FIC - Tightrope [Yamapi/Jin]
Jul. 28th, 2007 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zukkokyaH♥PPY BIRTHD♥Y NI-CH♥N!
Title: Tightrope
Pairing: Yamapi/Jin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,083
Summary: Because you’re dead the train is free.
Because you’re dead the train is free. Before you claim a seat, the doors close on the red string. Means you’re fastened to this spot, but you don’t have circulation anyway, so you stand.
You disembark two miles away from the hospital so you can look for the bakery you discovered that first week after you died. You can’t get lost; as you walk, the red string tied to your pinky steadily reels you in.
It’s past dawn. The sun rose to no one’s notice, shrouded by storm clouds. You’re soaked through before long—you’re separated from humanity, not nature. You weave your way forward beneath the cobbled canopy of umbrellas. Their carriers can’t see you. Wouldn’t even if they could, staring down as they are at the rain-splotched sidewalk.
A silent stripe of lightning slashes the sky as you enter the hospital. Moments later, as you board the elevator behind the pudding nurse, thunder bellows a response. You lean in the corner, evaluating the nurse. Her hair is freshly beaded with rain and her arms are damp, too. She’s exhausted, and it shows—her concealer is too thinly spread under her eyes. She has Jin’s files in her hand, which shakes from cold. That part you sympathize with.
You follow her down the hallway. She brings a file up to read while she walks, and you try to read it over her shoulder. But the handwriting is either illegible or communicating with a vernacular you don’t understand.
The lights in here freak you out. They bleach skin, searching scrupulously for a dormant disease. In this light, the shadows underneath pudding nurse’s eyes are dark like bruises. The veins running through her wrists look as if they’re on the outside.
A stronger reminder—because you’re always aware—that the living are holding Jin back from you.
While she reads, her pace is slow. The string guides you around the next corner and past three doors directly into Jin’s room. He’s awake, looking absently out the door through your chest.
That first week after dying, you pretended he was ignoring you to piss you off. You didn’t play that game long. One morning you managed to convince yourself he was ignoring you. That he hated you sulking after him. That he didn’t want you waiting for him. You yanked, wrenched and chewed on the string trying to break it, to free yourself from him. Finally, the viciousness left you. It took hours, but the string remained unbroken. Numb, you sat on his bed and watched him serenely break into another virtual car, thumbs flying on the DS Ryo loaned him, tethered pinky extended.
Now, as you close the space between you and Jin, the string shrinks. Pudding nurse enters with a resolute, “Good morning.” Jin nods, smiling, and replies quietly. You cover his hand with yours, and watch the one phenomenon you still cherish take place.
Your pinkies are lined up, your right over his, and the string has shrunk to a mere millimeter. Warmth from the string spreads through you body like sunlight through latticework. Underneath your hand, Jin’s glows. You place your fingers in the spaces between his, creating an alternating pattern of shadow and brilliance.
It’s the only magic in the world. Figures you can only see it when you’re dead.
Early on, you wanted to visit everybody.
You went with Takki to a restaurant. You watched him trace a circle around his eye with his thumb for ten minutes while his ramen cooled and developed a film on the surface. You know the waitress recognized him, and her hands shook when she arrived to refill his tea. It was still full to the brim. Takki didn't notice her when she blushed and retreated. The laugh lines by his eyes looked deeper. You poked one, then pretended to smooth it out.
He left his untouched food and a generous tip on the table. He held his composure until the first wintry breeze stung the wet track on his face. The blank façade dropped in an instant and Takki reached over his head to hide his face in his forearms. His sobs were silent.
You know he was waiting for Tsubasa. There was a string around his pinky, too, and it remained slack while you stood next to him, lips on his jacketed shoulder.
You climbed through Toma’s window just before sunrise on his day off. You knelt next to him and pet his hair. Pretended you could remember the scent of it. The feel of it wet from the rain. You curled up behind him, hugged his waist and sang. You made it up. You don’t remember actual songs.
Eventually, Toma unconsciously hummed a note or two. The harmony.
