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“You’re being transferred to Shinjuku General Hospital?”
“Yeah,” his friend answers, sketching some random lines onto the notebook he had bought him days before. “The doctors said that they’re trying out a new treatment over there, though it’s still in the experimental phase. With my condition, I really have nothing else to lose.”
Gentaro, true to form, doesn’t frown at the comment. Doesn’t snap with a Don’t say that. He merely hums a noncommittal note and says, “I see.”
“They also apparently have a really good doctor there who’s good at counseling and all that stuff,” his friend adds, that fond smile blooming across his face. “I heard that he’s part magic from one of the nurses.”
The synapses shoot off, filling in each detail and making connections effortlessly. It isn’t magic, he thinks. Gentaro has a very good idea of who this ‘really good doctor’ might be. Still, he won’t deny Dr. Jinguji’s skill and heart as a medical practitioner. His zephyr will definitely be in good hands, if that’s the case.
“Reminds me of the games you used to play,” Gentaro laughs lightly. The ones at the arcade you would drag me to, even when I just wanted to go home. He lovingly recalls two high school boys with endless worlds and stories to explore at the drop of a token: where they could forget their illnesses and lies, where they could pretend to be at peak health and strength, where they could be true and unleash relentless onslaughts against every enemy. That place had been a universe to them.
Their universe, at least the one they share, had long since narrowed to the bone-white walls of his hospital room.
His face settles back to his usual poker-stoicism—contemplative, neutral, unnerving. “So, when will be you transferred?”
“Two weeks at the earliest.” Gentaro nods his head: it would take a while to get all the paperwork and insurance settled as well as the issue of room vacancies. Actually, two weeks would be pretty fast. “I’ll let you know when I’m all good and ready to receive you properly.”
“You’re saying that as if I won’t be coming within the next two weeks.”
The laugh that follows bursts through like brass horns, unusually robust even as his body is slowly failing him. “You have a deadline for your manuscript, don’t you? Will you even have time to visit me?”
I always have time to visit you.
“I suppose not,” Gentaro lies. He’ll worry if I come too frequently. He always worries about Gentaro when he should be worrying about himself, instead. “But if you’re bringing up my manuscript so soon, then you must be really eager for this one, huh?”
His friend—his sun, the light of his life—leans back, setting his notebook and pencil aside. He folds his hands and looks up at Gentaro with tender eyes, waiting for the yarns to spill from his lips as they always do. “You kept hyping it up before, so of course I’m eager. Go ahead, Almighty Yumeno-sensei. Bequeath unto me your tales.”
Gentaro huffs out another laugh before retrieving his draft and letting the words pour out like a brook on a summer’s eve. He’ll make their universe last as long as he can.
Dr. Jinguji finds him a few weeks later in normal street clothes, thanking the receptionist at the floor’s lobby for her directions. They meet gazes for only a brief second before Gentaro walks by him.
The good doctor has the grace to stay silent.
He scribbles out another word: boxing it in first before crosshatching the error into obscurity. From one manuscript to another. Even if it’s just another short story for his company’s literary magazine, Gentaro can’t seem to find a good starting point. His eyes glance up at his moon and stars, messing around with some colored construction paper and shaped hole punches.
“Where did you even get that from?” Gentaro asks.
His friend punches out another shape, a tiny circle, and says, “One of the kids from the children’s ward gave them to me when I was getting a board game from the activity room. They’re cute, aren’t they? I got a square, a flower, and a heart, too.”
“You’re not even making anything.”
“No, but if you punch out a line of circles on a strip, it looks cool.” His friend holds up an aforementioned strip of blue paper, playfully peeking through one of the holes with one eye. It reminds Gentaro of something that puts lead into his stomach, sinking down uncomfortably. “Fancy, right? If I try hard enough, I can probably see the future.”
“Okay, my stories can’t be that ridiculous to you.”
“I’m serious, though! In fact, I think I can see the future right now!”
“What do you see then?”
There’s a twinkle in that eye—full of wonder and hope and everything Gentaro doesn’t have. “I see lots of cherry blossoms in full bloom on a sunny day and Gentaro Yumeno is right in the middle of it, lovelier than ever before. Oh, and he has lots of literary awards and a cute dog.”
Gentaro has to quell the surge of feelings washing over him like a high tide: the blush, the sputter, the wide eyed confusion all get drowned by his expert façade, cool as ice. He rolls his eyes and turns the corners of his mouth masterfully upwards, just enough for a bemused smile. “You’re so cheesy.”
“And that’s why you’re the writer and I’m not.”
He shakes his head and returns to his scribbled page, jotting down the tale of a man who could see the future with a spy glass.
