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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...
Note: this will be the last chapter for a few days, as I'll have having house guests come to stay. Thanks to everyone who's kept up with this so far, especially those who have commented!
'Nurse,' Aoi was saying in a timid sort of voice to the nurse behind the desk, 'I – I've got this thing.'
She had been busy doling out sleeping pills into individual two-tablet servings on her tray; she shot him an irritated look.
'A thing, Aoi?'
He lowered his voice. 'It's like – a growth. I need you to take a look.'
It slowly occurred to Ruki that it wasn't just his heart pounding in his ears: there actually was a muffled thudding noise permeating the ward. His eyes jumped uneasily to the door of the isolation room.
Hold on, he wanted to say, but he knew it would have been stupid.
'Aoi, I'm quite busy right now. Can you show me here?'
'It's not in a place I generally display to the public,' Aoi muttered darkly, and she sighed, screwing the cap neatly back on the pill bottle.
'Fine. We'll have a look in your room.'
'But Die's in there,' Aoi protested. 'Can't I show you in the bathroom?'
Ruki had to smile at that: Die and Aoi's room was just behind the phone booths, within clear eyeshot of the nurses' station; the bathroom, however, was all the way up the hall. Without a blink at Ruki, Aoi led the nurse away up there, complaining in a loud voice of how swollen and throbbing his growth was, and Ruki quickly boosted himself up over the desk.
There were more sets of keys than he had anticipated; there were at least twenty, and five had white tags. The one that said music had four separate keys on it. Clutching them tightly in his hand to stop them jingling, he hopped back over the desk and started trying all four of them in the music room door, wanting to be ready when it was time to lock it.
Slightly flushed, Die joined him, a whole bundle of colourful record sleeves in his hands. He stacked them carefully on the floor, clapped Ruki on the back, withdrew a black vinyl record and slipped it onto the player. He grinned.
'Ready?'
The right key was the biggest one, a tarnished silver. Ruki practised turning it in the lock and nodded stiffly.
'Ready.'
There was an agonising wait, perhaps a little under a minute, and then the bathroom door burst open and Aoi's loud voice was suddenly everywhere, echoing off the polished halls and floors as he sprinted towards the music room:
'My mistake, nurse – it wasn't a growth – just my DICK getting HARD when I THINK ABOUT MEN!'
He lurched into the music room and Ruki slammed the door closed behind him, fumbling only briefly with the lock; the key turned with a satisfying click and Die dropped the needle onto the record gently.
'Do the honours,' he said, bowing at Aoi politely. Smiling, almost blushing, Aoi nodded, and his careful fingers turned the volume up as high as it would go.
The drums came in first, and they made the windows shake; the guitar blared over the top, razor-sharp, and Die leapt excitedly onto the top of the piano, skinny legs spread wide and his red hair whipping around his face.
He didn't look anorexic at all in that moment, Ruki thought. He looked glorious.
'You jump in front of my car when you, you know all the time
Ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive
You tell me it's all right, you don't mind a little pain
You say you just want me to take you for a drive.'
There was a frantic banging on the door; through the reinforced glass pane set into it, Ruki could see the look of panic on the nurse's face, and he couldn't help himself: his face split into a wide grin and he laughed at her as Die yanked Aoi up on top of the piano with him, the two of them dancing so violently it seemed a miracle their flying limbs didn't hit each other:
'You're just like CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC!'
'Boys—'
'SO HARD TO GET THROUGH TO YOU!'
'Open this door right now—!'
'CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC!'
'Ruki! Aoi!'
'I DON'T NEED TO RUN OVER YOU!'
Kai's delighted face bobbed behind the nurse's in the window like a bright balloon; his smile was so wide it threatened to split his face in two. Uruha was tailing him, an amused/anxious expression on his thoughtful face; he suddenly frowned though, and took off his glasses, and as Ruki watched he set his hands on the nurse's shoulders and began to steer her around in a clumsy but forceful waltz, just like Aoi had taught him all those months ago.
