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0.
Sasara took a deep breath—adjusted his lapels, tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves. A brush of hands down his suit smoothed out imaginary wrinkles; a smile he’d long since lost the need to rehearse brightened his features. Thirty seconds before his call. The backstage fluttered around him, performers giving it their final shot before stepping up to that spotlight. Perfume and cologne mingled with the low laughs of the crowd up ahead, the taste of anticipation in the air.
Fifteen.
Sasara drank it all in and straightened his tie, rolled back his shoulders as he rocked on his heels. This was where he belonged. No matter what city, what stage, what reason he found for standing at its peak.
Ten.
The world had changed. In a snap of a pretty woman’s fingers and a rhyme from her lips, the old order crumbled and a new one rose in its place. A better one? A worse one? Not for Sasara to say. Just one that had given him a weapon in the one thing he’d always had.
Five.
His mic.
Four.
His words.
Three.
A partner.
Two.
A single thought, ringing hollow on his tongue behind that plastered-on smile. ‘All this way, and nothing changed at all, huh..?’
One--
“Showtime.”
1.
“Tragic Comedy.”
Samatoki snorted. Sasara looked over at him with utmost offense, a full-body recoil. If the way it fit him like a fish tank fit a fox was supposed to be funny, then maybe Samatoki would’ve conceded a point--but no matter which way he looked at it, Sasara was serious.
“If all your comedy’s really just puns and dad jokes, I guess the ‘tragic’ might--” Samatoki muttered under his breath, throwing a challenging grin Sasara’s way. But Sasara’s attention had already flit onto the next idea, giving Samatoki no room to breathe.
“Anyway! What’re you calling yourself?” Sasara’s tone was a particular sort of flippant. The one that meant he really didn’t care whatever name Samatoki had chosen because he was going to get weeks worth of material out of it anyway.
Just the thought of it pissed him off. If he ever needed additional proof that life was a rigged game, then the fact he’d gotten stuck with a half-assed dumbass the world thought was a comedian would work just fine.
Still--he’d picked something good. Sasara wasn’t ruining it that easily. He puffed up his chest and announced across the table, “Mister Hardcore.”
Sasara snorted out a laugh, more melon soda than air. “Miserable Hardass is more like it.”
“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t fuckin’ hear that one,” Samatoki began, but Sasara spoke over him without a care in the world for warning.
“Anyway--and way more importantly--what’re we gonna call us?”
“We’re gonna call you and me fuckin’ done if you can’t cut the shit,” Samatoki tried again, but Sasara still wasn’t listening. He swayed from side to side a minute, a pendulum out of time, then smacked a fist to his palm, brightening up the room with a smile.
“Got it! Get this one-- Comic Dialogue.”
Samatoki squinted at him. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Not because he didn’t understand, of course. Only because there was no way in hell that he was letting Sasara stick two equally lamebrained words next to each other twice in a row and call it a day.
“I’m the comic!” Sasara chirped, looking so very pleased about the fact he was a clown. He looked Samatoki up and down, and Samatoki crossed his arms, waiting for the punchline about Samatoki being drawn in black and white or something equally stupid--but Sasara frowned, tilted his head, then said--“...and the dialogue.”
“You wanna fuckin’ go?” Samatoki asked, halfway to his feet and coiled like a spring. If he had to shake sense into Sasara by the tie, today was the day he’d damn well do it. Sasara might’ve had something over him, but it sure wasn’t a gilded tongue. Not that his rap was bad. They’d found that out quick enough. But everything else? Needs some work.
“Well y’know? I’d love to head home and work on my act, but I haven’t talked you into picking up the bill yet!”
“Oh, so you know you’ve gotta clean up your shit.”
Sasara hummed, a mockery of thought. “I dunno, it might be kinda hard to dump you!”
“If you don’t shut your mouth your comedy’s not gonna be the only thing tragic about you,” Samatoki snarled, not quite sure how much he meant it.
He, as always, expected a dumbass quip. But Sasara only smiled at him, stage perfect and oddly insincere. “You can’t make me any more tragic than I already am.”
“You’re not serious.”
Sasara laughed at him, somehow managing to giggle smugly. “Don’t fall for it! If I’m serious about anything, I’ll keel over on the spot.”
