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solongsun It was very late by the time that Ruki was finally able to open Sato's envelope. The mood on the ward had been a bizarre one, half elated and half deeply, deeply subdued, with nobody knowing much what to say to each other; they had drifted off finally, most of them, to go and sit around in the music room, but Ruki had remained in the corridor. As soon as they had turned out of sight, he had sat himself carefully down by the isolation room door.
It was exactly the same with Kyo: he'd had no idea what to say. 'I'm here,' he'd managed at last, but there was no way to know whether or not he'd been heard; the silence from the room beyond was as still and perfect as death. Still, he had sat out there all evening, occasionally trailing his fingers over the floor in case Kyo could see his shadow moving through the little strip of light that ran under the door. It struck him that he didn't feel particularly happy or sad. The panic and excitement seemed to have cancelled each other out, and he was left feeling quite blank. A little after ten o'clock, the nurse on duty had come to usher him into bed, and he'd gone without an argument.
Then, it had taken Toshiya a long time to get to sleep. He'd wanted to talk about Die and Uruha, and about how calm and confident and altogether strange Uruha had seemed, and although Ruki had answered him with 'dunno's and monosyllables, his enthusiasm didn't dampen itself until long past midnight.
Now, he sat in a nest of blankets on his bed, shivering a little in the chill of the night. The ward was entirely quiet, and the sound of him tearing open the envelope seemed huge. On the bed next to his, Toshiya was breathing slowly and evenly, and Ruki eyed him a little suspiciously before he finally eased the flap open and upended the envelope over the bed.
Although it was thick, the only thing that fell out was the letter that Ruki had remembered – a narrow white envelope with his name and address at the sanatorium neatly printed in brown ink. It had an Osaka postmark, he saw. He sparked his lighter and examined it more closely by the lambent flame; it was, as Sato had promised, completely untouched.
He ripped it open before he could lose his nerve, almost tearing the letter itself. He unfolded it, and the first sentence seemed to hit him in the face: I regret to inform you...
He leant back against the wall, breathing slowly and deeply.
Something hard seemed to lodge itself in his chest, and a sour sort of taste in his mouth forced his face into a grim expression. He had expected this, he realised.
Dear Mr Matsumoto:
I regret to inform you that, following a lengthy conference with my colleagues on the board of directors, we are sadly unable to offer you any scholarship or financial grant for the academic year 1971/1972.
You are of course welcome and very much encouraged to apply for attendance without funding. I do hope this decision will not limit your future at our institution.
Although the decision of the board is final, I find myself extremely impressed by your work, and would like to meet with you to discuss some other avenues you may wish to explore. In particular, the Institute of Art is framing an exhibition starting in the summer of 1971 entitled Mapping Change: New Perspectives on Modernity. I feel your work would be perfectly placed for our show, and would like to formally offer you the chance to exhibit.
I understand from our mutual friend Dr Sato that your plans for the next year have not yet been finalised. Having spent some time in a similar facility myself in my youth, I quite understand the difficult situation you may presently be finding yourself in. If you do decide you would be interested in showing your work, I trust you will not hesitate to let me know of anything I can do to facilitate this arrangement for you.
I hope very much that we might work together in the future, and wish you the best of luck with your recovery.
Yours faithfully,
Takeji Iwamiya
Ruki folded the letter up carefully.
It seemed very, very important not to crease it. With slow movements, his fingers trembling just a little, he slid it back into its white envelope and smoothed down the flap. He had the immediate urge to read it again, but instead placed it gently down on his pillow and stared at it apprehensively, pinching his lower lip absently between his thumb and forefinger.
An exhibition at the institute. His work in an exhibition.
The idea felt too big to fit in his mind. Across the room, Toshiya murmured softly but slept on.
He'd been to the university's exhibition space, of course, and it was huge. Not only that, but the summer exhibitions almost never featured any work by students; those were for serious, established artists. People like Eiji; not him. Shortly after they'd met, Eiji had even taken him there; he remembered how they'd wandered around the hardwood floors and Eiji had told him about the various pieces on display, though he'd been too nervous to remember a word. He'd been anxious to get it over with, he remembered, so that he could go home and enjoy it properly: replay it in his mind, linger on every gentle touch and look the older man had given him. Eiji had seemed so remote, back then. He had seemed so untouchable.
It had been the best time in their relationship, he thought bitterly, those few short weeks when Ruki was nursing a fierce crush and Eiji was just beginning to look at him; just beginning to take notice. No mistakes had been made, back then. Eiji had still been everything he'd imagined.
