Chapter Text
There is something not right about Hikaru.
Yoshiki goes home with him. It’s quiet, and he tells him that his mom is grocery shopping for them. In the act of the deepest betrayal, Yoshiki doesn’t believe him. In the act of even deeper insanity, he still comes in, takes off his shoes, leaves his hat and they go to Hikaru’s room. And everything is…
Normal.
Not right. Still not right.
“Asako wants to come and visit soon,” Hikaru rambles the whole way home, “And Maki. And, uh, the rest. They all miss you, but I missed you the most.”
“I miss you too,” Yoshiki says, and he’s careful when choosing his words.
Hikaru turns around, and in the setting sun, his eyes glimmer like little specks of glitter that Kaoru always left all over Yoshiki’s own clothes. They leave Yoshiki’s bag in the corner of his room, and everything looks the same — nothing is wrong, nothing is weird or strange, only Hikaru moving through the space like he is an uninvited guest. Like he kind of forgot how to use all his limbs in a natural way.
“What should we do first?” Yoshiki asks.
He feels like a stranger in the place, that he knew very well for how long he could remember.
“Come here,” Hikaru says softly, and opens his arms.
Yoshiki thinks about it for a moment. He tries to stop himself, but it’s enough for him to almost fall into Hikaru’s arms, and they both go tumbling onto the floor, Hikaru laughing loudly as they do. He falls on his back, and it somehow doesn’t faze him at all; instead, he grabs Yoshiki and hugs him tightly, and Yoshiki breathes in and out, his face pressed into Hikaru’s neck. He smells like metal, sweat and something new; shampoo, maybe.
“You are so cold,” Yoshiki huffs.
He tries to explain himself to himself. They are friends; they missed each other. And Yoshiki is almost sure that he is close to crying, as he digs his fingers into Hikaru’s back, and he wants to crawl under Hikaru’s skin.
“I really thought you died,” Yoshiki mutters after a moment, and his voice breaks. “Back then, in December.”
He remembers it all in pieces, like the memory itself was cut out from his brain with a dull kitchen knife.
12/15
Yoshiki: please answer
Yoshiki: is something wrong
Yoshiki: did something happened
Yoshiki: are you mad at me
Yoshiki: please please please don’t do this to me
His mother says something, and Yoshiki drops his phone on the ground, the screen breaks. He doesn’t remember what it was – something about finally getting through to someone from her old client list.
“They are all looking for him,” she says quietly. “Since last night.”
“They are not,” Yoshiki says.
“Yoshiki,” she says loudly, and tries to reach towards him. “I—they will call me if there is an update.”
“I want to—”
“You are not—,” she stops him. “You are not going anywhere.”
So, he goes to his room. He lies down and he stares at the unread messages he had sent.
12/15
Yoshiki: I love you so much please don’t do that to me, that’s not fair, you are not the one that is suppose to do that
Yoshiki: I can’t live without you please. please I beg you to not do this to me
Yoshiki: please
Yoshiki deletes messages. He stares at his ceiling and it’s blurry from the tears in his eyes, and he cannot focus; the lights outside his room blink, and cars scream with their engines, and he wants to honestly jump in front of them not to even really die, but to make them all shut up. To stop. Everything needed to stop.
12/15
Yoshiki: please it can’t end here, it just can’t, we were supposed to move together and live together and I cannot end up like my father always missing my best friend
He deletes this one too. He’s selfish, he is – and he is in a panic. He sobs into his pillow, and gets up, tries to control his body and breath. Gets a tissue that he brought with himself from the living room – it's wet with his tears and snot, and it doesn’t help when he blows his nose into it. He sobs so loud he is sure that his parents and sister can hear, and cries into the wet tissue, and rubs the tears and snot and everything all over his face and he genuinely thinks to himself if someone could die from crying, he’s going to die.
He is going to die. He was going to die, and there was no way out, and he couldn’t breathe at all. He is going to die in the most pathetic way, because if Hikaru is not there, he won’t be either.
His doors open, and he cannot really register anything; he can feel arms around himself and his mother drags him closer to herself in her half-asleep state, and presses her son’s face into her chest.
“Shh,” she mutters, and rocks him like he’s a crying newborn. “It’s going to be alright.”
Yoshiki doesn’t say anything and he just cries, and wants to scream that it really won’t be. And he shouldn’t be here, in Tokyo; by now, he should be on the train to do… anything. Go into the mountains and die with Hikaru, for all he cared.
