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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...
When Ruki next woke up, everything felt different.
He was back in his own bed, for one thing, and there was no long body pressed against his own. The quality of the sunlight had changed, too; it was slanted through the dorm room at a dramatic angle, like it was either very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon.
The radio was playing, bursts of The Kinks – All Day And All Of The Night – between the hiss of static, and Ruki rolled awkwardly over on his bed. On the mattress opposite, Kai was sitting cross-legged with a book in his hands; he looked over the top of it when Ruki stirred, though, and smiled.
He looked strange, Ruki thought: older than usual. His smile reached his eyes but it didn't light them up like it normally did.
'Hello,' he said, 'You've been out for a long time.'
'Right.' Ruki eased his body upright, letting a wave of dizziness pass over him, 'What time is it?'
'It's just past six. In the morning, I mean.' He paused. 'It's the first of September.'
'It's...' Ruki put a gentle hand to his forehead, 'What?'
'You've been out for two days.'
'Two days?'
Ruki tore through his memory, but it was like trying to grasp onto a slippery bar of soap; the harder he squeezed, the faster things seemed to pop out of his grasp. 'But I...'
'Don't you remember eating?'
'Eating?'
'Yes, they woke you up to eat. I mean...they fed you, you know.'
Ruki had a sudden impression of himself swaddled in a hospital gown, his mouth making stupid gumming motions as some white-uniformed orderly fed him a spoonful of grey mush. The image was such a deeply unpleasant one that he felt the urge to bat it away, as if it was something physical.
'Are Aoi and Die...?'
'Aoi's up. Die isn't. He's so thin, you know – these things really get him.'
'They fed Die, too?' Ruki asked quietly, and Kai fiddled with his hair, hesitating.
'He didn't know they were doing it, I don't think,' he said at last.
'And – Kyo?'
'They let him out of the isolation room last night.' Kai bit his lower lip lightly, 'He hasn't said anything, though.'
'Did he hear us?'
That strange, abbreviated version of Kai's ordinary smile flickered over his lips: 'The whole place heard you.' His face relaxed a little. 'That was really something.'
'Yeah.'
'Aoi's face is pretty busted up. Die's too. His nose, I mean.'
'How can they do that,' Ruki said, not really a question, and Kai gave a loose shrug.
'Die'll never tell his parents, and if Aoi tried telling his, they wouldn't care.'
'Why wouldn't Die—?'
'He thinks they worry too much about him already. More than he deserves.' Kai fiddled with his hair again, his eyes following an invisible pattern on his grey blanket, 'There's nothing much else we can really do. Nobody believes anything we say, because we're crazy.'
Ruki shot him a sideways look, because Kai had never referred to himself that way before. The irony was that it made him seem saner than usual.
Ruki showered in a sort of fog that morning, feeling dirty from two days of continuous sleep. He stood under the spray for a long time, turning it up as hot as he dared, and by the time he wrapped himself in a towel and stepped out of his cubicle, the room had filled up with steam and the mirrors were opaque white slates. That was good: he didn't want to see himself. He was frightened he'd still look drugged up, and that there would be a look in his eyes that would stay with him; sort of defeated, sort of mindless. Like a zombie. He towelled his hair off slowly.
There was no way to pretend that it wasn't his fault. He'd talked them into it, both of them; even if they hadn't needed much persuading, none of it would have happened if Ruki had just kept his mouth shut.
He couldn't make himself regret it, though, he thought as he pulled clothes over his damp body. That was a difficult thing to swallow: if he was given the chance, he'd do it over again without question. It was worth it just for the hope that Kyo had heard the music; that he might have known he wasn't alone in there.
He knew the other man wouldn't be awake at that time of day, but when he left the bathroom, he couldn't help but tiptoe up close to Kyo and Shinya's bedroom door anyway. He hesitated in front of it for a long moment, but all was completely silent from beyond.