Samatoki let out a breath of not-quite exasperation. He crossed his arms, flopped back into the booth. “I’ll fuckin’ believe it.”
They waited about in silence a few breaths, letting the petty argument de-escalate as it always did. If either of them wanted to seriously pick a fight, this wasn’t the way they’d do it. Sasara finished his cream soda. Samatoki caught his eye drifting towards the dessert menu and said, quickly--
“Mad.”
“Huh?”
Sasara’s hand drifted away from the picture of strawberry shortcake and back towards his empty drink. Success.
“I’ll take the name. But if you’re the damn comedy act, then I’m the Mad Dog that leads.”
Sasara made a face, pinching up the bridge of his nose. But it wasn’t bad. And most importantly--it was anything but a rejection. “Mad Manzai, then?”
“Keep the English.”
Sasara stared down at him with the blankly disappointed expression he got when he thought Samatoki was being particularly an idiot. Always a great feeling from resident no-brain number one. “No, if you’re gonna use Mad, you’ve gotta alliterate! It’s got impact! And it means the same exact--”
“You want the name or not?”
Sasara held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever, Miserable Hardass.”
“That’s it, you and I are taking this outside.”
“At least take me on a date, first?”
“You fucking--!!”
(Aohitsugi Samatoki and Nurude Sasara were not thrown out of the family restaurant. They were simply politely asked to leave, before they started disturbing the other customers more than they already were. But they absolutely, definitely, were not thrown out.)
2.
Samatoki’s phone was ringing.
And ringing.
And ringing.
Samatoki snarled at it as he rolled over in bed. He grasped blindly for it, following the trilling. Put the damn thing out of its misery. His fingertips brushed against the edge and he seized it, squinting up at the screen through blurry eyes--his first mistake of the morning. All he’d needed to see was the decline call button. Red and loud and supposed to be eye-catching. What he was drawn to instead were the four characters written in stark white across the top. One name. Not that he expected it to be anyone else.
He should’ve just hit the damn power button.
“You call me way too fuckin’ much,” Samatoki said in place of greeting. Sasara’s ungracious laughter was too-loud in the early morning. He pulled his phone away from his ear and glared. Sasara didn’t lower his volume, but it was satisfying, at the very least.
“So hey, listen, I’ve gotta question. Is this fun--”
“No,” said Samatoki, and hung up the phone by slamming it into his pillow. It did nothing to actually hang up the phone, of course, but it did make him feel much better about being woken up at--he glanced at the screen as he finally quit the call--four-thirty in the morning. But the time vanished as soon as he saw it, replaced by a familiar name. The silence disappeared along with it as the phone rang again. No hesitation this time--
Samatoki declined the call.
It rang again.
Samatoki declined the call.
It rang again.
Samatoki declined the call, violently.
It rang again.
“I’m going to dig your fucking grave,” Samatoki snapped, imagining just how satisfying it would feel to whack Sasara over the head with his own mic stand.
“Free labor!” Sasara replied, delighted. “Now I won’t have to dig my own!”
“You do that every day of your damn life,” Samatoki said, then added, before Sasara could get a word in edgewise, “If you’ve gotta get my damn opinion, then do it in person.”
“Awwww, you wanna meet -”
Samatoki hung up the phone. All of Sasara’s teasing faded blissful into silence, and the phone, by some miracle, didn’t ring again.
“I’m still not gonna call you funny though,” Samatoki muttered, partly to the absent Sasara, mostly to his pillow. He’d rather die than have a heart to heart. But if anyone had to listen to Sasara rattle off jokes flatter than a deaf dog trying to sing, well. He’d take the bullet.
3.
“This is bullshit.”
It was a Wednesday evening and Ikebukuro was alight with an energy that didn’t suit it. Too sinister for the youth on the street, too gaudy for the glamour of Sunshine. In the case of a certain yakuza-den-slash-rap-crew-home-base, though, it had more to do with the nasty aura permeating the office by the one man stewing in it. Everyone else had long since left the vicinity. An irritated Samatoki was someone none of his underlings wanted to deal with. A visibly pissed Samatoki? That, somewhere along the line, had become a problem everyone else shoved off on Sasara. Who was here. Lurking. Shuffling around by the door pretending this didn’t involve him just as much as it did Samatoki. “I can fuckin’ hear you back there. Come see this shit.”