His voice was scratched raw by tears.
You took the train to Osaka right before Jin got sick. You went through his house and Uchi’s before you found Ryo at Ohkura’s. The eight of them, all eight, were sprawled around the television with Ryo at the center.
Uchi held him, head stacked on Ryo’s, eyes closed. Ryo’s were red, occasionally blinking out tears. He snuffled, but his nose was blocked, so he took breaths through parted, tear-slick lips. At the first near-whimper, Yasu bolted off the floor, giving up all pretenses, and tucked himself against Ryo. He kissed Ryo’s temple, and Ryo shattered.
You’d heard and seen Ryo cry before. This was worse.
Yoko got to him next, kneeling in front of the couch to pull Ryo’s contorted mouth against his shoulder. The sounds were muffled, but they were only beginning. Subaru hugged Ryo around the chest and pressed his lips against Ryo’s ear. He whispered quietly, the trip of his Kansai-ben soft and soothing. Yasu stroked Ryo’s hair. Maru’s hand overlapped Yasu’s. Hina slipped his arm around Yoko’s waist and Ryo’s neck, his hand gripping Subaru’s elbow. Ohkura brought Ryo’s arm behind him, gave him the fabric of his shirt to grip. Uchi pressed his face into Ryo's neck.
You left him in good hands.
It’s an epidemic.
Two hundred and thirty-two so far.
You were ninth.
When you visited him next, Takki deleted your number from his phone.
Then you followed Toma around Tokyo until he scrolled down his contacts. You didn’t see your name.
Ryo’s kept it.
So has Jin.
You still visit Jin. But mostly you stay here by your family grave. There are others like you in the cemetery, but you don’t acknowledge them and they ignore you in return.
Half of your ashes were spilled into the breeze. You don’t know where. You went home the first night — not to your apartment, but to your home. You watched your mother shriek on her knees for all of three seconds before you fled in searing pain.
The grave is not your home. It’s not your apartment, either. Still, the grave is where your friends travel to meet you.
Tegoshi kneels before the Yamashita headstone, head bowed. His white jacket and bug-eye sunglasses probably send a mixed signal to his fans: notice, but stay at a distance. Like this, he probably looks more otherworldly than you do.
Tegoshi arches his shoulders to slide his jacket off. His shirt is green, and that’s why you notice the pink necklace. On a silver chain hangs a cursive P stamped over the character for “yama.”
You didn’t know you could still cry.
Tegoshi takes his fist from his jacket pocket.
Kitagawa Rika climbs onto her grave, hooking her arm around the pillar and leaning over Tegoshi’s head. She stares at you without even the most minute hint of an expression. You grimace at her, but she’s staring at Tegoshi now. You join her.
He drives a rod into the dirt, then hangs another necklace identical to his own on the hook.
Kitagawa Rika starts walking the circumference of the pillar on top of her gravestone, her attention lost as easily as water through a strainer.
You sit next to Tegoshi, reaching your arm across his shoulders. You lay your head on his shoulder. You hear him breathe. You hear him whine. You feel him shake. Death has anesthetized them — him — from you. You hold him tighter because you can.
When he stands, you’re dragged up with him, weightless compared to the corporeal. He leaves with rounded shoulders. He forgets his jacket. You use it for a pillow until the sun sets. Then you return to Jin.
Jin is sick.
He showed symptoms much faster than you did.
It won’t help.
You saw it first, one morning as he dragged his shirt off. The bruise was in his left armpit. Yellow, mottled. Your first bruise showed on the small of your back. You didn’t notice it until you visited the onsen with Shirota.
You notice three days before anyone else does. Every time Jin puts an outfit together, you shake the hangers, spill jackets and shirts onto the floor. Jin retrieves them without looking at the mirror hanging near the closet, without seeing his own body.
You go at the wall with both fists. You see the punches, but you don’t feel anything. You want pain. You want to bleed. So you rake your knuckles on the wooden paneling, you throw your shoulder into the window and kick the bed so forcefully it should disjoint your thighbone from your hip, or at least move the bed. But there’s no change.
