slowly, he pressed his trembling hands to them.
He couldn't quite seem to catch his breath properly, and he got stiffly to his feet. The eyes in his work followed him blindly as he walked as calmly as he could out of the office, his feet feeling curiously leaden beneath him.
He had lied.
Or did he really believe it?
Ruki couldn't tell which was worse.
'You have a brother.'
'Had a brother.'
'I'm sorry.'
'You have any siblings?'
'Had. My sister. She was ten.'
He thought of Kyo's steady, deep brown eyes; the way they looked at him, the way they could flatten and go blank just as easily as if he had shut them. He thought of the other man's hands on his, their bodies pressing together, their lips; his head whirled with it, felt stuffed tight.
How disturbed was he to make a person up out of thin air; to imagine that kind of death for them?
Ruki's mind did a weird thing; seemed to get jumbled and spin helplessly backward, clicking into another time: he walked down the corridor and suddenly he was walking out of Eiji's apartment building, hearing the echo of his footsteps and thinking – thinking what – thinking, yes, that he shouldn't have come. That if he hadn't visited that day, Eiji would not have been able to break up with him; that he could have postponed it if he'd just stayed at home. Another day could have made the difference, and his mind had chattered it at him: he could have done something, he could have done something worthy of love; he could have done something to change his mind.
He pushed himself through the door of his dorm, paying no heed to Toshiya, stretched out and smoking on his bed. He dropped himself down on his own mattress and put his hands over his ears.
Evidence of sexual abuse, his mind screamed at him, and he closed his eyes tightly. Delusions. Sexual abuse. The words seemed stuffed tight in his ears, deep down where no scientific instrument could reach them.
He had let Ruki touch him; how could he have let him touch him without saying anything?
Delusions.
Sexual abuse.
His stomach churned and he retched suddenly, throwing up his half-digested lunch with a spattering sound over the floor; he dimly heard Toshiya's sound of alarm and doubled over, clutching onto his upper arms, feeling himself shiver.
Delusions.
Sexual abuse.
The words wouldn't pull themselves apart. The sound they made together was an angry buzzing, like wasps. Ruki rocked himself.
'...I don't know; he's sick, really sick. He just came in with a weird look on his face and started throwing up, I—'
Toshiya's voice was distant, like it was coming through fog. He felt a cool hand circle his wrist and an arm coming around his waist, and he was getting pulled to his feet. He retched again, his body jerking forward forcefully, and let go of an acrid bile that stung his throat and eyes and nose.
Delusions.
Sexual abuse.
Kyo's face swam before his eyes, first a drawing and then the real thing, then a mugshot, a teenager, all of them overlaying each other, blurring so they didn't make sense.
A woman's voice said in his ear: 'Come on, Ruki. We'll make it yet.'
He allowed himself to be led.
'It's the strain,' the nurse said to him, popping a thermometer between his lips, 'There's been an awful lot of upheaval lately, I know. We've all been very impressed by how you've coped, Ruki.'
He thought it might be a few minutes later: he seemed to have done a kind of mental blink that had completely erased the last little bit of time. With the thermometer in his mouth, the only answer he could make was a sort of non-committal humming noise, and he was glad. He blinked dully, crossing his eyes to try and see the mercury inching upwards. Dimly, he recalled the nurse rubbing his back and giving him a glass of water to sip. He looked down and found a cardboard emesis basin in his lap. It was shaped like a kidney.
The thermometer was a slim twig of a thing that tasted like disinfectant and clicked against his teeth.
'What with Die becoming so ill...and now this awful business with Aoi...' the nurse talked on blithely, soft patter that didn't need a response; she leant close to Ruki to inspect the thermometer and then plucked it out of his mouth.
'Completely normal,' she said confidently, giving him a smile. 'Do you still feel sick?'
'Just a bit,' Ruki muttered.
'I can give you an anti-nausea tablet, if you'd like.'
'No thanks.'
The nurse gave him an assessing sort of look. He had been taken behind the nurses' station and sat in a plastic chair, and now she sat on her heels next to him.
'Is there anything,' she said gently, 'That you would like to talk about, Ruki? I know you left your appointment with the doctor early, but if you would like to have another chat, or talk to the head nurse...'
'No,' Ruki said, perhaps too quickly, 'No, it's okay.'
She didn't look convinced, but she nodded.
'Well, the orderlies have got your room all cleaned up now. Why don't you brush your teeth and then go and lie down for the rest of the afternoon?'
