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Koito woke to the scent of the tea that Tsukishima favored.
He had stuck his nose up at it, at first. The “people’s tea” had an entirely different flavor profile from the kind he was accustomed to, had grown up being served. Tsukishima’s tea was made from late-season leaves, less refined and cut with grains of toasted rice. Still, it was nutritious and economical, and there was a warmth and sweetness to the flavor that his regular tea simply did not have.
Koito had come to love it very much.
He peered out from the futon to where Tsukishima was sitting cross-legged in front of his desk nearby in a globe of rosy lamplight. Loose paper and stacks of books, in both Russian and Japanese, overflowed onto the tatami. A cup of the tea sat steaming by an open dictionary as the man worked, the nib of his pen rhythmically scratching across paper.
“Tsukishima,” Koito called quietly, reaching out to brush his fingers across whatever bit of the man he could reach, but he was too far. “Tsukishima. Come back to bed.”
Tsukishima didn’t look up from his work but he did meet his hand halfway, absently stroking his thumb across Koito’s sleep-warm skin. The pen continued scratching.
“I’m almost finished,” he said, a little hoarse.
“I’m cold, though.”
Tsukishima sighed and Koito smirked. He was a pampered brat, after all.
The older man dutifully cleaned the nib of his pen, replaced the lid to the pot of ink, and extinguished the lamp. And then he went to him, limping only a little as he crossed the short distance, sinking slowly into Koito’s outstretched arms.
Koito melted into him, releasing the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He tucked his head under the other man’s chin, hoping that they could get back to sleep.
Ten years on and neither of them slept particularly well. Not since that night. Not since they’d run.
“Did I wake you?” Tsukishima murmured low against his hair. “The deadline is...”
“In a week,” Koito interrupted gently, knowing very well that his dutiful companion would never allow himself to miss one, or to be so lackadaisical in his time management that he found himself having to sacrifice sleep.
“I know. But I was awake, anyway...” Tsukishima trailed off, shivering a little.
Ah. So the ghost had visited again.
Once, trembling but safe in the loop of Koito’s arms, Tsukishima had admitted that he often awoke to find Tsurumi standing nearby, dressed in dripping, untanned flesh and stinking of iron and gun oil, his grinning teeth glinting from the dark corners of the room.
Koito understood. He saw the ghost sometimes, too.
So they slept light, as though their past would catch up to them any day now. They slept so light that even though Tsurumi was dead, something as minor as the scent of tea had been enough to wake Koito.
But their life in Tokyo was a world away from the wilds of Hokkaido, from the hunt for the gold, and from the violent aftermath of Tsurumi’s ambition. Koito and Tsukishima had disappeared into the expanse of the capital, just two more souls in a city of thousands, and it hadn’t taken them long to fall into its rhythm.
They had originally only come to search for her, at Koito’s insistence. The woman from Tsukishima’s past.
They spent weeks asking after her, chasing false leads. They rented a musty tenement house, one of the old nagaya* along a canal, because it was cheaper than staying at an inn. But even still, their money ran out fast, and Koito no longer had even his name to fall back on.
One evening, Koito caught Tsukishima staring into the burlap sack their rice came in, which had grown progressively limper as the days went by. Come dinnertime, Tsukishima had disappeared, the last of the rice cooked and served in a chipped bowl on the table.
In the day and a half that followed, Koito did not even notice his empty stomach and the rice went uneaten. Tsukishima returned to find him curled on the floor of their dim room, looking at the photograph he still kept close. Tsukishima had sighed heavily, clapped his hands, and scolded him for wasting the rice.
Then, he shoved a secondhand desk by the window and a bundle of skewered mezashi* into Koito’s hands. He had somehow found work translating Russian literature for one of the local schools, and they’d paid half of his first project upfront.
They soon found that their nightmares and memories were dulled by the immediate needs of the coming day: meeting deadlines to put a few coins in their pockets, household chores to keep the dust bunnies from creeping in, bringing home fresh sachets of the tea that made Tsukishima’s eyes light up and his translation work a little easier.
After Tsukishima and Koito finally introduced themselves, the elderly couple next door shared the vegetables they grew and made sure they were never again without rice. Tsukishima’s desk disappeared more and more each day underneath an ever-growing mountain of books and paper. They slept together under an indigo futon cover left by the previous tenant that still smelled of pipe tobacco, and Koito traded his hand mirror for an iron kettle and two roughly made teacups.
They never found the woman with egogusa hair, and it had been a long time since they’d searched for her.
“Nightmare or no, staying up like this will only make your translations sloppy, Hajime,” Koito tapped Tsukishima’s little rabbit nose and smiled. “And I won’t allow it.”
Tsukishima didn’t answer immediately. Gently, he brushed the back of his fingers along Koito’s jaw and across his mustache, a recent development.
Personally, he thought it made him look rather distinguished, though Tsukishima had yet to verbally comment. Still, as he pressed a kiss to the corner of Koitos’s lips, he had an inkling that Tsukishima didn’t outright hate the whiskers, at least.
Aside from a few new lines around his eyes and mouth, Tsukishima himself had not changed much in the last decade. He continued to keep his hair cropped short, groom his own facial hair just the same. He amassed a modest wardrobe of muted, earthy colors and practical cotton, his uniform long ago neatly folded and put away to feed the moths.
“Not my superior anymore,” the older man finally murmured, smiling sweet and genuine and those lines around his eyes were too pretty not to kiss.
Tsukishima leaned into him and Koito slid his hand to cup the back of his head. Koito could have kissed him deeply then, licked into his mouth to taste the tea that was left to go cold on the desk. He could have pulled the moss green yukata from his shoulders, could have slipped a hand beneath the folds of fabric, could have—
But the man in his arms was growing heavier and heavier, his eyes already closing, and Koito knew he had an appointment with his editor tomorrow, so.
Koito kissed his forehead, pulled the covers a little higher, and gathered him close.
They were not always safe from Tsurumi’s ghost. The ghost woke them, it haunted them, it wouldn’t let them forget.
But, Tsukishima continued to translate Russian novels. With help from the couple next door, he started growing their own vegetables and was quietly proud of his first crop. Koito tracked their finances with a carefully kept bankbook that he dutifully reviewed every week. He developed a fondness for kiseru pipes, which he liked to lazily smoke while he watched Tsukishima putter around the house. And with every passing year, Tsurumi's ghost visited them less and less, drowned beneath the sweet, humdrum rhythm of everyday life.
Koito knew that one day, the ghost would not be able to reach them here at all, in the little home that smelled of ink and paper, sweet tobacco, and genmaicha.