You curl your arms on the wall and push your face behind your elbow and scream.
By the time Ueda demands why Jin’s jaw is stained with what looks like Ueda's kale smoothie, Jin is beyond help.
You checked yourself into the hospital at the end of the month. Halfway into the next one, you died.
You know Jin doesn’t have as long. He didn’t wake up this morning. The fluids won’t sustain him much longer.
You climb into bed with him. He can feel you now. His fingers between yours aren’t as bright, but the warmth is just as strong. Stronger, now that he squeezes your hand back.
You’re lonely. You’re reaching, but his fingertips barely touch yours. You want to cling to him, hear the breath rush out of him, kiss his sullen mouth and his beaming smile and you want him.
You want him so badly.
You cry.
You leave when others visit Jin.
One evening, Kame runs into the hallway, through you, shouting for help. You follow him and Jin’s doctor back into the room, where Kame swears he saw Jin move.
The doctor lets him down subtly. Kame insists. The doctor says no.
The doctor eventually leaves. Kame stands, stunned, until Junno returns from the cafeteria with tea. Kame throws his arms around Junno’s chest and bawls into his neck. Junno drops one cup and the tea steams off the floor.
Jin’s nurse used to be yours. She gave you two cups of pudding with your dinner.
She can’t do that for Jin, but she brushes his hair and finger-combs his bangs off to the side the way he likes.
You’re positive angels will be like pudding nurse.
Tsubasa collapses before a concert.
Takki explains to their fans. The newspaper quotes it. He’s described as shaken.
When you see him in the waiting room, you understand the extreme end of “euphemism.”
In July, Kanjani8 cancels something without saying why. There’s no official word yet, but the why is this: Ryo’s been hospitalized. Something mild, Kame says, not what Jin has. Probably caused by exhaustion. No wonder, right? The way he works?
You snort and — kon kon — tap the tired streak under Kame’s eye with the muzzle of your fingertips. Then you stroke your knuckles down his cheek, knowing how alone he feels in his grief.
You imagine Ryo by himself at night, kept awake by the lonely sound of his own breathing. You imagine a sudden noise, some patient in a room down the hall faltering on her way to the bathroom. She overturns a chair and a metal tray by her bedside. You imagine the clamor, deafening in contrast to the silence. You imagine Ryo start to tremble, triggered by unexplainable terror. You imagine his hands over his face, the struggle to regain composure. Not terminal like Jin. Not dying like Jin.
But alone.
You trail your fingers over Jin’s blanketed toes as you leave.
Subaru is outside Ryo’s room. He holds his phone to his ear in a white grip. You think that right now, he would look nauseous in any light.
You stand in front of him, pretending you’re an opportunistic photographer holding out for genuine emotion from the idol. You’re fascinated by how young he'd look right now if you didn’t know him. He’s smothering his nose in a sleeved wrist. His breath stutters past damp, parted lips. You don’t remember how old he is, but you think you’d be surprised by any age.
Suddenly Subaru’s mouth opens wider in a silent, aborted noise. When he finally manages something, it’s only a breath on its way to a sob. You lean in closer and hear,
“Subaru? Subaru, shh, he might wake up—”
And Subaru says back, very quietly, “No, I haven’t gone in yet. But. But — ”
“Wait 'til Maru gets there. But someone has to tell him — ”
You step back while Murakami tries to calm Subaru down. He sounds too much like Koyama did, babbling soothing nonsense as he guided you away from the punishing stage lights to the bathroom.
Subaru drags his sleeve over his eyes and heaves a damp breath through his nose. He pins his wrist to his forehead. His eyes are blotched red, his nose slick. A nurse eyes him discreetly from her station, and when Subaru notices her staring, he tucks his face almost violently back into his sleeve.
“No — he’s not here yet. He’s not answering his phone. He said he’d get here before me. No, Hina — no. I don’t want to — ” Hoarsely, he whispers, “I can’t go in there alone.”