His hand stole out towards the door handle, but he pulled it back and told himself not to be so stupid. Wobbling only very slightly on his feet, he set off down the eerily silent hallway; he didn't like to be out before everybody else was up. The corridors looked all wrong with every door closed, like a series of closed eyes. The walls felt like they were breathing.
In the music room, the stack of records they'd left on the floor had been tidied neatly into a corner. The blood that had dripped onto the floor from Die's nose had been mopped up, but there was still a faint dent in the plaster of the wall where Aoi's face had hit it.
The ghosts of his friends seemed to flicker around the room; a flash of Aoi on top of the piano, a flash of Die clutching at his face.
What had really been so wrong with what they'd been doing, anyway? With any of the things he'd done? All right, so he'd been late getting back – was it really so bad? So they'd played the music too loud, so they'd locked the door – nothing had gone wrong. Nobody had been hurt, or at least not until the staff had got involved.
Unconsciously, Ruki began pacing the room. Locked up for three months, shit. Pacing his prison. Five steps around this wall; seven steps around that wall.
How many heartbeats?
Breaths?
It wasn't fair. Kyo in the isolation room; that hadn't been fair. That tone Ruki had never heard in his voice before – that fearful tone – that hadn't been fair, either.
How many thoughts? How many actual, individual thoughts?
How many people?
How many ghosts?
Shinya at the piano and Aoi against the wall. Die swinging his hips. Kyo sat under the window, head tipped back, sunshine golden on his exposed throat.
Ruki himself, hanging around the edges, observing.
Not fair. Eiji, his exhibition, whoever Kaito was: not fair. Eiji calling him kid all the time. Eiji fucking him when he didn't want to be fucked.
How many thoughts could you cram into a single room at one time? In your mind? How many flaws in a single body; could you draw it, map it out? Problem by problem, all the mistakes they had made in manufacturing; all the screws loose inside your head? All the pointless screams and the dreams that felt real and the times that your soul seemed to rise up from your body; couldn't you quantify that? Saying things that you knew weren't true and not bothering to bathe because it all felt pointless when you'd have to do it the next day anyway, and the next and the next after that, all stretching onward into forever?
Not fair.
Ruki took a deep breath. His hands were shaking a little, he realised, and he forced them to relax; he wanted them steady.
He went and fetched some paper and a pencil. In the music room he lay down carefully on his stomach, propped up on his elbows on the shiny floor, and spread his materials around him.
(His brother's special hospital-style bed in the corner: not fair.)
He began to draw.
After that, it seemed like the morning flew away around him. Every movement of his pencil seemed to nudge another great chunk of time in the past.
By the time he was interrupted and told it was time for breakfast, his breath was coming out quicker, and he had a strange elated feeling pressing up at his ribs. The work in front of him might have looked like nothing more than a bunch of formless scribbles to an outsider, but he couldn't explain why: he just knew there was something in them. He knew that they could resolve themselves into something beautiful, and that by doing so, they could make their substance beautiful as well: Die's bloody nose, Shinya flying out of control, Kai's long howling screams; all beautiful. All scribbled, somewhere, one line in a mess of others.
'I don't want to eat,' Ruki said distractedly, 'I'm not hungry.'
'Tough titty,' said a familiar voice from above him, and he glanced up quickly.
'Aoi!' He scrambled to his feet, 'Aoi, you – your face.'
The other man had a cigarette propped in the corner of his mouth, but that was about the only normal-looking thing about him; the entire left side of his face was mottled purple and swollen, and though Aoi cracked a grin, it looked painful.
'Yeah, I know. I look like shit.'
'It's all my fault,' Ruki said quietly, and Aoi rolled his eyes.
'You know as well as I do that I didn't get hurt for playing music loudly. That one orderly with the hairy arms is a total homophobe; remember when he told Kai off for cuddling up to Uruha on the sofa? He's been waiting for an excuse ever since he got here.'
He caught the expression on Ruki's face and rolled his eyes again, grabbing the smaller man by his arm and beginning to pull him in the direction of the dining room, 'Seriously, it's fine. No major damage, okay? The bruising will go down.' He slid another glance at Ruki and sighed fondly, 'Take that look off your face, will you? Nobody died.'