At length, Ruki remembered that there had been something else bulking out the large envelope; he picked it up again and stuffed his shaking hand inside. It felt like a bound essay or dissertation, he thought as he tugged at it; the pages were A4 sized and bundled thickly together. When he at last worked it free, his eyes snapped wide open: this wasn't from Iwamiya.
No, this could only be from Sato.
His own name was printed neatly on the front cover, and when he turned it back the first thing he saw was his own intake form – yes, there was his signature, looking childishly young and scrawly, almost unformed. There was his own lost-looking face staring a little mournfully out of a copy of a black and white photo, attached to the document with a couple of large, stiff paper clips; he leafed past it. Intake Assessment, the next page was headed, and he felt his mouth go a little dry as he read quickly through it: he read suicide attempt and evidence of self-injury/mutilation (wrist banging, biting at skin etc.), generally negative outlook, lack of interest in school/career...
'Why?' Ruki whispered to himself, hardly realising that he was speaking out loud, 'Why would you give me this?'
Toshiya gave a quiet, snorting sort of snore and shifted onto his back. His eyes were moving behind his eyelids, Ruki noticed distantly: he must have been dreaming. His brow was slightly furrowed.
Nervously, Ruki turned the pages. He caught snatches of diagnosis; saw where Kimura had written fear of abandonment and underlined it twice; saw the neatly typed and stamped incident report detailing the day he'd shoved a burning cigarette butt into the skin of his own wrist – the whitish scar there seemed to throb – and the neat paperwork transferring responsibility for him from Doctor Kimura to Dr Sato, signed by both. He saw pages and pages of photocopied notes and their scribbled conclusions, little snatches of his own words brushing past him like ghosts – except they weren't the ghosts, he thought; he was. Not his present self, but the Ruki represented in these pages; sad, and defeated, and scared. He was the ghost. He was the one, after all, who had passed out of existence.
He saw Hiroshi's name, and his eyes stung. Poor Hiroshi: he hadn't deserved this, to be dead and buried and then resurrected in the notes made at some distant hospital, miles and miles away from his lonely grave. Ruki bit down on his thumb agitatedly.
Survivor's guilt, Sato had written, and Ruki closed the rest of the file without finishing it. He felt the urge to get far away from it, as though it might contaminate him in some way, but settled for simply using his very fingertips to push it away down the bed. He sat, chewing on his lip, between the two documents: Iwamiya's letter on his pillow, his own file at the foot of his bed.
Why would Sato give him this? Was it supposed to help his recovery; supposed to show him how far he had come? Was he supposed to be reflecting on it – on the choice between Iwamiya's offered future and his own rotten, stunted past?
It's up to you what you do with it. You might find it useful and you might not.
As if compelled, he turned and fixed the door with a long, thoughtful stare.
You might find it useful and you might not.
But what, Ruki thought, if it hadn't been meant for him at all?
His hands were truly shaking now; he could feel how they trembled as he smoothed his hair and his clothes down. He knew what he had to do, and he knew that he couldn't do it without help, but before he woke up Toshiya he simply sat for a moment, trying to even out his breathing, searching for his resolve.
His heart beat high in his chest. He slipped off the bed and tiptoed over to poke his roommate awake.
'Toshiya,' he whispered, 'Toshiya. Wake up. C'mon.'
Sleepily, Toshiya groaned, and Ruki grit his teeth.
'Come on,' he hissed, 'Wake up.'
Deftly, he reached out and pinched Toshiya's nose, holding it fast. With a snorting noise, the other man came out of sleep, glaring at him in groggy confusion.
'What the hell?' he slurred.
'Good, you're up,' Ruki said smoothly, ignoring the shake in his voice, 'I need a favour.'
Toshiya groaned again, letting his eyes fall closed. 'Can't this favour wait until morning?'
Ruki bit his lip. 'No. Sorry.'
'Piss off,' Toshiya muttered, attempting to drag his pillow over his face, and Ruki sighed.
'I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important,' he said, trying to make his voice soft and persuasive even though he could hear how brittle and tense it sounded, 'I swear, Toshiya, it won't take long, and if we get into trouble I'll take all the blame, I promise—'
'Trouble?' Toshiya pulled the pillow off his face, eyeing Ruki shrewdly. 'You think we haven't been in enough trouble recently?'
'I know, but this is different.'
'Bet the punishment will be the same,' Toshiya said moodily, but he sat himself up.
'I need to open a door,' Ruki said, and Toshiya yawned widely.
'What door?'