You make a rectangle with your hands. Click.
The door doesn’t open for you, but that doesn’t stop you entering. It appears that when you’re dead, physicality relies on your state of mind.
Tsubasa’s asleep, but if you didn’t have Jin for comparison, you’d think he’s dead. His lips are dry, and his skin is ashen. His hair is coarse and unstyled, driven into sections by sweat.
You turn at the scrape of the door. Takki steps into the room.
You watch.
There’s a chair near Tsubasa’s bedside, but Takki doesn’t make it that far. He stops at the end of the bed. He almost touches the rail, but drives his hands into his pockets instead. His gaze wanders, focusing briefly on everything but Tsubasa. You wonder if he realizes how afraid he looks. He takes a breath and moves to stand behind the chair. He clutches the back rest, expression as tight as his fingers.
“Tsubasa,” Takki whispers hoarsely. Said mournfully, not so much a summons as an identification. Takki’s fingers curl into Tsubasa’s hair, gently and tentatively. His expression is so sincere and heartbroken, it frightens you until you remember you don’t have to comfort him.
You know he says, “Don’t wake up yet, Tsubasa,” even though only three or four syllables make it to a whisper.
He breathes through his nose deeply.
“I’m sorry.” Takki holds Tsubasa’s hand between both of his, shortening the string that connects them. He closes his eyes, leans on his elbows, Tsubasa’s hand held to his forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice. But — ” He squeezes Tsubasa’s hand — you can see it from halfway across the room. “You’ll be okay. They said. They said soon. It’s happening faster, but they’re catching it quicker and — ”
“Shh.” Tsubasa’s forehead creases. “Sleeping.”
Takki is paralyzed. Eventually, Tsubasa curiously opens one eye.
His grin is so casual that Takki laughs. Hysterically and unrestrained. He kisses Tsubasa’s eyelids, his sweat-damp hairline —
“Get off, you psychopath.”
“You fucker, you’ve been awake since I came in here!”
“I'd better not have to almost die after every time we argue. Can we let me try apologizing next time?”
Takki laughs into his neck, gripping Tsubasa’s hand until it’s white.
On your way back to Jin’s floor, you stop in Ryo’s room.
Subaru is inside at least, by the door. You read the message to Maru on his phone asking that he hurry.
Ryo is pale, but still better off than Jin and Tsubasa. Even Tsubasa, who’ll recover. Ryo is only worn and torn. He’ll be mended easily.
You poke Ryo in the cheek while you wait for Subaru to overcome his immobility. Twelve pokes, fourteen, thirty-one, fifty-six, eighty. You find it satisfying and morbidly amusing that you can get away with this. If you existed on the same plane together right now, he’d punch you.
“Subaru?”
Ryo’s own voice seems to startle him. Subaru rakes a hand through his hair and inhales. “Ryo-chan.”
“My head is — ” Ryo grimaces, probably a better description of his condition than what he can explain in words.
“Ryo-chan,” Subaru says again.
Carefully, Ryo says, “Subaru, I’m okay.”
Subaru scratches his forehead, saying nothing.
Ryo knows Subaru better than you do. He says, “What’s wrong?”
He’s realized Subaru isn’t worried about him, but for him.
The string no longer leads to Jin’s room. You sprint down the hall, down the stairs, through the hospital exit, through the lawn garden, up the path, up. Up.
Jin’s waiting, standing on nothing.
He throws a scarf at you.
It twists and twirls between you down to nowhere.
Jin says, “Yo. I’m dead.” He grins, swinging back and forth on his heels. “You too?”
You haul on the string. He laughs and freefalls. You catch him behind the neck and hug him. You sway, feet between his, one arm around his waist, the other around his neck, your mouth crushed on his shoulder. He holds you, laughing.
You say, “I love you. I love you. Jin, I love you.”
He rocks you. You kiss him. He fans fingers through your hair.
You punch him. “Asshat, I waited weeks for you to die!”
He sticks his tongue out at you.
You try to strangle him with the string. He fakes gagging.
