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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 took about two weeks for the swelling in Aoi's face to go down. By the time they were halfway through the month, his face was back to its usual shape but was still mottled green and yellow along the jawline and around his eye, and Ruki caught him standing with his cheek pressed up against the dent in the music room wall, to see where exactly he fit into it.
A general air of listlessness had stolen over their floor of the sanatorium; after the rebellion in the music room, both Die and Aoi had been restricted to the ward as well. Since Kai didn't often go further than the lawn, this had the knock-on effect of keeping Uruha inside too; he became extra twitchy and aggravated, and much more inclined to snap when his rituals were interrupted.
The change seemed to come with the weather. It wasn't cold yet, exactly, but it was raining more, and Ruki could feel it dampening all their spirits; another day stuck inside with only the clouds to look at, the clouds and the hills, exactly the same day after day – Kai trying to count the raindrops on a window, tracing their trickling descents with his index finger; Die doing sit ups, a look of grim determination in his eyes even as he joked breathlessly with Aoi; Uruha counting grains of rice at the dinner table. In the middle of it all there was Ruki, flat on his stomach on the floor and surrounded by paper, most often in the music room because the light was better in there.
We're acting like a bunch of mental patients.
Aoi playing guitar until his fingers bled, on the occasions he was allowed to take the guitar out of the cage; Shinya whispering to himself over the chess set; Kyo sitting under the window, reading each new book as Ruki passed them to him: A Clockwork Orange, The Woman in the Dunes, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In group therapy Die and Aoi had a fight about Die's continuous exercising, and a splintery silence existed between them for days.
On September 25 Ruki noticed his shower water was sloshing around his ankles, and found handfuls of dyed red hair clogging the drain.
Aoi bruised and fidgety, Die with lustreless skin and calluses on his knuckles, Kyo with his pinched, tired face angled permanently up to the sun.
We look like a bunch of mental patients.
On September 28 Ruki got a letter with the asylum address printed on the envelope in his mother's neat, compact script.
Before he opened it, he lit a cigarette. He was in the music room as usual, his drift of papers surrounding him and his mostly silent companion reading under the window; feeling strangely rattled, he boosted himself up to sit on top of the piano and tore the letter jaggedly open. Several glossy postcards slipped out of the envelope and landed on the floor beneath his feet, and Ruki gripped the edge of the piano hard.
Eiji. The postcards showed pieces Ruki had seen him working on, and some that he hadn't – a range of abstract woodblock prints; a mixed media piece comprised mostly of paper scraps. He didn't make any move to pick them up, but stared at them dully as he unfolded his mother's letter. Puffing hard on his cigarette, he scanned through it – past the darling Ruki and the must apologise about how it was when your father and I sat in and the I don't know if these are things you want to talk about more with us. She spent a whole paragraph describing the lodger and her habits, how sweet she was and how studious.
As you can see from the postcards, we finally went to that exhibition! We picked up every postcard the gift shop had so we could send them to you.
It was a very peculiar exhibition, Ruki – I suppose you would understand what it's all about far better than your father and I would. To us some of these blocky ones just look like mess! There were some pieces that I feel you would probably need to see with your own eyes to get the full effect. Your father's favourite was called Love Letter and apparently incorporated an entire torn up love note in it, with other things as well – very strange things like scribbled over snapshots and coffee filters and cigarette ends. A bit 'out there' for me. (Your father just likes to feel he's keeping up with what's current.) Anyway, at least it was nice and quiet. I had worried about crowds, but luckily we were just about the only ones in there.
Hopefully you'll enjoy the postcards. I still have high hopes that you will be able to see the exhibition yourself before it finishes, though unfortunately I've heard they are planning to close it early.
Have you been working on anything recently? I miss seeing the pieces you've made. I hope it doesn't disappoint you that your father and I don't have much understanding of art, or of your art in particular. You know we are always very eager to have you explain it to us. Ever since you were very small, I've felt like I should be able to use your pictures to figure out what's going on inside your head, but I've never been as good at it as I've wanted to be.
He let the hand holding the letter drop limply onto his lap. While he'd been reading Kyo had come to stand at his elbow, and the other man was examining the postcards that he'd gathered from the floor.
'Your artist?' he asked, and Ruki shrugged.
'I don't think you can really call him my artist any more.' He folded his mother's letter back up.
'He's not as good as you,' Kyo said frankly, flicking through the postcards. Ruki snorted.
'No?'
'No.'
'You don't have to say that.'
Kyo raised an eyebrow. 'I don't have to say anything, but if I think it then I might as well.' He deposited the postcards decisively on the surface of the piano, leaning back on his elbows. Ruki picked them up and began to shuffle through them slowly, his dark eyes intent.
'You know what's weird?' he asked.
A slight smile curled around the corner of Kyo's mouth. 'I can't even imagine.'
'I don't...' Ruki sighed, turning the last postcard this way and that between his palms. 'I don't miss him,' he finished finally. 'I did. I missed him like crazy.'
'But not any more?'
