Work Text:
The first time Gentaro rings, Ramuda ignores it. It’s unusual, but not unprecedented, for him to call; unsurprisingly, it turns out that a writer prefers text messages to phone conversations. Still, it’s nothing that can’t wait. Ramuda’s in the middle of a seam on a particularly slippery piece of fabric, that wiggles out of line every time he takes his eyes off it, and that’s his priority. Besides, he honestly doesn’t feel like answering anyway. He doesn’t dislike Gentaro, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it does take a lot more mental energy to be around him than most people. And, when half his bodyweight is coffee and he’s exhausted and has to desperately crunch out this prototype, the last thing he wants is to deal with a prying author who thinks of him as a particularly interesting puzzle.
The second time Gentaro rings, Ramuda thinks, Somebody better have died.
He finishes his seam, picks up, schools his face into his trademark grin. It’s easier to pitch his voice the way he wants to when he’s smiling, even if he’s not being watched. “Gentaro! And what do you want from me, hmmm?”
(Sometimes he wishes it wasn’t so easy. But never very strongly, and never for long.)
“Good morning, Ramuda. Might I be able to come past later? There’s a favour I’d like to ask of you.”
He’s still so formal, as if Ramuda hasn’t barged his way into Gentaro’s home at least twice a week for the past months. On anyone else, it’d be stifling, but Gentaro is always so fun about it.
“You need to be waaaaay more specific than that.”
“I’m attending a wedding tomorrow, and I’ve completely forgotten to buy a suit. I thought I could commission one from you on short notice.”
“Oh, oh, I know! That’s a lie, isn’t it?”
“Of course. In truth, lately my agent has been insisting I cultivate a stronger online presence. And since I’m not familiar with those platforms, I thought I could consult you.”
The annoying thing is, on any other day, he’d have jumped at the opportunity: the chance to get his hands on Gentaro’s social media profiles and jazz them up genuinely sounds like fun. Maybe he’ll feel things out a little, and try to gauge his teammate’s mood.
“You don’t know them, like, at all? You really are Meiji-era, Gentaro!”
“Really? I’ve always considered myself more of a Bakumatsu.”
“That’s obviously a lie.”
“I have samurai blood, though.”
That one gives him pause, because it’s the right blend of plausible and outlandish. “Huh, really?”
Gentaro’s smile is clear in his voice. “Who knows? But we’ve gotten distracted, Ramuda. Will you agree to help?”
He takes stock of his circumstances: he’s underdressed, exhausted, dehydrated, still in the middle of a seam, and hasn’t eaten a proper meal yet today. His work will keep, but he’s starting out on the back foot.
He had scouted Gentaro and Dice for his new team in part because they had been high-risk, high-reward choices. Dice had been easy to win over: Ramuda had offered him the thrill of rap battles, at the cost of him being kind of flaky, and also at the cost of crashing on his couch indefinitely. And while Gentaro’s lever had been nearly as obvious, it had been much harder to actually pull. People didn’t become writers unless they were interested in others, their mysteries, what made them tick. So Ramuda had laid his cards on the table, said: I know everything about you, and maybe you’d like to know everything about me? But it had required him to stake more of himself in turn. To parcel out little tidbits about his true nature, keep Gentaro onside by letting things slip, trusting in his drive to learn everything.
But that had been before they had gone to the Central District. Before Gentaro had met Jinguji Jakurai, and before he had known the shape of what Ramuda was trying to hide.
The problem is, knowledge isn’t a zero-sum game, and it doesn’t cancel out. Ramuda could know everything in the world about Gentaro, if he actually cared to, and it wouldn’t change the fact Gentaro knows more than nothing about him.
Because Gentaro might not be as good a liar as he thinks, but he’s smart, and the Dirty Dawg is no secret. Maybe he’s already spoken to Ichiro; it wouldn’t even be hard to find him, especially since Ramuda had let slip he had a well-connected friend in Ikebukuro. Maybe he’s already spoken to Samatoki; trawled the back streets of Yokohama, sticking his nose into yakuza business heedless of the consequences.
Maybe he’s already spoken to Jakurai.
The idea feels like ice against Ramuda’s bones, and he forces himself to take a deep breath. He needs to stop assuming the worst about his teammates, but they’re still very new friends, and it’s a very old habit. At least Gentaro isn’t capable of that kind of malice, even if he probably wouldn’t think of it that way.
(Ramuda would know, because he is.)
Gentaro’s tinny voice cuts into his thoughts, a little quizzical and a little anxious. “Ramuda, are you still there?”
He’ll endure.
“Sure thing!” he chirps. His face is starting to ache; he tends to clench his jaw when he’s too focused on sewing, and the fact his cheeks are locked into a smile isn’t helping. “Let’s saaaaaay forty-five minutes?”
“But I’m already on my way.”
So that’s how Gentaro wants to play it this time. It’s unusually aggressive of him, but he must know he’s gaining traction if he’s trying to tilt Ramuda.
“No fair, Gentaro! Don’t you know it’s super rude to drop in uninvited?”
“That was a lie. I’m actually still at home, but – by that standard, aren’t you ruder than I am?”
A different kind of aggressive, then. He spreads his smile a little wider, even though it makes something in his cheek pull uncomfortably. “No way. Not if it’s my right as Fling Posse’s leader.”
“I suspect you might just be bad at following your own rules.”
“See, see, now you’re definitely being rude! It’s really terrible of you to ask for a favour, and then make me want to say no.”
“Is it? I don’t think I’ve been told I’m terrible before.”
Something else that’s fun about Gentaro is how, as much as he wants to get to the truth of Ramuda, he’s just as likely to get distracted by banter in the moment. And he’s always kind of pedantic about it, too, approaching it with the same seriousness as his next novel. He may not be as overtly hungry for victory as Dice, but verbal sparring brings out the same kind of competitive streak in him.
That’s fine, though. Ramuda wouldn’t have chosen Gentaro and Dice if they didn’t share his love of winning.
“That sounds kind of like a lie, too.”
“Make what you will of it. But I’ll see you soon, Ramuda.”
“Yup! Bye-bye!”
The sound of the line going dead is a welcome relief. Ramuda lets himself lean back in his chair, roll his shoulders and work out the knots in his back. To be honest, he’s still not really in the mood to play –
But for Gentaro, he’ll make an exception.
*
By the time he’s showered, dressed, done his makeup, and scavenged together lunch from the scraps Dice has left in the fridge, Ramuda feels reasonably human. In classic fashion, he has a little time before his guest arrives, but not enough to actually make progress on his work. So he settles for ironing the garment he’s working on, for good measure, and moves it into his crafting room, and then the intercom buzzes.
Gentaro cuts the same figure as always once he arrives, looking like he’s stepped off the set of a period film. It’s kind of a waste that he dresses so unflatteringly, but Ramuda’s already dragged him into this argument, and he hadn’t really been invested in the outcome anyway. Fling Posse would have a less interesting aesthetic for it.
“Gooood morning!” he chirps, as if he’s on more than four hours of sleep. “Come in, come in.”
“Thank you,” says Gentaro, and steps inside. He leans against the wall of the entryway almost immediately, and starts to unlace his shoes – but his eyes are sweeping the apartment, and then they’re on Ramuda.
“No Dice today?” he asks.
“He said he had something to do.”
What, exactly, Ramuda isn’t sure, and he doesn’t actually care to find out. He and Dice coexist peacefully, in large part because their schedules don’t line up often; Dice is usually out late and sleeps through to lunchtime, while Ramuda’s almost never at home, unless he has work he doesn’t feel like doing in the office. They don’t even share meals, because neither of them can cook. So, when they do cross over, it sort of feels like an eternal slumber party.
“Hm,” Gentaro says, and toes off his boots. He trades them for house slippers with easy familiarity; every time he visits, he chooses the plainest pair he can. But because Ramuda’s taste runs so gaudy, he always winds up getting stuck with soft blue pastel, and that colour doesn’t go with his outfit at all.
(Gentaro’s more of a green than a blue, anyway. Or a purple.)
“And what’s that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Gentaro says, like he’s ever wasted a word in his life.
“Huuuuh? But that makes it sound even more suspicious!”
“Perhaps you just have a suspicious mind.”
“I don’t wanna hear that from you, mister serial liar.”
“I’d hardly call myself serial.”
There’s a beat. And Ramuda anticipates his answer, because there’s only one way that can end, and they finish the sentence together: “But that was a lie!”
