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“I’ll take this,” he says gruffly, slapping a little container of famima chicken and a pack of Wevius onto the drug store counter.
“That’ll be 640 yen,” the cashier smiles at him brightly. He hates it, but slides a wad of money across the counter anyway in exchange for his food and cigarettes. Essentially the only two things he needs in life.
“Thank you for shopping here, have a good day,” the cashier beams, handing him his plastic bag of items. He nods stiffly in acknowledgement, turning to walk out the door. It closes behind him quietly, and a storm of snow greets him outside. The sky is dark, but streetlights shine down and encase the snowflakes in a haunting glow. They fall like crystals—beautiful, fragile, broken.
Kyoutani reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter, unwrapping his pack of cigarettes in the other hand. He sticks one in between his teeth, igniting his lighter. It sparks, and the flame dances in front his eyes, the only warmth in the coldness of a December night. He brings it up to his mouth, edging it closer and closer to the end of his cigarette—
“What are you doing?”
The voice is so sudden that he flinches, dropping the lighter in the snow. The cigarette falls out of his mouth, too.
“Shit,” he curses, looking around warily. “Who’s there?”
“Nobody,” the voice echoes innocently. It sounds like a man’s. Annoying as fuck, too. “Just a guy whose grandma died from smoking those. You know how bad these are for you?”
“No,” Kyoutani growls. He still can’t see who’s talking to him. He’s not starting to hallucinate, right? Side effect of the meds, maybe? “Who are you?”
A figure appears, illuminated by the streetlights, flurrying blizzard of white whirling around their head like a halo. He looks young-ish, around early-twenties. His hair is a mousy sort of brown, and his skin is pale. Dull, almost. A faded photograph. “I go by Yahaba. Who are you?”
Kyoutani scowls. “None of your business.”
“Rude,” Yahaba snorts. “I told you mine.” He takes a step closer and looks Kyoutani up and down. His eyes land on Kyoutani’s wrist. “What’s that?”
“Nothing—” Before Kyoutani can move away, it feels like something wraps around his wrist, holding him in place. The touch is ice cold, sending goosebumps over his arm.
“Isn’t this a hospital ID band?” Yahaba leans in to inspect it further. “Kyoutani Kentarou,” he reads, looking up to meet Kyoutani’s eyes. Despite the dullness of the rest of Yahaba, his eyes are warm. That deep shade of brown that no one really notices until they see it up close. “What are you in for, Kyoutani? Or do you like Kentarou more?”
“Don’t call me-”
“Or Kyouken-chan-”
Kyoutani snaps. He rips away from Yahaba’s grasp, reaching his hand out for a hit to Yahaba’s cheek. But his knuckles don’t make contact. Instead, they go right through Yahaba’s skin like he’s made of nothing but air. Almost like he’s…
“What—?” Kyoutani chokes out. “How ?”
Yahaba winces, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “Um, it—it’s hard to explain...”
“...Do you believe in ghosts?”
“You’re a ghost,” Kyoutani says, eyes wide. “No fucking way.”
“I’m not lying! And even if I was, you couldn’t have just imagined your hand going through my head!”
“Shut up,” Kyoutani backs up against the wall. “Is this a prank or something? Just leave me alone!”
“Calm down!” Yahaba yells. He lowers his voice. “Look, I’ll prove it to you.” Before he can react, Yahaba leans in and presses his lips against Kyoutani’s mouth.
“Mmpfh-” It’s not warm, or wet, or cold. It’s not anything, really. All he feels is the inhale of cold air, and snow landing on his cheeks. Yahaba pulls away less than a second later.
“Sorry, but, you get the point,” he mumbles, voice smaller than it was before. “I’m not in your world right now, basically. I’m kind of just visiting. That’s why you can’t touch me, unless I want to manifest enough energy to become more... physical.”
Kyoutani furrows his eyebrows. “Then what are you doing here?”
“Like I said,” Yahaba shrugs. “Just visiting.”
“So, what’s wrong with Kyouken-chan? Pretty smart nickname, if you ask-”
“Don’t call me that,” Kyoutani says sharply. For a moment, Yahaba only stares at him in a mix of emotions that he can’t quite make out.
“Sorry,” he says finally, “I didn’t mean to, you know, upset you.”
“Whatever.”
“I still don’t get it, though—assuming you just escaped from a hospital, where’s your hospital gown thing? And how’d you get here?”
Kyoutani decides to answer only one out of two of those questions, which is still surprisingly outgoing for him. Not like he has much of a choice, though. “I ran.”
