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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...
The next morning, Ruki woke up to the sound of rain hammering against the windows, and the small room was filled with a dim greyish light that told him the sky outside was heavy with clouds. It was disorienting, not hearing tinny music from Kai's radio first thing; he stirred uncomfortably in his nest of sheets and blankets, trying to let his memories of last night come back to him in small, manageable pieces.
Over the rain, he realised he could hear gentle snores coming from across the room, and pushed himself up on his elbows groggily. Kyo was fast asleep, curled up into a very tight ball like some kind of hibernating animal; his hair was wildly rumpled, showing where he had tossed and turned during the night, and he seemed very deeply asleep. His eyes were moving slightly behind his eyelids, Ruki noticed. He must have been dreaming.
Ruki wondered exactly how badly you had to fuck up to end up stuck here for twelve whole years.
There was no clock in Kyo's room – evidently neither he nor Shinya felt the need for one – and so, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of going back to sleep in the other man's bed, Ruki rested just a moment longer before bullying himself into clambering out of the sheets and up onto his feet. It was cold, so after a moment's deliberation, he pulled the woollen blanket off the bed and draped it around his shoulders, bundling himself up; his feet were chilly on the floor, but that would have to wait. He had no idea whether or not it would be safe to go back into his own room or not, and the thought left him feeling vaguely displaced, like a guest that didn't really belong anywhere.
Killing time, he brushed his teeth extra thoroughly and washed his face. Blinking water from his eyes, he saw that he looked tired and wan; there were purplish shadows under his eyes, and his lips and cheeks had an unhealthy sort of colour in the yellow overhead light. His dark brown hair was messy beyond all reason, the kind of tangled bird's nest that E. O. used to label inexplicable, as in, Ruki, your hair is completely inexplicable this morning. With a handful of water from the sink, Ruki attempted to flatten it, but gave up quickly; it wasn't doing any good, and the droplets of water running down his neck were starting to make him shiver.
The ward clock that hung above the nurses' station said six forty-five, which was a relief. On the wide blackboard that was mounted just next to the nurses' shiny plate glass window, somebody had already written in a neat hand that the weather was unsuitable for any walks in the grounds that day, which seemed to hit Ruki right in the stomach even though he'd suspected as much, because he was supposed to have gone out with Kyo. After the awkward night they'd had, he was almost relieved that he wouldn't have to, but still, he felt guilty to have to break his word. He wondered how long it had been since Kyo had been outside in the fresh air.
Below that message – which was written in urgent red chalk, so that nobody could ignore it – the chalk colour switched back to the normal white and the board showed a neatly-drawn table showing the visiting schedule, which was new. Ruki couldn't remember anybody getting any visits so far; he knew that Die's parents travelled a lot for their business, and that Aoi's refused to come, but he'd felt too awkward to ask about anybody else's. Uruha's family came fairly often, but they rarely showed themselves; instead Uruha would always be waiting in a jacket by the door of the ward, an agitated look on his face and his fingers tugging on his hair twelve times on the left side, twelve times on the right side, over and over until it made you crazy to watch him, and then a buzzer would go and he would slip quickly out of the door and down the stairs, and then Ruki supposed his parents took him off in a car somewhere.
Today, both Die and Uruha were on the list, but next to both of their names was scrawled the acronym RTW: Restricted To Ward. Ruki supposed it made sense, after what had happened the last time Uruha was let out; still though, it made him vaguely uneasy, thinking of the friction that always arose between Uruha and Aoi whenever Uruha's parents were mentioned.
He wondered if Uruha maybe was right, and maybe it was jealousy. He knew that both Aoi and Uruha's families were very well-off, and that Aoi's family lived much, much closer than Uruha's – Aoi's were only next door in Mie, whilst Uruha's were way out in some fancy part of Kanagawa. It must hurt him that his parents never came. It would be impossible to avoid comparing them, the two families: the fact that one seemed to be so in love with their son, and that the other seemed to almost hate him.
'Morning,' said a husky voice from behind him, and Ruki turned. As if Ruki's vague thoughts had willed him into being, Aoi was standing in the corridor, still wearing his pyjamas and sounding as if he'd only just woken up, but already with a cigarette in his mouth and his lighter poised in his hand.
'Hi.'
'You survived the night, then,' Aoi remarked, lighting up, and moved to stand next to Ruki. For a moment, he read the board in silence, and then snorted through his nose derisively.
'Have you seen Kai?' Ruki asked, and Aoi gave his head a gloomy shake.
'Not yet. Maybe later on today. He's normally up by now, but...' he shook his head. 'Storms like that always seem to set him off. It makes the winter up here a right ballache.'
