Chapter Text
Living with Kai doesn’t get any easier.
Sometimes he forgets how hard it is, being around another person. Everything will seem fine, smooth-flowing, like it’s always been this way. Easy banter, light smiles – those are the things that make Kei forget.
Then there are the stretched silences.
Sometimes Kai will be sitting at the table, watching the TV. Kei will be done with his homework, books sitting finished in a neat stack and leaving him with nothing to do. The curtains would be half-drawn, even the sky in that awkward in-between phase of day and night. Kai will be quiet; Kei will have nothing to say.
Like this, the distance is hard to ignore.
The apartment is small, entrance, kitchen, main room. Privacy is illusory, at best – one can never truly have a moment to themselves here. They sleep on opposite sides of the room – an insistence made by Kei, who sometimes stayed up late, and sometimes just couldn’t sleep. Even so, they are always in hearing distance, so long as they remain in the unit. When it is quiet, their breaths can be heard from across the room.
It sometimes feels like Kai is too close, all the time. Just by being, every cell in Kei’s body bristles, the presence of another person too warm and too abrasive. Nerves frayed at every end, when he has no time to be by himself, away to think. Kei has taken to the habit of going for a walk, when he feels the irritation building beneath his skin, away long enough to feel calmer and not too much.
Kai never says anything about it. He says ‘take care’ when he leaves, and says ‘welcome back’ when he arrives. He knows it has nothing to do with him and is everything to do with how Kei is.
That’s what he hopes, anyway.
Kei sighs heavily, rubbing at his face again. He’s starting to become a permanent fixture, on the single rickety bench on their side of the park. People have started returning from work – tired salarymen dragging their steps in the dirt paths, office ladies yawning and quietly talking amongst themselves. It’s quiet, peaceful – like this, no one has energy to acknowledge another beyond that which societal convention requires of them.
There’s nothing to talk about, Kai tells him, whenever he brings it up. Kei doesn’t need to apologize, he says. He states that he’s Kei’s friend, like it’s a given fact, and says nothing more, as though it explains everything he does.
There’s no way he doesn’t know that in the near-decade they spent apart, Kei had been perfectly content ignoring his existence. His mother had told him to stop seeing him, giving a reason that, in retrospect, was really quite flimsy and pathetic – still, Kei had accepted it easily, taking it in stride. Kai has to know this – his mother must have called him. It would explain why Eriko had been so mad at him, that time. Maybe that’s when she started noticing, too.
No one, he reasons, could just accept that. People that aren’t like him – there’s no way they would be okay with it. They want to talk to each other, know that they hold concern for them and are interested in them. Maybe Kai took him in so easily because his residence would be convenient, having someone else to contribute to finances and take care of the apartment. Maybe he was waiting for the moment where he could leave him without any support, the same way Kei did him, all those summers ago. Sometimes, Kei wishes that was the reason.
It’d be easier for him to accept.
“Welcome back,” Kai says, looking at him briefly before returning his attention to the papers in front of him. Kei locks the door behind him, the click of the handle echoing as he slips his shoes off. A cool breeze slips in through the open window – moisture rises in wispy trails from the hot rice sitting on the kitchen counter.
“I’m back,” Kei says, automatically, shutting off the rice cooker and flipping the switch. The cupboard is looking better these days, but in the end, they’re two bachelors without much to live on. The best Kei can manage at the moment is curry rice.
Kai is content to say nothing as Kei pulls out a small pot, the stove lighting with a flicker.
“You’re troubled,” Izumi says, leaning against the entrance to the hallway.
Kei blinks at her, slumped into their uncomfortable plastic seats.
“That’s why I’m here,” Kei says, not bothering to censor himself. His feet are on the verge of refusing to walk, and his head is beginning to throb with the intensity of its protests. Izumi manages to roll her eyes without actually rolling them, brow raising as she stares blankly at him.
“I saw you, when Nakano-kun came in,” she continues, moving to sit next to him. He tries not to shift away too obviously. “Watching when he was talking to everyone. You looked… troubled.”
She knows that’s not the word she means, and it makes Kei feel even more irrationally irritated. “He’s loud and annoying. He’s never going to see them again so there’s no point wasting time cosying up to them.”
To her credit, she doesn’t react, instead leaning back to rest on the seat.
“But people like him for it anyway. He gets along with them, knows more about them. They tell him things and give him things easily. And you don’t understand it.”
“I’m not jealous,” Kei mutters, blandly, wishing he’d just minded his own business for once and gone home to suffer there.