He holds your hand. You squeeze his fingers. The string becomes tangled.
Title: Tightrope
Pairing: Yamapi/Jin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,083
Summary: Because you’re dead the train is free.
Because you’re dead the train is free. Before you claim a seat, the doors close on the red string. Means you’re fastened to this spot, but you don’t have circulation anyway, so you stand.
You disembark two miles away from the hospital so you can look for the bakery you discovered that first week after you died. You can’t get lost; as you walk, the red string tied to your pinky steadily reels you in.
It’s past dawn. The sun rose to no one’s notice, shrouded by storm clouds. You’re soaked through before long—you’re separated from humanity, not nature. You weave your way forward beneath the cobbled canopy of umbrellas. Their carriers can’t see you. Wouldn’t even if they could, staring down as they are at the rain-splotched sidewalk.
A silent stripe of lightning slashes the sky as you enter the hospital. Moments later, as you board the elevator behind the pudding nurse, thunder bellows a response. You lean in the corner, evaluating the nurse. Her hair is freshly beaded with rain and her arms are damp, too. She’s exhausted, and it shows—her concealer is too thinly spread under her eyes. She has Jin’s files in her hand, which shakes from cold. That part you sympathize with.
You follow her down the hallway. She brings a file up to read while she walks, and you try to read it over her shoulder. But the handwriting is either illegible or communicating with a vernacular you don’t understand.
The lights in here freak you out. They bleach skin, searching scrupulously for a dormant disease. In this light, the shadows underneath pudding nurse’s eyes are dark like bruises. The veins running through her wrists look as if they’re on the outside.
A stronger reminder—because you’re always aware—that the living are holding Jin back from you.
While she reads, her pace is slow. The string guides you around the next corner and past three doors directly into Jin’s room. He’s awake, looking absently out the door through your chest.
That first week after dying, you pretended he was ignoring you to piss you off. You didn’t play that game long. One morning you managed to convince yourself he was ignoring you. That he hated you sulking after him. That he didn’t want you waiting for him. You yanked, wrenched and chewed on the string trying to break it, to free yourself from him. Finally, the viciousness left you. It took hours, but the string remained unbroken. Numb, you sat on his bed and watched him serenely break into another virtual car, thumbs flying on the DS Ryo loaned him, tethered pinky extended.
Now, as you close the space between you and Jin, the string shrinks. Pudding nurse enters with a resolute, “Good morning.” Jin nods, smiling, and replies quietly. You cover his hand with yours, and watch the one phenomenon you still cherish take place.
Your pinkies are lined up, your right over his, and the string has shrunk to a mere millimeter. Warmth from the string spreads through you body like sunlight through latticework. Underneath your hand, Jin’s glows. You place your fingers in the spaces between his, creating an alternating pattern of shadow and brilliance.
It’s the only magic in the world. Figures you can only see it when you’re dead.
Early on, you wanted to visit everybody.
You went with Takki to a restaurant. You watched him trace a circle around his eye with his thumb for ten minutes while his ramen cooled and developed a film on the surface. You know the waitress recognized him, and her hands shook when she arrived to refill his tea. It was still full to the brim. Takki didn't notice her when she blushed and retreated. The laugh lines by his eyes looked deeper. You poked one, then pretended to smooth it out.
He left his untouched food and a generous tip on the table. He held his composure until the first wintry breeze stung the wet track on his face. The blank façade dropped in an instant and Takki reached over his head to hide his face in his forearms. His sobs were silent.
You know he was waiting for Tsubasa. There was a string around his pinky, too, and it remained slack while you stood next to him, lips on his jacketed shoulder.
You climbed through Toma’s window just before sunrise on his day off. You knelt next to him and pet his hair. Pretended you could remember the scent of it. The feel of it wet from the rain. You curled up behind him, hugged his waist and sang. You made it up. You don’t remember actual songs.
Eventually, Toma unconsciously hummed a note or two. The harmony.
His voice was scratched raw by tears.
