Maps: 2/??

[solongsun]

Title: Maps
Author: solongsun 
Rating: mature
Bands: The GazettE, Dir en grey
Pairings: Kyo/Ruki, Aoi/Die, Aoi/Uruha

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...

2

 

The clothing Ruki was given to wear consisted of a pair of plain, loose grey pants, sort of like pyjamas, a white T-shirt that was a few sizes too large, and a pair of black, slip-on plimsolls. His hair-tie had been taken from him, and so his brown hair tumbled messily around his neck, tickling him. Every inch of his skin felt covered with the itch of institutional clothing, and he kept tugging at the garments awkwardly as he walked through the same tour he'd already had. The first had been given by the head nurse, a calm, no-nonsense sort of person; this second was being given by his new roommate, an exuberant young man named Kai.

He wasn't exactly what Ruki had been expecting from a mental patient. There was a bounce to his walk, and he chattered away happily as he all but dragged his companion around; Ruki felt much more as if he was being taken around a new school by some kind of student advisor or class president – Kai was just that chipper.

'I guess you already saw the bathrooms. There's a sheet on the door – you need to sign in and out of there, okay? If you want to shave, you need to go to a nurse, or one of the orderlies, so they can get the razor for you and watch you while you do it. I guess that's pretty much it for the bathroom! Hi, Uruha. That's Uruha.'

Another young man had approached – or maybe had been standing there all along, lounging by the doorway to one of the rooms and holding a book limply in his hands. He wore a pair of glasses with thick black rims, and a small scowl. Ruki nodded at him tensely.

'This is Ruki. My new roommate.'

'Yeah? What's he like?'

'He's okay.'

Was it normal for them to talk about him like he wasn't there? Ruki must have looked surprised, because the gaze Uruha turned onto him was rather cool.

'I don't have a roommate,' he announced.

'Oh.'

'What's your book?' Kai wanted to know, and the change that came over the frosty man was as sudden as it was surprising; his face broke into a wide smile, instantly taking years off him, and he held the book up proudly.

'The Local's Guide to Mexico,' he read out loud, petting its cover. His smile turned fonder; his voice warmer, 'by Takashima Hayato.'

'Oh.' Kai turned to Ruki, his dark hair flying out with the ebullience of the movement, 'That's Uruha's father. He has a travel show on TV.'

'The Local's Guide,' Uruha added softly. He opened the front cover, and showed them both where, on in the inside of the dust jacket, there was a black and white photograph of the author. He closed the book, opened it again, and closed it again; opened it again, and closed it again; opened it again, and closed it again. He wasn't looking at them anymore, or talking to them, but his lips twitched very slightly, like he was saying something to himself. Twelve times he opened and closed the book, and then looked back up at them.

'This is Uruha's room,' Kai said informatively, apparently having decided on a different conversation, 'And in the room opposite, there's Aoi and Die – Die's got the red hair. Aoi's got the black.'

Their door was open, and 'red hair' was a pretty inadequate description, in Ruki's opinion. The man Kai had gestured to was tall – it was easy to tell even with him lying on his bed – and his hair was fire-engine red. He was wearing the same clothes Ruki was, and he looked thin enough to snap in two. He held a cigarette between two fingers, and an ashtray full of smashed butts rested precariously on the bed beside him.

'Hey Kai,' he said cheerfully. 'New roomie?'

'His name is Ruki.'

Die nodded at him amiably. 'Good to know you. Been anywhere like this before?'

Ruki shook his head no, and Die shrugged.

'It's not so bad.'

'Are you new as well?'

'Me? I've been here about seven months.'

'Your clothes—'

Die grinned, showing teeth. 'I lost a bet.'

'He lost dress privileges,' Uruha filled in, taking the responsibility away from Kai, who seemed breathless with his desire to explain, 'He'll get his real clothes back when he eats something.'

Die tipped his head back and blew a perfect ring of smoke towards the ceiling.

'Die's a psycho,' the one Kai had called Aoi said matter-of-factly. 'Starving is a shitty way to kill yourself.'

'I'm not trying to kill myself.'

Aoi exhaled an angry cloud of smoke. 'I don't give a shit whether you're trying or not; it's what's gonna happen if you hit that goal weight of yours.'