“I’m not saying you are,” she says, fists on her knees. She’s small, Kei notes, but she also looks like she could kick him through the wall if he did something wrong. “It doesn’t change the fact that he’s doing something that you can’t. I’m just saying that… well, it doesn’t make you any less for it.”
Kei stares at her. He stares long enough for her to duck her head, cheeks pink in embarrassment.
“What I mean is. That’s just how he connects to people. And that’s just how you connect to people. They’re not better than the other, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to connect in the same way that other people connect.”
She looks back up at him. The words leaving his mouth barely feel like his.
“And that’s supposed to be fair?”
She smiles, then, that frustratingly knowing smile that makes Kei want to give up on humanity forever and live in the mountains. “Nagai-kun, if someone feels something towards you, you aren’t obligated to feel the exact same thing back. Everyone feels everything differently – stronger, weaker, quieter. It would be unfair to expect everything absolutely reciprocated.”
The wall clock hanging in the reception room doesn’t make a sound, the hand counting down the seconds moving slow and smooth. Everything is white in a way that suggests sterility, coldly impersonal in its purity compared to the slightly yellow walls of Satou’s attempted homeliness. Down the hall, a man is being pushed out of an office, furious whispering audible even from the reception as he holds a cigarette high out of the other person’s reach.
“I thought Tosaki was the psychologist, here.”
“We also have Ogura-san,” Izumi says, standing back up. She dusts off the front of her slacks, stretching. “As far as I’m aware, he’s available for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m only here because Nakano got lost and was being an absolute nuisance to the public.”
“I know.”
Quick and fumbled words spill out of the hall, and Kei doesn’t need to look to know Nakano just walked out. He’s clutching a sheet of paper to his hand, babbling at a silver-haired man – Tosaki – even as he tries to push him into the direction of the receptionist. Tosaki looks like he could pull out a notepad full of things that annoy him about something as simple as Nakano’s shoes – Kei wonders how he got into therapy, of all things.
“Why’d you start working here?”
Izumi’s eyes snap to him in surprise. Kei watches as Nakano finally notices them, gesturing wildly with flailing hands while the door closes behind him, taking a tired Tosaki with it. She waves back, slowly, then pauses.
“Tosaki-san helped me after I’d been kicked out of home,” Izumi says. Kei stares. “He wanted me to work for him in return. Honestly, I probably would have done it even if he hadn’t asked. I wouldn’t be alive without him. I know he didn’t help me for any personal reason, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to repay him, whether or not he wants me to. That’s all there is to it.”
The rain pelting the window is only becoming heavier and heavier, burying the building in a haze of grey. Beyond them, pedestrians rush past, hidden beneath a sea of plastic canopies, streaks of color in the dim day.
The white noise of rainfall blurs everything out as the exit slides open, but Izumi is close enough for Kei to hear her mutter, quiet as they leave, “he could afford to pay me more, though.”
“Oh! You’re Nagai’s friend!”
Kai blinks. He eyes the steel beam hefted over the boy’s shoulder warily – it must be as unsafe as it looks, as one of the other workers starts yelling at him to pay attention before he drops it on someone’s foot.
He rushes back a minute later, peeling a glove off.
“Just Kai is fine,” he says, accepting a handshake. The other boy – Nakano – grabs him with both hands, defeating the point of having taken a glove off at all.
“I’m Kou! Nakano Kou. Though Nagai probably didn’t tell you that. Just Kou is fine, too.”
“Are you Kei’s… friend?” Kai asks, the question a bit awkward even as he says it. It’s relieving to hear that Kou thinks it about as ridiculous as he does, laughing in surprise.
“Uh, no. He’d sooner stick me in an abandoned truck than call me his friend. I just know him from, uh… that one dude.”
“Satou?”
“Yeah! Yeah,” Kou says. Then he stops, staring. Kai waits. “So he must have told you we needed hands? You’re looking for another job?”
“Actually, I didn’t know you worked here,” Kai admits. “But, yeah, basically.”
Kou’s face scrunches up. It makes the grime on his nose rub onto his eyebrow. “You should really make him go get a job. I’m pretty sure the only thing he does besides study is complain a lot. No offense.”
“He does have a job. Down at old Yamanaka-san’s place, with the ramen.”
Kou’s eyes widen. “What? When did that happen? I thought he was gonna be unemployed forever.”
“Just last week, actually. Yamanaka-san’s taken a liking to him, apparently.”
“Holy crap. Wonder how he managed that.”
