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solongsun April 8, 1970: the day of the Ten-Roku gas explosion, and the day that 22-year-old Ruki attempts to end his life. Less than two weeks later, he finds himself committed to the Yamauchi Hostel, a psychiatric hospital in the Kyoto hills. Kept on a ward with a number of other ill young men, Ruki is sometimes frightened and sometimes enthralled by his new friends – and none more other than the 'untreatable' Kyo, whose hospitalisation hides a legacy of dark secrets...
Midnight, or perhaps just past midnight.
'So all in all,' Aoi was saying in a low voice, 'not one of Kai's better nights?'
Along with the rest of the ward, he was lounging outside of his bedroom door in his pyjamas. The storm was raging outside, rain pounding against the roof and tree branches knocking the windows and the wind making a high whistling around the eaves of the building, but even the weather couldn't drown out the sound that had awoken them all; an unsteady, breathless keening that came from Ruki and Kai's room and seemed to wander sadly down every corridor, through every doorway, intent on waking everybody up and having them bear witness to the terrible grief. Shinya was absent – by now a drugged-up puddle in the isolation room, Ruki thought – but Kyo had appeared, still in his day clothes, and both Die and Aoi kept shooting him sideways glances; it wasn't like him to get involved.
Ruki's room was blizzard-coloured, thick with white coats. Kai's crying was closer to screaming. Why couldn't they calm him down?
'What's wrong with him?' Ruki asked, not really directing his question at anybody in particular. His voice was thick with sleep, and he could feel the creases from his pillow across one cheek. It was cold outside of his warm bed, too, and the sound of the wind outside made him shiver. Die offered him a tired shrug.
'Don't know,' he said listlessly. 'He gets like this sometimes.'
'Kai is one of God's special little people,' Aoi said.
'Ah, he's not stupid,' Die yawned.
'I know he's not, but he doesn't know he's sick. If you don't know that you're ill, it's hard to tell people what's wrong with you.'
Catching Ruki's sleepy, confused look, Aoi made a soft sound of frustration. 'Look, some of us are easy and some of us are difficult, right? You're easy to figure: you're here because you tried to off yourself. Whatever your reasons were, whether it's because of the environmental impact of living or the general cruelty of the world, blah-blah-blah, you did something that only sad, strange people do. So you're here until they can work out how to make you not sad and strange. Right?'
'You should be a therapist,' Ruki said drily, and Aoi made an impatient motion with his hand.
'My point is, we're on a spectrum. Yes? Die's harder to figure out because he assures us that he doesn't want to die, yet he gets his kicks from not eating whilst trying to burn as many calories as possible, which I'm sure is fun and all but is also really stupid and deadly. So that's his big question: why doesn't Die want to eat? So they have to figure that out and then turn him around. Get him back on the sauce, literally. Then you get more complicated with Uruha, who is obviously getting out any day now—'
'I am getting out!' Uruha fired back, his face tense, and Aoi rolled his eyes.
'—But who lives in a complete fantasy world where he's the only one who can stop everybody he loves from dropping dead, and the way he stops it is by making everything symmetrical or add up to twelve. Right?'
Uruha was glowering at him. 'You're an asshole,' he said.
A terrible, wailing scream broke free from the closed door behind Ruki, and the assembled men fell quiet and dropped their eyes to the floor.
'You are a bit of an asshole,' Die whispered after a long moment.
'I know. But you love me. Or I love you. One or the other.'
Die snorted. 'Both, you idiot.'
'And I love you, too, Uru. Even though you're a really huge pain in the ass.'
'Whatever,' Uruha said angrily, but his face seemed to have relaxed a little; his dark brown eyes looked softer. The yells from Ruki's bedroom had lapsed into some quieter, juddering sobs. A few minutes passed with the sound remaining steady, and then the bedroom door opened for the head nurse to step out.
She wasn't the real head nurse; that one was there during the daytime, although Ruki wasn't exactly sure which one it was. This one was just the night time cover.
It hadn't taken long at all for them to all start looking the same; just an endless parade of starched uniforms.
'Men,' she said in a clipped voice, 'I don't know what you think you're all playing at. Only Ruki should be out of bed.' She sighed deeply through her nose, and then, 'Uruha,' she said in a more friendly voice. 'How would you feel about having a roommate just for one night? Kai needs to be alone, and the isolation room isn't available.'