But he just sobs into his mother's chest like a child. He coughs, chokes on his own saliva, feels like he is going to lose his mind.
(He doesn’t really remember anymore, but he is sure he cried about how much he loved him too – but it was ignored, and gladly, never questioned, and maybe it was the only thing that truly kept him from ending it all.)
“I’ll get water and sleeping meds,” Yoshiki hears a male voice and somehow recognizes his father in all his hysteria, and is lucid enough to be surprised that his dad was actually home already. “Wait with him.”
So, his parents give him some sleeping meds. It takes another half of an hour before he is calm enough to lay and bed, and his mother says some nice words that were supposed to calm him down (‘We don’t even know where he is, after all, calm down.’), and leaves the doors half open. Calmer, with a headache from crying and with a puffy face, Yoshiki takes his phone again.
12/15
Yoshiki: please go home
Yoshiki: everyone is looking for you
Yoshiki: did you went into the mountains
Yoshiki: please come home
Yoshiki: please
“I’m sorry,” Hikaru says, because he’s alive, and he is here, and he is so cold that his body feels like it's dead, but he’s still talking and moving and… here.
Yoshiki presses his lips together. He takes his hand from underneath Hikaru’s back and tries to sit, but Hikaru holds him closer.
“You are so warm,” Hikaru purrs.
“Ugh,” Yoshiki mutters and finally wiggles from Hikaru’s hands. “You are being weird,” he adds.
Yoshiki sits, and Hikaru still lays on his back on the floor. He gives Yoshiki a sleazy smile and winks, the red shimmering in the darkness. Yoshiki swallows hard and looks away. Ignore it, he thinks to himself. It’s just Hikaru.
“Let’s go and get some ice creams before it gets dark,” Yoshiki says and gets up.
Reaches towards Hikaru, and the other boy grabs his hand and allows Yoshiki to pull him up. They stare at each other for a moment, before Yoshiki lets go of his hand.
“Let’s go,” he hurries Hikaru up.
Yoshiki stares at his friend.
He has grown taller – not much. He got skinnier too. His face lost it boyish fat, and features became sharper, and as Yoshiki stares at him, he isn’t sure if it was just a temporary growth spurt or the accident really took such a tool on him. He isn’t sure. He is too scared to ask.
“It’s soooo good!” Hikaru mutters, mouth full of ice cream. Yoshiki giggles, and they both are sitting on the little steps by the grocery store. “Aww, and it’s even better with you by my side!”
“It really is,” Yoshiki says. “What was the last time you had it?”
“Ugh, I can’t even remember—”
Yoshiki blinks.
“Yes, you can,” he says and gives him a sheepish smile. “Remember? We promised each other we won’t eat this particular ice cream without each other around. Did you keep your promise?”
Hikaru blinks. He looks like he is short circuiting. It takes him fourteen seconds to give Yoshiki a wide smile.
“I did,” he says proudly. “Did you?”
“Yes,” Yoshiki answers. “Of course.”
They take the long way home. Just walking. Talking. It is supposed to feel like they are best friends hanging out like they always did, even if Yoshiki can’t stop feeling like a stranger. Those roads that he knew are still here; and so is his friend. And still; as Hikaru kicks the stone and it flies down the road, Yoshiki feels like a stranger—
—he feels like an uninvited guest. The city is calm and quiet, and he feels the eyes of the shop clerk on him. Where have you been?, they ask him with a thick, honey-like voice. How is Tokyo? Is your mother alright?
She’s not too well, but he doesn’t say that, and says that everything is alright. His sister is great. His dad is amazing. He is doing amazing too, thank you for asking. He feels like an uninvited guest, and the conversation is just killing awkward tension – because why are you still here, Yoshiki? What are you hanged up on that you are still here, and why would you come back, and there has been some strange things going on since the winter, and—
Hikaru hums the opening of the anime that they were watching often.
“I was so lonely,” Yoshiki says softly. “Without you.”
Hikaru turns around. He smiles widely, and red in his eyes invites Yoshiki closer.
“Me too,” he says, and reaches towards Yoshiki. “I never felt anything like this before,” he admits.
Yoshiki doesn’t grab his hand. Instead, he looks away, in shame, and walks by Hikaru, looking at the setting sun.
“Tokyo is not what it is supposed to be,” Yoshiki mutters. “It’s loud and overwhelming. It’s—so loud,” he mutters. “I like it here more. It’s quiet.”
They both stare at the setting sun in silence.