The afternoon sun is relentlessly harsh, beating down until the earth is barren, but the workers are tireless, moving like aged clockwork. While there’s no doubt Kou is strong enough to take care of himself in this work environment, his face carries a youthfulness the others lack, missing that certain ruggedness. Kai wonders how long Kou’s been working on sites like this.
“You know, you’re not really what I expected for someone who’s Nagai’s friend. You’re real easy to talk to, y’know?”
“Thanks…? What were you expecting?”
Kou shrugs. He flops himself onto the ground, unheeding of the dirt and dust, and he pops open his water bottle. “I dunno? I was surprised he had friends in the first place. He’s not really an open kinda guy. Though I guess you’d know that, already.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s just real… I dunno, assholish, about other people? Not like he doesn’t know how he affects others, more like he doesn’t care,” he says, chewing on the cap. He scrunches his brows a little, but before Kai can respond, he’s talking again. “That’s what he says all the time, anyway. You know he once told me to stop talkin’ to other people, ‘cause I was just wasting effort and they weren’t going to be useful? Uh, hang on. Anyway, what I meant to say was, he plays all tough, but he’s actually a big softy. Probably.”
Kai stares at him. Not in a thousand years would anyone on the face of the planet say that about Nagai Kei. Still, the construction work carries on as per usual, no one looking too harried over Kou’s inactivity, so Kai sits down, as well.
“Haven’t heard that one before.”
“No, no, hear me out,” Kou starts, leaning forward as he sets his bottle on the ground. His eyes have that glint, the one people get when explaining a particularly deep conspiracy theory, the sorts that sceptics walk out of converted and preaching. “What I mean is, some of the shit that comes out of his mouth makes it sound like he’d push a stroller onto the road to get some money that was under it, but the truth is, he couldn’t hurt a dang fly. One time, I found him when I got lost trying to get to Tosaki’s place, and like, sure, he was whining about it, but he did end up walking me all the way there, and also tried explaining the history of the train line to me. Frankly, it went over my head, because what’s the point of knowing all that stuff anyway?
“Uh, what else… well, there’s the fact he hasn’t punched me yet? Oh, and him being polite!”
“That counts as being kind?”
“He doesn’t have to be polite,” Kou says, reasonably, spinning the bottle around. Dirt is starting to stick onto its surface, drops of water becoming mud. “He says it makes people listen to him easier. But I’ve seen him give out directions with a smile on his face to some poor sap that got lost in the clinic. He coulda easily told them to fuck off, maybe save some air in the meantime, but he didn’t. Like, sure, maybe it’s because it’s the easy way, an’ he’s doing it for himself, but maybe the easy way is being nice, and that’s got to count for something.”
Kai nods his head, slowly. The heat is making the back of his neck prickle, sweat beading down his back. Something starts beeping – Kou jumps, checks his watch, swears.
“Shit. Okay. I gotta go have somethin’ finished by now. So… you’re here for…?”
“Job. They called me in.”
“Then you’re lookin’ for the supervisor’s office, right over there,” Kou says, gesturing grandly at a set of demountables off to the side. He doesn’t bother dusting off as he stands, leaving patches of brown and orange on his overalls. Kai wipes his hands off his trousers. “But, yeah, at this point, you’re pretty much guaranteed the job, so, welcome to the force, I guess? You’re pretty cool, and if you’re Nagai’s friend, then there’s gotta be something good about him.”
“It’s been a while since we were both here. What, ten years, now?”
“Thereabouts,” Kei says, absently, watching as Kai climbs onto the old oak tree, laughing.
“Ten years and a half, now that I think about it. It’s hard to believe we’ve been living together for more than half a year.”
The shrine is quiet. The leaves shiver as the cool breeze passes, but otherwise only but murmur, shifting and rustling. Cars pass nearby, their coming and going marked by a distant rumble. Standing here, with no one else around, the oak tree is the center of a small microcosm, isolated.
Standing here, the guilt feels all the more prominent, an anchor holding him down from following Kai.
“I’m sorry,” Kei says.
Kai says nothing. Perhaps the wind carried his words away, breath stolen into dust. Still, Kai jumps down from the tree, leaves skittering into the grass as he lands.
“Kei, it’s fine.”
“I ignored you,” Kei says, eyes on his feet. “For ten years. Forgot you even existed up till half a year ago. I can’t give that back.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m not helping you because I want to be repaid, I’m helping you because I care.”
“And I can’t even do that, either!”
