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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...
He was being chased by something; he couldn't see what it was. His legs ran painfully slowly, as if he was wading through thick mud; he ran through his old school auditorium, which was somehow also his house as well, and opened a door into the sanatorium, where the lights glared off the white corridors and winced like a migraine. He passed Kyo's door and realised that he was still in his room, and that he hadn't been warned that whatever chased him was coming; he turned on his heel, wheeling around to bang on the door with his fist—
'All the leaves are brown...and the sky is grey...'
Ruki's eyes fluttered open, one small curled fist coming up to rub at them. He was in bed and the room was dim; the sun wasn't all the way up yet. Across the room, Kai was a completely motionless lump in his bed, the sheets pulled all the way up over his head, and it was the tinny sound of his radio that had woken Ruki up: The Mamas and the Papas singing California Dreamin'.
'I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.,' they sang cheerfully as Ruki clumsily pushed back the covers and sat up, yawning so widely his jaw clicked; he hadn't slept much, or very well. Kai had seemed to be having a difficult sort of night, rolling around frequently and making little groaning noises in his sleep; normally, he was silent as the grave.
Shivering slightly in the morning chill, Ruki got to his feet and padded over to his friend's bed. He had a weird feeling in his skin; the kind of anxious, edgy, almost itchy feeling he got whilst he was waiting for a summer thunderstorm to come along and break up the humidity in the air. Gingerly he reached out and gave what he guessed was Kai's shoulder a light prod.
'California dreamin' on such a winter's day...'
Kai didn't respond, and so carefully Ruki peeled back the sheet. It was a tricky job; it was tangled around Kai's head, but Ruki worked it loose, smoothing it gently around his shoulders.
His hands stilled.
There was something wrong with him.
Ruki froze for just a split-second before stumbling hurriedly backwards and hitting the switch on the wall; the room flared with yellow light, the outside seemed to darken in the square pane of the window, and Kai's skin was the wrong colour. His hands and the area around his mouth were blue, and his exposed arms and face were mottled a sick grey-purple; there was a smell of urine and when Ruki slipped the radio from Kai's hands, he found the skin there cool and artificial feeling.
A great, hideous scream got caught somewhere in his throat, creating a lump that he couldn't swallow past. Some kind of dried foam was caked around Kai's mouth and when Ruki tremblingly thumbed open one of his eyelids, the pupil stayed fat despite the light on overhead. Last of all Ruki's fumbling hand found his throat, confirming what he already knew: there was no pulse, and Kai was dead whilst his little radio still played on, wheezing out music with a static hiss collected over hundreds of miles of airwaves.
Very carefully, Ruki got to his hands and knees and felt his way over to the skirting board. He found the screw that twisted out but botched the job, his hands shaking so badly he could barely grip; at long last he got the screw out and the panel of wood fell flat onto the floor.
Totally empty. Ruki worked his hand into the hole and felt into all the dusty, crumbling corners, but there wasn't a single pill left; it was just an empty dark hole now, like every other empty dark place in the world.
Finally, the yell caught in Ruki's throat worked itself loose, and he squeezed his eyes shut as doors started to slam open all over the ward.
The morning floated by in a kind of nightmarish haze. When the nurses came, they covered Kai's face up again, and they wrapped Ruki up in a grey blanket as though he was the one who had died. He was grateful, dimly; he couldn't seem to stop shivering, his teeth clicking together.
Faces floated past him like the moons of foreign planets: Uruha's pale and shocked, his eyes terribly wide and his fist hitting at the side of his head; Die's sagging emptily with tear tracks glistening on his pale cheeks, his shoulders seeming to bow under the weight of the truth; Aoi's mouth working soundlessly as he cried, his hands fisting in his own hair. Die reached out for him and Ruki watched numbly as he folded Aoi carefully into his arms, his chin resting on the top of Aoi's messy dark head.
Uruha's eyes were red; Shinya had both hands crossed over his mouth and his gaze fixed to the floor. Kyo was...
Ruki's eyes found him blearily. He was standing there just in a T-shirt and his underwear, his hair tousled from sleep, and when he caught Ruki's stare he held it. Warily he stepped closer, and when Ruki didn't object he put a careful hand on his arm, keeping their eyes firmly locked so that Ruki could read the question in them: is this okay?