When it comes the first night, Yoshiki doesn’t know what it is nor does he understand anything.
He wakes up and stares into the darkness, and darkness stares back; the darkness moves, changes, distorts itself. It softly mumbles something, and Yoshiki just stays put, doesn’t dare to breathe, doesn’t move. He stares into the darkness, and darkness blinks at him, and he sees it glittering, and even without light, it seems like something that he stared into just a few hours before bed.
It stays in the same place, and seems to whisper something before sliding into the darkness once again.
Yoshiki doesn’t notice when he falls asleep again.
He doesn’t wake up alone. Hikaru must have crawled into his futon somewhere closer to the morning – his arms are wrapped around Yoshiki, and face pressed firmly into Yoshiki’s chest.
“Hey,” Yoshiki mutters and tries to push the boy away. But Hikaru doesn’t care; he wakes up, and nuzzles himself into Yoshiki’s chest.
“Hi,” Hikaru greets him.
The boy is all cozied up. Yoshiki shivers when he moves, and gray eyes look up at Yoshiki. He blinks and smiles, and makes a sound like a purring cat.
“Hiii.”
“Let me go,” Yoshiki says, and tries to wiggle himself out. It’s—so awkward. So violently awkward, and so cruel towards his own body and heart to do that. And Hikaru doesn’t budge, only raising his eyebrows slightly, like he just doesn’t get it. “Please,” Yoshiki begs, and sounds so desperate that it is almost telling.
“Sorry,” Hikaru says, and moves away, his arms brushing over Yoshiki. “Ah, I need to piss,” he mumbles and sits up, his hair standing all over.
He leaves Yoshiki alone. The boy stares at the half-open door for a moment, before sighing softly.
For some reason, he thought that seeing Hikaru again would fix the strange feeling deep in his stomach. That everything would turn out just fine – that all those strange thoughts he had in the last weeks were just him going crazy.
But here he is, with Hikaru by his side, and there is something so deeply not right, that Yoshiki feels a deep need to run away.
So, Yoshiki goes after him. He doesn’t go inside the bathroom; just waits outside, and when Hikaru sees him, he gives Yoshiki a wide, gummy smile.
“Are you checking if I washed my hands?” Hikaru jokes, leaning closer to Yoshiki.
“Yes,” Yoshiki answers, and Hikaru laughs softly. “Can we spend today just the two of us?” he asks, and tilts his head slightly. “Eating ice creams, watermelons and napping.”
Hikaru’s face lights up even more, and he reaches towards Yoshiki. He hesitates for a second, like he doesn’t even know what he wants to do, before just tapping Yoshiki’s chest with his hand.
“Sure,” he says happily. “Can we read the manga you brought too?”
Yoshiki nods his head. He gives Hikaru a soft smile.
It comes to him the second night too.
He can almost see its shape. It’s like sea foam but if the sea was made from deep, dark oil – softly moving through the room, and even in darkness, it seems like it’s a wild animal, drenched in red and blue glitter. Softly crawls around Yoshiki, getting closer by every other circle, and when it finally brushes over Yoshiki’s feet, he can feel how cold and touchable it truly is.
It crawls around him, stalks like a wild animal. It makes sounds like it's a big snail crawling on the floor; and when Yoshiki stares at it, it seems to stare at him back.
When the morning light comes, the thing disappears.
“Did you sleep well?” Hikaru’s mother asks him.
“Yes,” Yoshiki answers and doesn’t think about it too much.
“Hm. I heard something strange in the morning, so I thought—” she hesitates. “Nevermind,” she adds. “I left you boys some money for food.”
“Okay,” Yoshiki says. “Thank you.”
For a moment, she looks like she wants to say something else. She stares at Yoshiki, but finally shakes her head and leaves Yoshiki alone.
By the third night, Yoshiki is not so afraid. When he wakes up, he sits on his bed, and stares at the thing. It stops moving – just stays by the feet of his futon, and when Yoshiki moves closer, it stays put.
“What are you,” he wonders out loud, but quietly enough that Hikaru wouldn’t hear it. “What are you?” he asks, his voice shaking as he does.
Maybe he doesn’t value his life too much.
Few weeks ago, he had this conversation with himself – he stayed in his own bed for the whole weekend. Barely ate anything too, and his mother was too busy to really notice anything. He stayed in bed, scrolled through his old photos, and listened to the cars screaming their songs on the roads by his window. Yoshiki thought to himself, if they don’t shut up, I’ll do that.
Thoughts of dying were simple, and came natural to him.