'Fat chance in this place,' Die said, unperturbed.

'Fuck you. I'm not having you die and getting some new roommate brought in.' He turned a pair of sharp, dark eyes onto Ruki, 'Kai's old roommate did it. Kicked the bucket. But it wasn't an actual bucket; it was a chair. Kicked the chair. Away. Got me?'

'Why'd he do it?' Die asked curiously, shifting comfortably on his bed.

Aoi's smile was catlike, and not entirely cold. 'Maybe he was having a fat day.'

 

Dear E. O.—

I'm going to try and describe what it's like here for you.

There aren't many people on the ward. Kai said that when we were taking our tour, some of them were out walking – they had grounds privileges. I don't know how you get those. Be good, I suppose, and try not to kill yourself.

Every person I look at, I can't help but wonder what's wrong with them. Everybody is hiding their illness on the inside; they all look normal.

I can hear you right now: what does normal look like, Ruki? I guess just like you, I don't know the answer.

I don't know what's wrong with me, either. I wonder if all these other men have conditions and diagnoses, or if like me, they just fell apart one day. It sounds stupid, but if we're insane, couldn't anybody be? Anyone who ever felt like crying for no reason, or had a dream that they were so sure was real, even after they woke up? Anybody who felt like they just couldn't get out of bed at all, or did a bad thing, and enjoyed it?

If you want to try and picture me here, you should know that all the floors are that white hospital-floor texture, the shiny kind that orderlies are always mopping in books about places like this. Like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The walls are colour-coded. Blue for dorm rooms, green for the dining room, white for bathrooms and lavender for living spaces. They're all ugly in their own unique way. You'd hate it. None of the colours here are vibrant; none of the people are vibrant either, even when they sound loud and enthusiastic.

Everything is sort of dull and in slow-motion, like it's underwater. Everything is like a copy of a copy.

 

He wasn't going to mail it, of course. They'd taken his normal pen and given him a soft felt-tip to write with instead, and it had made his handwriting all but illegible; besides, he wasn't really writing it for E. O. – he'd never have addressed him that way. But what would he have written? 'Dear Senpai'? He gave a soft, derisive snort.

It was more that it was easier to write for E. O. than it was to write for himself. Imagining the expressions crossing the other man's face made him feel as though they were experiencing this together; it gave him the encouragement to carry on writing it down.

'You a writer?' Kai asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the twin bed opposite Ruki's, with a pocket radio in his hands; it was tinnily playing The Beatles' I'm Only Sleeping, and Kai was nodding along.

'Not really. I don't really like to write things down. I prefer drawing.'

Kai shrugged. Now that they were in their room with the door closed, he seemed much mellower. 'Why's that?'

'I don't know. I guess words don't change the way a picture does. With hindsight, you know?'

Kai tipped his head to the side quizzically, and Ruki sighed, struggling with how to explain.

'If I draw a line, I know right away if it's a good line. But I don't feel that way with words. If you write something and come back to it later, it reads back stupid.'

I'm Only Sleeping ended, and Kai gave a soft sigh of satisfaction.

'You'd better unpack, you know. You'll probably get your clothes back pretty soon. Did they take anything else?'

'They take other things?'

Kai's face suddenly darkened. He didn't look angry so much as incredibly troubled; he turned his radio up slightly and hung his head, shaking his hair over his face.

'They took my knives.'

'Your – knives?'

'I'm a cook. I like to cook. They didn't let me keep any of it. Even my pans.'

He was silent, and then suddenly flung his radio down on the bed, so forcefully it bounced back up again and clattered onto the floor. He paused, poised like a cat, but it played on. Slowly, he unfurled himself and gently picked it up.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I really miss cooking.'

'That's okay,' Ruki said faintly. He felt his eyes were wider than he could control, and his mouth was dry. He had been about to place his suitcase on the bed – it was a lot lighter without his clothes – but all the strength seemed to have gone out of his arms, and so he turned his back on Kai and opened it on the floor instead. Paranoid now, he scanned over its contents, but everything seemed to be in place; his portable record player and all of his records were still there, a carton of Marlboro, and his postcards.