'Yeah,' Ruki said vaguely, 'I will. Thanks.'
She set a hand briefly on his hair and then he got to his feet, wobbling stupidly because all the blood seemed to have rushed out of his head suddenly. He sucked in a breath, forced a smile and then traipsed off to the bathroom. Brushing his teeth vigorously, he tried to ignore his reflection.
The thought that troubled him now was that if it wasn't true about Kyo's sister, then how did he know that any of the rest of it was true? How could Kyo know, even, if he was that mixed up?
He spat toothpaste into the sink and ducked his head, shivering.
Kyo didn't look mad, that was the thing – not in the way that Shinya and Uruha could look mad. But then, Die hadn't looked mad either, and neither had Kai, and yet the two of them...
He splashed cold water on his face and drew up, dripping, to glare at himself soberly.
The boy in the mugshot had looked kind of mad. He could see that. He hadn't looked crazy in the TV way, where people pulled loopy faces and made stupid noises; he had looked mad in the real way, the sanatorium way; desperate and lost and sad, stunted somehow, like a flower growing away from sunlight; like a fox in a trap, chewing its own leg off.
And there was so much. Evidence of sexual abuse, what did that mean? What had to happen for it to be obvious to an observer; for it to be written into your skin?
He cringed when he thought back to all the times he'd talked to Kyo about Eiji: all the times he'd complained about how sex with his mentor had often felt degrading, and uncomfortable, and embarrassing. He wondered how Kyo had been able to hold back from laughing at him, or spitting in his face; how he'd been able to just let him prattle on like that, all the while cradling his own darkness safely inside like a vital organ.
Ruki turned away from his own reflection and pushed the bathroom door open, feeling sickish again. The door to his dorm had been left open, and all the traces of what had just happened had been removed; the only thing different was that Toshiya was now lying on his stomach on his bed, still smoking – maybe even the same cigarette; Ruki wasn't exactly sure how much time had passed – and he raised his eyebrow when Ruki walked in.
'You okay?' he asked, his voice wary, and Ruki gave a brusque nod.
'Yeah. Sorry.'
Toshiya snorted elegantly.
'Like that's the first time anybody's ever hurled on my floor. I wouldn't mind some warning if you're gonna do it again, though.'
'Noted,' Ruki said, clambering onto his own bed, and Toshiya slid him a look.
'Seriously, are you okay?' he asked bluntly. 'You look like shit.'
'Thanks.'
'Something happen?'
'What do you care?' Ruki said irritably, 'You're not one of us. You're just – just a junkie. You won't even be here in a few months.'
Toshiya rolled onto his back, propping himself up on his elbows.
'Yeah, I am a junkie,' he said dispassionately, 'And I need something to take my mind off how fucking badly I want a hit right now, so maybe you could start talking about whatever it is that's wrong.'
Ruki smiled at that in spite of himself, but then the words from the report seemed to crash into him again and his smile contorted into a strange grimace.
'I don't want to talk about it,' he said, and paused. 'Sorry,' he added grudgingly. Toshiya sighed.
'Suit yourself.' He seemed to deliberate for a moment, and then reached over and deposited something on Ruki's bed. 'Here.'
It was Kai's radio, and Ruki picked it up reverently. He cast a doubtful look at Toshiya and then turned it on, fiddling with the dial slightly to try and get past the crackle of static. The soft hissing resolved itself at length into a song he didn't recognise, and he shot Toshiya a questioning sort of look.
'It's new,' Toshiya explained, wriggling his shoulders into his pillow like a cat, 'Recognise the guitar sound?'
'It sounds like The Beatles. But...'
'Right on. It's George Harrison.'
'What, just alone?'
'Exactly.' Toshiya closed his eyes, smiling contentedly up at the ceiling despite the cold sweat starting to trickle down his temples. 'I really want to know you,' he warbled blissfully, not quite on key, 'I really want to go with you...'
Ruki considered that the conversation over; he turned onto his side to face the wall.
He had been so stupid, he thought lucidly, to not realise – to not even consider the possibility. The signs had been there, and he had stubbornly looked past them; had refused to see them. It made his head ache, what a mess he had made of things without even trying; what a huge mess everything was already.
'I screw things up,' he whispered, not sure if Toshiya was able to hear him over the music, 'I always do.'
The fact that he could still feel so much self-pity in light of what had happened to Kyo made him feel sick of himself. He wondered what right he possibly had to feel betrayed; to feel lied to.
The teenager's faraway face seemed to hover in front of his eyes, and he closed them tightly.
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