![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solongsun Since early childhood, Kaoru has been using doors to travel backwards and forwards through time: a motion he is sometimes able to control, and sometimes not. At the age of 22, he opens a door to the long-ago autumn of 1996 and finds something he never expected – a man who, decades before Kaoru's birth, seems to know exactly who he is...
Toshiya's scrawny, in a growth spurt stage, his hair a shiny black cap around his ears. His brothers have run on, leaving him, but he is the smallest; his legs can't keep up yet. Scowling, he picks up a stick and throws it against a tree.
He wants to be bigger, and it's not fair.
The mountain air is clear and pure in the morning, thin and sharp as a blade. There's a baseball in his hands and a scab on his left knee. He doesn't like playing by himself.
When the stranger appears, it's not threatening: his town is small and safe and quiet, a bright and tiny bubble, even if the stranger looks weird. His hair is blond, which Toshiya has never seen in real life before; only on the television. Underneath all that blond is a thick black ponytail that's the longest hair Toshiya's ever seen, and behind the hair is a man's anxious face, looking around a lot and seeming ill at ease.
He spots Toshiya and hesitates for a minute, looking at him uncertainly.
'Where am I?' he says at last.
This is easy enough because Toshiya is six and he has his address memorised.
'You're in Kiso village, Nagano Prefecture, Japan,' he says, and flings out an arm to point left, 'The river's over that way.'
He adds this last part on his own volition; he's often heard adults describe things as being east or west of the river, so he figures it's useful.
'Nagano?'
Toshiya lifts his chin slightly. 'You can get here on the railway,' he says declaratively, 'Or by driving on national route number nineteen.'
The stranger still looks worried, but he smiles a little at that.
'You're a smart kid,' he says, seemingly to himself. Then something seems to happen to him – his expression changes to one that Toshiya can't recognise, and his eyes get bigger in his face. He gives Toshiya a long, long look, and sort of makes to step towards him, but then doesn't.
'Kiso village,' he repeats again finally, in a weird voice, and Toshiya nods a bit more hesitantly because the stranger is being weird now. The man kind of shakes his head, like he's just come up from underwater. 'Is your name Toshimasa Hara?' he says, still in that weird voice, and Toshiya gives him an appraising look.
'Everyone calls me Toshiya.'
'But you are Toshimasa Hara?'
'Yeah,' he says.
The stranger stares and stares at him, and Toshiya shifts awkwardly on the spot. The man's eyes are still huge and he has raised his hand to his mouth, and there's a sort of shininess to his eyes like he's about to cry or something.
'I'm sorry,' the man says at last, 'It's just that I haven't seen you in a – in a very long time.'
'How long?' Toshiya asks, his face clearing; he likes numbers. Being six, that's a good thing. It's almost a thousand times better than being five.
'It's been – just a long time. It's hard to say exactly.' He swallows hard, his eyes still wet-looking, 'Hey, how old are you?'
'I'm six years and three months. And...' Toshiya counts on his fingers, 'Six...seven...eight days.' He looks up into the stranger's face. 'How old are you?'
'Twenty eight.'
'Exactly twenty eight? It's your birthday?'
'No, I'm...twenty eight years, four months and twenty one days. Exactly.'
'Okay.' Toshiya eyes him thoughtfully. 'What's your name?'
'My name's Kaoru.'
'Isn't that a girl's name?'
'Only sometimes. It can be a boy's name too.'
Toshiya nods, absorbing that information. He throws the baseball high up into the air; tries to catch it behind his back but misses.
'Listen, Toshiya. Can I ask you something?'
'Uh huh.'
'I need to find something. I'm looking for a door with a special kind of doorknob on it. It's round, and it's made of brass, so it's a brown-coloured metal. You know anywhere in the village with a door like that?'
'Yeah.' Toshiya looks at him like he's crazy, 'My closet.'
'Your closet,' Kaoru repeats, sounding like it's bad news. He rubs a hand across the back of his neck, biting down on his lower lip. 'Toshiya, I know it's weird, but do you think I could go and see it?'
'My closet?'
'Yeah. It's pretty important. The thing is though, I kind of need to get there without too many people seeing me. Do you think that's possible?'
'Maybe,' says Toshiya doubtfully. 'Nobody's at home right now.'
'Right, your parents are...' Kaoru says, like he's reminding himself of something, but tails off. 'So you live...with your mum and dad right now?'
'Yeah.' Toshiya kicks out at a scrubby patch of grass lamely.
'Where are they at the moment?'
'Out.'
'Are they out a lot these days?' Kaoru asks carefully, and Toshiya gives a rough shrug.
'You have to have a job so that you can buy things to eat.'
'I know, but you're just a kid. You need to have a grown-up in the house with you.'
'I like it best when they're out. They argue all the time.'
'I know, but you're little, Toshiya. There needs to be an adult to look after you.'
He can tell he's said the wrong thing by the offended angle Toshiya holds his shoulders at, crossing his arms firmly over his chest. Still though, after a quiet and slightly sulky moment passes, Kaoru feels a small and surprising hand nestle itself trustfully into his.
'Let's go to see my closet now,' Toshiya says, and he starts to pull Kaoru along.
Toshiya's village leads uphill and the houses are very traditional, packed close together and higgledy-piggledy. The mountains loom all around like a bad headache.
'Pretty here,' Kaoru manages to say.
'Uh huh.' Toshiya turns around and casts him an unreadable look. 'My legs get tired going up all the hills.'
'They won't for long. They'll get bigger and stronger.'
'I want to be big. I want to be tall.'
'You will be tall,' Kaoru says, his voice sounding a little like he has a cold.
'How do you know?'