'It's happened lots of times before?'
'Not lots,' Aoi amended. 'It's not every storm, I guess. Sometimes they just make him jumpy. Other things do it, too. Poor little freak.'
'What other things?' Ruki asked curiously, but Aoi gave his head a tired shake.
'Lots of things,' he said wearily, and stifled a yawn, gesturing towards the blackboard. 'Happy families on the ward today.'
'Yeah. I never met anybody's parents.'
'I saw yours when they took you in. Seemed all right. You fall out with them?'
'Huh?'
'They don't visit,' Aoi said, with the air of one spelling something out to a very stupid person, and Ruki ran a hand through his hair embarrassedly.
'Oh. No, nothing like that. '
'They live far away, or something?'
'No...' Ruki tugged on his hair uncomfortably, 'We're only in Osaka, but they're just – they're not very well off. I mean, they don't have a car or anything, and the train is expensive, and then they'd have to get a taxi on top of that, so...' he trailed off, shrugging unevenly, 'It's not really possible. Maybe on my birthday, or something.'
As soon as he said it, the thought of still being stuck here on his birthday made him feel as though a freezing cold wind had blown through the ward and straight through him; he clutched his blanket tighter around his body.
'Oh,' said Aoi, sounding quite unconcerned, 'Are you a state patient, then?'
'State...?'
'Yeah, this place is a non-profit, so it's subbed by the government, and every so often we get a state person through. Usually not for long; they're normally here for some specialised course of treatment. In and out, so it doesn't get too expensive for the taxpayer.' Aoi gave a harsh laugh and took a deep drag on his cigarette.
'No, my parents are paying.'
'Right.' Aoi shot him a sudden curious look, 'Wait, didn't you say that you were going to some fancy university? How did you afford that?'
'Scholarship,' Ruki answered shortly.
'Far out.' Aoi grinned at him. 'What, am I making you uncomfortable? Come on, just because half of us in here were once pampered little princes, it doesn't make a difference. Look what I've got for a family. If compassion was money they'd be grovelling on the street.' He took another deep pull on his cigarette: 'Check out Uruha's parents when they come in, too. They put dysfunctional in the dictionary. Just keep out of his dad's way if you want your dick unfondled.'
'What?' Ruki said, almost swallowing the lock of his own hair he'd been uncomfortably chewing on, and Aoi gave him a scathing look.
'I'm not making it up when I call him a creep,' he said pointedly.
'He did that to you?'
'Tried to. I was so fucking bored hearing him talk about his stupid travel show that I think he thought I was doped up or something.'
'So what happened?'
'Well I wasn't doped up, so I kicked him.'
'Where?'
'Only in the shin. I'd have got him in the balls if I could. Bastard,' Aoi spat. 'But he was on the chair next to me, so shin was my best option. Made him keep his hands to himself, at least.'
Ruki swallowed hard. 'Can I have one of those?' he asked, gesturing towards Aoi's cigarette, and languidly the other man lit one for him.
'It's always the same with people like that,' Aoi said. 'They get to thinking that they're such a big shot, they can just do anything they want. I might have let him touch me if I'd thought his dick would be anywhere near as big as his ego.'
'But he's got...a wife, hasn't he?'
'It's nothing to do with that,' Aoi said shortly, 'It's about power. Everybody like that wants to prove they've got power over you, and the sick thing is, they do. I pretty much yelled my head off trying to tell everybody what he was like, but I'm just some deranged little mental patient, so nobody listens to me. And every time he comes to visit, they're rolling out the red carpet. Of course, he also gives a lot of money to this place. Funny how the world works,' he added bitterly.
'But...' Ruki shook his head, struggling to make sense of all the information he was trying to take in, 'But – Uruha.'
As one, both men seemed to slide their eyes towards Uruha's bedroom door, still firmly closed at this time of day. Aoi closed his eyes briefly.
'I know,' he said.
Breakfast that day was strangely tense, broken up by the sound of the rain still clattering down in sheets. It didn't look like June any more: the hills were sodden, half-hidden by grey mists, and the gravel drive leading up to the sanatorium looked washed-out and muddy.
Uruha dissected his breakfast thoroughly but hardly ate any of it; he was telling anybody who would listen that his father was bringing brunch from a fancy restaurant when he visited, whilst Aoi was stabbing at his food with such vitriol that Ruki was surprised he didn't break his bowl. Shinya was still absent, but Kyo sat alone down the end of the table, chain-smoking and concentrating fiercely on his breakfast; whenever Ruki tried to catch his eye, he found it impossible. Finally, feeling very conscious of the quiet tension in the room, Ruki cleared his throat and leant forward over the table slightly.