“Yeah, yeah.” It came out more sigh than word, as if Sasara was dreading trying to placate him. But he’d see. With utmost reluctance in his heavy steps, Sasara made a show of forcing himself over... Though once he did, curiosity took obvious hold.
His hesitation vanished; Sasara leaned over his shoulder and plucked the invitation from his hand. Samatoki relinquished it with pleasure. The faster the damn farce was out of his sights, the better. He lit a cigarette while he waited, then held the carton up to Sasara. He accepted one absently as he read. And read. And read. And just as Samatoki was about to ask if he’d got struck by a sudden case of illiterate--
“Well that’s unique,” said Sasara, finally, flatly. Samatoki hadn’t thought it was possible. A Christmas fuckin’ miracle. At least the damn letter had been good for something.
“It’s fuckin’ posturing,” Samatoki spat. Shits who think they’re big shots trying to rig the game. I don’t give a shit about the other weakass crews they invited, but they think they can make a fool of us? Not fuckin’ likely.”
“So you’re not going?”
“Fuck no.”
He hadn’t thought it was even a question. Not with that level of bullshit involved. There were plenty of deals Samatoki trusted. Blatant cons weren’t one of them.
“Really?” Sasara leaned forward with the devil in his smile and the world in his sights. The cigarette dangled between his fingers, as much an invitation as a challenge. “Think about how much of Ikebukuro we can steal, though?”
Samatoki stared at him, trying to read the intent written into the lines of his smile. “These guys don’t have shit.”
“Yeah, maybe those guys don’t have shit alone. But if our guys take out all the other small-fry while we’re up on that stage?”
Samatoki barked out a laugh and leaned forward--this was what he liked about Sasara. Confident, right down to his bones. He reached up with his lighter, struck it smooth, blew smoke up at Sasara like a promise neither of them had ever known how to keep.
Up in flames. They’d take it.
The stage lights beat down on them, guiding their words to the beat pulsing through them at half the pace of their hearts. Something was different--something was right. An energy that rose between them that had never been there before. It might have been building for a long while, if either of them had cared to pay that much attention.
More, thought Samatoki as he picked up Sasara’s familiar rhymes.
More, he thought, bumping shoulders with Sasara as they advanced. This stage was their vessel, delivering them to victory. One step, two. Left and right and back again as they dragged their mics at their sides.
“More!” Samatoki roared, and left Sasara to pick up the verse. A tidal wave. The end. Before them the arrogant bastards who’d arranged this farce of a challenge fell flat on their backs, heaving for breath they couldn’t grasp.
“And you really thought you stood a chance,” Sasara laughed, towering over them with a presence that reminded Samatoki more of himself than of Sasara. Save for the god-awful attempt at a pun, of course. Samatoki rolled his eyes and dragged him back from the stage by a wrist. All the while Sasara waved with his free hand, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.
Show-off, thought Samatoki with no bite. Let him have his day. At this rate, it might be the only one he ever got.
He pulled the both of them to the darkest corner of the empty cavern that was the backstage area, waiting for Sasara’s laughter to fade. “So?”
It took Sasara a moment to catch up. But as soon as he did, he pulled out his phone. The ones who’d carried out the sweep of the other teams were broadly under Samatoki, but answered directly to Sasara. And what was waiting for them there was...
Sasara’s expression went blank. That meant only one of two things.
“That better be good news,” said Samatoki, loud over the roar of the crowd. They weren’t satisfied yet. With such meagre winnings, Samatoki wasn’t, either. Sasara flipped his phone to show Samatoki the message.
[All clear to West Gate.]
Samatoki laughed. Satisfied and bold, proud of how far they’d come. Looking forward to how far they still had to climb. But just as he glanced down, about to challenge Sasara to make it a race--
Sasara kissed him. Just a quick, impulsive thing, victorious and surging with a rhythm different than the one they’d shared on stage. Slower, despite the adrenaline. A little sweeter, as if he didn’t quite know how to let that rhythm carry over. Almost as if he didn’t want it to. Samatoki could feel the smile against his lips. To Sasara, at least, it was all equally as familiar.
