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solongsun As the weeks stretched on, the weather grew sultry and warm, and the winds died down to a gentle breeze. Ruki was eventually granted permission to walk around the grounds, as long as he wasn't alone, and he began to realise that he was in a beautiful place. The air smelled fresh and clean, not sooty and still like it always had during summers in the city, and the grounds of the hospital stretched a fair way around the surrounding hills, through dappled little copses of trees and fields thick with wildflowers, and Ruki saw a deer running in a skittery, high-tailed sort of way through knee high grass. It was quiet, too. It was just possible to see the buildings of Kyoto city, if you got to a suitable vantage point, but you couldn't hear it; the city seemed little more than a vast glittering oasis, shimmering somewhere unreachably far in the distance.
Not everybody had grounds privileges. Die's had been revoked and were never reinstated; the deal was that he could get them back if he ate everything on his tray for ten meals in a row. Kai had them, but he didn't like to wander too far; he played endless games of football on the patch of lawn directly in front of the sanatorium, sometimes against Aoi and sometimes against a friendly orderly or two, but his eyes flickered constantly up to the barred windows of the locked ward where he lived out his life, and before long the lack of walls and ceiling seemed to drive him to distraction; he was more inclined to get confused, and after those outdoor sessions he would spend long periods of time curled up on his bed with his radio.
The songs changed throughout the summer, as if the radio stations knew that all anybody wanted to do was flop down on the grass and tip their faces up to the sun. You didn't just hear Eddie Cochran with Summertime Blues, you heard The Kinks with Sunny Afternoon and Otis Redding with Sitting on the Dock of a Bay and The Beach Boys with Surfin' USA.
Die's Jimi Hendrix record hadn't been entirely ruined, but side one was completely unplayable; the needle snagged over and over on the wormy patch of melted plastic. In rebellion, Die played side two more and more that summer, at all hours of the day, and Ruki found The Wind Cries Mary seemed to be stuck in his chest like a heartbeat. Finally, Die got himself a month's ban from the music and TV rooms after sneaking out of his room and playing Foxy Lady as loud as it could go in the early hours of the morning, and he didn't appear at breakfast that day.
In mid-June, on a day without a breath of wind, Ruki signed himself out to go for a walk with Aoi and Uruha. The other men knew routes that he didn't; following Aoi's lead, the three of them moved as a straggly bunch up and around a steep hillside, craggy with patches of rock and great tufts of dry, reedy grass. They followed no clear path but they walked purposefully, the route growing tougher and tougher, until gradually the ground levelled out into a little plateau somewhere below the summit of the hill – or maybe it was a mountain; Ruki wasn't sure – and Aoi stopped. He took a deep, long breath, smiled a little, and turned to Ruki.
'This is our place,' he explained solemnly. 'You can't see the sanatorium from here, and they can't see you. I've checked out of every window; even the one behind the nurse's station.'
'How did you get there?'
'They can't watch all the time,' Aoi said impatiently. 'But look, the thing is...I need to discuss something with Uruha. It's pretty important, but...' he swept a hand through his hair uncomfortably, and said bluntly, 'Look, I feel like such a dick saying this. But it's kind of private.'
Ruki shrugged. 'That's okay.'
It really was. His head had been buzzing all day, and the idea of being alone outdoors was an attractive one. He thought he could loop back around to the other side of the hill, where it was shady, and simply lie in the grass until the sweet healthy smell of it was inside him, and his pores were purged completely of the sanatorium smells of radiator dust and disinfectant and overcooked vegetables. He could sense that Aoi felt uncertain, so he held up his hands.
'It really is okay,' he repeated. 'I'll come back and find you. We've got...' he checked his watch, 'Forty minutes until we have to be back. I'll come back for you when it's time for us to walk back down, okay?'
'You sure you're okay to be alone? I mean – you're sure?' Aoi asked, eyeing him edgily, and Ruki smiled ruefully at the ground, suddenly realising what the problem was.
'I'm not going to kill myself,' he said.