'I just know, that's all.' He shrugs, and Toshiya thinks his eyes look a bit pink, 'You ever feel like you just know something – you can't really explain why, but you know it's true?'
Toshiya thinks hard about this. 'Yeah,' he says, 'sometimes.'
'So you can believe me, then. You're going to be tall.'
'Seven feet tall?'
'No, not as much as seven feet.'
'Oh.'
They lapse back into silence, turning onto a very steep hill that makes Toshiya slow down significantly. It's summer, and it's warm, and Kaoru can feel his t-shirt sticking to him damply. When they round the corner and the hill keeps on going up, Toshiya stops abruptly.
'My legs need a rest,' he says, 'It's too steep.'
'You want me to carry you on my back?' Kaoru offers, and a little spark goes through Toshiya's face.
'Really?'
'Sure. Climb up.' He bends down and feels Toshiya clambering onto his back as nimble as a monkey, skinny arms thrown around his neck. They're surprisingly strong, like wire. 'Which way?'
'All the way up, and then that way.'
'I can't see which way you're pointing, Toshiya.'
'Oh.' He thinks about it. 'Left,' he says uncertainly.
Kaoru hesitates. 'Which left?'
'This one,' Toshiya says, patting Kaoru's right shoulder, and the man has to suppress a smile.
The rest of the trek is quiet, Toshiya simply hitting Kaoru's shoulders to make him change direction, obviously enjoying himself a lot. He leads him up to a ramshackle sort of house tucked between two others in a dense row. A crumbling wall stakes claim to a patch of scrubby garden in front of the building, but it hasn't been tended to in some time; it's mostly weeds and baked earth. Nervous now, Kaoru pushes through the gate and lets Toshiya slide down from his back.
'You have a key?' he asks quietly, and Toshiya sends him a look that tells him he's asked a stupid question.
'It's never locked.' He pushes the door open to a dark interior. 'You have to take your shoes off,' he says. 'We don't have spare slippers, though.'
'That's okay.' Slipping quickly through the door, Kaoru pulls off his shoes but picks them up, carrying them loosely at his side. 'Toshiya, are you sure your parents aren't here?'
'They're never here.'
'Okay. Where's your closet?'
Toshiya takes him by the hand again and leads him through the house, which is small and somehow gloomy; the ceiling feels low and the windows are bleary. It's messy, too, and Toshiya weaves an expert path through the clutter, pushing his way into a tiny box room with the bedding still laid out over the floor. There's some kind of stuffed animal caught up in the nest of sheets, and Toshiya stuffs it embarrassedly out of sight.
'There it is,' he says, pointing unnecessarily to the large closet that dominates most of one wall, 'That's the doorknob you said, right?'
'It is,' Kaoru says with relief. Sighing, he gets down on one knee so he can look Toshiya in the eye better, and sets both hands on his shoulders. 'Okay,' he says, 'I'm gonna tell you something, and I need you to listen really, really carefully and do what I say, all right?'
Toshiya gives a one-shouldered shrug, and Kaoru sighs again. 'Just – if any other grown-up ever asks you to do this again, to take them back to your house whilst your parents aren't home, you have to say no, okay? Say no, and as quick as you can, go and find an adult that you can trust.'
'Why?'
'Because some grown-ups want to hurt you,' Kaoru says baldly. 'I don't, I'm safe, but you never know, okay? Even if a person seems really nice and they say that they know your mum and dad, never let them in. Right?'
'Right,' Toshiya agrees dubiously, and Kaoru gives his shoulders a little squeeze.
'Can you promise that for me? It's really important.'
'Okay, I promise.' Toshiya leans forward and presses their foreheads together briefly. 'There.'
'What?'
'I promised.'
Kaoru smiles, but it looks sort of sad.
'Okay, good. The second thing I need to tell you is that in a second, I'm going to disappear. I'm going to walk into your closet and close the door, and when you open it again, I'll be gone.' He hesitates. 'I know that's a really weird thing to happen, so it'll make you want to tell people, but you need to keep it a total secret. Okay?
'Why?' Toshiya says instantly, looking impressed.
'Because it's a really unusual thing to happen in the world, so lots of people don't believe it can happen. So that makes them think that if you say you've seen it, maybe you're crazy. And you're not crazy, so you don't want people to think you are.'
'Crazy like on TV?' Toshiya asks, and Kaoru pauses.
'Kind of,' he says at last, 'But a bit sadder and a bit more scared.'
'Okay.'
'Okay, you won't tell anybody?'
'Okay, I won't tell anybody.' Toshiya grins at him suddenly, 'Can I watch you do it?'
'Sure, I guess.' Kaoru gives his shoulders a final squeeze – the bones feel so fragile and finely turned beneath his hands – and gets to his feet. He stands in front of the closet for a second, and then places his hand on the brass doorknob and opens the door.
'See you around,' Toshiya says nonchalantly, and Kaoru gives him another weird smile: like he's happy but he sort of wants to cry as well.
'Yeah,' he agrees in a peculiar thick voice, 'I'll see you around, Toshiya.' He drums his fingers on the closet hinge for a moment, and then suddenly says, 'Your parents aren't arguing because of you, you know. They have grown-up problems. But none of it is your fault.'
Toshiya gives him a very old smile, rueful, and it's obvious he doesn't believe him.
'Okay,' he says in a quiet voice, and Kaoru nods at him. He takes a deep breath, and as Toshiya watches, he steps through the closet door and closes it behind him.
As soon as it latches Toshiya is running to open it again, and he climbs eagerly inside the closet to look for a hidden door, for a Twilight Zone portal; for anything, but all he finds are his limp hand-me-down clothes.
But Kaoru doesn't see any of this. The scene has already changed, and he's gone.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject