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Makoto is the one that calls to tell him that Rin is dead.
Haru doesn’t remember what he was doing at the time. Flipping through one of his text books, maybe. Doodling in his sketchbook. Thinking about going to the swim club down the block instead of the one at his university. He’d been doing something, but the world had narrowed down to Haru’s fingers around his phone and Makoto’s voice.
“Haru,” Makoto says, voice solemn, not bothering with a hello. “Something happened.”
He sits down, his mind scattering in a million directions. Makoto had gone home to visit that weekend, so it probably had to do with Ren or Ran, or maybe even his parents. Haru thinks of every possibility, except the right one.
“What is it?” Haru asks, when Makoto refuses to elaborate, a bare silence stretching between them.
“It’s.” Makoto pauses. “It’s Rin. He’s. There was an accident, Haru, and he didn’t make it out. I’m so-”
There’s a roaring in Haru’s ears that cuts Makoto off. Rin is dead. His Rin, the one who had shone so brightly and drew him in every time he smiled, is now cold and dead. Waves of grief rear up, and swallow him whole.
Haru has to struggle not to get swept away by the current, has to struggle to stay with Makoto. He holds on by the tips of his fingers.
The night before Rin had gone back to Australia for the last time, he had stayed in Haru’s apartment with him, to be closer to the airport. He’d filled Haru’s tiny studio apartment with noise and his presence, and Haru had thought about how nice this was. How he’d love to do this forever, or at least, someday.
Haru had only had one futon, so the two of them had shared. Rin did so with pink cheeks and his back to Haru, until Haru had touched his back.
He’d turned around to face him. “What?” Rin had asked, voice soft in the darkness. The moon shining through the window had illuminated half his face, and Haru thought that there were few things more beautiful.
He didn’t know what came over him, but he’d kissed Rin that night, a kiss that was long overdue. Rin froze, and Haru pulled away, suddenly terrified that he’d misread the looks that Rin had given him all night, the way he’d found every excuse to touch him.
Then Rin pressed his lips back onto Haru’s, deepening it, until it was deep and messy. Haru’s fingers had clung to the back of his tank top and Rin had grabbed his hips, until the two of them had to pull away to breathe.
“Haru.” Rin’s voice had been breathless, chest heaving. “We can’t. Not right now.” When Haru had pulled away, Rin had grabbed his arm, stopping him from turning around. “Next time I come back, we’ll finish what we started.”
Haru nodded, wrapping his arms around Rin’s waist instead of kissing him again, and pressed his head to his chest.
In the morning, Rin was gone, not even bothering to wake Haru up. His heart pounded with panic, until he found the note on the pillow where Rin had slept. To Be Continued, the paper read.
Haru had believed him.
Haru doesn’t want to go under, so he does what he does best. He paints.
Rin’s mother would appreciate that, he thinks. Maybe she’d even use it at the funeral, or put it up in her house, a reconstruction of the son she’d birthed.
He considers painting a picture from memory. He has plenty: Rin winning a race, his smile outshining the sun. Rin looking at him with soft eyes in their better moments. The way his eyes hardened when they were at one of their worst. Twelve-year-old Rin, coming into Haru’s world and destroying it without a second thought. The way Rin had looked the night they kissed, moonlight wrapping around his face.
The memories are there, but every time Haru tries to remember Rin’s face the only thing he can see is the accident, Rin bleeding out on the street, Rin dead on arrival.
He decides to work from a reference instead, dragging out the photo albums that Nagisa, Rei, and Kou had gifted him with when he moved to Kyoto.
It takes him a while to find a picture that Haru thinks Rin’s mother will like to have to remember her son by. When he’d been given the three photo books, which had all been completely filled with pictures, he’d thought they were too much.
Now, he realizes that they aren’t enough. Like there isn’t enough record of Rin Matsuoka being happy, of him being with Haru. He sifts through all of the photos for hours before finally settling on one to use.