'But Die—'
'Oh, come on, Ruki. A few full meals and some enforced rest time probably did him some good. And you can't say it wasn't worth it.'
'But your face—'
'I'll have the memory long after my face is back its glorious original state. No scars. No bumps. Forget it, okay?'
'But—'
'Forget it,' Aoi said emphatically. 'Look, whatever happens, it's worth it. Like nailing Uruha's dad with that cake. It's good for morale; or at least it's good for my morale. Even if I knew they were going to break them off, I'd still always want to stick two fingers up at this fucking place. You get me?'
He steered Ruki easily into the dining room and pushed him down into his usual seat, where there was already a tray waiting: hot rice, a raw egg, a small dish of soy sauce. Pickles, miso.
'Everyone was waiting for you,' Aoi said, his voice as always just threatening to slip over into sarcasm, 'Since you're the man of the hour, and everything.'
Ruki chose to ignore that. He mumbled an embarrassed good morning and picked up his chopsticks, beginning to poke at his food disinterestedly; he didn't feel remotely hungry. All he wanted to do was draw, but...
He stiffened suddenly and glanced upward.
Everyone was waiting for you...it was true. Even Shinya, normally deaf and blind to any activity around the ward, was smiling at him with his hand over his mouth; even Die, ashen-faced and slumped sideways in his chair, was waving away the spoonful of rice porridge being offered to him and attempting to focus on Ruki's face.
Even Kyo.
He was in his usual seat up at the far end of the table, and he wasn't eating. His hair was standing almost on end, and Ruki could picture him raking his hands through it a thousand times.
He looked different. Small. Logically Ruki knew that he was small, but this was the first time he'd ever really looked it. All the strange angular bones that made up his body appeared fragile, jutting against his pale skin, and his eyes looked very deep and black in his face; they were bloodshot and darkly shadowed, as if he hadn't slept in days.
He nodded at Ruki and pulled his cracked lips into a tired smile.
'Hi.'
'Hi.'
They were interrupted by a crash from Die's end of the table; he had been supporting his head on the heel of his hand, and the whole arrangement had toppled. He blinked dazedly, half asleep, and gave a more effortful shove to the hand holding the spoon of porridge by his face.
'At least he finally got to try pentobarbital,' Aoi said sarcastically, but he reached out to give his friend's hair a soft stroke. 'C'mon, Die, eat some breakfast.'
The redhead made a non-committal noise and slumped down further in his chair; he looked exhausted. His nose didn't look broken, but it was bordered with two black eyes that were welling involuntarily with tears of exhaustion. He said something, but it was incomprehensible.
'Come on,' Aoi said, gentler. 'Just a few spoonfuls and they'll let you go back to sleep. Yeah?'
Die's eyes fell closed, and he made a sound like a snore. Aoi rolled his eyes.
'If you take another mouthful I'll suck you off.'
'Aoi,' the nurse trying to feed Die whispered sharply, and Aoi held both his hands up.
'Sorry, sorry. Just thought I'd try something to get him to eat, since you suck at it so much.'
The nurse simply sighed and settled herself deeper into her chair, brushing the tip of her spoon coaxingly against Die's lower lip. He kept his eyes closed, but opened his mouth to take it.
Ruki realised that he must have looked like that – him and Aoi and Die, the three of them as numb and empty as the eye of a hurricane – and suppressed a shudder, starting to mix his food up unenthusiastically. He poured a little soy sauce into the bowl with his egg, mixed it roughly, then pressed a small well into the centre of his rice bowl to stir it all together.
This had always been his mother's standard breakfast; rice and soy sauce and raw eggs was an easy meal for her hectic young family. Before the disease had progressed quite so far, it had been something Hiroshi had been able to eat himself, if he'd used a spoon, but gradually those days had passed. Or perhaps passed was the wrong word, because it was more like they'd had more of a fading out period: sometimes he could hold the spoon just fine but sometimes his hand would sort of spasm and he'd let it drop. You could just never be sure. After a while, though, it had been quicker for him not to try, and their mother had fed him just like the nurse was feeding Die.