Gentaro’s almost, almost smiling. Ramuda makes himself turn his back and lead the way into the main room.
“Water?” he calls. “Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I don’t intend to be here for long.”
It’s kind of annoying that Gentaro has pre-emptively kicked himself out before Ramuda could take the initiative, and definitely annoying that his only option for counterattacking is to drag this arrangement out and prove that wrong. But he’ll deal.
“Well, fine, but I’m still getting something. Sit down, okay?”
Gentaro peels off, and Ramuda sweeps into the kitchen. He opens the fridge, pouts at the two bottles of juice tucked into the door, eventually picks out the apple. Reconsiders, goes for the other. Realises, with no small amount of irritation, that he doesn’t actually feel like drinking anything.
When he returns, Gentaro’s already entrenched at the dining table, tapping away at his phone. Ramuda plonks himself into the adjacent seat, and leans over obnoxiously to look at the screen. Gentaro, in a rare show of helpfulness, tilts it towards him; it displays the loading screen of a popular social media app.
“I have an account already, if that helps.”
“Show me.”
Gentaro taps a few buttons, brings it up, slides his phone across. The profile that greets them is bare-bones: hardly any tweets, hardly any followers, and his display picture is the black-and-white headshot that goes in all his books. In short, it looks like the kind of account which makes dull, untargeted promoted posts – the kind Ramuda immediately hides, or blocks if he’s feeling particularly irritable. That really won’t fly.
“The first thing you’re going to do,” he announces, snatching it up and clicking the ‘edit profile’ button, “is write a bio. A real one.”
“What’s wrong with how it is currently?”
“It’s too short. Plus, ‘This is author Yumeno Gentaro’? That doesn’t even say anything about you.”
“Yes, it does.”
Ramuda ignores him. Because even if he’s trying to be annoying as possible, he’s also absolutely right about this, and he knows it. “What was your last book called, again? The Whole Wide World?”
“Who In This World.”
Who In This World out now, he types, punctuates it with a book emoji, and then adds, FLING POSSE.
When he looks up, Gentaro is watching with benevolent scepticism. “It’s supposed to be a professional profile.”
“Well, my accounts are professional, and that doesn’t mean they’re boring!”
“Need I remind you that we have very different professions?”
“Personality sells, no matter what you do!”
“I suppose it does,” Gentaro says, looking at him like he’s said something incisive. “Leave it in, then.”
Ramuda saves his changes with relish. Gentaro’s display name can probably stay, even if he can’t shake the desire to stylise it somehow; it probably needs the formality. Which means the next order of business is…
“Don’t you have a better picture of yourself?”
“No. I belong to an elusive sect which believes that we lose part of ourselves each time we’re photographed.”
“Aw, but I take soooo many selfies! So if that’s true, there wouldn’t be any of me left by now.”
It’s a provocation, of course, as transparent in its way as the original lie. Like clockwork, Gentaro’s eyes narrow.
“I was lying, of course. I simply don’t like having my picture taken.”
“Well, you have to suck it up, cause I’m not letting you leave without changing it.”
“All right. But please make it tasteful.”
“Hmmm,” Ramuda says, picking up the phone and switching to a different app. An idea’s starting to brew in his mind, but he can’t give it away just yet. “What kind of tasteful, Gen-ta-ro?”
“Posed with a book, perhaps, or at a desk. Something serious, and studious. Ideally in grayscale or sepia –”
Ramuda throws an arm around him mid-sentence, cutting him off. With his other hand, he angles the phone – and its camera – down at them. “Smile!”
The shutter clicks before he’s even finished speaking. The selfie that comes up onscreen isn’t one of his finest: the angle is only mostly flattering, and the lighting isn’t perfect, and it’s actually kind of blurry. Still, it’s worth it for how startled Gentaro looks, like there’s no way he could’ve predicted this. There’s honest surprise written across his face, and maybe a little of something else too. It suits him.
“Ta-dah!”
“Absolutely not.”
Ramuda ignores him in favour of the phone. Gentaro’s too polite to snatch it from him, and he’s not dumb enough to be tricked, so he’s more or less safe to do whatever he wants. Although he’s stuck with a pretty basic camera, the social media app has a selection of filters, which he can feed the image through to tweak it. He tabs over and tests them, narrows it down to a couple almost immediately; one of them makes Ramuda’s hair stand out more, but the other turns Gentaro’s eyes a particularly arresting green. It’s a tough call, and he should get advice to make it.