The thing moves, and his eyes adjust to the darkness. He knows that something is there — and whatever it is, it cannot be real. But it shimmers in darkness, and he can see red sparkles welcoming him too.
“What?” Yoshiki whispers, still half asleep.
The thing blinks again, curiously. When Yoshiki reaches towards it, it shivers – but slowly and curiously, it comes closer, touches Yoshiki’s finger. It’s cold and burning at the same time, and leaves soft kisses all over Yoshiki’s finger.
“What,” Yoshiki mutters and moves his hand back. “What are you?” he asks louder, now painfully aware that he wasn’t really half asleep anymore.
The kisses stains. The goo, sea, oil, monster, demon—it wraps itself around Yoshiki’s fingers and it burns in the most pleasant ways. And it is sick and wrong, and truly, Yoshiki knows a lot about how to be sick and wrong and impure.
The thing disappears in a blink of an eye when the lights blink softly in the room. Hikaru stares at Yoshiki, his hand on his night light he kept close to his futon.
“What?” Hikaru asks.
“Nothing,” Yoshiki lies. “I just saw something strange.”
Hikaru smiles sweetly and reaches towards Yoshiki, like he wants to say come to me.
“You are just having a silly dream,” he says.
I didn’t, Yoshiki thinks to himself. He looks at his hand in the half darkness, and it’s almost sure that whatever the thing was, it left dark blemishes all over his finger.
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
“Goodnight,” Hikaru says, and turns off the light.
Yoshiki lies down.
He doesn’t sleep the rest of the night, and it’s almost sure that Hikaru doesn’t either.
This time, Hikaru doesn’t crawl into Yoshiki’s futon. He’s up before the morning sun crawls into the room – Yoshiki hears him getting up, leaving, and Hikaru doesn’t come back for some time. Yoshiki stays in bed, and after some time takes out his phone and scrolls through every social media he can find.
When Hikaru comes back, he seems quiet — he doesn’t acknowledge Yoshiki waking up, and instead falls onto him, pressing his face close to Yoshiki’s neck.
“Awgh,” Yoshiki gasps, as Hikaru says:
“You smell so nice.”
“I do not,” Yoshiki mutters.
He can feel himself getting tense as Hikaru's breath tickles him.
“I’m going to cuff myself to you just so you won’t leave.”
Yoshiki blinks and tries to escape from Hikaru. The boy straddles him through the sheets and sits on him, his hands both placed around Yoshiki’s face; he stares into Yoshiki’s eyes, and Yoshiki can feel his breath getting shallow.
“Where were you?” Yoshiki asks quietly.
Hikaru just humms and closes his eyes.
“I like you a lot,” he admits, and it leaves his lips in such a ease that Yoshiki wants to hit him. “I’ll do whatever you want,” Hikaru whispers. “You can do whatever you want to me.”
Yoshiki blinks. It’s not something that he should be ever saying—
—but doesn’t Yoshiki want it? He’s seventeen and feels like he has been for such a long time already, and he feels like he has a pretty good grasp on the world. He knows how people die, and he knows how people come to be. He knows the basics of everything; of love, of grief, of what is correct and what isn’t. He heard that his neighbour had a baby this spring, and it’s a girl and they called her a pretty flowery name, and they joke about her being a heartbreaker with her big, black eyes. He wonders to himself sometimes – they called him that too? His little beauty marks were called the kisses of the past, and some old women around the neighbourhood joked about him hiding his pretty face behind his hair.
And he doesn’t want his beauty mark to be called the kisses of the past, and he’s the age where he wonders how it is, to feel something warm and soft pressed against them. And he dreams about shapes of humans that are pressing their bodies against him. And they are never really anyone, unless they are sometimes Hikaru, but Yoshiki never admits that they are anyone at all. He lies, and lies, and lies, and lies—
“What do you even mean,” Yoshiki mutters softly. Hikaru tilts his head, and gives him a soft, innocent smile. “What. Do. You. Mean.”
“Nothing,” Hikaru answers, and his eyes widen, and seems worried. “Just—just tell me what you want. I’ll do that.”
“No,” Yoshiki says and shakes his head. Without any force, he flips them over, and now he is towering over Hikaru, pressing his arms into the futon. “You don’t say that kind of stuff. It’s weird.”
“Why?” Hikaru wonders, and there is a childlike curiosity here. He doesn’t fight Yoshiki at all.