'The isolation room door. I was thinking about it and – you know, it's just a standard lock, like the one between the ward and the stairwell, so couldn't you pick it?'
Toshiya looked at him grumpily.
'Maybe,' he said in a grudging tone, 'But I'd need something to pick it with. Don't suppose you're smuggling any hairpins, are you?'
'No, but...is that really the only way?'
'Oh yeah, you're right, I forgot that I could just magic it open.'
'No, I mean...wouldn't anything else work?'
'Hmph.' Toshiya sighed. 'I don't know, it just needs to be flexible and strong. I mean, flexible enough for me to bend it, but not so flexible that it'll just bend in the lock. It's gotta be able to push the pins up.'
'Pins?'
'Pins,' Toshiya repeated, slightly impatiently, 'They're how a lock works; you need to push them up to turn it.'
'Right,' Ruki said quickly, none the wiser, 'So what would work? Hair pins...a wire hanger?'
'Too thick.'
'Haven't you ever used anything else?'
'A knife,' Toshiya said, pulling a face, 'But that works differently, and we'd never be able to get our hands on one. Sometimes you can do it if you've got a couple of shards of metal, or something; you can use a beer can tab, sometimes, if you can hammer it out okay. Paper clips can work—'
'Paper clips?' Ruki said instantly, and Toshiya blinked at him.
'Sometimes,' he said warily. 'What, you've got some lying around? For all your home office needs?'
Wordlessly, Ruki grabbed his file off the bed and threw it into Toshiya's lap. He then stared hastily down at the blanket on his roommate's bed, unwilling to acknowledge the strange, solemn look the other man was giving him.
'On the first page,' he muttered, 'The photo of me is held on with paper clips. Will they do?'
He heard the rustle of paper, and Toshiya was quiet for a moment.
'Yeah,' he said at last, 'Yeah, I think so.'
When Ruki managed to drag his eyes up to meet Toshiya's, he found the other man gazing at him soberly, and gently his roommate handed his file back to him. 'Here.'
'Yeah. Thanks.'
Toshiya took a deep breath, and smiled at him.
'Ready?' he checked.
'I'm ready. You?'
'Born ready. C'mon.'
It was completely silent out in the hallway as Toshiya, yawning and shivering slightly, knelt down with Ruki's two paper clips in front of the isolation room door. He started steadily picking away as Ruki hovered behind him, ostensibly keeping watch, though he couldn't say to what end – anybody he saw was bound to see the both of them just as quickly, and what would happen then?
Even if Toshiya didn't seem that concerned, Ruki didn't want to get him in trouble. There was something about the way he accepted punishment – so matter-of-factly, so unquestioningly, as if it was only ever all that he deserved – that made Ruki feel somehow sad.
It was a tense five minutes that the two of them spent out in the corridor, growing colder and colder; there was a chill in the air of the type that only ever seemed to exist between the hours of two and five in the morning, and Ruki could see it raising goosebumps all over his bare arms. He hugged them tightly to himself as Toshiya concentrated on the lock, humming Do You Love Me? absently under his breath as he worked, and the two of them exhaled softly when, with a quiet clicking noise, Toshiya finally twisted the lock open.
He sat back on his heels and looked up at Ruki a little strangely.
'All done,' he said quietly. 'Sure you want to do this?'
Ruki tried for a smile. 'You don't even know what I'm doing,' he said lightly, and Toshiya shrugged.
'I guess not.'
Ruki hesitated. 'Thanks, Toshiya.'
Snorting, Toshiya punched him softly on the arm. When he spoke again it was over his shoulder as he disappeared back into their bedroom, and in that floating tone of voice that Ruki could never fully understand, 'Yeah, any time.'
So. Ruki hovered in front of the door, nervously adjusting and readjusting his grip on his file. He knew that if he allowed himself to hesitate too long he'd be out there forever, so he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.
Oddly enough, the image that came into his mind was the image he'd used to get of Hiroshi; of the great ship rolling into the dock, the figure on the deck almost too small to see, but getting clearer and clearer and closer and closer all the time. Ruki pushed open the door.
His first thought, stupid as it was, was that it couldn't possibly be Kyo. The sight of his body so hunched over and broken looking was so unfamiliar that for a moment, Ruki had a brief moment of something akin to panic: suppose they'd done something really awful to him, far more terrible than he'd ever understood; suppose they'd changed him in some way, made him into some other person, huddled so compliantly over in a corner?