He turns the phone around, bounces between filters one and two. “Hey, Gentaro, which do you like better? Cause I know it’s your account, but I can’t authorise any of my selfies that aren’t suuuuper cute.”
“You aren’t really going to use that as my avatar, are you?”
“Of course. I’m in your bio now, after all!”
“Fling Posse is in my bio,” he corrects, “and that was your idea in the first place. Besides, I still don’t think that’s the impression I want to give off.”
“Huh? Would you prefer people to think you’re boring?”
“There must be a middle ground between boring and whatever you’re planning.”
“Fiiiiiiiiiine,” Ramuda sighs, as if he hadn’t been prepared for this from the start. “Then I’ll get you the best boring picture I can! Juuuuust let me do one thing – no, two things first.”
He saves both versions of the picture and texts them to himself, ignoring his phone buzzing in his pocket as it arrives. Then he jumps back to the social media app. Gentaro’s following exactly three accounts: his publisher, his agent, and another high-profile author who’s represented by the same people. So Ramuda runs a search and adds himself, Dice, and the official Fling Posse account in short succession.
“Okay, ready!”
Gentaro peers over his shoulder, but doesn’t comment on his extended follow list. Even he can’t argue against that. “And now?”
“You said something about a desk before, right? Let’s roll with that.”
“Where?”
“My office.”
“I’m not sure a sewing desk looks at all like a writing desk.”
“We can do some set dressing! Trust me, Gentaro, I’ve been to tons of fashion shoots. One time I even got to watch people film a music video, cause they were using some of my designs, and –”
“All right,” Gentaro says, “then lead the way.”
So Ramuda does, standing and tucking his chair in and setting a brisk pace. Gentaro falls into step behind him, slippered feet soft on the carpet.
Ramuda’s workroom is fairly clean, because it always is. And Gentaro takes it all in with interest, the same way he always does, like Ramuda’s secrets will come spilling out if he looks hard enough. But today, and every day, he’s out of luck. The only thing out of place is the prototype he was working on earlier, draped loosely over a mannequin, and it’s not likely to drop any revelations about his past.
“Sit down, sit down!”
Gentaro takes a seat at the desk, and Ramuda circles out in front of him. Conceptually, the shot should work: the rich colour of the wood contrasts well with Gentaro’s outfit, in a way which should be preserved even after filtering. And, despite their worries about needing to do a lot of set dressing, it seems like it might be okay as is – but still, it’s not quite perfect.
“We need to move the table.”
His guest frowns. “Why’s that?”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I’d like to know.”
“You know, Gentaro, if you think I’m untrustworthy, then you should really just say –”
“Ramuda.”
“Fine, fine! It’s the lighting. I always work with lamps, so it doesn’t matter, but natural light’s better for what we want.”
“That makes sense.”
“So we’re going to move it.” Ramuda points to a spot in line with one of the windows. “Here, side-on. And if you scratch my floor, I’ll have to kill you!”
“I’m hardly dressed for manual labour.”
“No excuses!”
Gentaro’s eyebrows rise, gently, and he stands. “I suppose I don’t have a choice, then.”
He undoes the clasps of his sleeves, starts to fold the fabric crisply back in on itself. His forearms come into focus slowly, one inch at a time. The skin underneath is unmarked, as pale as the rest of him, and it gives nothing away. No watch; no jewellery. Ramuda doesn’t know if he should be drinking it in or averting his eyes, if this feels like an anticlimax or the start of another mystery.
Because the thing is that nobody wears long sleeves year-round, the way Gentaro does, unless they have something to hide. But maybe that’s a lie, too.
“Shall we?” Gentaro asks, once his undershirt is past his elbows. Ramuda wrenches his gaze up, doesn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t staring at those fine-boned wrists. The faint amusement in Gentaro’s eyes says he knows he was looking, but Ramuda looks at everyone anyway, so it’s not like he really means it.
“Aren’t you gonna tie up your sleeves?”
“Not if I’m going to be photographed. It’ll crease the fabric.”
“I didn’t know you cared about stuff like that.”
“I have to, with my wardrobe.”