The song was drawing to a close but Die was ready for it; hopping lithely down from the piano, he flipped Jimi Hendrix off the player and dropped on the Please Please Me LP instead. He mistimed his placement of the needle slightly, and they were treated to the fading-out ending of There's a Place before a moment of crackly silence.
He pointed at Kai through the glass and, like a starved rock star, intoned: 'this is for you, baby.'
'Hope you know how to do the twist!' Aoi hollered at the nurse as The Beatles clattered back into life with Twist and Shout, leaping down from the piano and grabbing Die and Ruki's hands to dance with them.
They were screaming more than they were singing. The words were all English anyway, foreign but knowable just by the sound of them, just by the music behind them; why would you need to understand every word anyway? Die had his eyes closed, his long hair flying out around him as he twisted enthusiastically, up on his toes with his skeletal arms in the air; Aoi was up on top of the armchair, his hips swaying as he tossed his hair back from his face, grinning.
There was a great flurry and banging of activity outside the door; they could no longer see Kai or Uruha through the glass. The view had turned white with nurses and orderlies, smoothing their white shirts and trying to look useful; one of them brandished a screwdriver in the air triumphantly and Die shot a slightly nervous glance at Ruki and Uruha.
'Last song, I guess,' he said in a light voice, flicking through the records, and Aoi set a hand on his shoulder.
'Make it something we can dance to, will you,' he said, his voice breathless from the exertion of his twisting, and Die held up a record triumphantly.
'Etta James?' Ruki said sceptically, and Die grinned as The Beatles hissed and crackled their finish, the record spinning uselessly.
'Gotta have soul,' he said. Behind him, the door shook ominously as the team of orderlies got the first of the screws out, and Die and lowered the needle onto the record. There was a brief crackle, and the player kicked in with I Just Want to Make Love to You, the rhythm bold and bluesy. Die offered a gentlemanly hand to Aoi: 'Gonna dance with me?'
It was funny, but even as it was happening, Ruki knew it would be one of those fierce memories that would burn in his mind for his whole life: the door shaking, the music blasting, the rising feeling in his chest that he had done something, after all – done something – and Aoi and Die in the middle of the music room floor, arms wrapped around each other as they danced dirtily to the music, Die sliding a leg between Aoi's as the other man pulled their bodies close together.
Even the door stopped shaking for a moment; Ruki glanced over his shoulder and saw the orderly with the screwdriver standing with it clasped limply in his hand, forgotten, his mouth open.
It was stupid, but he wished fiercely that Kyo could have been there; he would have liked to have seen the look in his eyes; he wanted to know if he would have smiled or not, and shaken his head in that tired way he had, and then joined in.
It was only for a minute, though. Soon the door was shaking again in earnest, but even as it was finally yanked out of his frame and a torrent of white uniforms poured into the room, Ruki still couldn't stop smiling.
They had known, of course, that there would be trouble. The orderlies flooded into the room; the needle was pulled roughly from the record and Ruki found himself pushed back against the wall as two orderlies wrenched Die and Aoi apart. There was a tussle and Ruki gave a yell of outrage: one of the white-uniformed men had bypassed tugging on Aoi's arms entirely and had instead yanked him back by the hair, the movement so forceful that he went wheeling back and staggered straight into the wall; there was a crunching noise as his face made contact, and Die leapt forward furiously.
'You bastard dick,' he said nonsensically, his long arms grabbing for the orderly who had treated his friend so roughly, but the man seemed to have had enough; his face was contorted with anger, and rearing back, he struck Die hard across the face.
Suddenly, even with the music off, the room felt far too chaotic and noisy. It was like he'd only just started seeing things clearly: the dazed look on Aoi's face, the way Die crumpled to one side. He was taller than his opponent but he was thin, weak; he tried to cover his bleeding nose with his hands but his wrists were grabbed, forced behind his back like he was under arrest as they marched him from the room, Aoi making weak struggling motions to get back to him.