And Yoshiki thinks to himself, he doesn’t get it. And it’s strange, because for Hikaru, in many ways, always got it. It was strange for them to cuddle up in the bed after they got older. It would be weird for them to play-fight like this in high school. Hikaru understood sex, and he understood from what it comes, and why it happens — in all certainty that a typical teenage boy could, of course.
This? This wasn’t how Hikaru ever talked or acted. And Yoshiki stares at him, and it’s undoubtedly Hikaru, and they share all little scars, beauty marks, everything—and Yoshiki is sure he’s going crazy. Because whatever it was, it wasn’t Hikaru.
“What do you mean ‘why’?” Yoshiki snaps at him. “You told me many times ‘why’ that’s weird.”
Hikaru gives him a soft, shy smile, and he once again makes that strange face like he’s trying to make his brain move in a way he needs it now.
“Right,” Hikaru says softly, but sounds deeply unsure of it. “Can’t I change my mind?” he purrs, his fingertips playing with the hem of Yoshiki’s shirt. Yoshiki slaps them away, and Hikaru pouts. “Mean!”
“You are mean,” Yoshiki says, and his voice shakes. “What are you doing? Making fun of me?”
Hikaru looks genuinely surprised.
“No—but I thought—you wanted…”
“I don’t,” Yoshiki says bitterly. “Please don’t do that again.”
He feels like begging. Please, don’t remind me who I am. He often wondered, if Hikaru ever saw half of the things that he texted to him last few months before Yoshiki deleted them in the embarrassed mania — and if anything, if Hikaru was making fun of him.
But now, Hikaru looked almost painfully upset. When his eyes get teary, Yoshiki suddenly lets him go, and back off so quickly he almost hurts himself.
“S-sorry,” Hikaru mutters, and sits up too. They stare at each other, and Yoshiki presses his lips together.
It’s weird how obvious it was that Hikaru doesn’t really mean it at all. Yoshiki almost wonders to himself, how innocent it all was — like he is not truly aware of what he was even doing. But he knows. And Yoshiki knows that he knows.
“You are such a brat,” Yoshiki says softly. He reaches towards Hikaru, and brushes his hairs away, staring into Hikaru’s eyes. “Such a brat,” he repeats.
Hikaru grimaces.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“It’s okay,” Yoshiki answers. “You are just different than before, right?”
Hikaru blinks. Smiles at him through the tears, and slowly nods his head.
“Mhm,” Hikaru just mutters.
Yoshiki takes it as a confession.
“There was another death in the village.”
“Hm?”
“The old teacher, Kurosawa.”
“What happened?”
“They don’t know—but you know, boys, how it is with old people. He was probably sick.”
“Aren't there a lot of old people dying lately?”
“Because there are a lot of old people here, Yoshiki…”
“But it is worrying, I agree. The police aren't saying anything, but… I dunno. I don’t want you boys going out after it gets dark.”
“Alright.”
“Sure, sure. I mean, but there probably isn’t anything weird going on – old people die all the time!”
“They really don’t. It’s strange.”
Hikaru’s mother leaves them alone again. For Yoshiki, it was surprising how often the house just went quiet; in the mornings, evenings, and at night. Sometimes, he felt like Hikaru’s mother was never here at all, just visiting like a guest, making them dinners and asking Yoshiki how life in Tokyo is. But they are alone more often than they are not, and Yoshiki spends his days with Hikaru.
Hikaru is clingy; he needs some soft words, a warm smile, and a little attention. Yoshiki still tried to believe that it was just leftovers of Yoshiki leaving, and Hikaru missing him so much… but there is something deeply strange about it, in the way Hikaru acted, in the way he expressed himself.
(Yoshiki couldn’t admit that he dreamed about things like this, could he? Not in a soft daydreaming way — but buried deep between his sheets, the scenes playing between his eyelights. Hikaru touching him first, not saying a word, crawling under Yoshiki’s sheets and whispering something soft and sweet.
Only deep in his dreams, Yoshiki allows himself to think about it. To dream about the better fate. To lose sleep over all “what ifs”, and to cry his eyes out over ever thinking about it.
He tries to stop it. He tries, and begs himself to stop that. He gives up finally, and just tries to stop thinking about Hikaru like that – disgusting.)
Hikaru pouts his lips and puts the manga on his head.
“People always kiss by mistake,” he says suddenly and stares at Yoshiki. “Have you ever done it before?”
Yoshiki feels his skin crawl.
“No,” he answers simply, and flips pages of his own manga, pretending to read. “It only happens in manga.”