That seems fair. Ramuda supposes if he wore nothing but creasy garments, he’d have learned to care too.
“Well, okay. Just don’t complain to me if they get in the way.”
He moves around to one of the short sides of the desk. Gentaro copies him, shifting to stand opposite.
“On three!” Ramuda cheers. “One, two –”
As soon as he says three, they lift, but they don’t lift equally; Ramuda’s side of the desk is much higher than Gentaro’s, even though his arms are much lower. Still, he doesn’t have the time to complain about it. “Go, go!”
He has, of course, arranged things so that Gentaro’s the one walking backwards, but they move quickly across the office. Despite the height advantage, though, Gentaro isn’t particularly strong, and Ramuda definitely ends up doing more than half the work. For a moment he almost wishes Dice were here, both to do the heavy lifting and to break the tension that always comes out when he and Gentaro are alone.
And yet: it’s hard to shake the feeling that, if Dice was around, Gentaro wouldn’t have asked to visit. In some ways, he really is deceptively simple.
“Here,” he grunts, once they’ve reached the position he’d picked out, and stoops to set it down; Gentaro follows a heartbeat later, not quite able to hide his relief. Then Ramuda takes a step back and looks at their handiwork. “Get the chair, okay?”
Gentaro does, takes a seat behind the table again. This positioning, Ramuda notes to himself, definitely works much better for their purposes. The sunlight streaming through the window does good things for Gentaro’s profile, and brings out the warm tones in his hair. But he’s still sitting so rigidly.
“Okay, now pose!”
“How?”
“If you opened one of your books, what would you want to see in the author photo? Since you want to play this so boringly.”
Gentaro pauses, fiddling with one of his sleeves. They’ve slid back down again, but the clasps are still undone, and he runs a thumb over the metal as he thinks. When he speaks, it’s in a voice that isn’t his own, pitched like one of the girls Ramuda takes out on dates. “I’m, like, such a big fan of Yumeno’s! It’s cool that he’s so young but so, like, accomplished. So something kinda fun and youthful, I think.”
“Okay, okay, but what does Gentaro think?”
“I’m not sure,” he admits, slipping back into his regular speech – well, as regular as his speech ever gets. “My agent usually makes these decisions on my behalf.”
Ramuda brings the phone up, zooms in, and squints at his teammate through the screen. Gentaro frowns at him in response, pushes a lock of hair behind one ear. His sleeve slips down his wrist and exposes the blue marbling of his veins.
“Hmm, well. Can you smile?”
“Ah – I can try.”
Gentaro pulls his face into a strange, frozen grimace. It’s not at all like the way his lips twitch when something small has amused him, or the way his mouth folds in on itself when he’s trying not to laugh, or the soft smile he showed Ramuda in the entryway this morning. Actually, it’s mostly kind of sad.
Ramuda lowers the phone, pouts convincingly at Gentaro. “You really need a better camera app,” he says, instead of any of those things.
“I don’t think I’d ever use it.”
“Boo! I talked Dice into downloading at least three.”
“As I recall, you also bought Dice his phone, after he sold his last one to pay off a debt. He’s hardly in a position to turn you down.”
“Make all the excuses you want, Gentaro, but you’re this close to becoming my least favourite member of Fling Posse. You better be careful.”
“If it’s between Dice and I, and judged on our willingness to be talked into things, I think I can accept my loss.”
(Ramuda doesn’t say: but Fling Posse has three members . Because it isn’t that clear-cut, and it isn’t that easy.)
“Oh, but that was a lie! I love you both equally.”
“You know,” Gentaro says, crossing his arms, “that sounds like even more of a lie, Ramuda.”
“Are you saying I don’t adore both my teammates? I have a big heart, you know.”
“Apparently, not big enough to call us friends.”
Gentaro’s so insufferable when he thinks he’s onto something. Because Ramuda, contrary to what some might think, does know what friendship is supposed to look like, and it’s not this elaborate mental tug-of-war. If Gentaro expects to be friends with him, he’s got another thing coming. Those were never the terms of their agreement. To have fun, yes; to fight side by side, yes; to try and be better together than alone, yes; but he draws the line at showing his real self. He’s not willing to take that step with anyone, not now and not ever – but the thing is, if anyone in this world could make him come around, it might be Fling Posse.