'Thanks for letting me sleep in your room last night,' he said quietly. He had somehow hoped that only Kyo would hear, but instantly a lot of the movement around the table stilled; Die's eyebrows shot up so far they almost seemed to join his hair, and Aoi leant back in his chair with a cigarette, watching Ruki and looking interested.
'It's nothing,' Kyo responded shortly, his eyes on his plate, his tone blunt and almost angry. Ruki hesitated.
'I guess this is your blanket,' he said in a weak voice, gesturing around his shoulders. 'Sorry, I shouldn't have taken it with me. I was cold. I'll put it back on your bed.'
'Sure.'
'Well...you know. Thanks,' Ruki said again lamely, and Kyo finally set down his chopsticks and looked at him.
'Who's Eiji?' he said blankly.
If the room had been quiet before, it went silent at that; even Uruha stopped counting under his breath, and Ruki was aware of a dreadful heat travelling up his face.
'Wh-what?'
'Eiji. It's a name, yes? You were saying it in your sleep.'
Ruki wasn't sure what was worse: the casualness with which Kyo had just decimated him, or Aoi's long, low wolf-whistle. Quickly, his face flushing so red he could feel it hotly in his cheeks, Ruki riffled through what vague little he remembered of his dreams: had he dreamt of E. O.? Oh god, if he had, what kind of dream had it been? How much could he have given away?
'I don't talk in my sleep,' he muttered faintly. He met Kyo's eyes square-on, trying his best to ignore the stupid grin on Die's face that he could see in his peripheral vision. 'I don't know any Eiji,' he said in a slightly stronger voice.
Kyo's stare was very, very level and very still. It seemed he knew what Ruki was about to say next, and his eyes neither begged him to stop or urged him onwards; they simply looked at him, some vague disappointment hidden in their depths.
'You must have been hearing things again,' Ruki said, only a slight shake in his voice. He wished more than anything that Kyo would stop looking at him, but the other man didn't; his gaze was completely unwavering, dark and inscrutable, hard as flint.
'Maybe so,' he said in a featureless voice. Finally, he turned back to his food, and Ruki let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding.
He should have felt relieved, but he didn't.
Around half past ten that morning, when they were sitting around in the TV room after another uncomfortably quiet group therapy session, the first of the parents arrived; there was a tap on the door frame, and Ruki turned to see two rather tall people navigating their way through the assault course of chairs. Even if he hadn't seen what Uruha's father looked like already, Ruki would have known that these were Die's parents; both were gangly like their son, broad-shouldered and rangy, and the man's face, when Ruki saw it, was close enough to looking like Die's that it made him feel sad. It had the same smile and the same nose and eyes, the same jaw and cheekbones, but it was smiling without a single glimmer of doubt in the eyes, and the cheeks were full and the chin gently rounded: Die's face, as it should have been. Standing next to his father, he looked especially like a skull, and he seemed embarrassed of it; he kept his arms folded tightly around his body and grinned mostly at the floor. His father clapped him on the back, making a hollow noise, and his mother moved forward to greet him; she was a very, very pretty woman, with a strong and rather aquiline face, but her smile was as warm and wide as her son's. She was dressed stylishly, her jacket well tailored and her feet in needle-heeled shoes, but she gave an endearing wobble as she reached up to embrace her son, and her perfectly manicured hand shook as she gently stroked his cheek, gazing at him as though she never wanted to look anywhere else again.
'Mum. Dad. You remember Aoi.'
'Aoi, sweetheart.'
'And...' Ruki realised Die was flapping a hand awkwardly at him, 'This is Ruki.'
'Ah,' Die's father peered at him good-naturedly, 'We've heard a bit about you. You're the one who tried to kill himself. Very glad you didn't succeed.'
'Thanks,' Ruki said, utterly confused: were these people real?
'And Aoi, how are you doing?'
'Still a raging homo, thanks.'
'Good, good,' Die's mother said distractedly. 'Where's that darling Kai gotten to? I've got a little something I think he'll like.'
As if on cue, Die's father pulled a brand new LP out of his briefcase, still in its cellophane packaging: Let It Be, by The Beatles.
'I was going to post it,' Die's mother was saying, 'but I thought: no, after everything Die's told me, I'd really like to see the look on his face when he opens this one. It's not out in this country yet, but your father took a business trip to New York recently, and he remembered how much you all like The Beatles.'
Her voice was refined, but she spoke very fast, and as she did so she blotted a tear that threatened to undo her expertly applied make-up. No matter what she said, Ruki realised, her real conversation was going on silently with her son: her eyes were so full of love that it looked painful, and she kept finding excuses to touch him – pushing his hair back and smoothing his t-shirt over his shoulders.