Hikaru hums. He lies down on the floor and places the manga on his face.
“I don’t understand how that even happens,” he admits.
Yoshiki blinks and stares at him.
“People trip and fall, most of the time,” he says after a moment. “That's what I saw in all that manga.”
“I mean yeah, sure, but—why are they all so addicted to it?”
“Addicted?”
“I like them getting together,” Hikaru says, and puts manga on the ground, his eyes staring at Yoshiki. “The game they play. But when they kiss, it’s like—suddenly, it becomes a different story. Suddenly, they are all obsessed with it.”
Yoshiki presses his lips together. He thinks about yesterday, and wonders to himself if that is related. He doesn’t like the idea of playing into Hikaru’s stupid trap. So, instead he puts his manga on the ground, and gets closer to Hikaru, staring at him.
“Because that’s nice,” Yoshiki simply says. “They enjoy it, the physical touch.”
Hikaru stares at him from the ground. His hand crawls towards Yoshiki, and he grabs Yoshiki’s pants with his fingers.
“It seems so bothersome,” Hikaru says after a moment, like his hand isn’t slowly crawling into Yoshiki’s pants leg. “To think about it so much.”
Yoshiki shivers when a cold hand touches his leg. Hikaru just leaves it there, apparently
“What are you doing now, then?” Yoshiki mutters.
Hikaru raises his eyebrows. Thinks about a bit, and finally says:
“But they all don’t have you. I do.”
That’s a ridiculous explanation, Yoshiki thinks to himself. But instead, he moves a bit closer, his knees almost touching Hikaru.
“It’s different,” Yoshiki says.
“Aren’t I different too?”
“I dunno,” Yoshiki answers and leans, staring at Hikaru’s face. The other boy opens his lips slightly, and stares into Yoshiki’s eyes. “What if you are? What are you, Hikaru?”
Hikaru gives him an ugly smile. Doesn’t answer.
Tonight, Yoshiki allows Hikaru to crawl into his futon.
They are too big to sleep together, but somehow, they make it work. Hikaru wraps around him like a cat, arms all around Yoshiki, one of his legs thrown over Yoshiki. It’s intimate, and it’s wrong, and Yoshiki feels his skin burning, but Hikaru is so cold it’s not even that bad.
Hikaru’s breath gets steddier, and Yoshiki just stays awake, his eyes itching. He wants to hit Hikaru. Or himself; for allowing that. Yoshiki did so much to ignore this feeling, hiding it deep between his ribs, underneath his heart. Did everything to stop thinking like that; to stay safe—
—and he doesn’t really remember how old he was when he realized that the whole idea of sleeping with another boy in a bed seemed strangely interesting. He couldn’t really describe it even to himself, but it just seemed just so not natural to think like that. He thought about it more, and came to a couple of conclusions – first of all, he was a freak, and should never think about it.
Second of all, the boy he most wanted to sleep with was always Hikaru, just Hikaru, no one else but Hikaru – and that, in itself, felt like a knife in his ribs.
But for now, he allows a needy, whiny Hikaru to crawl with him underneath the sheets. They lie on the same pillow, only thin layers of their pyjamas between their bodies. If Yoshiki wanted, he could
The monster doesn’t come tonight. And when Yoshiki stays awake, and Hikaru snores all night long, he realizes one thing — he never really heard Hikaru snoring when the monster came for Yoshiki.
Hikaru’s mother leaves for work, and Yoshiki goes to the kitchen.
Hikaru is rambling. Just talking, when Yoshiki paces the room and stops every now and then, and stares at Hikaru once again. He thinks and thinks; and finally, he falls to his knees in front of Hikaru, and the boy stops talking.
“Hikaru,” he starts softly.
“Hm?”
“I—” Yoshiki mutters softly. “I’m sorry,” he finally says.
“What are you so—”
Hikaru's eyes widen. He stares at Yoshiki, and the red blinks, as he touches his chest too, and feels the knife between his ribs. He breathes slowly, and Yoshiki presses his lips together.
“You figured it out?” Hikaru whispers.
Eight months ago, Yoshiki tried to take a knife with him to the bath. His sister was already done, mom too, and dad wasn’t even home. So he washes himself, a knife waiting just a reach away. He washes himself, and then gets into the lukewarm bath, a knife a reach away. He lies in the bathtub, and stares at the ceiling, and the knife is just a reach away and there are five hundred things that Yoshiki would love to write right now. The knife is a reach away, and so is his phone, so he reaches and takes his phone.
