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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...
It seemed to Ruki that the rain might have been slackening slightly; the clouds were still as grey and heavy as ever, but there were little chips of blue sky in the distance, and some of the far hills were topped with shining gold, like crowns. There was a hissing noise from somewhere below Kyo's window, and when he looked up he could see a very big, very shiny car snaking slowly up the drive, crunching the gravel beneath its spotlessly clean tyres; each individual wheel kicked up a miniature halo of glittering spray. When it pulled to a stop, Ruki's eyes widened; an actual chauffeur in a hat and a grey uniform and spotless white gloves had climbed out, and his shoes made a much quieter crunching sound on the gravel as he rounded to the side of the car and opened one of the back doors with a flourish.
Ruki was aware that Kyo was watching too, a strange look on his face, and the two of them drew closer to the window, Ruki letting the pillow slip to the floor and resting his shaking hands on the sill instead. A small flurry of feathers burst around their feet, and Kyo shot him a withering look.
Outside, a very slim white arm had appeared from the car door, the bejewelled fingers rested lightly on the chauffeur's outstretched hand as one of the daintiest, thinnest and haughtiest women Ruki had ever seen graciously rose from the back seat. She wore a sleeveless cream-coloured dress and dark red stilettos, and around her neck there was clasped a choker of gems too large to be fake, all rubies; from their distance, it looked as though her head had been cut off. She waited on the gravel, looking up at the sanatorium with an unreadable look on her face, as the chauffeur crossed to the other side of the car and opened the other back door, stepping back smartly so a well-dressed man could emerge. The chauffeur touched his cap respectfully, closed the door behind him, and then hurried to the back of the car to start removing packages from the trunk.
As Ruki and Kyo watched, the man joined the woman and touched her elbow lightly. In the clearer light, he was clearly recognisable: Uruha's father, just a little smaller and older than he looked on the television. His hair was thick and almost as shiny as his car, and he was dressed impeccably, though like his wife, he looked out of place; gleaming black shoes and an expertly fitted pale grey suit paired, not with a tie, but with a patterned cravat.
Ruki thought he could almost hear Aoi muttering scathing things in his ears, and shook his head irritably.
'He looks like The Great Gatsby,' he murmured, and Kyo shot him a quizzical look but didn't respond. He could hear a clattering in the hallway as people started moving; obviously they hadn't been the only two to notice the arrival of the car.
Ruki hadn't been planning to follow the flurry of movement towards Uruha's parents, but he heard something that made his heart seem to lift up a little higher in his chest; the sound of a tinny portable radio playing Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks, which could mean only one thing: Kai. He was surprised at how eager he was to see his roommate, and was both entertained and slightly dismayed by the fact that after just one night, he had missed him a little: Kai could be annoying to room with – the constant crackle of the radio could get to you after a while – but he was sweet, and he was a bright sort of spirit; being in the same room as him, Ruki found it hard to truly believe in a lot of the bad things in his life. Even E. O. felt somewhat removed, like a character in a book.
After the conversation he'd had with Kyo, he felt uncomfortable, so he only gave the other man a sort of half-nod, half-bow before leaving his room. He thought his head hurt less than it had before, but it was also buzzing in a way he found uncomfortable; the things Kyo had said had both relieved and scared him.
It felt so good to have somebody look at him and say, so simply, that they thought he could fix himself.
On the other hand, it was terrifying to think of the connotations of that – of what that knowledge entailed; what it held within it.
He wasn't like Aoi. He could recognise that.
But he wasn't exactly like his parents, either.
Nor was he really like E. O., or even Uruha.
Miserably, he wondered where exactly he was supposed to fit; if there even was a place for him. In the few long months he'd been at the sanatorium, it seemed that the strange layers of relationships between people had grown immeasurably more complicated.
'And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon...'
Kai was singing quietly into his radio, as if it was a walkie-talkie and the people on the other end would be able to hear him, his fingers quietly tapping along to the rhythm against its back. He was sitting cross-legged on an easy chair in the TV room – the programme currently showing was something dull, some mid-afternoon talk show – and he didn't seem to notice when Ruki walked in; or at least, he didn't look up. When Ruki put an awkward hand on his shoulder, though, Kai suddenly found him and gave him a huge grin.