Then a slice of dim light from the hallway fell over Kyo's face, and he opened his eyes a crack. His gaze was disoriented, utterly uncomprehending and so suspicious that Ruki's first impulse was to take a step backwards, as if to prove he meant no harm, but he found his legs taking him forward instead.
The door closed behind him, and it was dark. How could he have forgotten how dark it was? He immediately stumbled, dropping the file; he turned and lost his bearings, feeling uncertainly for the wall. He could hear an awful noise, a kind of scrabbling noise; the sound of some small and frightened animal trying to escape, flattening itself against a wall, trying to burrow into it.
'It's okay,' he whispered, hearing his own voice shake. There was no response, and carefully he lowered himself to the floor, blindly crawling forwards. His hand touched something warm and felt it flinch back from him, cringing.
'It's okay,' he said again, his voice tight, 'I promise it is. It's just me.'
Tentatively, he moved closer. Kyo's body was shivering violently, but when Ruki touched him this time he remained still; perhaps he felt there was nowhere he could escape to. Feeling his way, he moved his hand carefully from Kyo's arm to his shoulder, dropping down over his collarbone, coming to rest in the centre of his chest. Beneath his palm, the other man's heartbeat raced; his breaths were fast and shallow.
'Easy,' he whispered, 'Just take it easy.' Beneath his T-shirt Kyo's skin felt cool to the touch, and Ruki felt a sharp twist of anger: who could dump a person in here like this, all night, without even a blanket to keep warm? Who could open the door on this and possibly think that they were doing the right thing; could turn the key in the lock and forget about it?
Cautiously, Ruki shifted closer, sitting up straighter against the padded wall. Next to him Kyo felt small with his body slumped as it was, and gently Ruki slipped his other arm around his shoulders, trying to share some of his body heat. There was an awful moment where Kyo's whole body went rigid and Ruki was worried he'd throw him off, but the two of them stuck it out: it took time but, still and silent, Ruki began to have a strange sense of the man next to him unfurling in some way, as though part of him was putting out some soft kind of tendrils or shoots: a strange, exploratory, not-quite touch, like a plant leaning towards sunlight. Some of the tension seemed to leave his muscles, but his heart raced as fast as ever.
They were quiet for a long time; the only sound was Kyo's breathing, quick and light. The darkness was so complete that Ruki's eyes couldn't adjust to it. He looked around himself despairingly, trying to gauge where the walls might be, how far away that dim strip of light showing under the door was; he remembered how horribly endless the darkness had seemed when he'd been shut in here, how he'd felt so lost within it. It had played with his head, tricked him into seeing shadows on the walls, movements like plants under the floor; it had taken over him, made him hear Eiji's voice whispering as if from inside his own mind.
It was strange thinking back to how defenceless he'd felt then; how completely incapable he'd been, trapped inside his own head.
Somewhere along the line, he realised, he'd become stronger. He'd become much stronger.
He remembered his friends playing music for him outside the door, the sounds of them singing and dancing and the way their shadows had moved; he remembered the clicking sound of tapes being changed over in the cassette player; he remembered Kyo's low, serious, gentle voice: pretend you're outside. It helps.
And Kyo would be all right, he thought, because he had always been strong. It was all over him; even in the way he sat now, hunched into himself, stalwart and stubborn as ever. Refusing to cry out or break down the way Ruki would have done; refusing to run away. Never giving in; never giving up, ever.
'I'm so sorry,' Ruki said at last, his voice soft in the stillness and quiet, 'I'm sorry that I called out for you that time, and that I ended up getting you into this. I just...I had to speak to you. I wasn't trying anything bad like they thought; I was trying to get to you. I – I wanted to tell you that I was really sorry about before, and that I don't think you're crazy; I think you're the sanest person I've ever met, and I think that you're smart, and I...' he hesitated, feeling uncertain, 'I miss you. I miss spending time with you, and I miss watching you write in your notebook, and I miss talking to you because even if – even if you don't say much, you use your mind in a really interesting way, and I always want to hear more.' He paused, biting down on his lip nervously, 'I have my file, and when you're out of here, I want you to read it. And then...and then maybe we can be friends again. If you can forgive me.'
There was a long silence.
'It's really you,' Kyo said finally.
His voice was hoarser than Ruki had ever heard it, cracked and broken sounding.
'It's me,' he said quickly, seriously, 'And it's okay. You're going to get out of here. I promise you that you're going to get out.'
Even as he said it, he knew it was a promise he had no business making.
'Just keep holding on,' he whispered.
Neither of them said anything more after that, but Ruki felt the change as Kyo's body finally relaxed into his.
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