It pings once and twice.
11/21
Hikaru: is my best friend ever ready for our anime night today evening
Hikaru: make some popcorn!! Let’s make it like we are really together, I have one too
Yoshiki stares at the message through teary eyes. He sighs, and finishes bathing. He reaches for the knife, and takes it to the kitchen. Puts it back. Like nothing had ever happened.
“Yeah,” Yoshiki mumbles.
Yoshiki still holds the knife, as Hikaru pulls him closer. He cups his face, and presses his mouth to Yoshiki’s lips, and—
Yoshiki often thought about this moment. Before. If that even could happen, how would it look; probably always in the bedroom of one of them, or somewhere deep in the forest, where no one could see them. He could never really imagine himself being the one to pull Hikaru closer, so he most often would imagine Hikaru pulling him so forcefully that Yoshiki would fall onto him. Hikaru would press their mouths together, beating all the air from Yoshiki lungs and it would be just that — because they both don’t know how to kiss, right? So they would press their lips together. For a second, two or maybe fourteen, until they would pull away panting and staring at each other all wide eyed, blushed and embarrassed. And then, in the orange sunlight creeping into the room, Yoshiki would kiss him – throw himself onto Hikaru so suddenly that they would both fall over, and Yoshiki would grab his face and kiss, kiss, kiss and kiss, until Hikaru is covered with his kisses from head to toes.
Oh, the stuff Yoshiki would do to him. The things he wanted Hikaru to do to him — all so deeply immoral, that it made him so sick he couldn’t think about much more than that. But he wanted it all, in the deepest, sickest way — but that was before. Not now.
Now, he feels consumed. Now, he feels something cold and oily sliding inside his mouth as he pushes the knife deeper into Hikaru’s chest. Now, he is getting consumed in every way that he could never imagine — and it doesn’t feel pure, just doesn’t. It’s not like a first kiss that he had ever imagined for himself, and it tastes like all those nightmares that he had since forever. The thick, cold oil is slowly entering him, and he moans into Hikaru’s mouth, but still holds the knife.
Please, lips pressed to his seems to mouth. Please let me go.
“Ugh,” Yoshiki groans into an answer, and tries to back off just a bit.
The kiss becomes softer. The oily substance inside his mouth seems to back off, just like Yoshiki loses his grip on the knife. As he moves away, so does Hikaru; and when Yoshiki opens his eyes, the thing that is Hikaru now is looking at him teary-eyed, his cheeks pink, and shirt bloody.
They stare at each other. After a long moment, Yoshiki speaks:
“What are you?”
“Please don’t tell anyone,” begs the entity inside the body.
“I won’t,” Yoshiki promises, and he is not lying, even if he probably should be—but in all honesty, he wasn’t even sure what he could call in this situation. “But is he—”
He cannot finish. The question doesn’t belong inside his mouth.
“He is,” the stranger answers. “It wasn’t me,” he promises, and for some reason, Yoshiki trusts him. “He begged to stay, I think — I don’t remember much.”
Yoshiki stays silent for a moment. Room spins, Hikaru’s blood seems to be everywhere. Yoshiki is going to vomit – he can feel himself getting sicker, and the sour taste in his throat is rising by every second as he stares at Hikaru.
The boy, who should be Hikaru, looks at Yoshiki. He grabs the knife in his chest and pulls it out, and then throws it on the floor, his eyes still on Yoshiki.
“Were you planning to kill me?” Yoshiki asks.
Two seconds, then five, eight, fourteen.
“No.”
It took him too long to answer.
“So what have you done to me?” Yoshiki asks, his voice shaking. He backs off, stands up from the floor. Hikaru is still looking at him. “What was that?”
“I just tried to calm you down,” Hikaru explains. “Wasn’t it the thing you wanted?”
Yoshiki feels sick. Deeply, devilishly sick. The implication is killing him, and it’s not like it’s untrue, but it doesn’t change the thing – and whatever that is inside Hikaru’s body knows it, and it makes him even more scared. Did Hikaru know? Yoshiki thinks to himself and the panic rises inside him.
He wants to throw up, but in the last pathetic effort to actually respect what was left of Hikaru, he doesn’t leave the messy dirty pile of puke in the middle of his room. Chooses to ignore the bloody hand prints all over the bedsheets too.
“Not from you,” Yoshiki whispers. “What are you?”
The thing blinks.
“I don’t know,” it says after a moment.