'Hi, Ruki! I missed you last night! You weren't there.'
'Hi. How are you feeling?'
Kai looked a little confused; he wrinkled his nose. 'Fine, of course.'
'But – I mean—'
A sharp slap suddenly caught Ruki across the back of the head; scowling, he looked up to find Aoi raising his eyebrows and drawing a brief finger across his throat; shut up now, his eyes said, so Ruki simply dropped himself onto the sofa. Languidly, Aoi sprawled out on the floor, propping a cigarette between his lips and then lighting it.
'Uruha's parents are here,' Ruki said inanely, and Kai frowned at his radio.
'I don't like them,' he said.
'You tell 'em,' Aoi said lazily.
'Uruha's dad is a bad man.'
'Damn right.' Aoi exhaled grey smoke. 'Ruki. You never told me how you made it out unscathed last night. Make any new friends?' He made an obscene gesture with his hand and mouth that made Ruki's cheeks feel hot.
'Don't be an idiot,' he muttered. 'Kyo's all right.'
'Kyo's a psycho. So are you two bestest friends forever now?'
'What do you mean?'
'Well.' Aoi raised his eyebrows, 'You were in his room just now, weren't you?'
Ruki hesitated, and Aoi laughed triumphantly.
'You probably don't need to play it quite so keen, you know. It's a loony bin, not a bar. I doubt he's had many other offers.'
'Shut up.'
'You're blushing!' Aoi took a deep pull on his cigarette, obviously enjoying himself. 'So, do you talk in your sleep?'
'I—'
'Yes, he does,' Kai piped up.
'Interesting.' Aoi's eyes glittered. 'Is Eiji still somebody you don't know, or...?'
'No, it's...' Ruki rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, but he was spared having to answer; Uruha was pushing his way through the haphazard arrangement of chairs in the TV room, not leading but trailing behind his parents. He was smiling in a strange sort of way at the ground and Ruki could see where all his fingernails were red and sore, and some of them still had dried blood on them, flaky and the colour of rust.
He was carrying a lot of expensive-looking white boxes tied with black ribbons, which he set down on the coffee table and began to unpack, carefully untying the knots and smoothing the ribbons out so they lay in exactly straight lines down the length of the table. Pastries, fruit arrangements; there was a whole plate of thin salmon slices garnished with lemon and dill and some kind of roe; there was a lot of food that Ruki hadn't seen before in his life, and the ostentatious display both attracted and repulsed him slightly. There was more food than three people could ever eat, even if they were starving to death; he wondered what the Takashimas were trying to prove, except that they had a lot of money.
'Boys!'
Uruha's father really was much smaller than he looked on TV; he had only a few inches on Ruki, and stood just a little shorter than his wife, who looked as though she didn't care much for food anyway. She settled herself in an armchair and guided her son to sit next to him, keeping hold of his wrist even when Uruha started rocking uncomfortably back and forth in his seat; his father, though, beamed around the room and settled himself directly in the centre of the sofa.
'Please,' he said generously, 'Dig in. I know they like to give you a very wholesome, very healthy diet here, but everybody can enjoy some treats now and again, right?'
Aoi blew smoke in his general direction.
'No thanks.'
'Aoi, isn't it? How are you keeping, son?'
'Still kicking against the pricks,' Aoi said, and Ruki heard Uruha's mother give a small sigh.
'Dad brought food for everyone,' Uruha mumbled suddenly, 'You should eat. Everyone should eat.'
'Uruha, sweetheart, don't rock so. You'll make yourself ill.'
'Die and his parents should eat too,' Uruha went on, apparently talking to himself, 'Someone should get them. I should go and get them.'
He gave a big twitch and got to his feet, looking at least a little relieved to have yanked his hand away from his mother's manicured grasp; she gave a little groan and busied herself retrieving a cigarette from the shiny metal case in her handbag. She held it a moment, waiting, and finally Aoi got to his feet to light it for her.