You took the train to Osaka right before Jin got sick. You went through his house and Uchi’s before you found Ryo at Ohkura’s. The eight of them, all eight, were sprawled around the television with Ryo at the center.
Uchi held him, head stacked on Ryo’s, eyes closed. Ryo’s were red, occasionally blinking out tears. He snuffled, but his nose was blocked, so he took breaths through parted, tear-slick lips. At the first near-whimper, Yasu bolted off the floor, giving up all pretenses, and tucked himself against Ryo. He kissed Ryo’s temple, and Ryo shattered.
You’d heard and seen Ryo cry before. This was worse.
Yoko got to him next, kneeling in front of the couch to pull Ryo’s contorted mouth against his shoulder. The sounds were muffled, but they were only beginning. Subaru hugged Ryo around the chest and pressed his lips against Ryo’s ear. He whispered quietly, the trip of his Kansai-ben soft and soothing. Yasu stroked Ryo’s hair. Maru’s hand overlapped Yasu’s. Hina slipped his arm around Yoko’s waist and Ryo’s neck, his hand gripping Subaru’s elbow. Ohkura brought Ryo’s arm behind him, gave him the fabric of his shirt to grip. Uchi pressed his face into Ryo's neck.
You left him in good hands.
It’s an epidemic.
Two hundred and thirty-two so far.
You were ninth.
When you visited him next, Takki deleted your number from his phone.
Then you followed Toma around Tokyo until he scrolled down his contacts. You didn’t see your name.
Ryo’s kept it.
So has Jin.
You still visit Jin. But mostly you stay here by your family grave. There are others like you in the cemetery, but you don’t acknowledge them and they ignore you in return.
Half of your ashes were spilled into the breeze. You don’t know where. You went home the first night — not to your apartment, but to your home. You watched your mother shriek on her knees for all of three seconds before you fled in searing pain.
The grave is not your home. It’s not your apartment, either. Still, the grave is where your friends travel to meet you.
Tegoshi kneels before the Yamashita headstone, head bowed. His white jacket and bug-eye sunglasses probably send a mixed signal to his fans: notice, but stay at a distance. Like this, he probably looks more otherworldly than you do.
Tegoshi arches his shoulders to slide his jacket off. His shirt is green, and that’s why you notice the pink necklace. On a silver chain hangs a cursive P stamped over the character for “yama.”
You didn’t know you could still cry.
Tegoshi takes his fist from his jacket pocket.
Kitagawa Rika climbs onto her grave, hooking her arm around the pillar and leaning over Tegoshi’s head. She stares at you without even the most minute hint of an expression. You grimace at her, but she’s staring at Tegoshi now. You join her.
He drives a rod into the dirt, then hangs another necklace identical to his own on the hook.
Kitagawa Rika starts walking the circumference of the pillar on top of her gravestone, her attention lost as easily as water through a strainer.
You sit next to Tegoshi, reaching your arm across his shoulders. You lay your head on his shoulder. You hear him breathe. You hear him whine. You feel him shake. Death has anesthetized them — him — from you. You hold him tighter because you can.
When he stands, you’re dragged up with him, weightless compared to the corporeal. He leaves with rounded shoulders. He forgets his jacket. You use it for a pillow until the sun sets. Then you return to Jin.
Jin is sick.
He showed symptoms much faster than you did.
It won’t help.
You saw it first, one morning as he dragged his shirt off. The bruise was in his left armpit. Yellow, mottled. Your first bruise showed on the small of your back. You didn’t notice it until you visited the onsen with Shirota.
You notice three days before anyone else does. Every time Jin puts an outfit together, you shake the hangers, spill jackets and shirts onto the floor. Jin retrieves them without looking at the mirror hanging near the closet, without seeing his own body.
You go at the wall with both fists. You see the punches, but you don’t feel anything. You want pain. You want to bleed. So you rake your knuckles on the wooden paneling, you throw your shoulder into the window and kick the bed so forcefully it should disjoint your thighbone from your hip, or at least move the bed. But there’s no change.