'No, I mean it sort of feels like I never missed him. I try to remember what things I missed about him – like the actual, specific things – and I can't do it.' He sparked his lighter distractedly. 'I hate it when people leave.'
'Even if they're no good?'
Ruki stared at him. 'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'
Kyo shrugged, his gaze steady. 'It doesn't seem like he was nice to you.'
'He was nice.'
Glowering, Ruki dropped down from the piano, placing his feet squarely on the floor so that he could round on Kyo properly, 'He could be really nice. You don't know anything about him.'
'I know what you've told me,' Kyo said in a neutral voice, and Ruki ground out his cigarette angrily.
'Big deal,' he snapped, 'You heard me complaining, so what? He still mentored me. He still stayed with me for two years. He still – got me a present on my birthday, and everything.'
'Uh huh. Did he watch you open it?'
'Watch me – what?'
'Presents. Did he stay to watch you open them?'
'Well – so what if he didn't? That doesn't mean anything! He was busy!'
'Working?' Kyo said, and the look in his eyes made Ruki want to hit at him.
'Yes, working!'
'Uh huh. What'd he say when you told him about your brother?'
'Why would I tell him about that?'
'Because the people who love you are supposed to know,' Kyo said forcefully.
'You don't know anything,' Ruki hissed, grabbing on a handful of his own hair and agitatedly yanking on it so hard that tears came to his eyes, 'How would you know anything? Have you had a lot of relationships, holed up in here? Been really serious about anybody?'
'He didn't treat you right.'
'Because he wasn't there for some stuff? Because he didn't know every single tiny thing about me?'
'Because he hid you, and he lied about you, and he ditched you.'
'That's – grown-up relationships are just like that. You have to make sacrifices; you have to...you have to accept that you can't always come first with people; that other things are just more important.'
'Do you,' Kyo said quietly, and Ruki felt a few hairs rip loose from his scalp as his fist tightened.
'Yes, you do,' he said defiantly. 'I don't care if it's not – not romantic, or like a relationship in a book. That's real. That's how it is.'
'So he wasn't the most important thing in your world, either?' Kyo asked, and Ruki hesitated.
'I had less going on,' he said.
His voice sounded lame even to him. He clenched his fists even tighter, his knuckles white: 'You wouldn't understand. I'm sorry, you just wouldn't. You've been in here too long.'
Kyo went quiet at that. He gave Ruki a long, painful sort of look, the kind that made him wriggle uncomfortably, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse and soft.
'You deserve to come first,' he said finally, a resigned sort of look on his face, 'Sorry. That's just how I feel.' He shrugged. 'There's no point otherwise.'
Ruki stared at him. There was a sort of burning feeling in his throat that made him want to cry, and he swallowed hard.
'Well, it's not up to you,' he said stiffly.
'Correct.'
Ruki nodded. Not sure what to do with himself, he lit up another cigarette, but let it smoulder in an ashtray after the first drag because it made him feel ill. His fingers shook, he noticed, when he put it down, and he curled them back into fists. He was standing in front of Kyo, but he stared hard at the floor. He watched as two fat tears hit the ground between his feet.
He could feel the rest of them sloshing around inside of him unsteadily, like an overfilled bucket. He sniffed and cleared his throat, and gave a harsh sob.
'Ruki—'
'Are you a fucking idiot?' He grabbed Kyo's wrists, pulling them towards him, 'Do something. Hug me.' He jammed the other man's arms into place around his back and pushed himself into his chest, clutching hold of two great handfuls of Kyo's t-shirt so he couldn't be pried loose. He ignored the way Kyo's breathing turned sort of shallow and fast, and the frozen sort of feeling to his body; he squeezed him all the harder. The urge to cry was incredible, irresistible as a cough, and he pressed his eyes tightly shut.
'You think I'm an idiot,' he said, speaking into Kyo's neck so his voice came out muffled, 'You think I don't know that he didn't care about me, but I do know. All he wanted was somebody to have sex with him and tell him that he was brilliant. He didn't want me. He didn't even like me. I know.'
His shoulders under Kyo's hands felt as delicate as a cat's; they heaved violently.
'I don't think you're an idiot,' Kyo said uncomfortably.
'Yeah, right,' Ruki said bitingly, sounding as if he had a heavy cold. 'If that's what you really think then you're as stupid as I am.'
'You don't think maybe Okada is the stupid one?'
Ruki snorted sadly. 'How'd you figure that?'
'Well,' Kyo said awkwardly, 'he had somebody who loved him this much, and he let that go. To me, that's stupid.'
'It's only stupid if you love them back.'
Kyo sighed, his nervous breath ruffling Ruki's hair. 'I'm not good at this,' he said bluntly, 'And I'm not going to be able to explain, so you're just going to have to believe me: he did a stupid thing. Leaving you, treating you like that; it was stupid.'
'You make it sound so simple.'
'It is simple.'
Ruki sighed. 'Hug me properly,' he said. 'You feel like a dead tree.'
'I haven't done this in a long time.'