Ruki was scared now. Pissing off the orderlies was funny until they were really angry; until then, it seemed the three of them had forgotten who really had the control. Seeing the look of rage on their faces was sobering: the knowledge that they could hurt, if they wanted to; that there was nothing Ruki or Aoi or anybody could do about it. Pinned against the wall, he watched helplessly as a hypodermic was sunk into Aoi's upper arm and he began to sag like a doll. Something glinted in front of his eyes; another needle, this one for him.
'You can't treat us like this,' he said.
But he knew it wasn't true. There was a flash of metal, and the needle plunged into his skin; there was a sick feeling in his stomach, and his legs threatened to buckle.
He thought of Kyo, tangled up in the straitjacket, alone in the dark.
He thought of the other man's voice, saying words he had never expected it to say: please don't put me in there. You know how it'll be if you put me in there.
He thought of being on the hill in the rain and the mud, and Kyo's arm around his back, and how it felt like a million years ago.
He wobbled, and the floor rushed up to meet him.
The dreams, when Ruki had them, were vivid and surreal; pictures without stories. People with no faces, fish with crushed-diamond scales, teeth that nibbled on the tips of his fingers and turned them numb.
He was aware, at one point, of turning his face into the coolness of his pillow, and of the crackly sound of Kai's radio playing on through the night, and he wanted to try to say something so that his roommate wouldn't worry, but his tongue wouldn't work and he was so tired he thought he might die.
When he fell back into sleep, it was with the sensation of being dropped from a great height, and he had a dream that he was wandering alone through a landscape of sand and mirrors, and that the ground was the same colour as the sky.
Somebody, at some point, pressed a wet cloth to his face. The light was bright; he burrowed away from it.
He dreamed off all the lines in the world resolving themselves into a single face, all the dots and splashes of colour rushing together to form one body; a familiar face, messy haired, stupid glasses, speaking gently:
It's not that we haven't had our fun, but you know this was never meant to last...September just can't marry May; you know it can't. Don't cry. Don't cry. You know this was only ever a fling; you know it didn't mean anything.
We're still trying to make a beautiful image, Ruki.
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...
You're very young, Ruki, okay? Sometimes you don't exactly know how the world works.
It's not that we haven't had our fun.
Never meant to last.
Only ever a fling.
It didn't mean anything.
Ruki. I'm fond of you. But you know – you must know you're not the kind of person I could fall in love with really.
It's not that we haven't had our—
Sunshine lay brightly across his face, and he blinked crossly. There was no radio, nor the gentle sound of Kai snuffling and settling in his sleep across the room. Everything was quiet.
Stiffly, his limbs not working exactly right, he pulled himself into a loose upright position. His head swam, and he shook it blearily. His arm felt bruised, and when he looked down at it, he saw a tiny red dot; the prick of the hypodermic.
He closed his eyes and let it all wash over him. Crosstown traffic. Well shake it up baby, now...twist and shout...
He lowered himself back down against the pillow limply, wishing the sunlight wasn't positioned so precisely across his eyes. There was a clock on the little table next to Kai's bed, but he couldn't make out the time on its face; it might as well have been a million miles away.
I Just Want to Make Love to You. Die and Aoi dancing so close they might have been Siamese twins, legs and bodies sprouting from the same conjoined hips, grinning at each other. Kai's bright face in the window. The door, the door taken off it's hinges, the door, the door to the isolation room slamming shut.
'Promise me you won't wait around outside the door.'
Groggy, he pushed back the blanket covering him and set his feet unsteadily on the floor. It took a lot of effort to push himself to his feet, but he managed it; he swayed and almost toppled over, catching himself on the wall.
Aoi spinning into the wall. Die's nose bleeding.
He squeezed his eyes closed briefly and then walked, concentrating on putting one foot carefully in front of the other. It took him a while to negotiate the handle of the door – his fingers were having trouble gripping – but at last he got it and managed to stumble out into the quiet, shiny, sunlit hallway.
