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They’ve been lucky the past few months, pulling in a couple jobs big enough that they don’t have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck, at least for a while. Takeru saves his share of the money, Masaki buys a new muffler for his bike, and Hiroto finds a surgeon willing to accept ¥80,000 paid out-of-pocket by someone just over the age of majority.
“You’re sure this guy isn’t going to steal your kidneys while you’re unconscious, right?” Masaki asks, squinting at the unassuming tan concrete edifice.
Hiroto, stripping off his riding gloves and stuffing them into his jacket pocket, doesn’t dignify that with a response.
Overgrown camphor trees and the faded canopy of a 100-yen store shade the clinic from immediate notice, as does the fact that it’s buried down a side street, it’s only distinguishing feature, the doctor’s name engraved on the tarnished brass plaque mounted above the letter-box. A man in scrubs idles in the entryway, smoking and flicking his cigarette ashes into the rock-filled flower bed.
“I’m here for a 10:30 appointment,” he tells the woman at the front desk, hating how his voice echoes in the minimally decorated room. “Amamiya Hiroto.”
“Amamiya?” He waits impatiently for her to find him in their records. “Oh, you’re here for the—ah—the surgery. With Dr. Takanori. We have some forms for you to fill out first.”
The waiting area consists of a loveseat and two child-sized plastic chairs in red and blue; the forms are all familiar ones — lists of possible complications, health risks, aftercare instructions, and consent forms. He skips over the F/M question and fills out the rest of his information first.
While Hiroto hunches over the flimsy clipboard, trying to get the cheap promotional pen to write, Masaki stands by the tall, narrow window, looking out at the street. That morning, Takeru had sat down with them for breakfast, as usual, and gone over their plans for the day. He’d listened as grave as ever, and agreed to pick up post-op supplies on his drive home, on the condition that Masaki went with Hiroto to the appointment. Hiroto wonders if Masaki’s having second thoughts.
After Hiroto returns the pen and clipboard to the front desk, receiving a smile and a brief “the doctor will be ready for you shortly” as acknowledgement, Masaki rolls his shoulders, sighs loudly, and drops down on the loveseat beside Hiroto, ignoring Hiroto’s scowl at being crowded. The fan overhead makes slow revolutions, and the woman at the front desk hums under her breath as she clatters away at her keyboard.
Masaki clears his throat and jerks his chin at the door that leads into the back of the clinic. “Want me to go with you?”
Hiroto fixates on where an electrical cord is taped down to the carpet at the edge of the room and tries to ignore the excitement and nausea warring in his gut. “Don’t think they’ll let you.”
Masaki pushes out his lower lip a bit and nods, staring down at the toes of his boots on the scuffed tile floor. “What do you want to eat tonight?”
“You can’t cook.”
“I can ask Takeru.”
“Don’t bother,” Hiroto snorts. Takeru’s done a lot for them over the past few years, but the one thing he has yet to do is learn how to cook.
A smile flickers across Masaki’s face, but he doesn’t reply immediately. Another few seconds of scuffing his boots on the floor pass before he asks, “How long is this gonna to take? So I know when to get lunch.”
“You’re not waiting around for five hours,” Hiroto says. “Just pick me up after I wake up.”
Masaki pulls a face. “There’s a park nearby. I’ll get something to eat and hang out there. Have the front desk call me when they think you can walk. You’re too big to carry anymore.” He leans over with a grin and swipes at the back of Hiroto’s head, blithely continuing on when Hiroto easily avoids the flat of his palm. “There’s no way I’m missing a chance to film you when you’re high on painkillers.”
Hiroto looks at him flatly. “I’ll kill you.”
His brother’s self-preservation instincts must finally kick in, because he holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender and grins.
It’s a manful struggle to not roll his eyes, but Hiroto wins out over the impulse, and instead grabs a magazine from the side table and immerses himself in an article about mountain biking.
He’s mostly managed to bury his nerves, when his doctor’s voice greets him, and Masaki’s shooting to his feet and bowing sheepishly, because Dr. Takanori is an attractive person, and there’s clumsy introductions and discussion of the time estimate while Hiroto wonders if there’s time for him to throw up in the tiny employee bathroom.
Dr. Takanori smiles at him and waves for him to go first through the door, so with a deep breath, he jams his hands deep into his pockets, and does.
“You want anything from the store?” Masaki asks from behind the doctor.
“Takeru has my list,” Hiroto says over his shoulder.
“I’ll pick up some popsicles!” Masaki yells after him as the door swings closed.
Dr. Takanori chuckles. “You’ve got a good brother.”
“He’d better reminder what flavor to get,” is all Hiroto can get out.