“What? You ran? In this weather?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “You got a problem with that?”
“No, just...surprised. Impressed. How are you gonna get back?”
“Back?”
“To the hospital, I mean.”
“I’m not,” Kyoutani answers sharply. He pauses. “And you’re not stopping me.”
Yahaba shrugs. “I didn’t plan on it.” A smile crosses his face. “But I do tend to improvise quite a bit.”
And then he punches him.
The last thing Kyoutani remembers before his vision turns dark is what feels—and sounds—like a fist hitting his nose, his nose breaking, and the smell of blood, metallic and disgusting.
The most human poison there is.
“We really need to keep a better eye on you, Kyouken-chan,” Oikawa says primly. “I mean, it would also help if you stopped running away, but what can you do, I suppose.”
"Fuck off.”
“Language!” Oikawa chides. He checks his watch. “Oh, by the way, you have a visitor! He’s been waiting for you to wake up for, like, three hours or something.”
“Huh?” Kyoutani can’t think of a single person who’d want to visit him.
“That’s right,” Oikawa says smugly. “Have you been keeping a secret boyfriend from me or something?”
“Wha—no!”
“Hmm. Suuure. I’ll call him in now. Have fun!” As soon as Oikawa walks out, a familiar face walks in. He hates the look of it.
“G’morning,” Yahaba smiles easily. “How are you?”
“Stop following me,” Kyoutani snaps. He adds, as an afterthought, “creep.”
“I’m not following you,” Yahaba says defensively. “We just happened to be in the same place at the same time, so I thought I’d see how you’re doing. Clearly not well, though. How’d you get that bruise?”
“You gave it to me.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about last night, by the way.”
“How did you do it?” Kyoutani hates asking people shit, but he genuinely needs to know the answer to this one.
“How’d I hit you? Well, I gathered enough energy together, I guess. It took a lot more work than I expected, though, because I needed enough energy to take your cigarettes, too.”
“What?”
“You don’t need those deathsticks in your life,” Yahaba says shortly. “Your doctor would kill—I mean, he’d be pretty upset if he found you with those. And speaking of your doctor, what’s his name?”
“Oikawa,” Kyoutani scowls, not bothering to hide the loathing undertone.
“And, um, is there anything...notably weird about him?”
“Why do you care?”
Yahaba frowns. “He can see me, which shouldn’t be possible. The only explanation is that he’s being haunted like you, too.”
“Creep.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s just the word for when you’re visiting the other side and you find someone’s energy to latch onto. I didn’t come up with it. Anyway, has Oikawa ever mentioned missing a loved one or something?”
“No.” Kyoutani has always kind of thought that Oikawa would be forever alone despite the hoards of girls chasing after him.
"Does he ever leave the hospital?"
"I don't—no. He works night shifts."
“Huh. Well, maybe ask him the next time you see him,” Yahaba says. He takes in a deep breath and looks Kyoutani in the eye. It feels weirdly intruding. “I’m going to be busy the next few weeks, so I need you to promise me that you won’t run away from the hospital again.”
“No,” Kyoutani says immediately. “The fuck?”
“It’s for your own good,” Yahaba says seriously. “I don’t know why you’re in here, or if you’re terminal or not, but going outside and being reckless isn’t going to help you much.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” Kyoutani growls. “I never asked you to come and follow me around 24/7.”
“Come on, Kyoutani,” Yahaba pleads. “Look, I—the reason why I’m even on the other side is because I have a mission involving you, and the consequences to me failing this mission are not good, okay? So I need you to stay safe when I can’t come and, you know, check in on you.”
Kyoutani tightens his grip on the fleece blanket of his hospital bed. “Fine,” he bites out. “I...promise.” Ow. It almost hurts him to promise anything.
Yahaba smiles, exhaling in relief. He runs his fingers through his hair, and Kyoutani can’t help but notice a strand in the middle sticking out. He resists the urge to smooth it down.
Every few times a week, Yahaba walks into his hospital room and sits down in the grey armchair by his bed. He talks about nothing and everything at the same time, and Kyoutani listens. And then Yahaba asks him things like, "how's your day going?" or "who's your favorite staff here?" and he is forced to say something.
"I like your new hair," Yahaba comments one day. Kyoutani flushes. "You dyed it, right?" It's a bleached blond with black stripes on the sides now. He nods.
"Were you just feeling spontaneous or something?"
"No," he says. "It's stupid."
"You can tell me."
Kyoutani shifts in his position. "I wanted something to be mine for once. Like, my whole life isn't controlled by me."