'Kai had a freak out,' Die explained, 'He's still...I think he's a bit out of it.'
'Oh, that's a shame,' Die's mother said, but her lack of focus was almost comical; she had given up trying to blot her tears before they started, and the mascara around her eyes was dribbling.
'Let's go to my room,' Die said. He was smiling at her in a way could only be described as grateful, and Ruki thought he understood: it was worth thankfulness, to be loved that much.
The rain kept up throughout the morning, and into the afternoon. Ruki went off to his one-to-one session with Sato, and after he came out at midday, Uruha was sitting in the middle of the sofa and savagely biting at his fingernails; his parents still hadn't arrived. Ruki watched as he went too far with one, ripping it so that it bled; he made a soft noise of pain and stared down at his hands as if they'd betrayed him. There seemed to be a dreadful struggle going on beneath his skin, and at last he made a tiny moaning noise in his throat and brought the same finger of the other hand to his mouth, ripping that one so it bled too, evening up his hands.
In an easy chair, Aoi was slumped right down with a cigarette in his hand, glaring at nothing in particular; there was such a distinctly frosty atmosphere between them that, rather than joining in, Ruki quietly turned on his heel and set off aimlessly down the hallway, not really sure what to do with himself. A nurse had squirrelled some fresh clothes out of his room, but otherwise he still wasn't able to go in; it was very strange to think that Kai was behind that closed door, hurting in some indefinable way, and that there was nothing anybody was allowed to do to comfort him except to wait it out.
Waiting it out felt like cruelty.
Ruki stopped by the bank of phones, feeling uncertain. The bandage was still on his wrist from where he'd flipped out last time; suppose he wasn't allowed to make calls any more? He opened the door of one of the booths slowly, just in case, and kept his eyes on the nurse busy behind the plate glass window of the station; she gave him a short nod.
'Whenever you're ready,' she said, 'I can connect you.'
Ruki's throat was aching, but as soon as he sat down within the booth, he lit up a cigarette anyway. He got the next one out of the pack ready, picked up the receiver, and dialled. There was a brief pause as he was connected, and the phone only rang once before it was answered.
'Yes, hello?'
Ruki took a quick pull on his cigarette.
'Hi, mum.'
'Ruki! Oh, Ruki. How are you?'
'I'm...' he hesitated, 'I'm okay, mum. How are you and dad?'
'Oh goodness, we're fine; all fine. Let's see, what's going on with us? Well, your father came off his bike a few days ago, but no harm done. We've painted the kitchen; it's yellow now.'
'That sounds good,' Ruki said, feeling the beginning of a headache behind his eyes, 'It must look much lighter in there.'
'Much lighter. I can't wait for you to see it. We wouldn't touch your room, of course, but we have just gone in and boxed up a few of your things, because we have a lodger in there now.'
'A lodger.'
'Yes, a lovely young girl. A student, just like you, but in her first year; I think her parents wanted her to live somewhere with a bit of familial influence.'
So you didn't tell them about your crazy son, then?
'She might be somebody you would want to meet, Ruki. We haven't told her anything about – what's happened – only that you're away; and she's really a lovely girl. Very polite; very refined.'
'Yeah,' Ruki said tonelessly, 'Yeah, maybe.'
'She's a pretty thing, as well. And she said you looked handsome.'
'Great. Any other news?'
'Oh, nothing that would interest you, I'm sure.'
'No...' Ruki lit his second cigarette from the smouldering end of his first, 'I want to know. I miss you.'
'Oh, Ruki. Oh, we miss you too.'
There was a crumple in her voice like she might have grown a little tearful; Ruki shut his eyes tightly.
'Well, let me have a think. The old lady upstairs passed away, which was very sad.'
'What? When?'
'Oh – a few weeks ago. I would have told you sooner, but I was a bit worried about giving you any upsetting news.'
Ruki's head was definitely throbbing now.
'Uh huh.'
'Well, and I passed a great big billboard the other day, and guess who was on it?'
'I don't think I'll guess.'
'It was that artist you like! The one who gave you all those private lessons! It seems like he's got a huge exhibition coming at the Tezukayama.'
Ruki felt an unpleasant jolt, as if he'd been standing in an elevator that had very suddenly dropped down a few floors.
'Wow,' he whispered.
'I knew you'd be excited about that. The show has some funny name – I can't exactly remember – something about youth; Youth Reflections or something like that, something a bit fancy. Nothing much that your father and I can make head or tail of, but of course we'll be going along so we can tell you all about it. Oh, but what am I saying? You'll probably be home by then.'
'Maybe,' Ruki said, but he couldn't seem to make his voice work too well; it was drying up in his throat.