You curl your arms on the wall and push your face behind your elbow and scream.
By the time Ueda demands why Jin’s jaw is stained with what looks like Ueda's kale smoothie, Jin is beyond help.
You checked yourself into the hospital at the end of the month. Halfway into the next one, you died.
You know Jin doesn’t have as long. He didn’t wake up this morning. The fluids won’t sustain him much longer.
You climb into bed with him. He can feel you now. His fingers between yours aren’t as bright, but the warmth is just as strong. Stronger, now that he squeezes your hand back.
You’re lonely. You’re reaching, but his fingertips barely touch yours. You want to cling to him, hear the breath rush out of him, kiss his sullen mouth and his beaming smile and you want him.
You want him so badly.
You cry.
You leave when others visit Jin.
One evening, Kame runs into the hallway, through you, shouting for help. You follow him and Jin’s doctor back into the room, where Kame swears he saw Jin move.
The doctor lets him down subtly. Kame insists. The doctor says no.
The doctor eventually leaves. Kame stands, stunned, until Junno returns from the cafeteria with tea. Kame throws his arms around Junno’s chest and bawls into his neck. Junno drops one cup and the tea steams off the floor.
Jin’s nurse used to be yours. She gave you two cups of pudding with your dinner.
She can’t do that for Jin, but she brushes his hair and finger-combs his bangs off to the side the way he likes.
You’re positive angels will be like pudding nurse.
Tsubasa collapses before a concert.
Takki explains to their fans. The newspaper quotes it. He’s described as shaken.
When you see him in the waiting room, you understand the extreme end of “euphemism.”
In July, Kanjani8 cancels something without saying why. There’s no official word yet, but the why is this: Ryo’s been hospitalized. Something mild, Kame says, not what Jin has. Probably caused by exhaustion. No wonder, right? The way he works?
You snort and — kon kon — tap the tired streak under Kame’s eye with the muzzle of your fingertips. Then you stroke your knuckles down his cheek, knowing how alone he feels in his grief.
You imagine Ryo by himself at night, kept awake by the lonely sound of his own breathing. You imagine a sudden noise, some patient in a room down the hall faltering on her way to the bathroom. She overturns a chair and a metal tray by her bedside. You imagine the clamor, deafening in contrast to the silence. You imagine Ryo start to tremble, triggered by unexplainable terror. You imagine his hands over his face, the struggle to regain composure. Not terminal like Jin. Not dying like Jin.
But alone.
You trail your fingers over Jin’s blanketed toes as you leave.
Subaru is outside Ryo’s room. He holds his phone to his ear in a white grip. You think that right now, he would look nauseous in any light.
You stand in front of him, pretending you’re an opportunistic photographer holding out for genuine emotion from the idol. You’re fascinated by how young he'd look right now if you didn’t know him. He’s smothering his nose in a sleeved wrist. His breath stutters past damp, parted lips. You don’t remember how old he is, but you think you’d be surprised by any age.
Suddenly Subaru’s mouth opens wider in a silent, aborted noise. When he finally manages something, it’s only a breath on its way to a sob. You lean in closer and hear,
“Subaru? Subaru, shh, he might wake up—”
And Subaru says back, very quietly, “No, I haven’t gone in yet. But. But — ”
“Wait 'til Maru gets there. But someone has to tell him — ”
You step back while Murakami tries to calm Subaru down. He sounds too much like Koyama did, babbling soothing nonsense as he guided you away from the punishing stage lights to the bathroom.
Subaru drags his sleeve over his eyes and heaves a damp breath through his nose. He pins his wrist to his forehead. His eyes are blotched red, his nose slick. A nurse eyes him discreetly from her station, and when Subaru notices her staring, he tucks his face almost violently back into his sleeve.
“No — he’s not here yet. He’s not answering his phone. He said he’d get here before me. No, Hina — no. I don’t want to — ” Hoarsely, he whispers, “I can’t go in there alone.”
You make a rectangle with your hands. Click.