And then, before Samatoki had any sort of chance to respond--Sasara pulled back. But not far enough. Not enough to pretend that nothing had happened.
“Sasara…” he began, unsure of what exactly he was going to warn. That this might not last? That he wasn’t sure he could ever give what Sasara surely wanted? (That if he couldn’t see an end before, then he certainly could see one now?)
“Doesn’t matter,” Sasara said, wrapping an arm around his neck and dragging Samatoki down to his level, this time. And, well… Samatoki was never one to overthink.
Sasara kissed him.
Samatoki kissed back.
3.5
Sasara was… vibrating. Vibrating, and with an energy that Samatoki would have dubbed manic, if that wasn’t Sasara’s general state of being whenever he got excited about damn near anything. Fuck, Samatoki swore he’d get that way if he offered to treat him to a melon cream soda half these days. Not that Samatoki would. And not that Sasara would.
It was just… a feeling. A certainty Samatoki couldn’t quite place. And it wasn’t his problem. Not today. Definitely not when Sasara had just waltzed into his office like the cat with the cream and canary and a koi in its jaws to boot.
Or it wouldn’t have been, if Sasara didn’t desperately, transparently, want him to ask. Samatoki sighed. Only way to get rid of a fly’s to swat it, huh?
And so he lifted his voice, reluctant but honest. “Something good happen?”
Sasara grinned at him like a child that’d just been told that dinner was dessert. “Somethin’ or other!”
And that was the end of it. No chattering his ear off. No bouncing off the walls. Just an oddly content-looking Sasara, strangely amenable to whatever plan Samatoki proposed for taking Ikebukuro’s other half. No matter how outrageous. No matter how damn reckless or stupid or utterly implausible.
This was Sasara in a damn good mood.
And Samatoki, not for the first time, wondered.
4.
Things changed.
Yamada Ichiro and Harai Kuko went from little brats running off with places that didn’t belong to them to little brats who had their backs as they pressed on past Ikebukuro and into Ueno beyond. Ikebukuro was no longer just a city with a battle, but a city with a King. If the winds of change were blowing, thought Samatoki, then it was with the god of victory at their backs.
But some things were still unshakable, even with his power. Kuujaku Posse’s hold on Shibuya. Chuuou’s walls, rising high into the skyline. And, most tragic of them all--Sasara’s incessant attempts to get someone to think he was funny.
“C’mon, Samatoki! Just give it a try! You’ll like it! He’s hysterical!”
Or maybe they did.
“Well someone’s gotta be,” Samatoki replied, caught off guard by the way it was someone else Sasara wanted to talk about for once in his goddamn life. The angry twitch of Sasara’s eyebrow didn’t go unnoticed. Samatoki bit down his laughter, just this once. But that didn’t escape Sasara. He bristled like a kitten learning to hiss.
“Just try saying that again, huh?”
Samatoki smirked. “Well someone’s gotta be.”
“And it sure isn’t you!”
“Pretty sure you’re the only one around here aiming to join the circus.”
“Though I know they’d be glad to have a nicely-trained baboon like you!”
Samatoki really did grab him by the tie, that time. Sasara stuck out his tongue in childish retaliation. With a sharp click of his tongue Samatoki let him go, knowing he hadn’t really meant it. Sasara made a big show of dusting off his suit from any of Samatoki’s common sense that might have rubbed off and restaged himself for victory.
“I ended up with two tickets,” Sasara said brightly, “so you’re comin’ with me whether you like it or not!”
“Yeah, there it is,” Samatoki muttered to himself, rolling his eyes where Sasara couldn’t see. Figures that of all the people out there who’d fall over themselves for just the chance to sit next to him, Sasara would pick the one person who couldn’t give a shit either way.
“It’s a date! So no forgetting,” Sasara warned.
Samatoki brushed him off with a wave of his hand. “Yeah, yeah.”
(But he wouldn’t forget.)
And for once, Sasara was right. He was funny. Enough to pull a few chuckles out of him, an appreciation of a fine joke that he was pretty certain Sasara was lacking somewhere in that empty head of his.