'Promise?' Aoi asked abruptly. 'Because if we find you swinging from a tree, it's going to really ruin my life, and I've gotta tell you, things are already going downhill as it is.'
'I promise', Ruki assured him. 'Don't worry. I'll see you soon.'
Feeling embarrassed but still somehow touched, he stumbled around and took off, hands in his pockets and his head tilted up, his eyes fixed straight on the hazy, softly glowing horizon. The air was so clean; the sky was so blue it almost wasn't blue any more. The sun felt good on his skin, like sinking into a warm bath; it was so palpable and so golden that it seemed almost liquid. Walking around the hillside, the roof of the sanatorium came into view, and he studied it soberly, trying to figure out the feeling that it called up within him.
It felt like a thousand things at once.
Dear E. O.,
I've been here just over two months now.
I still think about you every day, and I wonder if you're thinking about me. I think about you in your studio, or in your flat, or at the bar down the street from your place – sitting at that little round table in the window and smoking a cigarette. I'm only just allowed cigarettes again. Did you remember that they said I couldn't have any, after what I did?
Definitely not. You wouldn't remember even if I'd actually told you. But anyway, the ban is lifted. It's a relief because I don't have to scrounge for them any more, and I can pay everyone back for all the smokes I borrowed.
It's summer again. Remember last year, and how much time we spent walking along the river, feeding crackers to the fish? Remember how the bed felt too hot with both of us in it?
At the moment I'm allowed to walk around the grounds here; I get an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, if I want, as long as people are free to go with me. I have to have at least one other person, whether that's a patient or a nurse or what. I don't want to go with a nurse or an orderly, but it's not always easy fitting an hour outside around everybody else's therapy sessions.
It sounds so casual writing about it that way, as if this isn't the strangest thing that's ever happened to me.
The thing is, E. O., there are a lot of negatives to being here. I'm away from you and from my home, and I have no freedom to decide what to do with myself, and sometimes I feel completely cut off from the world.
But, there are good things too. I have friends; real ones. Do you know what that's like? Do you have friends, or are they just your entourage?
And the thing is, I can't be sure, but I think I'm getting better. These days I don't have those huge blank periods; I can remember everywhere I've been and what I've been doing. I don't feel so scared, either. I never ever managed to tell you how scared I was, or why. I suppose I didn't know why myself. But every day I just felt like I was disappearing. I felt like I was being stuffed further and further inside a big black airless sack.
Ruki looked up from his notebook, shading his eyes against the sun. He'd found a pleasant place to sit, but the sun had slid down in the time he'd been there, and when he checked his watch he found that his twenty minutes were up already. He took a deep breath, lit a cigarette and got to his feet, brushing grass off his legs. The late afternoon sunshine was his favourite kind, the after-school light that he loved, and it called up in him an ache of almost pleasurable melancholy. It was like having a tooth ache, he thought; the way it made you want to grit your teeth together hard, and how good the pain could feel then.
Ruki rounded the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks. In the warm sunshine, his skin seemed to freeze.
Aoi and Uruha were tangled up on the grass, and Uruha was messier than Ruki had ever seen him. His T-shirt was shoved up to his chest and his pants were around his knees; he was on his back, messy haired, and Aoi was sprawled over him. He was on his knees, bending to suck enthusiastically on the other man's cock, and though he was fully dressed his jeans were unzipped, and one of his hands was pushed inside his own underwear.
Ruki felt his heart clench tightly in his chest, his cheeks flooding with blood. He knew he had to do something; to make some noise or else back away, turn around, pretend he hadn't seen, but he was frozen. His mouth moved soundlessly.
Everything felt hyper-real, as if life had suddenly got a lot more defined; he could see the individual blades of grass being flattened under Uruha's cheek as he moved his head restlessly from side to side, and he could see the tip of Uruha's cock pushing against Aoi's cheek; he could see rhythmic movement where Aoi's hand disappeared inside his pants, and he realised that he could hear everything clearer, too; the wet, hot sound of Aoi's mouth, the skin-on-skin sound of him desperately stroking himself off. Clearly his jeans were in the way; he made a small noise of frustration against Uruha's body.