Ruki wondered how that would feel: somebody telling you to stop trying because it was no good.
He knew his parents were good people, and that they had been busy and that maybe it was painful for them to watch his brother attempt to feed himself.
Still he couldn't think of any good reason not to have let him at least try.
After breakfast Ruki waited, watching Die being dispatched sleepily back to his bed; he wasn't really walking, just tottering with a nurse under each elbow, going in the right direction more or less by accident.
He wanted to draw – he had a keen sense of panic that the ideas and the fresh surge of inspiration would suddenly evaporate, like mist before a sweltering humid day – but seeing Kyo at breakfast, something had tugged at him. It felt almost exactly like a cruel hand had reached into his chest and given his heart a sharp yank; he could feel it thudding strangely against the confines of his ribcage, hurting in an earnest kind of way that made his eyes want to water even though there was nothing to cry about.
'Come into the music room with me,' he said, standing right in front of Kyo so it couldn't be mistaken who he was talking to. The other man smiled.
'Going to lock me in with you?' he said, his voice hoarser than normal.
'Not this time.'
Outside, it was a glorious looking day, and inside the ward it was beginning to feel stuffy already. Ruki sat down uncertainly in the centre of his drawings, recognising the shape his small body had made as the papers had snowed down around him, and Kyo took his usual spot underneath the window. Sighing, he tipped his head back and let his eyes fall closed.
'You heard the music?' Ruki checked, and Kyo smiled wearily.
'Yes. It helped.'
'Die chose the songs.'
'It wasn't the songs; it was thinking of you out here, moving around in the space.'
Pretend you're outside.
'Is it the darkness you don't like, or the smallness?' Ruki asked curiously. Eyes still closed, Kyo began fumbling with his cigarette packet; he popped one between his lips and lit up.
'Both,' he answered shortly, his word a cloud of blue smoke.
'Why?'
'They're unpleasant things.'
'Yeah, but...' he floundered, and Kyo cracked one eye open to look at him.
'The truth?' he offered gruffly, and Ruki nodded. He watched Kyo's open eye flick towards the empty door frame and back.
'I used to get locked in a cupboard as a punishment. I started feeling like I couldn't stand it.' He shrugged. 'That's the truth.'
'The whole truth?'
Kyo gave him a wider smile, showing teeth this time.
'Why didn't you want me to wait outside the door?'
Kyo's cigarette had gone out; he relit it carefully.
'I don't know.'
'Liar.'
Kyo nodded. 'I didn't want you to overhear if I got worked up in there.'
'You think that'd really matter, after all the times you've seen me in a state?'
Kyo shrugged. 'Snap decision,' he said tiredly. Idly, he picked up one of the pieces of paper on the floor and, glancing quickly at Ruki's face for permission, examined it. He looked at it for a very long time.
'Can I ask a favour,' he said eventually, and Ruki nodded. Kyo paused, fiddling with his cigarette and finally stubbing it out, only half-smoked. 'Can I sit here while you carry on drawing?' he asked at last, his voice blunt.
'What?'
Kyo shook his head. 'No conversation,' he said, 'You just draw. I just sit.'
Ruki felt the corners of his lips twitching upwards. 'I guess.'
Kyo gave a single slow nod, and then tilted his head back, letting his eyes shut again. He looked exhausted, Ruki thought, but more peaceful than he had at the breakfast table.
And he'd given up a secret.
How many others were there?
And how many could you fit inside a single person? And were they contained on the inside or worn on the outside, in dark circles under your eyes or in shaking hands?
Ruki picked up his pencil and began drawing again, his lines demarcating quantities, qualities, tallies and breadths; he stared down at his paper and had the impression of sinking right down into it, safely, to a place where everything else went away for a while. All the outside radio signals, silenced. The bullshit stopped.
Underneath the window, Kyo quietly fell asleep, a restful expression at last on his pale, tired face.