'We thought we'd wait for the crowds to die down a bit, because apparently they're expecting it to be very busy, but it's showing until November or December, I think. Isn't it amazing! To think that you took private tuition from him – well it just goes to show, Ruki. When you get back nice and rested, if you really put your mind to it, I'm sure the art world is just going to open up for you.'
Don't bank on it, Ruki thought. But he forced a smile onto his face, just as though she could see him, and he agreed.
All in all, the phone call dragged itself out for twenty excruciating minutes, throughout which Ruki's mother managed to remind him six separate times about E. O.'s wonderful exhibition, and all about its glowing early reviews, and how meaningful it was that Ruki had been hand-picked for one-to-one mentoring by such a successful person. The throb in Ruki's head had developed into a headache so strong he thought he might be sick, and his throat felt raw from inhaling so much smoke; head spinning, he almost slammed the door of the phone booth behind him, and gave only the merest spasm-like nod to the nurse before setting off down the corridor and hammering rudely on Kyo's door. He gave it a moment's shaky hesitation before knocking again, feeling like he might jump out of his skin; when there was no reply, he gave one more hard knock and then pushed his way inside, banging the door shut behind him so he could lean heavily against it.
Sitting over on his bed, Kyo raised an eyebrow.
'I need to lie down,' Ruki said in a rush, 'I still can't go in my room.'
Kyo's eyes were distant; inscrutable. 'Fine.'
But Ruki didn't lie down; instead he crossed over to Kyo's bed, picked up the pillow and, burying his head firmly within it, finally allowed himself to let out the scream that had been building up inside of him; he yelled at the top of his lungs, his throat a sharp little knife of pain and his lungs working painfully against all the tar and ash he'd inhaled; he screamed until his voice gave up entirely. When he lowered the pillow, he realised he was trembling and that a few tears had spilled from his eyes; they had blotted into the fabric to make a smeary imprint of his face.
'Didn't you hear me knocking?' he asked, his voice utterly hoarse.
'I wasn't sure if I was just hearing things again,' Kyo said lightly, and Ruki squeezed the pillow hard to his chest.
'You really dropped me in it this morning,' he said in a tight voice, his hands forming small fists so that his fingernails bit into his palms, 'With all that Eiji stuff.'
'You found your way out of it.'
'Why the hell did you do that?' Ruki asked furiously.
'Because you're lying to everyone.'
'I'm not lying.'
'Yes you are.'
Ruki squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe in and out, a few times, through his nose.
'How,' he said in a gritty voice, 'How am I lying?'
'I don't know; who is Eiji today? Is he some artist? Your mentor? Your—'
'Shut up!' Ruki burst, his fingers digging so tightly into the pillow that he felt the fabric begin to give beneath his nails, 'It's nothing to do with you! It's none of your business! You...' he swallowed grimly, forcing the panicky feeling back down into his stomach, 'You know what happened to Aoi. I can't say. I can't.'
'You think any of us are going to tell on you?' Kyo said quietly.
'I don't...I don't know.'
'Yes, you do.' Kyo closed his eyes gently, for just a little longer than a blink. 'And that's not why you're lying.'
'No?' Ruki said challengingly, but flinched when Kyo met his eyes; the other man's gaze was hard as ice, cold and distant and bright as the furthest star; the intensity of it made him take a step backwards, his hands contracting involuntarily against the pillow, and there was a small ripping noise from beneath his fingers.
'No,' Kyo said calmly, his voice about a hundred degrees colder than his eyes were, 'You're lying because you're scared.'
'What exactly am I supposed to be scared of, apart from being locked up in here forever?'
'Who you are,' Kyo said, seeming to choose his words carefully. 'What you want.'
Ruki stared at him, feeling suddenly exhausted.
'You have no idea who I am,' he said, and Kyo shrugged.
'Correct. But neither do you.' He sighed heavily. 'The people here can help you, if you let them. But you have something that you've been carrying around inside you so long, it's starting to rot. I know you can feel it rotting, but you're still holding on to it. Don't you understand that's why it hurts? Because it's eating away at you now, too?'
Ruki's eyes were glassy, his vision blurred, but he forced himself to look away, staring blankly at Shinya's empty bed.
'I don't have to listen to this,' he mumbled. 'You're crazy. Everyone here is crazy.'
'Mostly. But are you really any better?'
'I...' Ruki's voice broke, and he felt hot tears begin to course down his cheeks, 'I'm not mad.'
'Maybe. Maybe not. But I promise you this: if you don't give up that thing you're hanging onto, then you're never going to find out. Because I don't think it's going to leave much of you alive.'