The breath in Ruki's lungs felt thin and harsh.
Uruha was making noises, little moaning and sighing sounds, and his head was thrown back to expose his long pale throat. It was shocking, somehow, to see him so undone; the twigs in his hair and his clothes in disarray; he was panting now, his breath escaping him in uneven little bursts, and one of his hands groped desperately for Aoi's head, tangling in the other man's hair, pushing him down to get more of him:
'Please,' he groaned, 'Aoi, please, I'm gonna—'
Ruki stepped backwards abruptly, but it must have been his movement that caught Aoi's attention; his eyes widened and he yanked his head up, scrambling to shield Uruha from view.
'Shit – shit. Ruki—'
'I'm sorry,' Ruki croaked desperately, finally finding his voice, 'I'm sorry! It's – time to go. But – you two catch me up. Okay?'
Cheeks burning, he quickly started to trip his way down the hillside, his heart in his throat and his hands and feet numb and prickly. He couldn't explain why the sight of his friends had affected him so much, but he felt almost heartsick; there was a dissolving sort of feeling somewhere inside him and he could feel as he walked that his own dick was hotter and heavier than usual, not exactly hard but still pressing against his thigh insistently.
His friends. Had he expected it? Had he purposefully watched? He was panicking, unable to find answers to those questions, so they spun in his head loosely. He raked his shaking hands through his hair. Guilt, hot and terrible, seemed to roil in his stomach. In his head he saw Uruha and Aoi, and he saw E. O., and he tried to make sense of it but he couldn't.
By the time he got to the bottom of the hill, he was out of breath. He'd been almost running, but he felt slightly calmer. He couldn't go back inside without Aoi and Uruha with him, so he tried to breathe deeply as he waited. It felt very important to act naturally.
It didn't take them long, which was lucky because there wasn't much time. Aoi was dragging Uruha behind him by the hand and they both arrived with flushed cheeks, panting heavily; they'd obviously run all the way. Aoi's lips were still red, still slightly swollen looking, and Uruha was frantically pulling his hair into order and trying to yank his clothes straight; he looked deeply, deeply agitated, and Ruki saw panic in Aoi's eyes.
'Ruki,' he gasped. 'I'm sorry you saw that. I really am.'
'We need to get back,' Ruki interrupted him, 'We're nearly out of time.'
'Uruha...' Aoi clutched the other man's shoulders desperately, 'Uru, come on. I promise you'll be able to get cleaned up when we get in—' he said in a pleading tone of voice, but Uruha wrenched himself violently out of his grasp.
'It's on me,' he gasped, 'I have to get it off, I have to, I have to.'
'Inside you can get it off—'
'I have to, I have to, I have to—'
The panic in Aoi's eyes suddenly made sense: it wasn't at being caught at all. Ruki had grown so used to the daily routine of Uruha's compulsions – hearing him counting under his breath, watching as he calmed himself down by straightening things or evening them up, sitting beside him as he chewed each mouthful of food twelve times on the left side of his mouth and twelve times on the right – that they had almost faded into the background, become just a quirky part of his personality, but this was different; this was real; this was scary. Tears were rolling freely down Uruha's cheeks and his hands scrubbed vigorously at each other, leaving vivid red scratching on his skin.
'What's on him?' Ruki asked, shaken.
'Cum,' Aoi snapped impatiently, 'It's cum, and he hates it.' He threw a harried look at Ruki, 'I'm sorry. When you – he was just about to cum when you saw us. I normally...' he clutched at a handful of his hair, giving it a sharp, angry pull, 'Fuck! I normally get it all off him, I mean I make sure it's all in my mouth or in my hand, but...' he shook his head, 'I couldn't this time, you distracted me; I missed some.'
'What do we do?'
'We get him inside.' Aoi squeezed his eyes shut tightly, just for a second, and then in one smooth movement he lunged at his friend, grabbing Uruha from the back and pinning his arms down to his sides, fighting vigorously against his struggles as he started trying to drag him along.