Kou had been behind the camera, just like she was in most of these. Rin’s expression is caught somewhere in between a laugh and a scowl, but there was more emphasis on the laugh. His eyes are bright with it.
Haru had just barely escaped being in this photo as well, the camera’s lens not quite capturing him. Rin’s hand had been on his wrist, warm, thumb on his pulse point. He’d been touching Haru to make a point, one he hadn’t quite gotten through before the picture was taken.
Emotion rises in Haru’s throat at the thought, and he has to tamp it down, has to stay afloat.
He clips the photo at the edge of the canvass and starts to sketch, working through the night. He doesn’t want to sleep, so he just continues to work until he’s satisfied with the sketch, and then goes straight to his paints.
There aren’t any roadblocks until he has to paint Rin’s hair. He doesn’t have any color that matches the shade exactly, so he gets out his mixing bowl and gets to work. He adds too much blue, at first, and then too much red, and takes the white too far and it thins out the color too much. He spends an hour on this until he’s completely satisfied with how it comes out.
When he’s finished with this picture he still has plenty of paint left over, and the sun is almost in the center of the sky. He feels exhausted, but there’s no reason for the paint he worked so hard on to go to waste, so he picks another picture out of an album and gets another canvass.
He paints until there’s nothing left, until he’s too exhausted to fight the grief or his body, begging him for sleep. Five pictures of Rin stare back at him, and he collapses into bed, finally giving in.
Haru doesn’t particularly listen to world news on a good day--he knows he should, but he doesn’t, and that’s that--but during those two weeks he cares even less.
The morning that he wakes up with paint on his hands the color of Rin’s eyes he goes out and buys a suit for the funeral. He ignores the rest of the world, including the headlines and the news blaring from every television, too wrapped up in treading the waves of grief.
The dead rise from their graves, starting in the West and spreading onward to the rest of the world. Haru decides on what tie he should wear to the funeral, before finally settling on a black one that Rin would have liked.
There is a cure made within days of what the world calls The Rising, and by the time the dead rise in Japan it is too late for much panic. Haru contemplates mixing more paint, his fingers going towards the red and blue paint tubes before putting them up.
The few dead in Japan that aren’t already cremated are quickly cured and declared Partially Deceased. There are only five casualties in all of Japan, nothing compared to the rest of the world. Haru books a ticket back to Iwatobi and packs his bags.
Makoto calls him, tells him, “Rin’s back,” as though he’d only been away again, instead of dead.
Haru goes back to Iwatobi using the same ticket that he would have used to travel to Rin’s funeral. He leaves the suit at his apartment in Kyoto, hanging in the back of his closet instead of the door where he’d put it with intentions to use it.
Kou had told him that she would tell him when Rin was back from the treatment center, but Haru is still impatient. For the first time in years he cleans his grandmother’s house from top to bottom, dusting and mopping and scrubbing the bathrooms until everything shines.
Then he goes to the beach and sits on the edge of the beach, his feet in the water but nothing else, and he waits.
He wonders what Rin will be like, what he’ll look like. Haru searched the internet for answers, but he still completely sure about everything. Most of the information of Partially Deceased Syndrome is vague and unhelpful, and he wonders what it is they’re trying to hide.
They say that PDS suffers are essentially the same people that they were before, just sick, as though they have cancer or AIDS. Diseases with the ability to eat you up from the inside out.
Onii-chan is home, Kou texts him, three days later. Another text follows that one. He probably would like to see you again.
Haru takes a deep breath before knocking on the Matsuoka’s door. There’s movement in the curtains of the window before the door opens, Kou at the entrance. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers, letting him in.
He wonders at her volume, but doesn’t question it. Now that he’s here Haru feels antsy, impatient.
There’s a part of him that can’t believe that Rin’s back, that he’s come back from the grave. Haru lived in hell for two weeks, trying not to drown, only for his head to break through like he never struggled for breath. Like his entire world didn’t change, like he didn’t have to live in a world without Rin Matsuoka somewhere in it, living.