Eyes wide, Uruha shook his head, and the nurse sighed again.
'I'm not sure that there's a lot of choice, Uruha. Ruki here needs a bed.'
'No,' Uruha said distinctly. Aoi rolled his eyes.
'There must be spare bedding. He can sleep on the floor in our room.'
'I don't really think that's a very nice option for Ruki, is it?'
'He tried to kill himself. You think one night on the floor's going to make a difference?'
'There's a spare in my room,' said a hoarse voice, and everybody seemed to jump. Kyo had been so quiet, they'd all forgotten he was there.
'Kyo,' the nurse said in an odd tone of voice.
'I can sleep in Shinya's. Ruki can have mine.'
'Ruki can just...sleep in Shinya's, can't he?'
'Shinya wouldn't like that.'
'Oh, he wouldn't—'
'He would know.' Kyo's level stare met against the nurse's, but she looked away first.
'Well, that's very...nice of you, Kyo. Are you sure?'
'I thought there wasn't a lot of choice,' Kyo repeated, choosing his words carefully. 'My parents didn't get me a private.'
It was slight, but Ruki caught it: a deep shudder seemed to run through the nurse, and one of her hands spread itself against the wall to steady her body. She seemed unable to look at Kyo, instead staring at the door beside him. She stretched her lips into a smile, though, and gave a jerky nod.
'Of course. Well, how nice. You can sleep in Kyo's room tonight, Ruki.'
'Oh my god,' Ruki heard Aoi mutter to Die lowly, 'He'll be leaving the ward in a matchbox.'
The room Kyo shared with Shinya looked a little different to Ruki's, which surprised him: he'd expected every single box-like dormitory in the place to look exactly identical. Ruki's room was at the back of the building, though, and Kyo's was at the front; the rain was louder here, hammering hard against the window, and because Kyo's room was on the end, the ceiling sloped in one corner to follow the line of the roof. Ruki thought it would be claustrophobic in here in the daytime, with the lone window and low ceiling and the view of hills crowding in all around, but it was cosy-feeling at night. Maybe that was just because he was cold, though. Even the grey wool institutional blankets looked inviting.
It seemed Kyo slept under the sloping ceiling, pressed against the outer wall of the sanatorium: at least, that was the bed that the other man gestured towards.
'Why wouldn't Shinya like me sleeping in his bed?' asked Ruki, feeling a little apprehensive now he was here. The floor was cold against his bare feet, and he shivered as the wind rattled the windowpane.
'He gets paranoid,' was the short answer.
'He doesn't mind you?'
'He's more used to me.' Kyo sat down on Shinya's bed. Ruki noticed that, unlike his room with his postcards on the walls and Kai's colourful confusion of posters, the walls in this place were almost entirely bare. There were only two decorations, both on Shinya's side: a watercolour of the surrounding hills, and a family portrait showing a very pretty woman who seemed to have Shinya's smooth oval face and wide mouth, sitting next to man who wasn't anywhere near as attractive, but who looked friendly and calm. A single child sat between them, smiling; Shinya, in happier times. He looked very young: perhaps twelve or so.
The picture made Ruki feel sort of bruised inside his chest, and he pulled his eyes away from it. He wondered if there had been any signs then; if Shinya's parents had had any inkling of what was coming, or if they were simply waiting in perfect ignorance for their family to fall apart.
Feeling uncomfortable, Ruki pushed the covers back on Kyo's bed and perched himself on the edge of the mattress. Blue lightning flickered through the clouds outside, and Kyo's profile seemed to sear itself onto the backs of Ruki's eyelids.
'Everyone acts scared of you,' he said haltingly.
'Correct.'
'Any reason why?'
Kyo gave him a measured look. 'You aren't in any danger,' he said flatly.
Ruki nodded, still shivering. The wind sounded louder than ever. He heard a low, long, rising wail from down the hall; a sound of pure despair. He gripped at his own face, fighting the urge to clamp his hands over his ears like a child.