'Look,' he said, his teeth gritted with effort, 'Run ahead and tell them we need help. Nobody's gonna be able to talk him down from this one, okay? And – Ruki?'
'Yeah?'
Aoi leant his forehead briefly against the back of Uruha's neck, still struggling against his desperate movements. 'I'm sorry,' he said quietly.
Ruki hesitated for a moment, his heart racing, and shook his head.
'Why would you do that to him,' he said furiously, 'If it makes him like this?'
Aoi seemed to stumble backwards, and Ruki took off running; there was no time to wait for an answer, even if Aoi had one.
Later, it all felt to Ruki had watched a scene in a bad movie: the drama of a nurse sprinting across the field, hypodermic at the ready, seemed corny and manufactured. Neither did the sight of Uruha gone horribly limp and being carried inside feel real: it was just too sad.
Aoi didn't get into trouble; as far as Ruki could tell, the nurses had no idea what had caused Uruha's breakdown. Ruki didn't feel much like hanging out with him, though. He wasn't angry, exactly, but he felt deeply uncomfortable about everything he'd seen; when he was walking down the corridor and saw Aoi walking purposefully towards him, he turned on his heel and shut himself up in one of the phone booths instead. He stuck the phone's receiver between his ear and his shoulder, and he lit up a cigarette. Hastily, he started to dial, wanting to look busy enough so that Aoi couldn't reasonably ask him to stop and talk; he found his hand was shaking, and he clenched it tightly into a fist to make it stop.
There was a pause whilst the nurse at the station connected him, and finally the ringing started. Ruki took a deep drag on his cigarette. Two rings, three, four. His heart was pounding in a way that felt dangerous. Five rings. Six.
'Yes?'
'It's me,' Ruki said flatly.
'Ruki. Listen. You can't keep calling here.'
'No, you listen,' Ruki said, closing his eyes tightly, 'I have something to say to you.'
'Ruki, why are you speaking to me like this?'
'I'm—' Ruki gulped, the breath catching in his throat, 'I'm speaking to you like this because you're just – you're just a big user.'
Pause. 'What did you say?'
'I said you're just a user!' Ruki repeated, and he was surprised to hear how strong his voice had become, 'You – you just use people! You use people to make you feel better about yourself, because your paintings are shitty and all your friends only hang around you because you're famous and everyone pretends that they like you but they actually hate you, they hate you.'
'Ruki.'
'I was the only person who loved you, and now I hate you too! And I didn't want to, but you made me! You made me hate you!'
'Ruki. Ruki. Ruki!'
It took him a moment to understand that the voice wasn't coming from the telephone, but instead from the young nurse standing beside him, her body holding the glass phone booth door open; he also realised that he was crying, and that he had been hitting the side of the phone with his wrist over and over, and that his wrist felt bruised and his fingers numb.
In the phone, there wasn't even a dial tone.
'Ruki,' the nurse gasped, evidently relieved he had stopped shouting, 'I've been trying to tell you. That phone is broken. It doesn't connect.'
A great chill swept over Ruki's skin.
'Wh-what?' he whispered.
'It's broken,' she repeated, her wide eyes peering into his face, 'It doesn't work.'
'But – no – I was talking—'
'No,' she said, 'No you weren't. You were shouting, and you were crying, but you weren't saying anything.' She placed a hand gently around his upper arm. He looked down; he was holding a cigarette, but it wasn't lit. His eyes filled with fresh tears.
'Come on, now,' the nurse said gently, 'Come on, let's go and calm down. I can give you some Valium.'
'Will it – will it knock me out?'
'No, it's very gentle. It'll help you to calm down, and it'll let you go to sleep if you want to, but that's it. Sound good?'
Ruki nodded. He wasn't sure exactly what he was agreeing to, but it felt good to give in and just be led, and to have somebody else take charge.
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The scene inside the phone booth is heart-breaking, but in a way, I think it's a good thing. Ruki's acknowledging that the guy he loved didn't love or appreciate him back - that he was just being used through no fault of his own. I hope he doesn't take a turn for the worse after the Valium.
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