'Ma'am,' he said in a just barely sarcastic tone, and she regarded him coolly.
'Thank you.'
'I'm so pleased Die is still around,' Uruha's father said in a public tone of voice. 'His parents are grand people. It's such a shame about his terrible condition.'
A quote Ruki didn't realise he had remembered from the book he'd lent Kyo jumped into his head: Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it. He gave an accidental snort of laughter that he had to turn into a coughing noise, apparently unconvincingly; Aoi met his eye, smiling in a wicked sort of way that showed his sharp canine teeth.
'You're a new face. What's your name?'
Ruki's eyes were watering slightly from the force of his fake cough.
'Ruki.'
'And how long have you been here, Ruki?'
'About two months.'
'And do you like it? My wife and I are just about the main benefactors of this place, you know. Anything you don't like, I'm sure we could have a little word or two about getting it changed. You know, if there's time, you should take me on a little one-to-one tour and show me where you're sleeping. I know you boys like to fix up your rooms; make them your own. Hey, why don't you have something to eat? You look like you could use a little feeding up. And – Die, there you are! How are you?'
Distracted, Uruha's father got to his feet and moved forward to greet Die and his parents, who were looking a little baffled at the spread of food. Die gave a half shrug.
'Hi, Mr Takashima. I'm okay. How are you?'
'Can't complain, can't complain, thank you. And you're having a visit today too; how wonderful. Please do join us. There's enough for everyone.'
He gestured widely, seemingly oblivious to the fact that nobody had made a single movement towards the food. Uruha had sat back down on just the very edge of his seat and was gripping his knees tightly with his poor torn nails. Die's family started doing a polite little dance around the food with Uruha's parents, a sort of oh we really we couldn't – oh no you absolutely must – oh well maybe just a tiny bit – oh please, help yourselves to whatever you'd like.
It was so weird how the world of grown-ups worked, Ruki thought. Already he could see Die's parents starting to feel bad because they'd only bought an LP instead of a gourmet brunch. What was the sense in that? He guessed the ostentatious generousness of the food was stopping Die's mother from mentioning the new record to Kai, and felt almost a bit angry. He slid his thumbnail into his mouth and began to chew on it thoughtfully; he wondered how much of a cleaner feeling place the world would be if people said what they really felt all the time.
He was still puzzling it out when he heard a sound that seemed to both stop his heart and inflate it to a painful size in his chest all at once; he dug his nails into his forearm urgently. The talk show had announced its next guest, and the live footage had been swapped out momentarily for some pre-recorded shots of a camera panning around an art gallery, the paintings achingly familiar even on that small black and white screen, and the voice talking about the work over the top of it all...
Not really aware he was doing it, he curled his hand into a fist and bit down on it, hard. The voice talking about the paintings overlaid itself with another, earlier voice in his head: Ruki, Ruki. We're still trying to make a beautiful image, Ruki.
Please, please, I'll make it so good for you.
You're so beautiful I could eat you.
He could taste blood against his teeth. The pre-recorded footage ended and the camera steadied itself on a sofa, where the energetic host in his smart suit was in complete contrast to his guest; a man in his forties with messy, windblown-looking hair, wearing a black turtleneck sweater and heavy-framed glasses, his legs outstretched elegantly, as if he was completely at home; he looked much more comfortable than the host, who was bouncing in his seat slightly and saying something like very pleased to present, in his first ever television interview, a true artist of our time...
A fierce rush of love made Ruki feel almost dizzy. If only there was a way to make the pictures on a television stay put; if only he could record them in some way and watch them back forever, and dwell on that sweet, distant face with its silly glasses, its affected hairstyle; if only he could reach through the screen and become a part of that staticky, monochrome world.
Loss inflated inside him like a balloon; that was exactly how it felt, as if something alien was swelling and swelling within him, pushing out against his skin and distorting his bones, forcing them to mould to a new shape. He wouldn't have been surprised if he'd found a huge, raw wound had opened up in his chest. It felt incredible that such an intense pain couldn't actually kill him.