But at his side--Sasara laughed. Wild, genuine in a way that Samatoki had only ever heard come from him when engrossed in someone else’s joke. It was nothing like his stage laugh, gaudy and confident and more for others than himself.
He’d just glanced to the side. Really. Just a moment, to see if Sasara was actually enjoying himself. Just for a moment. He couldn't look away. So this was what the rest of the world saw, then. A goddamn sun come to rise in the seats of this no-name comedy club, dazzling enough to eclipse even the stage.
It was a damn sight, Samatoki thought. A damn sight.
And he could only watch so long before he was discovered. Eventually Sasara turned his head, shot him a curious look. Samatoki lifted an eyebrow at him, then gestured vaguely at the stage. “Should I be takin’ notes, or something?”
For a split second, Sasara’s expression wavered in the candlelight. A troubled line to his brows. A slackness to his smile. If he was looking at someone in those distant sights, then it sure wasn’t Samatoki. And then he was back to normal, smiling his usual bright grin before Samatoki could dare him to look at me, damnit.
“The only notes I ever wanna hear outta you better end in rhymes.”
Samatoki huffed out a dry laugh. “Fair enough.”
If he picked up anything for Sasara, it sure wasn’t gonna be comedy. A verse, he was much more suited for. The both of them knew that. They’d seen it, experienced it, shared it. This was what they had. How they knew each other. And so...
“Invite me sometime.”
Sasara tilted his head, waved between them and the stage as if to say I did?
But that wasn’t it. Samatoki stared him down, trying to get Sasara to understand. But he didn’t. And so--“To one of your shows.”
Sasara blinked, as if seeing him for the first time in a flash of color and candlelight. Samatoki could only wonder if it had really taken this long. If he could really blame Sasara if it had.
“Yeah! I’ll make sure you get the best seat!” Sasara chirped with a too-kind smile, “Up in the peanut gallery where you belong.”
And the bubble burst.
“You drive me fuckin’ nuts.” Why he ever thought to take Sasara seriously, Samatoki didn’t know. The clown must have been rubbing off. If Samatoki had known it was fuckin’ contagious...
Sasara went slack-jawed in absolute offense before whirling on Samatoki with paper fan in hand. He advanced. Samatoki reflexively leaned back in his seat. The aura Sasara was emitting was dangerous. Worse than even the harshest of battles.
“Are you stealing my jokes?”
“If that counts as stealing then you’ve been robbing the shittiest bakery in town with how stale that shit is.”
“You--!!” said Sasara, smacking him with the fan full strength. Samatoki ducked away, covering himself with his arms and taking the hits despite how much easier it would have been to do something far more effective. Like kiss him. Or maybe just flat-out deck him. (Though he wouldn’t do that, even in his dreams.)
“Fuck--ow! Sasara, you fucking-- Ow! That hurts! Sasara! Cut it out!”
(They were not thrown out for causing a disturbance halfway through the show. They were not thrown out, if only because Samatoki’s name might’ve had some leverage around these parts, and what good was a yakuza’s influence if you weren’t going to leverage it for stupid shit every once and a while? And besides. Samatoki wouldn’t allow the night to go to waste. Not when Sasara was enjoying it that much.)
“You and that Yamada Ichiro,” Sasara began, turning his fork idly over his half-eaten plate. Conversationally. Practically low-key. Like any other human being on this planet Earth would bring up something in conversation. Coming from Sasara, it meant that something was seriously, deathly wrong.
“Huh?” Samatoki lifted his head, fixed Sasara with a curious stare. “You say something?”
Their quiet bickering had trailed off with the arrival of their food; Samatoki had been too busy enjoying the silence to pay attention to whatever he’d just said. That was what he’d let Sasara believe.
“Nope,” said Sasara, “But I’ve gotta say, I’m flattered you wanna hear my voice that mu-”
That was enough of that, Samatoki decided. “And you’re done.”
“I’d like to think I’m pretty rare?”
God fucking damnit.
“Shut up and eat or I’m never taking you anywhere again,” Samatoki threatened lowly, to which Sasara had the decency to lean back in his seat and click his jaw shut. The only thing Sasara liked more than free food, after all, was fancy free food.