The only person in sight was a solitary nurse at the station, and she didn't look up when he tottered out into the corridor. He ignored her in turn. He noticed the music room door was still outside of its frame, propped against the wall uselessly. The door to the isolation room was shut, though, and when he tried it, he found it locked.
Fear twisted uneasily in his stomach, and limply, he forced his hand up to knock on Aoi and Die's door. It was hard to move his wrist with the force necessary; his body felt as though it had been drained overnight. There was no reply, and he knocked again, and finally spun dizzily around and gazed around the corridor listlessly.
Apart from the nurse, he felt like the only person alive. He could tell from the silence that the music room was empty, and the TV was quiet too.
'Where is everyone,' he mumbled, but his mouth bungled the words into a single messy slur, and he ran a shaking hand through his hair.
Maybe he was still dreaming.
Acting on sleepy impulse, he staggered over to the next bedroom door and knocked, his fist sliding lazily down the wood of the door. There was a long pause, and he was about to knock again when the door opened, and he saw Uruha standing there in his day clothes, looking relieved.
'Ruki,' he said, and glanced down the hall, 'You can come in. But shut the door behind you. And...' he gave a slight twitch, 'You know, don't – mess anything up.'
Ruki must have nodded, he thought; at least, his body sent him forwards and he closed the door clumsily behind him.
He'd never been in Uruha's room before. It was neat as a museum. On the shelf above the bed, there was a whole collection of Local's Guides; each one had a differently coloured spine and they were arranged in a perfect rainbow gradient; red to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple to pink. There were still two beds, but one was just an empty frame. The other was made up with different sheets than those in the other dorm rooms; they were pure white and looked expensive.
Ruki focussed blearily. The made bed was occupied; there was a tangle of dark hair on the pillow. Following his sight line, Uruha frowned slightly and went back to the bed; moving very, very carefully, he climbed himself over the sleeping person's body and lay himself down gently beside it, curling a hand with bitten fingernails around its waist.
'Aoi,' Ruki managed to say. Uruha didn't answer, just pressed his nose into his sleeping friend's hair, but Aoi's eyes opened slightly. They spent a while searching the room; when they settled on Ruki, they were there a long time, trying to resolve his shape into something familiar.
Ruki noticed, with a feeling like a great chain being tugged through his body, that half of the other man's face was bruised purple.
'It's me,' he said at last, and Aoi tried to push his exhausted face into a smile. Weakly, he flapped a hand: come here.
Almost falling, Ruki went and knelt by the bed, and Aoi somehow gathered the energy to snort.
'Not there,' he said thickly, 'Idiot. Come up here.'
'I won't—'
'You'll fit.'
There was so much effortful shuffling that it made Ruki's head ache; Aoi's hand groped for the sleeve of his t-shirt and somehow Ruki pulled himself up onto the bed, lying gratefully on his side. The sheets felt as expensive as they'd looked.
'Let's go back to sleep,' Aoi said in a cracked voice, 'And Uruha will be here to make sure that we don't choke on our own sick...' his voice faded away and he flopped an arm that felt boneless around Ruki's waist, snuggling into him tiredly.
'I'm glad we're all friends,' Ruki managed to say, his vision wavering, and felt Aoi smile against his shoulder.
'It was a good stunt,' he said exhaustedly, 'Last night.'
'I got you into trouble.'
Aoi gave a loose shrug. 'Worth it.'
'Where's Die?'
'Kyo and Shinya's,' Aoi slurred, 'They wouldn't let us share. Not after...'
He didn't finish his sentence, and Ruki realised from the way the body against his own seemed to soften and the way its breaths seemed to deepen that Aoi had fallen back to sleep. Sighing softly, he wormed his way a little deeper into the sheets, thinking of Die in Kyo's bed.
Ridiculous that it should make him feel so jealous.
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Of course the orderlies would be brutal. I hope Die's okay. As under-nourished as he is, it would be so easy to break a bone. And poor Aoi with his bruise; at least Uruha is taking care of him.
I wonder how Kyo will react to the whole thing once he's released from isolation.
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