Every so often, Gentaro will dream of his old classroom—he’ll dream of his corner seat by the windows as the ambient sounds of people and life passing him by buzz in his ear as the day comes to a close. He’ll hear the sound of the door sliding open, of heavy footsteps growing nearer.
And there was the light.
‘Let’s be friends.’
Every so often, Gentaro will wish that his heart could truly believe in that lie—that he didn’t need friends, didn’t need anyone. He’d rather yearn for something he can’t have than to actually have it and lose it.
“You’re not going to ask?”
Gentaro doesn’t look up from the vending machine on the first floor, by the cafeteria, casually pressing the button for a soft drink. It tumbles out with a dull thud and Dr. Jinguji waits for him to retrieve it. After a long silence broken by the pull of the can’s tab, he says, “There’s no point. The Hypnosis Microphone only affects the brain. It can’t fix his heart.”
The citrus taste fizzes in his mouth as he takes large gulps; it stings down his throat not unlike alcohol. He can’t afford to get drunk and emotional—not here, in front of a rival division leader. They partake in this muted point in time, where they’re simply a doctor and a patient’s friend rather than two opponents in a territory war.
“How long has he been like this?” Dr. Jinguji asks after another bout of silence.
“From what he’s told me, he’d been born with the holes, but he’d undergone surgery to close them. It should’ve stayed that way, but he grew ill some time during high school a few years ago.” That sunny, summer day. It’s still vivid when Gentaro closes his eyes: the way the clouds swam across the sky, the way his shining pillar of hope collapsed against the concrete. “Somehow, they had opened up again. They’re bigger now—they’re growing. They don’t know what happened.”
He can tell that Dr. Jinguji wants to offer him words of encouragement, something to distract him or to alleviate the pain. He can also tell that Dr. Jinguji knows he’s strong enough for the truth—how could he be a part of Fling Posse if he wasn’t?
“His condition is rapidly declining.”
“How long?”
“A little less than half a year.”
Gentaro exhales slow and lies in the same breath: “It’ll be enough.”
“Ooh, is that it? Your collection of short stories?”
“Indeed it is,” Gentaro says, patting the thin hardcover book on his lap. The cloth covering is two-toned blues with fine grooves, the title and his name embossed in silver. “Are you gonna say how old-fashioned it looks?”
“It’s very you,” his friend says. The words are pathetically brittle. “Can you read it to me? It’s not so long, right? I don’t feel like actually looking at anything right now.”
“Yes, yes,” he says, opening to the first page of story. “Don’t fall asleep now.”
“I won’t.”
He reads aloud with the same cantering rhythm as his raps, though his tone is a lullaby in comparison. The familiar universe they built in this narrow world of bone-white walls begins to piece itself together again with every word: the detective brothers who solve the mystery of their differing heterochromatic eyes, the three warriors who defeated a faceless clan, the magic doctor and his two assistants who saved a village girl from certain death, the man who could see the future with his spy glass. Gentaro reads through the entire afternoon and his friend listens with quiet breaths.
Once he’s finished, his dying sun asks, “Gentaro, do you love me?”
It’s so like this precious treasure that found him so many years ago to be so brutally direct—and with the audacity to use his first name, too. Every instinct and every rational part of him tells him to lie, but the words are caught in his throat the moment he tries to open his mouth.
Gentaro has already lied to him so much.
“I do,” he says, barely above a whisper. Some part of him hopes that his friend hadn’t heard, that they can go on with this play of just being friends.
But his light, his beacon that always pulls him towards the future, uses the little strength he has to hold his hand. His friend’s voice is merely an ember now. “I’m glad. So glad.”
Gentaro allows himself to move closer, to rest his head against his friend’s shoulder. He feels a thin arm—much too thin for someone who should be at the prime of his life—wrap around his frame.
“Gentaro, I’m so glad you love me.”
They cross paths again in Shibuya.
“Yumeno.”
“Dr. Jinguji.”
“I heard about your friend,” Dr. Jinguji says. “Please accept my condolences.”
Gentaro sports his usual attire, refusing to shift his colors to complete black. He looks back to where Ramuda and Dice are scoping out a potential hunting ground to rout some inexperienced rappers. “I made my peace with it. Don’t speak of it anymore—it’s only a liability to me now.”
“You’re lying.”
“Take it as you will,” he says. “You might want to leave before he spots you. I don’t think either of us are in the mood for Ramuda’s whining.”
Dr. Jinguji closes his eyes and concedes with a sigh. “Very well. Even as your enemy, I pray for your safety in this venture.”
Gentaro watches him leave the same way he came, avoiding Ramuda skillfully. His two teammates are none the wiser of the exchange by the time they come back. He lets himself be dragged off into unknown dangers, hoping that he’ll meet his end sooner than later.