He could feel the strange tension in Kyo's body and his breathing. He made a halting gesture forwards and slowly, incredibly, Kyo placed his arms around him. For a second, he held him close, his body warm through the blanket; then, he began walking, and Ruki allowed himself to be led. His legs seemed to be moving on autopilot, and he nearly stumbled, but Kyo seemed to be holding him upright. He was taken gently through a door and sat on a sofa, Kyo's body settling stiffly next to him. Through the windows, he could see the sun rising properly now, a golden glow at the edge of the horizon and the sky washed a delicate pink, purplish clouds floating insubstantially here and there. The surrounding hills looked more blue than black, and the birds were singing.
'He took pills,' Ruki said, his voice juddering violently; he swallowed hard to try and control it. 'That's how he did it.' He took a deep breath. 'He hardly ever took his medicine. He kept everything he didn't take in a hole in the wall, and I...I never thought it was a problem. I never thought he'd want to—'
'Nobody could have known,' Kyo said quietly.
'But I – slept next to him, and – he must have still been alive when I went to bed, but he didn't make any noise, and I—'
Ruki broke off roughly, shaking his head. 'I know you don't like being touched,' he said dully, 'But I really need to touch you right now.'
'I don't dislike being touched.'
'But you always...'
Kyo's arm encircled him, pulling their bodies carefully together so that Ruki's head was resting on Kyo's chest. His free hand settled on his lap and Ruki grabbed it and linked their fingers together; his cold, Kyo's warm; his small, Kyo's big. He could feel the muffled beating of Kyo's heart, a steady undercurrent to the birdsong; it was soothing. He didn't feel better, but for the first time since he'd seen Kai's body, he thought that he did at least feel calm.
'I've never seen a dead body before,' he said, his voice shaking out of control, 'But you have.'
'Yes.'
'Kai was...'
Ruki shook his head pointlessly. Kai had been fucking gruesome, but he couldn't say that. Why couldn't he have looked peaceful, like he was sleeping; why couldn't he have fooled Ruki for just a moment? 'It didn't look like him,' he said finally. 'I mean, it was him. But I almost couldn't recognise him.' He paused. 'Was it like that with your parents?' he asked, and felt the deep breath Kyo took.
'I didn't see them right away,' he answered finally in his hoarse voice. 'I was inside my head. But when I found them, they didn't look like themselves any more.' He made to remove his arm from around Ruki's shoulder; Ruki gripped it firmly in place, and Kyo hesitated. 'I spent my whole life scared of them,' he said, 'and suddenly they were nothing to be scared of. They couldn't do anything; they couldn't stop themselves from rotting; they couldn't brush the flies away.'
Ruki felt a tear slide down his cheek until it blotted into the fabric of Kyo's T-shirt.
'I never thought about looking like that,' he admitted softly. He gave Kyo's fingers a small squeeze. 'Dying felt nothing like I thought it would.'
'I don't want you to think about that,' Kyo said stolidly.
'What?'
'I don't want you to think about copying him.'
Ruki opened his mouth, but he didn't have anything to say to that. He squeezed Kyo's hand again, and this time, he got a quick, hard squeeze back.
A few minutes of uncomfortable silence passed. Ruki felt a warm pressure on his other side and a third hand joined their tangle of fingers; hair tickled his cheek as Aoi curled up against him. On the other side of Kyo, Die was lowering his skinny frame down tiredly; Shinya was hovering and Die pulled him down next to him. Ruki registered the movement as Uruha settled himself by Aoi and the other man adjusted to accept him, pulling them closer together as a group so they could all fit on the small sofa, and Ruki shut his eyes tightly, forcing himself to focus only on the steady lull of Kyo's heartbeat.
Something's missing.
There're too few of us.
'It's my fault,' Die said hollowly. 'If I hadn't told him about The Beatles...'
Ruki sighed, nestling his cheek more firmly against Kyo's chest. 'It wasn't that,' he said dully. 'That was just an excuse. He wanted to do it.'
'How do you know?' Aoi said, his voice sounding like he had a cold, and Ruki squeezed their conjoined hands awkwardly.