“You should stop distracting your photographer,” he says instead. It’s a weak deflection, but intentionally so, because Gentaro eats that kind of thing up. Ramuda wonders, vaguely, what portrait of the truth he’s sketched from all the leads, real and false, he’s been fed by now. Because this particular morsel isn’t a useful one, except that it is, and Gentaro’s never going to get anywhere until he learns that paradox. “I know it’s fun to play with me, but we have important work to do, too.”
“All right. I take it smiling didn’t work?”
“Maybe if you’d smiled like you’d meant it, it would’ve!”
“I don’t know how to do that on command.”
“Don’t try so hard.” Ramuda taps his lips thoughtfully. He’d known Gentaro would be a difficult subject, but it’s one thing to know that and another to experience it. “You just have to… stop thinking so much and relax.”
“Around you?”
Ramuda ignores him, raises the phone again before he can get caught up by either the tangent or the implications. “Hmm. Try resting your head on one of your hands, okay?”
“Left, or right?”
“You’re still overthinking!”
Gentaro goes right, chin against the heel of his hand and fingers curled along his cheek. Looks at him quizzically.
“Now tilt your head a bit.”
He complies. Ramuda takes a couple of long shots, then zooms in on his subject and takes a couple more. It’s his prerogative as today’s photographer to deal with framing, and the close-up images – starting a little above his head, going down to about mid-chest – foreground the play of sunlight over Gentaro’s features. The issue is, they’d still be better if he was smiling.
“Okay, now wink!”
Satisfyingly, that startles the serenity clean off Gentaro’s face. “Sorry?”
“I’m the expert here, and I told you to wink. It’s selfie 101.”
“I can’t.”
“Huh? What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I meant what I said. Some people aren’t capable of raising their eyebrows, some people aren’t capable of snapping their fingers, and I’m not capable of winking. My brain simply isn’t wired to.”
Ramuda doesn’t move the camera away, keeping Gentaro squarely in the frame, but he does close one of his eyes as he regards his subject over the top of it. “You should’ve told me earlier! Now we’re gonna have to rework our whole strategy –”
“Oh,” Gentaro says, tipping him a huge, audacious wink, “but I was lying, Ramuda.”
It’s a good thing Ramuda’s selfie thumb works faster than his brain does, because he’s snapped three pictures before he’s fully processed what he’s seeing. Gentaro being this playful is strange, when he’s normally so serious, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, he decides, it’s definitely good.
He navigates to the photo gallery to inspect his handiwork – and, right away, he realises it’s perfect. The hand, the wink, the tiniest pull of the lips; he’s outdone himself.
“Well?” Gentaro asks. “How is it?”
“The best!”
He crosses the room and perches on his desk, and Gentaro scoots over to accommodate. So Ramuda plants his feet on the edge of his teammate’s chair, mostly because he can, and turns the phone around to show him. “Look!”
“They are good,” he admits.
“We’re not done yet, though. Even the best picture gets better if you tweak it!”
This time, it’s not even a choice: Ramuda picks out the warmest filter they have, even though it’s not one he’d usually combine with Gentaro’s usual colour palette. It brings colour to his cheeks and undertones to his hair, reddens his lips.
Youthful, Gentaro had said. Handsome, Ramuda thinks, then saves it as Gentaro’s display picture before he has to unpack that thought.
“There! Done.”
Gentaro reclaims his phone, inspects his new profile. It’s been completely transformed, not least because it looks like it’s run by an actual person now. Then he tucks it back into whatever compartment of his clothes he stores it in. “I suppose I should thank you.”
“You should, but you don’t have to repay me or anything. We’re a posse, aren’t we?”
“A posse,” Gentaro repeats. “That we are.”
They sit in silence for a moment, Ramuda kicking his legs aimlessly and Gentaro still taking in the details of the sewing room. It’s almost companionable, except that Gentaro’s almost certainly planning something – and the longer it stretches out, the more exposed it makes him feel. He needs to end this, before it becomes too comfortable; before Gentaro, somehow, gains the ammo he needs to win this game. Ramuda hops to his feet.
“Sorry, but I’m kicking you out now! I have a tooooon of stuff to do, okay?”
“That’s fine by me. As I said when I arrived, I’m in a similar position.”