Kou leads him to the living room, and smiles at him with no teeth. She looks a bit pained, and Haru can’t imagine why. He’s distracted from the thought when a loud thump comes from the back of the house, and a low curse, before the door to the hallway opens.
And there Rin is. Haru can hardly breathe, heart in his throat, as he beholds Rin Matsuoka standing in front of him. If Haru was the crying type, he’d cry just then. He’s not, though, so he keeps his composure, sitting on his hands to keep them from reaching out.
Once the miracle has passed, Haru looks closer. The skin mousse that the government gave Rin is two shades darker than his skin had been when he was alive. The worst, though, are his eyes.
As someone who spent an inordinate amount of time mixing colors, looking for the exact shade, Haru knows how hard it is to capture. Still, though, the difference is noticeable to everyone that knew Rin before.
Haru knows what a PDS sufferer’s eyes look like without the contacts, and there’s a part of him that wonders if he wouldn’t rather see that instead of this pale imitation.
“Haru,” Rin nods, sitting down next to Kou. He doesn’t even try to get closer, or say anything else, just Haru’s name.
To be continued, Haru thinks, but doesn’t say. He can tell that that’s one promise that will never come to pass, as though Rin forgot. Haru knows he didn’t, though, can tell by the way Rin looks at him and because the internet told him that the Partially Dead remember everything they knew before.
Kou forces small talk. Rin and Haru give one worded answers, but she still manages to hold an entire conversation until Rin’s mother returns from the store. She kisses Haru when she sees them, almost in tears.
When she hugs him she whispers into his ear, “Thank you for coming.”
Haru can’t remember the Matsuoka house ever being this quiet before, or having this much whispering. It must be a new addition, much like Rin.
Mrs. Matsuoka sits them down for another half hour of small talk before she stands up. “Kou and I should go work on dinner,” she says. She isn’t as subtle as she probably thinks.
When the women leave, Haru and Rin just stare at each other. Haru can’t think of a single thing to say, even though he’d had a million words back when he thought that Rin was dead for good.
Rin is the one to break the ice. “Awful, isn’t it?” he finally says, some wry humor in his voice. He gestures to his entire body. Haru can tell that he is trying hard to act like this is normal.
“No.” Haru has to clear his throat. “It’s fine. But I’m sure you look fine even without all that too.”
Rin snorts. “That’s what you think,” he says. “I hope you never have to find out.”
Every time that Rin came back from Australia after high school, a small party was thrown. They were more of an excuse to try to get everyone back together in Iwatobi during school breaks and holidays than an actual celebration of Rin, but they’d been important.
Nagisa and Kou decide that this time deserves a party too. The Samezuka ultimate relay is coming this well, an addition that has never been made before, but one that Haru knows Rin will appreciate.
After all, they all thought that Rin was dead too.
The party is at the Matsuoka house, decorated with streamers and a yellow banner yelling, WELCOME BACK, RIN! There’s a table full of food that Rin can’t eat, along with a huge cake with a picture of Rin stuck in the icing. Haru can smell Nagisa all over this. He wonders if he should’ve taken one of his paintings of Rin back anyway. They would’ve have fit right in.
Haru finds Rin staring at the banner when he walks in, his face unreadable. Closed off. Haru wonders if maybe he didn’t want a party, if he would’ve have rathered not to have been welcomed back at all.
Before Haru can say anything, Nagisa comes barrelling over. “Haru-chan!” he cries, eyes bright. Rei trails behind him, looking frazzled. It’s been a few months and a brand new world, but Haru is still glad that some things never change.
“Rin-chan, you should look more excited for your own party,” he admonishes, and Rin rubs the back of his neck.
“Yeah, probably.”
Nagisa starts chattering about the party, leaving Rin nodding in response. He doesn’t look annoyed or even try to respond verbally. He just nods, letting Nagisa control the party.