And there it is again. That solemn awkwardness, the regret left after speaking words he knows to ruin and derail. The birds chirp on, unaware, the day still pleasant and warm. The words remain cold.
“That’s why I want you to tell me,” Kei continues, closing his eyes. “What you feel. Because I won’t know otherwise. I can’t understand. And I – I want to. Even if you say it’s alright, you deserve at least this much.”
Kei looks up.
Kai is giving him that look again, the one that makes Kei feel hopelessly lost. He’d always thought it was pity, the way his eyes drooped and his entire constitution seemed to weaken. He’s still not sure that it isn’t.
“Of course I was hurt,” Kai says, quietly. His gaze never leaves Kei’s. “You were my first friend, Kei. My only one, even. I was even angry, at first – I knew your mom’s the one that didn’t want me around, but if you wanted to, you could have…”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m not blaming you. That’s not how you are. But I had fun with you, Kei, I was happy. That didn’t change either. I like being with you, and I want to help you. I’m not expecting you to change because of that. You don’t owe me – for any of that.”
Kei’s shirt clings to his back, sweat dampening it and turning sky into deep grey. Kai’s fingernails are caked with dirt, fingers callused and red, outstretched and sincere. Kei’s own clench tightly into his palm, wringing out his doubt and leaving dark crescents as resolve.
“Kai, I don’t know if I’ll ever understand that. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel what you feel – if I even can. And if you ever decide that it’s unfair, that it’s too troublesome to deal with that – with me, then I get it. But even if it’s not the same way, or as strong, I want you to know that... I do care. That as long as you are with me, I want you to be happy, too.”
Kai stares at him. The sunlight streaming through the trees strike gold in his eyes, molten and fleeting. Then he smiles, one corner quirking up and the other wobbling with laughter, the same way he looked at him the first day they lived together.
“Apology accepted.”
The veil cracks, then, sound from outside spilling in. Some children are laughing, playing – their mother ushers them to the shrine and holds a finger to her mouth. The cars are coming and going, more of them than before, the roads carrying them past. They’re just two people again, in a town of thousands, eyes still on each other as they stand by the oak tree.
Kei takes a deep breath, then decides, fuck it.
“Hey, Kai–”
The apartment looks even smaller, standing outside. Kei’s old duffel bag is still enough to hold all his things, emptier than when he’d arrived even – Kai barely fills one, most things disposable and left behind or distributed. Even empty, the rooms had seemed unbearably finite, spaces not so much empty as they are filled with the silence of solitude and discomfort.
Three floors up, window locked and curtains drawn. Kei stares up at it, at the place that had become ‘home’ in the past few months. It’s probably a good thing that it’s impossible for him to get too attached.
Kai kicks the stand up, and the engine roars to life.
It’d be too dramatic, Kei thinks, bothering to look back at where the university is, at everything he’s leaving. He does it anyway. Satou didn’t look surprised to hear that Kei was leaving, both town and his sessions, wishing him luck in that annoyingly pleasant manner of his. Yamanaka-san seemed sad to see him go, but nonetheless wished him all the best, glad that he was 'looking in a better mood'.
“You sure you don’t want to let them know?” Kai says, mostly perfunctorily. He knows just as well as Kei that he probably wouldn’t even have remembered them, had Kai not brought it up.
“There’s no point. They’ll find out, eventually, if they can be bothered.”
Kai hums, sliding his helmet on. He wiggles around in his seat until he hears Kei’s put-upon sigh by his ear, arms snaking around his stomach.
He’d finished the semester, at least. It had already been paid for – it would be a waste to just throw it away. In any case, Kai said, he could always study in Kyushu, if he ever felt the urge. Maybe if he got bored enough, Kei said, putting the textbooks up for sale.
“You didn’t forget anything?”
Kai manages to shrug, even with his hands on the bars.
“If I forgot anything, it’s probably not important. You?”
“It’s probably not important.”
Kai laughs.
The sky is still pink, pale in the rising light, and the streets are bare and empty. They could make it in a couple of days, maybe three, if they left now and stopped only to sleep and refuel. The day laid beyond them seems to stretch infinitely, the end far and unknown.
“We should stop by Fukuoka. I heard the Hakata Torimon manju is great.”
“Well, it’s not like we don’t have space. We need to bring gifts, anyway.”
“I told you, don’t worry about that.”
Kei tightens the strap of his helmet around his chin, and tentatively smiles when Kai turns back to grin at him.
“To hell with it?”
“To hell with it.”