Which-- hold on a goddamn second.
“Was the only thing you wanted outta this whole date… dinner?”
Sasara just slapped a finger over his impish smile, teasing that for once in his life, he’d be quiet and do as Samatoki said.
“Bastard,” Samatoki scoffed. Sasara just dug into his steak with a pleased little hum. Whether it was at the food or because he thought he’d outwitted Samatoki, he’d never know.
Well… It was fine.
(If only because it was a bitch to deal with Sasara when he thought he was on a losing streak. If Samatoki didn’t throw him a bone every once and a while, then they wouldn't have lasted nearly this long. Both as a team and as… this.
But if it was the food...
On a day Nemu wasn’t home. Or in a safehouse with a nice kitchen--the Yokohama one, maybe, once they worked their way that far out--then he’d like to see just how bright Sasara would smile at something Samatoki’d made just for him. And if he’d smile just at the thought he’d tricked Samatoki into giving him leftovers to take home, then, well. Fuck. He’d take that, too.)
5.
The Nurude Sasara that existed in front of others wasn’t the same as the one that existed when alone. That was, of course, because Sasara was incapable of choosing solitude. No matter where he was, he always brought a crowd—or failing that, found a way to make one, a flame drawing moths in the wind. To make them laugh. To draw them into his pace, a spell that left only blessings in its wake.
Without an audience, he was useless. A question without an answer. A quip without a scolding. A performer without their partner.
Like a rabbit, thought Samatoki idly, brown and fluffy and gonna die if you leave it alone for too long.
Softly, slowly, Samatoki backed away from the apartment door, shutting it silent in his wake. Sasara’s voice grew ever-more distant with each step, clipping through an old act that begged its punchline in the silences left behind.
He waited in the stairwell a while. He’d been early. Now he’d be late. But none of it really mattered, because by the time he walked up to Sasara’s door again, the only sound that filtered through was an evening variety show from the television turned up too loud.
He turned the key over in his hand, considering the glint of it in the late afternoon--then shoved it deep in his pocket as it would go and lifted his hand to knock instead. “Oi, Sasara!”
From inside came the shuffle of steps. Not a moment later the door swung open and Sasara’s head popped out. He was disheveled as he always was when he spent a day inside; Samatoki half wanted to tell him to go brush his hair. But Sasara would have only ignored him anyway. Meanwhile, Sasara waved him in with a frown and a berating—“Samatoki! I gave you the key!”
Samatoki shrugged and brushed his way in. It meant he very conveniently didn’t have to look Sasara in the eyes when he said, “Forgot it.”
The withering look Sasara fixed him with--ready to scold him as if he were the child he never got to be--was almost enough to change his mind and spill the truth. But he knew how to keep a secret. To the grave, if he had to.
He said nothing.
+1
And said nothing.
+2
And said nothing.
4.5
This was a secret.
A secret known only to Sasara, swept up and locked away far from loose lips. Another one to add to the pile of things he didn’t want to keep. They were on the verge of change. Even the blind could see the way he’d been shoved from his place. Even the deaf could hear that the voice that finished most of Samatoki’s verses no longer carried that Osaka twang. That Harai Kuko could feel it too. He just didn’t know it as well as Sasara, was all.
And the secret… The secret, see, wasn’t even his.
“Like this?” Samatoki asked. He handed the notebook over to Ichiro, who read it with a tilt of his head. It was surprisingly contemplative.
“No, something more like...” said Ichiro, scribbling furiously with his pencil before shoving his clipboard back at Samatoki. He was practically at the edge of his seat. The kid was going to fall off the couch at this rate.
Samatoki accepted with much more grace, read over the lyrics with a smile beginning to split his lips. He laughed. Everything about him brightened with the audacity. “Yeah, that’s it. Nice one, Ichiro.”
He lit up at the praise. What kind of song they were working on, to this day Sasara didn’t know. Whether they’d ever performed it or not, whether they’d scrapped it and created something new, whether it had been something for just the two of them… It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because...