He'd been collecting them from art galleries for quite a while, and he would no more have travelled without them as he would have travelled without his own skin. They were getting a little dog-eared now, but he still took his time laying them out on his bed, one by one, like tarot cards. The soft, slick sounds of them comforted him. He put his favourite – a reproduction of E. O.'s The Student at Work – at the centre, and let his fingers linger on its surface ever so slightly. He had used to keep it clipped to the side of his desk whenever he was working. A boy painting a picture, staring at a boy painting a picture. And now with tattered, greying corners on a hospital blanket, next to Kahlo and Klimt; Broken Column, Beech Forest.

He had a headache. He drew his hands away from the picture and curled them against his temples.

'You brought records!'

Miraculously recovered, Kai was suddenly next to him, leaning right over his shoulders, stopping just short of falling right into his suitcase; his fingers trembled excitedly over the stack of records in their sleeves.

'Can – can I..?'

'Go mad,' Ruki said vaguely, and instantly felt his face grow warm. 'Sorry.'

Kai laughed, tossing his hair back. Gently, he perched on the side of Ruki's bed, hoisting the stack of records up onto his lap so he could look through them.

'Nobody you've met so far is like you thought, are they?'

'I guess not.'

'I felt that way too.'

'How long have you been here for?'

Kai paused, picking up a record squarely between his two palms, and lifting it up to his face to scrutinise the sleeve closely.

'Two years, nearly.'

Ruki's mouth felt dry. He settled back on his knees on the floor, and licked his lips to try and get the moisture back to them. 'Wow.'

'Wow,' Kai agreed.

'Do you miss your—?' Ruki hesitated. Do you miss your life, he wanted to say, but he wasn't about alienate the least threatening person he'd met so far. 'Home?' he finished lamely, instead.

His fingers caught the neck of his T-shirt, and began to toy with it nervously, but Kai didn't look fazed.

'Not really. I mean, I miss my friends, and my room, but when I lived there I used to feel scared all the time. It's better now.'

'If it's better,' Ruki tried timidly, 'Could you go home?'

The other man beamed at him, a thousand megawatt smile. 'I'm not leaving,' he said. 'I like it here.'

 

Ordinarily, Kai explained to him, they'd be busy in the afternoons – they'd have group therapy or occupational therapy ('group' and 'OT' he'd called them blithely, Ruki tripping over all the words he was dropping), or if it was a Tuesday or Friday, in the art room, which also had a locked cage with tambourines, bongo drums and a guitar ('you can only use that supervised,' Kai explained, his fingers touching lightly about his neck, 'the strings, you know.').

Otherwise, there was a sitting room with a TV, and there was a room for playing music – there was an ancient piano ('only because they probably figured it was too big to be put in the cage') and a record player.

'Do you play piano?' Kai asked curiously.

Ruki shook his head. The door opened and a nurse popped her head around it; she surveyed the two of them and then left, leaving the door open a crack. Casually, Kai slithered off the bed, and closed it fully with a brisk snap.

'That's a shame,' he said, like they hadn't been interrupted. He went back to the records and – 'Rubber Soul!' he said enthusiastically, clamping the record to his chest. His dark eyes shone brightly, 'You brought The Beatles. I love The Beatles. “I'll get by with a little help from my friends...”'

Ruki smiled anxiously. 'Me too. I have all of their records.'

'I wish I knew what most of the words meant.'

'I guess maybe it doesn't matter.'

'Maybe.'

'Why'd you close the door?'

'I like it closed.' Kai gave him a sudden, searching look. 'I like the door closed all the time you can manage it,' he said seriously, 'If that's okay. I mean if you leave it open I can't concentrate at all, and I – I panic, sometimes.'

He smoothed the record on his lap, and smiled at his roommate comfortingly. 'You'll get used to it,' he said, 'Them coming in, I mean. You're new, so right now it's every half hour the door's closed, but they'll space them out more if you do okay.'

He stroked the record carefully. 'I just wish they'd close the door.'