'Of course, as you can guess from the title, Reflections of Youth, the exhibition itself is all about just that: youth. I wanted to marry two sources of inspiration; traditional ukiyo-e prints, and the fast-paced, destructive nature of the world of today. The world is changing so fast...our traditions, as a nation, are being burned through. I myself turned forty-seven this year, and I can recognise that today's generation of youth is very different to my own. But youth attracts us; it's compelling. Youth is beautiful most of all because it is fleeting; it's ephemeral...it's the new 'floating world', so to speak. I wanted to immortalise that feeling.'
Something twisted sharply inside Ruki, and he lurched out of his chair and ran from the room, almost bouncing off the walls in his haste to get down the hallway; he threw himself into the bathroom and vomited hotly into one of the toilets, his whole body convulsing weakly. He retched again, his eyes watering, and flushed the toilet. Belatedly, he shut and locked the cubicle door behind him and leant against it. He was sweating, he realised; he could feel it standing out in droplets on his forehead. His face felt waxy, like a mask.
'Fuck you,' he whispered quietly, closing his eyes, 'Fuck you, Eiji.'
Carefully, he slid back the lock on the door and crossed over to the sinks to pick up his toothbrush. All the while he was brushing his teeth, he stared at his own face, noticing how wan the skin looked and how red the eyes; he looked like some disgusting blind creature from the bottom of the sea. The white underside of some fish floating belly up in polluted waters. He brushed vigorously and spat.
Back in the television room, when Ruki finally made his way there – he was caught and told off by a nurse on the way for not signing in and out of the bathroom, an admonition that flowed mostly directly over his head – there was some new tension; it seemed Uruha's parents were leaving already, and Uruha's face was starting to grow very red.
'But you only just got here,' he said in his opinionated voice, and his father shook his head.
'Son, son, I'm sorry. But we have somewhere else to be, and we were held up in traffic this morning...'
'You stopped to get the food,' Uruha said stubbornly, 'Nobody's even eating it!'
Die's parents had the frozen looks of people who were witnessing some great embarrassment and weren't quite sure what to do about it.
'Uruha, is that any way to speak to your mother and I? We planned this meal as a special treat for you and all your friends!'
Looking almost drunk, Uruha's mother got to her feet, smoothing her dress down carefully over her hips.
'Goodbye, darling,' she said, resting her cheek briefly against her son's, which made Uruha twitch heavily, 'We'll be seeing you soon. Maybe not this month, but July certainly—'
'Don't see us out, son. I know you're not allowed out of the ward at the moment. Wouldn't want to get you in trouble.' Ruki watched as he pulled his son into a hug that made Uruha go entirely rigid, even his jaw locking and his eyes going wide and frozen, but his father either didn't notice or didn't mind; he gave his son a thorough squeeze and then went around the room shaking hands, patting shoulders; he made to include Ruki on his route but must have noticed the bloody teeth marks on his hand, because he drew back and contented himself with a nod.
When they left, they left a lingering smell of expensive cologne in the room behind them, and Ruki could hear the sound of their expensive shoes tapping their way down the staircase. Uruha scratched at his cheeks hard, leaving livid red marks down them, and for once Aoi didn't seem to have anything to say; he was watching Uruha worriedly.
'Uru—' he started, but as if that had been the final straw, Uruha turned on his heel and stormed from the room, and a moment later they heard his bedroom door slamming.
Aoi sighed slowly. He hadn't made a single move towards the food that was laid out on the table, but now he picked up a dainty miniature cake that was about the size of his fist and garnished with edible flowers; he held it strangely though, like a baseball.
'I know what you're thinking,' he said in a low voice to Ruki, 'But if I get punished, it's still worth it.'
Moving leisurely, he opened up the window so fresh, rainy air streamed in, and took a deep lungful of it.
Then, for all the world like a professional pitcher, he wound his arm back and launched the cake very precisely through the bars, and Ruki just caught a glimpse of it sailing like a strange bird through the cloudy sky before he heard a gratifying splat and a high-pitched, restrained sort of yelp.
'Oh good,' Aoi said. 'It was chocolate inside.'
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I couldn't possibly stop reading. I have to find out what happens next!!