"Oh, do you mean what I've been doing?" Yahaba winces. "I'm sorry-"
"No, it's different," Kyoutani says quickly. "Not you."
"Oh, okay," Yahaba smiles sheepishly. "Still, I'm sorry about that. I'm probably like a really bad mom or something."
"Yahaba-kun," a voice sings. Oikawa's head pops into the doorway. "Oh, thank goodness, I thought I might be walking into something way more embarrassing. Visiting hours are up!"
Yahaba stands up, his cheeks dusted over with a shade of reddish-pink. "Um, bye, Kyoutani. See you next week." Kyoutani nods, managing to cough out a feeble "bye" in return.
When Yahaba leaves, Oikawa immediately sits down in the bedside armchair. "You two have been getting along pretty well, huh?"
"Shut up."
"I'll shut up when I want to," he snipes. "Anyway, back to the matter at hand. You like him, don't you?"
"..."
"Oh, come on, it's obvious," Oikawa sighs. "You never have semi-decent manners with anyone except for Yahaba-kun. Might as well be a declaration of undying love."
"That's not what it is," Kyoutani grits his teeth.
"Denial is the first stage!" Oikawa wags his finger. The grin disappears off his face as soon as it came. "Just be careful around him. Love is a dangerous thing, you know."
He's getting worse. The pain was bearable before, but now it feels like his entire body is turning inside-out and it's ripping him apart. They have him attached to an IV drip 24/7, when he's not going through scans and chemo and more scans and more meds and more dying.
If this is what living is supposed to be, he'd rather be dead.
Yahaba comes to visit him with a bouquet of flowers and a smile that could light up the whole room. He looks brighter than usual.
"White chrysanthemums and daffodils," he says, setting the bouquet into an empty vase on Kyoutani's nightstand. The daffodils are a sunny shade of yellow. "I thought they might brighten things up or something."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. How are you feeling?"
"I don't know."
"Do you need anything?"
"No. I don't want to talk." It hurts to talk.
"Okay. I'll just...keep you company, I guess."
"YAHABA, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN THERE! NO VISITORS ALLOWED!"
He curses, getting up from his seat. "Sorry. I better go."
"Promise me you'll be okay?"
I can't promise anything. "Okay."
A few minutes after he leaves, Oikawa pulls the door open and then shuts it. "Kyouken-chan. I'm here to tell you that we're trying new meds. The other one wasn't working, but hopefully, this one will. Also, about you and Yahaba-kun..."
"I'll get straight to the point, okay?" he continues, smiling sadly.
"Falling in love with him is going to kill you."
"It happened to me once. In high school. There was this boy, with these dark green eyes and tan skin and just, overall, really freaking hot. I'm sure you get the picture. Anyway, it was a difficult time in my life when I met him, but he would always take my mind off things, and god, he was one of the funniest, most caring people I've ever met—" he cuts himself off, taking in a deep breath. "Sorry. When we started dating, he told me, for some reason, that we couldn't kiss. I didn't really know why, and I wanted to kiss him so badly, but—I would do anything for him."
"He was like my pillar. He never did anything with me that I didn't want to do, he called me out when I did something stupid, he–" Oikawa's voice cracks. "He loved me through all the shit I had going on."
"But even pillars break, I guess."
"He came to me one day with tears in his eyes, and I asked him what was wrong," he says thickly. "He couldn't look me in the eye, but when he finally did, he said he was so sorry. I didn't know why, but then he leaned in and kissed me and—he killed me."
In the cold silence between them, Kyoutani musters the strength to prod a tissue box in Oikawa's direction. He accepts it gratefully.
"But," Kyoutani finally speaks, "you're not dead."
"Who's to say I'm not?"
"You're here. Not six feet underground."
"And who's to say that here isn't that terrible period of consciousness, where you're falling off the edge of living and looking down at what death feels like?" Oikawa asks, tilting his head. He stands up, and takes the tissue box with him. "I should go. My other patients must be needing me."
Before he leaves, he turns around and fixes Kyoutani with an expression that seems sad and happy and content and lonely all at once. "I was suicidal in high school," he says simply. "You know, falling off life, looking at death. Iwa-ch—Iwaizumi must have felt it."
"Yahaba might feel it, too."
Yahaba might feel it, too. It feels like Kyoutani's head has been split apart into a thousand pieces, and it'll take more than Elmer's glue to put it back together. He knows what he needs right now, and so he sits up and digs under his bed for a not-so-secret stash of clothes and money that his nurse is probably too gracious to confront him on. Then he does what he does best.
He runs away.