Ah, thought Sasara, hesitating behind the door still. Beyond it played a memory; a day from a summer some years past. His own voice echoed back to him a phantom, snickering at his own jokes. More excited than anyone to perform them. Unwaveringly certain of their success. And at his side, a pillar he never could have imagined leaving behind--
I can’t wait.
I can’t use this punchline, it has to be more like-
I can’t stop now, Sasara! One more hour. Just one more...
I can’t.
I can’t.
Sasara, I just can’t--!!
Like the doorknob had scalded him, Sasara jerked back. He hopped back lightly into the hall, turning his back and all but making a break for it. He shouldn’t be there. He wasn’t welcome. He never had been. He never was. Every single time, I just--
+3
A pair of red eyes tracked the flutter of him outside the door-- the arrival, the pause, the retreat--
And said nothing.
+4
And said nothing.
+5
And said nothing.
+6
And said...
+???
He’d left it out on the table. Well of course he had. He’d never have dreamed Samatoki would be interested enough to actually look inside, let alone start reading. It was just a notebook. It was just a used one. An old one. Something that would hardly look out of place around his old apartment, nothing recent enough to hold lyrics but nothing ancient enough to be an obvious keepsake.
But there it was, open in Samatoki’s hands as he lounged about Sasara’s living room. Pages turning idly. Tracing eyes over words in two different scripts.
“Ah--”
The sound left Sasara before he could stop it. Samatoki looked up at him, piercing straight through to something Sasara had never meant for him to see. This’s bad. Not good, not good, not good--
“I’m gonna get some fresh air!”
It was a bad excuse, but it was all he had. Sasara skittered out onto the balcony, dodging the towels he should’ve taken down from the line while it was still light out and wishing he’d brought his coat, if only for the cigarettes he kept in the pocket. It would give him something to do with his mouth besides talk. A hint of white colored his breath all the same. It got cold too fast, these days. Maybe it always had.
He wasn’t lucky enough that Samatoki decided to stay inside. But he did make the detour for his jacket on the way out, the bastard. Samatoki moved wordless to his side, lit a cigarette wordless. He tilted the carton, but Sasara shook his head. Samatoki was gonna stink up his towels, the inconsiderate jerk.
Oblivious to it all, Samatoki just shrugged and pocketed it, leaning against the rail instead. Sasara braced himself, looking anywhere but Samatoki at his side. And then, like the signal that ended it all--“Who were you writing that for?”
“Someone!” said Sasara, knowing that Samatoki would give up the game more times than not if he was flighty enough. But Samatoki’s cynical gaze was unrelenting. Sasara squirmed on the balcony, glad that he could blame it on the breeze. “Just, y’know, someone. That I haven’t seen in a while.”
“The one who stood you up for that comedy show?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Sasara said, though Samatoki’s dry uh-huh spoke volumes as to just how much he believed that. “Really. He was coming to town for a conference. It got cancelled. Y’know! Life happens! Not his fault.”
“So he cancelled his whole trip?” said Samatoki with eyebrow raised. But that wasn’t it. He could feel Samatoki’s opinion of Rosho dropping by the second; Sasara scrambled to explain before he got the wrong idea.
“No. It’s… he wasn’t paying for it, see? The school was. He’s a teacher,” Sasara added, before Samatoki could try and rib him about anything indecent. “A good one. A real good one.”
“And he was your partner?”
Sasara didn’t know in what sense Samatoki was asking about. At this point, it hardly mattered. They’d been all of them, after all. Even the ones it had taken Sasara all this time to understand. He took a long breath. “The only one I ever wanted to stand up there with.”
“Wanted... huh.”
Don’t do this to me, mister fucking softcore. It was something in his tone. Something in the way that could be the start of a conversation or the end of one. In the way he really did just have that much consideration for what Sasara had to say, if he would say it.
And if Sasara told him to drop it… Then he would. He’d probably never hear another word about all the routines Sasara’d adjusted down from two people to one, or the way Sasara still went to kiss him sometimes like he was expecting Rosho there to meet him.
And yet again they’d fall to silence, and yet again Sasara would ruin something with his own two hands.
He took a breath.
He spoke only the truth.