'Yeah, but it's kind of like riding a bike. I assume you didn't forget the basic theory,' Ruki said acidly, nestling his face deeper into Kyo's neck. He could feel the point where the pulse leapt anxiously under his skin; a dead tree, but beating with life.
He felt strangely calm.
He felt purged, as though he'd sucked all the poison out of a snakebite.
It was a relief. It was like lying down and knowing that he was no longer able to trip over. Like being in deep water and deciding to sink instead of thrashing. He felt Kyo tentatively rest his cheek against the side of his head; there was a muscle twitching in his jaw.
Kyo's body felt unusual beneath his own; it was harder than Eiji's had been, thinner, and more compact. There was no awkward placement of arms or shoulders, because their heights were matched almost exactly, hip to hip, chest to chest, neck to neck; like a mirror image. He slid his hands carefully up Kyo's back and felt muscle tense as wire beneath the fabric of his t-shirt, the heat of his skin burning through the cotton.
Ruki angled his hips suddenly away, feeling slightly sick with the rush that had gone through him. He closed his eyes against the skin of Kyo's neck, concentrating hard on the pulse that thrashed there. He wondered if Kyo could feel how his own heart was doing the same, or hear how his own breath had the same quick, frightened note humming beneath it, as if his fear was gasping below his skin.
'Cuddle cuddle cuddle,' said a sly voice from nearby, and Ruki jumped so hard he almost headbutted Kyo in the jaw; he shoved the other man away roughly, tugging his t-shirt down to hide the growing bulge in his pants. Aoi was lounging in the empty door frame, a cigarette in his hand and a smug look on his face. He blew a long plume of grey smoke at them and strode into the room. 'This what you do on all your long walks?'
'Shut up,' Ruki mumbled, pushing the postcards into a neatly stacked pile just for something to do with his hands, 'I was just – I got a letter from my mum, that's all.'
'She well?' Aoi asked unconcernedly. He draped his lean body elegantly over an armchair, taking a short puff from his cigarette, 'What's with the postcards?'
'She – my parents went to an exhibition they thought I'd like.'
'Your mentor guy?' Aoi guessed flatly, and Ruki gave a short nod. 'Can I see?'
Wordlessly Ruki handed over the stack of postcards, relieved that the erection that had started when he'd pressed his body against Kyo's was at last going down. He felt both angry and grateful both towards Aoi, who settled himself deeper in his armchair with a wriggle of his shoulders and peered at each of the postcards in turn.
'Where's Die?' Ruki asked, trying to puncture the big balloon of silence that seemed to be swelling between the three of them.
'We're not joined at the hip.'
'Yes you are. Where is he?'
Aoi sighed, flicking ash onto the floor, 'He's having a visit from mummy and daddy, and they're not happy.'
'Not happy?'
Out of the corner of his eye, Ruki saw Kyo return to his spot under the window, pulling his knees up to his chest and tilting his head back, eyes closed.
'Not happy at all,' Aoi said idly, and then flicked his eyes up to look at Ruki. 'He's lost weight again,' he said bluntly, 'And they're having a frank talk. Want to decide if this is the right place for him. If it's good for him.'
'Where else could he go?'
'I don't know,' Aoi said moodily. He dropped the postcards in a pile on the arm of the chair, 'These are shitty. You're better off without him.' He took a short pull on his cigarette, 'Of course, Die doesn't want to go anywhere else, unless it's home. But why would that matter?'
'You really think they'd move him?'
Aoi shrugged helplessly. His face was twisted into a bitter expression, but his eyes looked wide, 'I don't know. I know they shouldn't. I can get him to eat; I just need to...figure it out.' He sighed. 'I can't believe they're even talking about it. If talking solved anything we'd all have gotten out of here a long fucking time ago.' He paused. 'Die's doctor said I was a bad influence,' he said in a smaller voice.
'A bad influence?'
'Yeah. She said Die's been behaving rebelliously and that...' he swallowed, his throat working angrily, 'There have been worrying incidents in our relationship.'
He caught Ruki's questioning look and rolled his eyes. 'I danced with him,' he snapped. 'Big – fucking – deal. I don't give a shit if boys don't dance together outside; they do in here. There is nothing else to do. Are they scared I'm gonna fuck him just because we danced?'
Ruki was pretty sure that was exactly what they were scared of, but he didn't really know how to say so. He gave a non-committal sort of shrug, but Aoi seemed to catch his meaning anyway: his eyes narrowed.
'I wouldn't fuck him if he begged me,' he said deliberately, 'Not while he's like this. He's weak; don't they see that? I don't even know if he could get it up for more than five minutes at a time. His body's giving up.'
He stabbed his cigarette furiously into the arm of the chair, grinding it out. 'If he dies,' he said savagely, 'I'll never forgive him. I swear to god I won't.'
Ruki placed a hand quietly on Aoi's shoulder, and the other man closed his eyes wearily. A thin tear trickled down his cheek, and Ruki did him the greatest kindness he could think of: he pretended not to see.
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