A smoke and a piece of chicken have the capability to solve every problem in the universe. Convenience stores are his second home. Which means that the hospital is his first one. Jesus.
"What are you doing?" a voice asks as he steps outside.
"Why do you care?" Kyoutani says. He sticks a cigarette in his between his teeth and lights it. Yahaba whacks it out of his mouth, like nothing more than a strangely strong gust of wind.
"You broke your promise," Yahaba starts angrily, "and you're smoking again. What the hell?"
"Your fault for following me," Kyoutani says, and it's true, mostly. "Leave me alone."
"I can't just leave you here, Kyoutani, or you–"
"Or I'll what?" Kyoutani snarls, daring him to say anything more. "Afraid I'll kick the bucket before you can do it for me?"
"I—what?"
"Isn't that what you want? To kill me?"
"No! What are you talking about?"
"Oikawa," Kyoutani spits out. "He's a dickhead, but he's not a liar. He told me someone used to haunt him, too. Killed him."
Yahaba stays silent at this.
"So?" Kyoutani asks. "When are you going to do it?"
"It's not what you think," Yahaba says quietly. "I'm not killing you, I'm saving you."
"From what?"
"From this!" Yahaba shouts, waving his hands around wildly. "Do you really call this living? Having to sneak out and run ten miles just so you can smoke your problems away? And, sure, Oikawa might not be a liar, but that doesn't mean he isn't delusional! I did some research on him, and Iwaizumi, the one who haunted him—he was just an imaginary friend from his childhood that he hallucinated from his anti-depressants! It was never someone haunting him, it was all because of his own mind-" Yahaba takes a deep breath.
"Haven't you ever wondered why Oikawa never leaves the hospital?" he asks softly. "It's because he tried to kill himself, and when they rushed him to the hospital, he knocked out unconscious. Still hasn't woken up, apparently. They're thinking of taking him off life support."
Kyoutani crushes one of his cigarettes in his hand. "That's impossible. He's alive."
"And why do you think that?" Yahaba demands. "Is it because you can see him, and touch him? Have you ever thought that maybe it's because both of you aren't alive, but aren't dead, either?"
"That doesn't exist!" Kyoutani snarls.
"Oh my god, why do you never believe me?"
"Because you're insane!"
"Takes one to know one, then!" Yahaba snaps. He huffs. "I'm not insane. God. This is all for your own good, Kyoutani."
"Your mission, huh?" Kyoutani says bitterly. "Was that to kill me?"
Yahaba looks up to meet his eyes. That dumb shade of brown. Chocolate and caramel swirls. "I'm sorry. I...I haven't been completely honest with you."
"I'm not a ghost," he begins. "I'm alive. I was sent to this side to put you out of your misery. Like a missionary, of sorts. This side--it's like an airport. A place where people are either coming or going. It's a passageway, not a destination. But some get stuck in the process, like you, and Oikawa. When I've sapped you of enough energy, then you can finally pass on. But I can't let anything else hurt you before I sap all of your energy. So, no smoking, going out when you're sick. Nothing that could hurt you."
"You can't just give me energy? Make me alive again?"
Yahaba laughs wryly. "That means I'd have to kill myself to give that energy to you. I'm selfish. Humans—especially living ones—are. If you give me the option of saving my life or someone else's, I choose mine, but it's not like I want to, you know? And you'll be so much happier when you're dead. Trust me."
"I don't trust you."
"Great, thanks," Yahaba rolls his eyes. "Look, you only have two options now: keep staying in this hellhole, or dying. There is an afterlife, you know, and ghost options. You could come visit me in the living world or something."
"I don't want to do anything," Kyoutani says through gritted teeth. "I don't want to stay here, I don't want to leave, I-" His voice cracks, and he balls his hands into fists. "I don't want to die."
"I don't want to die."
Yahaba takes a step forward and wraps his fingers around Kyoutani's wrist. The touch is warm. "It's painless," he whispers into his ear. "You won't feel a thing."
"I don't want to go."
"Do you trust me?" Yahaba says softly. "for real."
Kyoutani scowls, turning his head in the other direction. His forehead feels too hot, a cold sheen of sweat starting to settle despite the below-freezing outside.
"Is that a yes?"
"Yeah. Whatever."
Yahaba inhales. Closes his eyes, and then opens them again. "I'm going to kiss you, okay?"
Kyoutani breathes out shakily. The words come out hoarse.
"Okay."
The last thing he remembers before his vision turns dark is what feels like lips brushing against mouth, warmth spreading across his body inside and out, Yahaba's hand in his, and—a voice.
"Come visit me sometime."