“We were a good pair, you know! An odder couple than me and you.” Samatoki shot him a skeptical look, but Sasara pressed on, waving a chiding finger his way. “That’s good, y’know. Makes people laugh just by lookin’ at you. Sets the bar high, so when you show them that you can go higher they’re even more impressed. Though it’s all hard work, y’know! Always was.He practiced so much. No one practices that much! No one! You gotta feel the funny. Like you feel the flow! He’d always say stuff like, ‘practice seriously!’ or ‘don’t mess with the timing!’ and then he’d be the one who started laughing first.”
The echo of it still rang in his ears. The first sound he’d loved. The first sound he’d realized he’d loved. His favorite thing to hear from Rosho’s mouth. And the one that he’d… Sasara sighed, tried to slow down. The words had been stiff, at first. He hadn’t known where to start. But now they all flowed out, a stream of them he didn’t know how to stop.
“And I? It didn’t even matter. How much I practiced, I mean. Because once you’ve got the hang of something, you’ve got it, right? If you think up some good ad-libs, it’s gonna be on the fly, not in the practice room. But if he was there… If he wanted to practice, then I wanted to go, too. Do you know how many times he tried to take back copies of the key I made to his house? But he never changed his locks. Haha… Maybe because we were both broke before we debuted? It was tough, but we got by... And y’know? He’d let me stay there after we practiced. I think I basically lived with him? And he gave me shit about it, but I… I thought he liked having me there? I thought… I really thought…”
He’d thought a lot of things. He’d hoped for even more. And yet he’d gotten nothing from them but an empty stage and a debut in a field he hadn’t even cared for. Why was he even here? He knew the answer. He knew exactly why he’d run.
“The duo doesn’t matter. I just can’t… understand why he had to break up with me as a person.”
Samatoki said nothing in the silence, just let his breath puff white as smoke in the air as his lit cigarette stayed untouched in his hand.
“He never gave me a reason, Samatoki. Not for any of it. Was it because I came to Tokyo? Because he decided that comedy couldn’t be his career? Because…?”
Sasara trailed off. There wasn’t a need to continue. Not when he already knew what had driven Rosho away. A genius? The star of his generation? The best young comedian this country had to offer?
Sasara bit back a bitter laugh and let it grow stale in his lungs with the taste of Samatoki’s smoke. No need to spoil what was supposed to be a pure sound. Not any more than he already had.
How was I supposed to be talented if just standing next to me up there left him feeling miserable? If even after we split up the act, he still didn’t..?
Sasara dropped his head and stared down at the empty streets grown so familiar in his sights--engraved onto the back of his eyelids like the way to Rosho’s apartment. A path he could stumble blind and half-dead in the middle of the night. A place more welcoming to him than home. A place that had become his home. And he’d been foolish enough to think he’d have it forever.
Quietly, softly, Sasara admitted--“I think I was serious about him.”
“You better not be figuring that out now.”
Samatoki’s words were harsh, but the arm slung over his shoulders was warm and reassuring in the bite of evening wind. Sasara leaned into it, feeling suddenly too small to refuse. He laughed, more a sigh than anything. He wouldn’t repay that kindness. He knew himself well enough to say that with certainty--he’d take all the care Samatoki had shown him and run with it, whether back home to Osaka or to a new stage somewhere that had never heard his name.
But it was fine. Samatoki was destined for greater things than Sasara as he was now. He’d come to understand that. Different stages. Different paths. Is this like how you felt, Rosho? Anything at all?
“‘Course not,” Sasara said, calming his nerves in a way he never had to do for the stage, “I think I knew that from the first time I saw him.”
Samatoki huffed. “Romantic.”
It was enough to make Sasara laugh--honestly. If only because it was better than the alternative. “Pot, kettle, brute.”
“Ahh, fuck off,” said Samatoki with no bite, and no intention of moving his arm from Sasara’s shoulders. Samatoki’s cigarette burnt down as they stood in that late autumn evening, watching the city buzz on without them. Despite the chill, something in Sasara burned again with a fire he’d never been able to let die--a passion born somewhere that wasn’t here. That wasn’t this.
His mic, his words, a partner up on a different stage. Guess it’s not the same after all, huh?
Sasara took a long breath and made his choice. He’d come to Tokyo for a change.
Time to finally go through with it.