“I told Nagisa-kun that this was unnecessary,” Rei says in an undertone to Haru. “Most PDS, well.” Rei adjusts his glasses. “They don’t really feel welcome, no matter how well recieved they are at home. If they’re received at all, that is.”
Haru knows that Rei now works with the PDS in the area, helping them acclimate and with their medication, but it never hit him before he saw just how exhausted Rei looks. Things must not be easy on the other end of this, either. He couldn’t imagine having to deal with all of that.
“I don’t know if this party was for Rin, exactly,” Haru responds. Rei just nods.
He means to keep an eye on Rin throughout the entire party, but loses him once everyone arrives and Rin starts to drift person to person. No one seems to comment on his appearance, or make things uncomfortable. They’re all acting like everything is glossed with a layer of normal, instead of embracing the differences. It’s almost suffocating.
“We should cut the cake,” Kou says after a while, when everythings gets to be a bit much. “Where’s Onii-chan?”
“I’ll go find him,” Haru volunteers, and goes out to the back porch, if only to find some air.
He opens the door when he finds Rin standing in his backyard, Yamazaki beside him. Their backs are both towards the house, so they don’t even notice Haru standing there.
“...kill me,” Rin is saying. “It has to be you, Sousuke. I don’t trust anyone but you to do it, to do right by me. Say you will.”
“You’re asking me to help you die. Again. Rin...” Yamazaki trails off. Haru can’t imagine what the look on his face must be.
“I don’t want to remember killing another person, Sousuke. Please.” Rin’s voice is soft, now. Pleading.
“Why do you always do this to me?” He sighs. “Fine. I will. If you go rabid and kill someone else then I’ll kill you, whether you’re rabid or not.”
“Thank you.” Rin’s voice cracks a bit, before he straightens up, taking a deep breath. “I’m glad we didn’t have to settle that with a throwdown.”
They both laugh, short and soft, before growing quiet again. Even from his place at the door, Haru can feel the weight of the silence between them. He shatters it completely, by making sure the porch door squeaks.
They turn around, to find Haru there. “Cake’s ready,” Haru says, revealing nothing. Rin nods and shoulders past him into the house. Yamazaki lingers behind. He and Haru stare at each other, have an entire conversation, before he goes inside too.
Everyone but Haru leaves back for wherever it is they’re stationed now, except Haru. He doesn’t want to leave Rin, wants to be here for everything.
He knows that it isn’t practical, that he still has a semester to finish, but he doesn’t care. Haru calls his university, tells them that he needs another two weeks to be excused before he can go back.
After those two weeks are up, Haru doesn’t know what he will do. Go back to Kyoto, he supposes.
Still though, he has time, and so he goes to the Matsuoka house every day, eating dinner with them some nights. Every time he comes Rin looks just a little more strained, his cracks a bit more visible.
Two days before Haru has to leave he goes to hear shouting behind the door. Rin storms out, slamming the door behind him. He freezes when he notices that Haru is on the path to the front door.
“Shit,” he says under his breath. When the door opens again, Mrs. Matsouka coming out, Rin grabs Haru’s arm, pulling him along. “Let’s go.”
This is the first time that Rin has willingly touched him since he came back. Haru hasn’t noticed him touching anyone else either, but it still hurts. Rin had been someone that needed that closeness, that physicality. It had bothered Haru a lot of the time, because he had been the opposite, but it’s only now that he realizes that he’s missed that part of Rin. He’s actually missed the arms slung across his shoulder, or light touches to his arm or face. And, even though it had been just the once, the touch of his lips.
Rin’s hands aren’t warm anymore. They’re cold, like you’d imagine a dead person’s grip to be. Haru finds that he doesn’t mind, because these are still Rin’s hands.
Rin realizes what he’s doing too soon for Haru’s liking, and he lets go. “Sorry,” he mumbles, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets.
“Why were you running?”