'I just do,' he said. 'He must have known he'd never leave this place. Sometimes...there doesn't have to be a reason. Just the thought of everything being the same, and keeping on going on, forever, without changing. All of the sadness, and the loneliness, and the fear – none of it ever going away.'
'Is that why you did it?' Die asked, and Ruki nodded slowly. Next to him, Aoi made a strangled sound, and he shook harshly against Ruki's body, squeezing his fingers hard.
'It's not fair,' he said in a tight, angry sort of voice.
'Aoi—'
'It's not fair. He was – he was special. And somebody should have done something. Something to save him. Anything.'
'Nobody could have saved him,' Uruha said in a small voice, shifting on the sofa. 'He'd decided. Everyone has to decide whether they want to live or die. He made his choice.'
'Will there be a funeral?' Die asked, and Ruki felt Aoi shrug.
'There's always a funeral. Doubt they'll let us go. They won't want us to see how much they cheap out on the ceremony.'
'They arrange it? The sanatorium?'
'I guess so. He didn't have any family.'
'He didn't?'
Aoi snorted sadly. 'You ever see him get any visitors?'
There was a pause, and then Shinya's low, melodious voice from the other end of the sofa: 'Kai's family was in a wreck.'
'A car wreck?'
Shinya must have nodded or something. Ruki fisted his free hand in a twist of Kyo's T-shirt. It was weird seeing him wearing only underwear on his lower half, but it was weird in an abstract sort of way that Ruki felt too dazed to appreciate; he was grateful for it instead, the skin, the warmth.
'How do you know?' Aoi asked.
'I heard the nurses talking about it a long time ago,' Shinya answered. He paused. 'When you don't speak very much, people start assuming you don't hear either.'
'Got any other secrets?' Aoi asked.
'Some,' Shinya answered mildly.
'They have to let us go to the funeral,' Uruha interrupted. 'It's not right. He was our friend. We have to say—'
His voice broke. 'Goodbye,' Die supplied.
Something like a shiver went through them as a group, and Kyo's arm tightened almost imperceptibly around Ruki's shoulders.
The six of them sat that way for a long time.
It was a long, cold, slow sort of day. The sun dragged itself up and then down again in the sky, but there didn't seem to be much point to it. Nobody seemed to want to be on their own. A grey van came for Kai's body, and as the men watched the nurses stripped his bed and started taking his posters down from the walls and emptying the drawers of his clothes. The shelf over his bed was cleared, his few books placed in the small bookcase in the TV room; they went around Ruki and Kai's room with a pinkish liquid that smelled strongly of disinfectant.
Nobody said much. His clothes were sad, limp articles without his body to fill them: those achingly familiar sweaters and jeans and socks that seemed to have Kai's smell caught up in their folds. To Ruki, it was the smell of their shared bedroom, and he wondered how long it would be until it didn't smell like that any more. The books were boys' adventure manga, dog-eared and read to death; the nurses didn't seem to know what to do with his radio. At last, they placed it on top of the piano in the music room, and that was the final thing – the room cleared, just another hospital dorm after all.
Early in the afternoon, the group therapist showed up unscheduled; she attempted to gather them all around into the usual circle, but nobody wanted to move much or say anything, and as Ruki watched her try to coax Die into sharing his feelings he wondered why she bothered: after all, it was plain enough what Die's feelings were. They were written all over his face. Aoi stayed almost silent throughout the entirety of the meeting, giving one-syllable answers to any questions directed towards him; Ruki found himself missing the old Aoi, who would normally sit on the very edge of his chair and make up long, outlandish stories about himself. Quiet as he was, it was like he had died, too.
'Ruki? Ruki?'
He snapped out of his daydream, pushing the hair out of his eyes. The doctor was looking at him in a half concerned and half annoyed kind of way, evidently aware that he hadn't been paying attention, and he cleared his throat lamely.
'Pardon,' he said in a weak voice, and he watched her decide not to sigh.
'I was just wondering, Ruki, what you would like to add to our discussion.'