'What's wrong with him?' he asked desperately. 'He's so...I just woke up and he was like that. I tried to comfort him, or to get him to talk to me, or something—'
'You couldn't have helped him,' Kyo said, not unkindly. Agitated, Ruki raked his hands through his hair, feeling it snag and pull on his fingers.
'No?'
'No. Nobody can.'
'So what happens?'
'You just have to let him wind down.'
'But what's wrong with him?'
There was a pause, and then the click of a lighter, and Kyo's face flared suddenly into view – just for a moment, rosy from the flame, his eyes glowing. Then, the flame died, and all that was left was the tiny smouldering end of his cigarette as a soft red glare in the darkness.
'I don't know,' he said. 'But he's not like Shinya. I don't think he was born like this. Something happened to him.'
'Yeah?'
Ruki saw the cigarette dip slightly as Kyo shrugged.
'That's what I think.'
'What about you?'
'What about me.'
'Why are you here?' Ruki asked quietly, turning onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. It was so completely dark that his eyes couldn't adjust; there was just darkness forever. Kyo was very quiet. The quiet stretched for a long time.
'I don't feel like saying,' the older man said in the end. 'Sorry.'
'But you've been here twelve years?'
'Yes.'
'How old are you?'
There was another long pause.
'Twenty-seven,' Kyo said at last.
'Are you...I mean...' Ruki swallowed, this throat dry, 'Are you curable?'
He thought he saw it when he turned his head; in the dim light from the cigarette, a wry smile seemed to flicker across Kyo's face.
'That depends whether or not I'm sick,' he said quietly. He ground the small light of his cigarette out into an ashtray. 'When I came in here, it was 1958. Now a dozen years have passed and the world outside has changed completely.'
Ruki fidgeted with the covers uncomfortably, not quite sure what to say. The truth was that if he thought he had to stay here for ten years or eight years or even five years, he would really go crazy. He would kill himself outright. Even if he failed over and over again, he would keep trying until he finally succeeded in flinging himself out of his own life.
He just didn't see any point in anything.
'How can you stand that?' he asked at last, his teeth chattering, and heard the whispery sound of blankets moving as Kyo shifted over on Shinya's bed.
'I don't know,' the other man said. 'There's nothing else to do but stand it.'
'I would kill myself,' Ruki said quietly, and Kyo gave a soft snort.
'Is that all you know how to do?' he said acidly. 'You have no idea.'
'No idea of what, exactly?' Ruki retorted, stung.
'You don't know what it's like. You come in here thinking poor you, poor Ruki, and maybe that's true. Maybe things have been unfair and you shouldn't have wound up here. I can tell already that you're unhappy and that you don't really know who you are, but I know who I am. And I deserve to be here.'
'Deserve—?'
'Yes.'
'I don't understand.'
'I don't know how to explain any better.'
'Can't you try?' Ruki asked impatiently. 'You're talking in riddles.'
'Look, for you, life was something you were happy to throw away. But that's never going to be me. Back when I had any choice in the matter, I did everything I could to keep myself alive. You turned everything – all your sadness and anger and fear – inside, you understand that? You used it against yourself, but I didn't. I turned it outside.'
'Did you do something bad?'
'Yes,' Kyo said plainly, 'I did.'
'Do you regret it?' Ruki asked.
The question sounded stupid to his ears, but Kyo seemed to be considering it. He wondered if the other man was like him; if he also found it easier to talk in the dark, when nobody could see his face.
'No,' Kyo said at last. 'I don't. Sometimes I wish I did. I think they would let me go if I did, but it wouldn't mean anything. There's no such thing as regret when you don't have a choice, do you understand? It was going to be death, so I chose to live.'
'I still don't understand.'
'No. But it's all right. I like that you say that.'
'Say what?'
'“I don't understand”. It's good. Most people would pretend that they did.'
Ruki sighed, turning restlessly over in his bed. Kyo's bed. It felt strange to be there, when he thought about it. He hadn't been aware that the other man had any particular smell, but now that he was surrounded by his sheets, he thought there was something familiar to them. It was nice. It had been a very long time since he'd been surrounded so completely by the feeling of another person.
Kyo's last comment seemed to have put a full stop at the end of whatever drawn out conversation they'd been holding onto between them; the silence dragged itself out into minutes. The wind outside was still harsh, the rain still spattering against the window, but down the hall everything seemed to have gone quiet. The absence of even Kai's lone sobs made it feel as though everybody in the entire world might have been asleep, and that the night was very deep and dark and long.
It was a feeling so lonely that it took Ruki's breath away. It was sudden, but it was strong: the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end, and he felt a strange prickling sensation at the back of his throat. The dark room yawned around him like the mouth of some great dark creature, and with a crunch he felt it bite down around him, separating some vital part of him from the rest of his body, so his hands and arms went numb and he couldn't swallow or breathe properly.
E. O., he thought stupidly, desperately, why aren't you here?
I keep asking for you, why don't you come?
It seemed suddenly unbearable to him that he should be so alone, that he should be the one who was left to hurt. Unbearable. Intolerable that the person he loved so much had pushed him aside; had used words like messing around and very young and so many years ahead of you, little words, tiny words that minimised and made him feel as though some distant winter was sinking into his skin. He breathed in hard because it hit him in the chest and it hurt, as if the wound that had been dug into his body on the day E. O. left him had suddenly split open again along the old fault line: if you take me back you don't even have to treat me nicely. You really don't.
Just please, please don't leave me.
'Kyo,' he said, barely audible; he would be surprised if the other man heard him over the raging of the storm outside.
'What,' Kyo said. His voice was just slightly muffled, and Ruki guessed he was either half asleep or had his face pressed into his pillow.
'I – I need something.'
'You know where the bathroom is.'
'Shut up.' Ruki pulled at the hem of his t-shirt awkwardly. 'I just...will you do me a favour?'
'Depends.'
'Will you...' Ruki bit down on his lip, unsure exactly how to express what he wanted, 'Would you just – stay awake?'
'Stay awake.'
'Until I'm asleep?'
He heard the rustling of blankets, and felt rather than saw Kyo's eyes staring at him in the darkness.
'You want me to stay awake until you're asleep.'
'Yes.'
I know it sounds crazy, but it feels so late and I feel so lost and alone, and everybody else is asleep or dead and I kind of feel like if you go to sleep too, if you leave me as well, then I'll stop existing. I'll just fade away into nothing. I'll turn into a shadow, like the negative of a photograph, and all this darkness around me will come and swallow me up.
He didn't think he would have said that to Kyo even if he had been able to find the right way to do it. He simply lay, stiff as a board in the darkness, listening to the silence between them. There was a long, long pause, and then:
'All right.'
'You will?'
'I said I would.'
Ruki hesitated. 'You promise?' he asked, and when Kyo spoke again, he thought he could hear a smile in his voice.
'Go to sleep.'
Dear E. O.—
It was easier to lie and to write in his head, imagining the words written in white ink across the black of his eyelids.
If you ever tell me anything ever again, you have to tell me why and how you could do this.
I would like to know why you said you loved me, and why you said you didn't, and how you could look me in the eye and tell me that sometimes 'I love you' was something that you could say but not necessarily mean.
Because I always meant it.
He was so tired. He curled into a tighter ball, pressing his nose into the pillow. He really could smell Kyo now; his skin, his hair.
I love you, E. O., but I don't think I ever want to be like you. I want to always mean the things that I say and only ever say the things that I feel.
He jolted, almost slipping off the edge of sleep, and heard Kyo make a soft sound from across the room. Still awake. Ruki let his eyes fall closed again.
And there's a guy here who said that you sounded like a dick, and I think he might have been right. And I think that even though I love you, I'm wrong to love you. And that I made a bad choice.
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"But you love me. Or I love you. One or the other." That made me smile. And Die's response after was perfect, because of course it's both. I get the feeling that Aoi couldn't choose between Uru and Die any more than he could decide between inhaling and exhaling. (Or maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.)
The bit about Shinya's family pic made me sad. I hope his family still loves him & visits sometimes. Even if they realized they couldn't care for him with his severe schizophrenia.
Yet another little fact about Kyo. It makes so much sense that his rage would be turned outward where Ruki's is internalized. I wonder who it was he hurt...
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I'm hoping I get the chance to tell Kai's tale in a way that works within the story. I don't want to just shoe-horn it in. I do have one idea for how it can be revealed, so I hope that can fit in nicely!
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