The fake-boy touches his bloodied shirt. He looks at his fingers, how they stick to the blood. Yoshiki, honestly, wants to slap him for that; but there is a sweet innocence in this all.
“St-stop that,” he just mutters.
The monster looks up at Yoshiki, a bit surprised.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, and seems genuinely apologetic.
“E-explain,” Yoshiki demands, his voice cracking.
“I just told you I don’t know,” the fake Hikaru says, and pouts slightly. “I–I heard a wish. I fulfilled it.”
“What was the wish?”
“To stay,” Hikaru answers.
Yoshiki wants to throw something. Something hard, that would break and go into all the crevasses of this room.
“I have his memories,” Hikaru says. “All of them.”
“Are you a ghost? A demon? A parasite?”
A cockroach, maybe, Yoshiki thinks to himself, and it’s not even an ugly, mean assumption – he stabs, the stabbed thing is quite alright. From everything he knew for now, whatever the thing inside his friend's body was, it was unkillable.
“A god, maybe,” Hikaru wonders out loud. “Or just a spirit.”
At that, Yoshiki snorts. Because it’s honestly, hysterical – what was even going on?
“Why did you—why he, Hikaru—why?”
The thing tilts Hikaru’s head.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I—he was doing something important, I think.
Yoshiki takes another deep breath, feeling himself getting closer to a panic attack every second. He can feel a fever of emotions getting to him, as he tries to find a logical explanation, to understand that all his worry—truly, Yoshiki felt crazy.
“If I was here—”
“He would go there anyway,” Hikaru says. “I don’t know why; but he needed too. It had nothing to do with you. You wouldn’t have been able to save him anyway.”
“I knew there was something weird about you since December," Yoshiki says and feels like crying. “I just… Didn’t know what exactly.”
Hikaru stares at him. It takes him a moment, before he blinks and looks away, covers his face with his own hand.
“I’m sorry,” the boy cries. “I just care about you.”
“Hey,” Yoshiki says quietly. “Hey, okay. Don’t cry.”
He feels a strange urge to pat him on the head, but stops himself. Honestly, Yoshiki is too nice to him anyway already; whatever it was, apparently wanted to eat him. Hikaru cries harder and hiccups like a child.
The realization dawns onto him. He looks at his right hand, the pointer finger full of little, dark marks that look like a little bruise.
“I knew it,” he whispers to himself. He looks at Hikaru again. “You were doing this.”
“I–it was an accident!” Hikaru chokes. “You are so warm, and—ugh…”
“You keep saying that—but what does that even mean?”
Hikaru shrugs.
“Your soul,” he says, still sounding like a cry baby. “It’s warm. It’s called me. Why did you stab me?”’ he asks suddenly and touches his bloodied shirt.
Yoshiki shrugs.
“You tried to eat me at night,” he says after a moment, and it sounds ridiculous, but everything now was kind of ridiculous. “I—I was protecting myself.”
“That’s crazy, Yoshiki,” Hikaru says. “To just kill me. What if I died? What would you do?” Seeing a clueless expression on Yoshiki’s face, the boy laughs. “Exactly! Would you just run off into the mountains?”
“I would just kill myself,” Yoshiki answers coldly, and his words are thick like honey. “Stupid question.”
“Don’t say that. Hikaru—”
“Don’t say his name,” Yoshiki mutters and feels his skin crawl. “I—you—you are still suspicious,” he continues.
With tears in his eyes, the thing tilts Hikaru’s head.
“Didn’t you like this body? I can tell you do, even if Hikaru never realized,” Hikaru says. Yoshiki feels cold crawling down his neck. “Damaging it won’t help, y’know,” Hikaru pouts.
Yoshiki blinks, as the boy starts to take off his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s dirty,” he says, and throws it on the ground. “If you want to not get found out, we need to clean this all up before my mom comes back.”
Yoshiki feels his jaw locking in as he stares on the ground. The sheets; the shirt, the carpet. Hikaru himself, and Yoshiki too – they all had blood on themselves. Yoshiki brings his hand towards his lips and feels sick again, and can still almost feel the way Hikaru kissed him. He is sure that he’s smearing blood all over his place, and he looks at Hikaru, who stares at him with a surprisingly mature expression.
But it’s not Hikaru, right.
“What now?” Yoshiki asks quietly.
“I dunno,” Hikaru answers. “But we can figure it out, I think.”
Yoshiki presses his lips together, and can almost feel blood on his lips.
“Never kiss me again,” Yoshiki whispers.