“I wasn’t-” Rin stops himself. “I’m just sick of it, you know? Mom’s acting like everything’s normal, like it’s okay, when it’s not. I’m not going back to Australia after a month, I’m not going to the pool to train. I’m sitting in that house, rotting. And worse than that is Iwatobi proper. People think I’m a demon, and so I can’t even leave. It’s just. It’s just a lot,” he finishes lamely, looking at his hands instead of at Haru.
“Come back with me,” Haru responds, after some time with this. He’s been thinking about this for a while, but he wasn’t sure that he’d ever have the opportunity to ask. This is perfect.
“Eh?! Haru, what are you-”
“It’s better in cities. For people like you,” he clarifies. “People aren’t as superstitious there, and there are treatment centers in case something happens. It’d be-” Perfect? Because then I’d really feel like you came back to me, like we were continuing something instead of standing still--“better for you than staying here.”
Rin turns to look at him. “You’re offering to let me live with you?”
Honestly, Rin can be so stupid. “Yes.”
“I’ll think about it,” Rin pauses. “Mom won’t be happy.”
“She’ll be happy if you’re happy. And you’ll be happier”--with me--“in Kyoto.”
“Anything’s better than this,” Rin says.
Three days later they’re packed and ready to go back to Kyoto. Rin’s mother and Kou are both at the station, seeing them off.
“Please take care of him,” Rin’s mother says to Haru. “You always have but this time. It might be harder.”
“Mom,” Rin hisses, cutting her off.
She stands up on her tip toes to kiss Rin on the cheek, smiling. “And you behave.”
“I will,” he grumbles. “C’mon, Haru, let’s go.”
As they wave from the window, Haru wonders just how many times Rin’s mother has watched her son leave her. He wonders if it ever gets any easier, and if it does, if she can tell him the secret to it.
As soon as they are done unpacking Rin hands him a medical administrator and a glass jar full of a blue liquid. “My medicine,” he responds to Haru’s confused look. “It’s hard doing it by myself. You have to give it to me every day--I can’t miss a dose.”
“Oh,” Haru says, the weight of the gun-like object strange in his hand. “Okay.” Whatever you need.
“I need some now, I didn’t have time earlier this morning,” Rin says, going to sit on the couch. He pulls down the collar of his shirt at the back of his neck. There’s a dark, round hole where he’s pointing. Haru wonders if the doctors had to cut that there themselves, at treatment. “See that hole there? The applicator goes there, and then you pull the trigger. It’s easy, even for you.”
Haru ignores the jab, and screws the medication into the applicator before holding one hand to keep Rin’s shirt down, and pulls the trigger.
There’s a hissing sound, which Haru takes to mean that he’s done it right. Rin bends over in pain, head in his hands, moaning. Haru hovers, wondering what he should do, if it’s normal, when Rin straightens up again.
“Thanks,” he says, tone dull. Then he goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.
Kyoto is better than Iwatobi, when it comes to PDS. No one stares or calls Rin a demon, at least not at a personal level. There are news stories everywhere about hate crimes, especially in the West.
Haru finds himself thankful that Rin’s body had gotten on an airplane quickly, since there are reports of many PDS sufferers in Australia being killed instead of treated in their rabid state. None of the articles ever seem to remember that PDS sufferers are people too.
Haru tries to hide the papers when they have such reports, but Rin probably seeks them out on his own. He can’t blame him.
The knowledge of these attacks weigh heavily on both of them, even though there are no reports of anything happening in Japan. It’s a strange thing to realize that cremation might be something to be thankful for, but suddenly Haru is grateful for this custom as well.
If there were more PDS sufferers around, then he might have a harder time keeping Rin safe.
Haru knows that no matter what happens, he will never let Yamazaki and Rin’s promise come to pass.
Rin never talks about the accident that killed him. Haru knows, from Makoto, that Rin received wounds, but Haru has never seen them.
One night, though, once he’s out of the shower, Rin forgets to pull his shirt down all the way as he’s talking to Haru while he cooks dinner. It’s only then that Haru gets the chance to glimpse what he’s been hiding.