It was weird, the way that question and the way she was looking at him made him feel like he was itching all over. He opened his mouth but the words seemed too horrible to come out, so he swallowed them: how whenever he closed his eyes Kai's bloated face seemed to float up against the back of his eyelids like a puffy grey balloon, and how he wondered where Kai's body was right now; if it was stored in a refrigerated metal locker on a sliding tray; if it would be on the slab already, being sliced into by some scalpel-wielding pathologist or other. How Kai had been so young to die that Ruki wondered if the pathologist would enjoy the look of his pristine organs – the smooth blue heart with so many beats sill left in it; the lungs the perfect shell pink of medical textbook illustrations; the finger-like appendix still intact and innocuous, never having had the chance to get infected and burst. His brain would still be set firm, like a jelly, and his eyes would still be clear, the whites white enough to look blue under the laboratory lights. Perhaps they would already have begin their tender stripping of his valuables, the cutting away of the earthly possessions he couldn't possibly take with him: corneas, kidneys, skirting around the toxic liver, pumped full of drugs. They'd find the pills littered throughout his digestive system like confetti strewn over the floor after the party, the bulk of them a soggy powdery mass clogging up his small intestine.
'Ruki.'
Lab rat.
He jerked back to attention, staring around himself in confusion; he hadn't felt himself getting to his feet, but now he was standing in the corridor like a sleepwalker. He glanced around, dazed, and found Aoi a few paces behind him, his eyebrows slightly raised. 'You okay?' he asked, and Ruki shrugged.
'No.'
'No. Me neither.' He leant himself against the wall and stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and Ruki saw his hands were trembling; he had to chase the tip of his cigarette with his lighter to get it lit. Once he'd managed, he pulled it out from between his lips and offered it to Ruki, taking a fresh one from his packet for himself. Quietly, the two men smoked.
'Want to sleep in our room tonight?' Aoi offered, and Ruki shot him a grateful look.
'If they'll let me.'
'Fuck 'em.'
'Fuck 'em,' Ruki agreed. His cigarette tasted like dead ash. 'I keep wondering where Kai is now. Whether they're cutting him up or what.'
'Animals.' Aoi contorted his face and blew a series of perfect smoke rings. 'Nah, he's not here any more. His spirit's gone somewhere better.'
'You believe in stuff like that?'
Aoi shrugged. 'Times like this I do. You ever seen a ghost?'
'Never. You?'
'We're all fucking ghosts,' Aoi said darkly. 'Kai had the right idea. I don't know what happened, but he realised it. He understood that he was a ghost. That's why he killed himself. He just wanted to be in the right place. Why give them any more years of his life? Fuck 'em. Cut it off at the root. Like amputating a limb. Now he's crossing the floating bridge. I know he is. Into the Plain of High Heaven, where there's no more misery and bullshit, just a non-stop Beatles concert where he's in the front row with nobody pushing, and when he gets excited enough to scream, John Lennon pulls him up on the stage and they all dance together. Doesn't that sound better?' He eyed Ruki shrewdly, 'Better than being sliced and diced by some doctor.'
'He didn't have the right idea,' Ruki said.
'No?'
'No. And you don't think so either. Don't say stuff like that.' Ruki looked at Aoi lucidly, and Aoi had the grace to shrug and look down at the floor. He made a sniffing noise, and swiped a quick hand over his face.
'Sorry,' he said in a small voice. He sniffed again and finally looked up, trying to force a smile over his pale face. It was a poor effort. 'Die snores,' he said lightly, 'Sorry about that. But we can get your mattress and stuff and just put it on the floor between our beds; it'll be easy.'
Ruki didn't answer; stepping forward, he awkwardly folded his arms around Aoi's, pulling the other man close to him. There was a moment's hesitation and then Aoi's cigarette fell forgotten to the floor; he wrapped his arms around Ruki's back and clung to him tightly, nestling his face against Ruki's messy hair. He made a gentle gasping noise, and his shoulders shook heavily as he cried, his breath and tears wetting Ruki's neck. It was an odd thing to hear him cry; to learn small things about him, like the soft gulping noises he made and the sighing sound it made when his breath juddered in his throat, and the way his hands gripped tighter even as his shoulders sagged weakly.
'Somebody should have done something,' he whispered, his voice jagged as something shattered to pieces, 'Somebody should have saved him.'