So Ramuda trails Gentaro out of the workroom and over to the entryway, watches as he exchanges one pair of shoes for the other. But he doesn’t let himself out, even once he’s laced up his boots and put his slippers back. Not even when Ramuda helpfully opens the door.
Instead, Gentaro lingers in the doorway, looking like he wants to say something. If there’s really something on his mind, then far be it from Ramuda to annoy it out of him; even he can be patient, when the situation demands. At last, his lips twist in a certain way, and the truth comes out.
“I lied, Ramuda. I didn’t actually need your help today, because I know how social media works.”
That’s kind of surprising, actually, but he makes himself take it in stride. “Oh, so you really came over because you wanted to play? You should’ve said.”
“Something like that.”
Ramuda leans in a little, aware of how his gaze tracks the movement. Because Gentaro may want to lay him out and dissect him, take him apart til he’s found the truth he’s seeking – but he’s not the only one with a scalpel.
“I think that’s a lie, though. Didn’t you really invite yourself over cause you’re lonely?”
That makes something in Gentaro’s face shutter off. He probably isn’t even aware of it, but Ramuda knows what blood in the water smells like. “I’m not lonely,” he says, but it lacks a little of his usual confidence.
(Gentaro’s still too new at this to have learned the cardinal rule: strike first, or be struck yourself. Too new, or too inexperienced, or too kind to really go for the throat, or maybe he just hasn’t come up against an opponent of this calibre before. Not like Ramuda, on any of those counts.)
(Jakurai always was the best.)
But there’s no fun in calling him on it. Not when it’s so close to a complicated truth, and not when he still needs Gentaro for Fling Posse. And, if he’s going to be honest, not when he’s still enjoying himself.
“Well, whatever! Let’s lie to each other again soon, okay?”
It’s a weak attempt at reconciliation. But Gentaro seems to accept it, even though there’s something almost wounded in his eyes. “Of course. Did you still want to freestyle with Dice and I on Friday?”
“Yup, yup. We need to keep practicing if we’re gonna rule Tokyo!”
“All right,” Gentaro says. “Goodbye, then.”
The door clicks shut, and he leaves. Ramuda braces himself against the wall and listens to his footsteps recede, until there’s nothing left to be heard, and he’s properly alone again.
He’s tired, and that’s before he thinks about all the work he has left to do. Every time he interacts with Gentaro one on one, without Dice as a buffer, it takes a lot out of him. In a good way, like he imagines running a marathon might. If a marathon was dangerous, and competitive, and had delicate, unblemished wrists, and didn’t know how to smile without being self-conscious about it.
He pulls out his phone, less to check his messages and more to distract himself from wherever that train of thought is going. But when he unlocks it, the first thing that greets him is the selfie he took with Gentaro, with the filter that had turned his eyes a witchy green.
What was that lie he had told, when Ramuda had first raised the idea of taking a real picture? About losing part of himself in every photograph. Of being stolen away, piece by piece, one click of the shutter at a time.
It had been rubbish, of course, but there’s undoubtedly something of the real Gentaro trapped in his phone screen. Something honest. Not just in his surprise at the way Ramuda’s arm is slung around him, or at the photograph being taken – but in the way he looks nearly as pleased as he is shocked. Like he’s having fun.
But he’s not the only one in the picture, and there’s a truth about Ramuda in there as well. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, or even particularly damning, but it’s clear that he’s having fun too.
Because Ramuda knows himself, even if he’s the only one who does. Even if Dice doesn’t really care to and Gentaro doesn’t understand how to, and Jakurai had only hurt them both by trying. And even with all the exhaustion, with all the risk, with how much of himself he’s staking: he suspects he likes spending time with Gentaro more than just about anyone else.
Then, right on the heels of that messy truth, he’s hit by another. At this point, he can acknowledge that Gentaro would probably stay with Fling Posse even if Ramuda wasn’t tossing out bait to keep him interested. He’s friends with Dice, obviously loves rap, and probably even cares about his leader as more than a mystery. But Ramuda would keep stringing him along forever, if it meant Gentaro would keep wanting to look at him.
Ramuda’s phone screen dims, flickers off. It takes their selfie with it, and he’s left staring at the reflection of his face against the grey. He’s not smiling, not any more, because there isn’t really any denying it. He’s attached.
“Fuck,” he tells his empty apartment. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”