 

Dinner was at five thirty, which seemed early beyond all reason; afternoon sunlight was still streaming brightly through the windows and collecting in glaring puddles on the floors. The air smelled of disinfectant and warm dust. For some reason, Ruki had initially expected the dining room to be something modelled on his high school cafeteria, with dozens of tables scattered around as if there were hundreds of people to be fed; instead, the room was small, with one oblong wooden table at its centre. The chairs were the plastic kind found in schools and assembly halls, though, and though the plates and bowls were china, the cutlery was plastic too.

What surprised Ruki the most was that it was so much louder than he had expected. He'd pictured dim, wan, quiet creatures huddled like wraiths around the tables, picking at their food in hospital gowns, all pointed elbows and glittering, hectic eyes; instead, he felt as if he were at a peculiar kind of summer camp. People were talking and laughing and hollering up and down the table, and you had to look closely to see that anything was, actually, wrong.

Except: the redhead, Die, was puffing away at a cigarette and sort of stirring the food on his plate around, and whenever he wasn't talking or joking with anybody else, a painful expression of tension came over his face.

Except: Uruha laid his napkin on his lap and then picked up again, and laid it down again, and picked it up again, and laid it down again, until Ruki thought he wouldn't ever stop. And then he chewed each bite of food exactly twelve times, on each side of his mouth. And drank exactly eight sips from his glass at a time, but swapped hands between them, looking agitated and faraway; he was one of the few not talking.

Except: down the other end of the table, nearby Die, were people who Ruki hadn't seen or met yet, and they looked like mental patients, somehow. Real ones.

 

There were two of them, and maybe they weren't friends; they weren't talking and appeared to have been lumped together. One was very young looking, and pale, and he ate about half of his meal in perfect decorum, taking neat mouthfuls and patting his lips gently with his napkin. Then, very abruptly, he scraped his chair back, curled into himself and began to cry and hit up at the side of his face, catching his jaw with his wrist in the same spot over and over; a nurse and an orderly hurried over and attempted to force his arms down whilst another rang a call-button on the wall, and he arched off his chair as if in agony. His jaw was clenched, Ruki saw, and tears were sliding down his cheeks, but he hadn't made a sound. Then, when the chatter around the table died down, Ruki saw that he was making sounds, talking almost too softly to hear and make sense of, no, I don't want to, you're confusing me, you're confusing me. His actions weren't violent, but there was an uncontrollable strength to them that was scary, like a seizure, and he continued his slow and twisting fight until the head nurse came walking briskly with a syringe, and shot something into his upper arm.

It wasn't immediate, but it almost was. He didn't go unconscious, but there was an awful slackening to his face and spine and limbs, like a paper boat taking on water and beginning to dip and sink, and spiral in the current; he would have fallen, a sad droplet, if he hadn't been caught by the hands around him. Eyes still open, tears still on his cheeks, drying now, lips still moving but slower – much slower. His hands were placed gently in his lap, his napkin taken and folded neatly on the table, the hair smoothed back from his face.

The other quiet one got to his feet, and Ruki was conscious of sinking down a little further into his chair. He didn't look angry, not exactly, but his face was set in a way that was tough and stubborn and frightening in its resolution; it might have been carved from stone. He placed both of his hands flat on the table, hunched over and shot a quick, short glare around at them. A particular talent: his eyes seemed, just for a moment, to meet every single other gaze squarely. He might not have been a single inch taller than Ruki, but he carried six feet of charisma on his shoulders.

'Don't stare,' he said at last. 'He wouldn't like to be stared at.'

Strange voice; smooth, and hoarse. Low. Not cold, not warm.

His eyes scanned them all again, rested on Ruki for a moment.

'Who's he,' he said, not exactly a question. He firmed his lips, pushed his plate away – it made a screeching noise across the table; he appeared not to notice – and began to assist a male orderly in gathering his friend, the marionette cut loose, to his feet. He came up in a disorganised bundle, but the actions were tender; the hands were strong, large and capable. They didn't look as though they should be moving quite so gently.

All Ruki could think about was how he had been wearing the institutional clothing, too. But he had been eating, and there was no chance that he was new.

Later he would learn that the man's name was Kyo, and that he had been there the longest of any of them. But in the next few days, and through the next few sleepless nights, he would think of him and wonder what terrible rule it was that he had broken – what awful thing he had done.