The door doesn’t open for you, but that doesn’t stop you entering. It appears that when you’re dead, physicality relies on your state of mind.
Tsubasa’s asleep, but if you didn’t have Jin for comparison, you’d think he’s dead. His lips are dry, and his skin is ashen. His hair is coarse and unstyled, driven into sections by sweat.
You turn at the scrape of the door. Takki steps into the room.
You watch.
There’s a chair near Tsubasa’s bedside, but Takki doesn’t make it that far. He stops at the end of the bed. He almost touches the rail, but drives his hands into his pockets instead. His gaze wanders, focusing briefly on everything but Tsubasa. You wonder if he realizes how afraid he looks. He takes a breath and moves to stand behind the chair. He clutches the back rest, expression as tight as his fingers.
“Tsubasa,” Takki whispers hoarsely. Said mournfully, not so much a summons as an identification. Takki’s fingers curl into Tsubasa’s hair, gently and tentatively. His expression is so sincere and heartbroken, it frightens you until you remember you don’t have to comfort him.
You know he says, “Don’t wake up yet, Tsubasa,” even though only three or four syllables make it to a whisper.
He breathes through his nose deeply.
“I’m sorry.” Takki holds Tsubasa’s hand between both of his, shortening the string that connects them. He closes his eyes, leans on his elbows, Tsubasa’s hand held to his forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice. But — ” He squeezes Tsubasa’s hand — you can see it from halfway across the room. “You’ll be okay. They said. They said soon. It’s happening faster, but they’re catching it quicker and — ”
“Shh.” Tsubasa’s forehead creases. “Sleeping.”
Takki is paralyzed. Eventually, Tsubasa curiously opens one eye.
His grin is so casual that Takki laughs. Hysterically and unrestrained. He kisses Tsubasa’s eyelids, his sweat-damp hairline —
“Get off, you psychopath.”
“You fucker, you’ve been awake since I came in here!”
“I'd better not have to almost die after every time we argue. Can we let me try apologizing next time?”
Takki laughs into his neck, gripping Tsubasa’s hand until it’s white.
On your way back to Jin’s floor, you stop in Ryo’s room.
Subaru is inside at least, by the door. You read the message to Maru on his phone asking that he hurry.
Ryo is pale, but still better off than Jin and Tsubasa. Even Tsubasa, who’ll recover. Ryo is only worn and torn. He’ll be mended easily.
You poke Ryo in the cheek while you wait for Subaru to overcome his immobility. Twelve pokes, fourteen, thirty-one, fifty-six, eighty. You find it satisfying and morbidly amusing that you can get away with this. If you existed on the same plane together right now, he’d punch you.
“Subaru?”
Ryo’s own voice seems to startle him. Subaru rakes a hand through his hair and inhales. “Ryo-chan.”
“My head is — ” Ryo grimaces, probably a better description of his condition than what he can explain in words.
“Ryo-chan,” Subaru says again.
Carefully, Ryo says, “Subaru, I’m okay.”
Subaru scratches his forehead, saying nothing.
Ryo knows Subaru better than you do. He says, “What’s wrong?”
He’s realized Subaru isn’t worried about him, but for him.
The string no longer leads to Jin’s room. You sprint down the hall, down the stairs, through the hospital exit, through the lawn garden, up the path, up. Up.
Jin’s waiting, standing on nothing.
He throws a scarf at you.
It twists and twirls between you down to nowhere.
Jin says, “Yo. I’m dead.” He grins, swinging back and forth on his heels. “You too?”
You haul on the string. He laughs and freefalls. You catch him behind the neck and hug him. You sway, feet between his, one arm around his waist, the other around his neck, your mouth crushed on his shoulder. He holds you, laughing.
You say, “I love you. I love you. Jin, I love you.”
He rocks you. You kiss him. He fans fingers through your hair.
You punch him. “Asshat, I waited weeks for you to die!”
He sticks his tongue out at you.
You try to strangle him with the string. He fakes gagging.
He holds your hand. You squeeze his fingers. The string becomes tangled.