Pale body, like a corpse. And then there are the stitches and staples used to keep his body together forever, ones that won’t ever be removed. Rin stops talking when he realizes what Haru is looking at, closing off for the rest of the night.
He never sees Rin without his contacts or skin mousse either, always off color. Haru wonders what Rin would do if he told him that it’d be fine if he wanted to look natural. He has never scared easily.
Haru realizes that this means that he really never will swim with Rin again. He can’t go in water ever again, even though swimming had been his life, once.
Rin might not agree, but Haru would still rather have him be alive, than be able to swim.
Rin gets a job as a waiter at a high class restaurant deeper into the city, the only thing he could find that would accept him.
It seems to give Rin some kind of purpose, which Haru is glad of. But it’s the job that brings things to a boiling point, since it causes Rin to interact with the public daily.
Haru has felt the frustration building for months, but one night Rin comes home angry, his hands shaking. He falls like a stone onto the couch and Haru rushes over to him, wondering if he’s having a bad reaction to his medication.
“What’s wrong?” Haru asks.
“Everything,” Rin replies. He has a piece of paper in his shaking hands, with numbers written on it. “Some fuckstick at work gave this to me. I accidently touched him when I was handing him his glass, and he became very after that. He cornered me right before he left. Told me he’d give me a million yen if I’d fuck him. Two million, if I let him fuck me. Said I should call him.”
Rin lets out a humorless laugh. “Maybe I should let him. Now that I’m undead--excuse me, a PDS sufferer--fucking me is worth two million yen. Two million. I never would’ve gotten that much before I died. I should call him right now, tell him sure. Why not? Plenty of people do it.”
“Rin, stop it,” Haru says, trying to get him to shut up, but he continues on anyway, as though Haru hadn’t said anything.
“It’s not like I’d feel anything anyway. I can’t feel anything.” His voice cracks here, face crumbling. “I’m not good for anything except some pervert’s delusions anyway. Can’t swim, can’t go out without taking two hours in the bathroom. Might as well as become a fucktoy. Might as well be dead, again.”
Haru wants to scream at Rin to shut the fuck up, to stop talking about himself like this, but he doesn’t. Instead he takes the paper with the number from Rin’s fingers and shreds it into tiny pieces and throwing it into the garbage can.
Rin’s face is in his hands when Haru comes back to the couch. His shoulders are heaving, like he’s sobbing. Only Haru knows he’s not. The dead don’t cry.
Haru wraps his arms around Rin instead, and loves the weight of him in his arms. Rin tries to pull away, but Haru doesn’t let him, forcing him to stay with him. Eventually Rin gives in and presses his cold face into Haru’s neck.
“Why did I come back?” Rin asks. “I should have just died.”
“You came back for me,” Haru whispers. He’s not sure if Rin hears him or not, but he knows that’s why.
No matter what happens, no matter how far he goes, Rin will always come back to Haru. This only proves that to Haru. It’s a selfish thought, but then, when it comes to Rin, Haru is selfish. Selfish enough to think that they could be the reason for the entire Rising.
Rin grips Haru’s shirt tighter in response, but finally quiets, as though he agrees.
Rin finds the paintings a few weeks later, finally bothering to remove the blankets from over the canvass. “What’s this?” he asks.
“You,” Haru replies. “When you died, the first thing I wanted to paint was you.”
“Nobody can blame you. I was beautiful, wasn’t I?”
“Still are,” Haru says, remembering the despair he felt and the way the paint had dried on his hands.
Rin looks at him, but doesn’t comment on his slip up. Haru is grateful for small mercies.
That night, when he comes out of the bathroom, Rin isn’t wearing any mousse or his contacts. “Still think I’m beautiful?” he asks when he finds Haru staring.
“Always,” Haru answers, no emotion in his voice.
For the first time since Rin came back, Haru feels like things actually will be continued.