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Takemitchy leans against the kitchen doorway and doesn’t bother flicking the lights on. He knows Chifuyu’s silhouette, has memorized it like the back of his palm. “You know the Kinsey scale?”
There’s a crunching noise. He realizes Chifuyu is devouring a cereal, no milk. In a bowl. In the middle of the night. “The sexuality scale or whatever?”
“Yeah,” he answers, and wishes he could have opened the lights so he can see Chifuyu’s expression. “I think I’m two. I like girls a lot, but sometimes I like boys too.”
There’s a light chuckle. “Charming.”
“You think that’s charming?”
“No,” he answers swiftly. “Congrats? For figuring out yourself, I guess.”
So nothing click to him. Isn’t that fucking devastating. “You like boys, right?”
“Yes. Only boys, no girls. Romantically or sexually, I mean.”
“And I like boys too,” Takemitchy says, and waits in the silence.
“Yeah,” Chifuyu replies, at last. “That’s one more similarity between us, huh?”
He wants to shove Chifuyu’s face in the bowl. “You’re right.” Then he opens his mouth, clamps his teeth together, then finally, forms an o-shape, mouthing Ai-bo.
Partner.
There’s a momentary dizziness when Chifuyu switches the lights on, mint eyes scanning his face. “You sleep with Mikey. Why are you only telling me this?”
He shrugs, grabbing a handful of froot loops from his bowl. Rainbows. Nice. He shoves everything to his mouth. Chifuyu doesn’t hide the disgust on his face when Takemitchy opens his mouth and some of the ring-shaped cereals come flying. “Da’s fo me zo kno, en you zo ffigu-e aw.”
“What the fuck.”
Takemitchy bids him goodnight.
*
Takemitchy doesn’t know what the Bonten meeting will be about, if Mikey’s in good mood, he’ll just ask them to mutilate some bodies, if he’s in a bad mood, then he’ll make them wait for two hours at his favorite store for his favorite fish shaped cake.
He frowns. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Mikey comes waltzing inside the meeting room, wearing his usual baggy clothes that are all black from head to toe. He goes straight for Takemitchy’s seat and makes himself home between his legs.
He doesn’t make an attempt to push him away, but he scolds. “Mikey, there’s a reason we put a chair at the end of the table. Don’t sit on my crotch.”
Mikey grunts in protest. “I sit where I want.”
He sighs, and says a tired whatever because he doesn’t think Mikey will appreciate being told fuck you at this time of the day.
“I heard there’s a delay in the delivery of goods today,” Mikey announces
That sounds bad. After his talk with Chifuyu last, night, he has been craving for murder.
He schools his expression to innocence when he finds Kakucho staring at him.
Koko pushes an arm at the table. “Heh. Just say the word, boss.”
Sanzu grins, tossing a pill to his mouth. Wow, he’s really taking his junk right here. When he catches Takemitchy looking, he waves a finger, implying a question, want some too?
Takemitchy mouths it’s fucking 8 am .
Takeomi Akashi, unsurprisingly, shares the sentiment. “Haruchiyo, isn’t it too early for that?”
His eyelids droop threateningly. “Mind your own business, old man. You smoke like a bitch at 3 am, don’t tell me what to do.”
As expected of Bonten’s number 2, quite scary.
“How is the delay a problem?” Chifuyu asks.
“I always know those new recruits are a problem,” Kakucho says. “Goods get delayed, a raid the next day, bla bla bla. You all know how it goes.”
“Shame,” says Rindou in a poor imitation of fondness. “I like those new recruits.”
Ran tilts his head slightly, smiling his appealing smile. “So?”
The whole room goes silent.
When Mikey presses himself to Takemitchy, he feels the gun on the back of his shirt. A light, deadly thing, like the owner himself. “Bring them to me.”
They get to work.
*
For the record, Takemitchy doesn’t like blood. It’s not his fault he’s good at drawing them out.
“You suck at these, Takemitchy,” Chifuyu chides, and they’re in a warehouse, roofed ceiling and all that, but the sunlight filters through the small gaps in the wall. He sees a small halo of dust floating above his partner’s head, and Takemitchy knows he should probably look somewhere else instead of staring while disfiguring someone else’s hand.
“Shut up,” he says, finally paying attention. “Hey, hey, stop moving. There, will hurt less, won’t it? Less blood too.”
The man screams from his gagged mouth, a sorry view. Takemitchy pities him a little, his eyes were pretty, after all. The shade of green he has been overly fond of. He can steal that, but that’d be creepy. Chifuyu will find out, sooner or later.
Takemitchy has a vague recollection in this same warehouse. It was Sanzu who gave him the blessing to be part of Bonten. Once, Sanzu jokingly tells him that out of the recruits he tortured, he’s the only one that forced him to use the chains. After all, it takes two weeks for Takemitchy to finally break.
The one who took care of Chifuyu was Akashi, and thank god it was him. Chifuyu still retained light in his eyes after, whereas Takemitchy completely lost his.
“Let’s have drinks after, yeah?” Takemitchy tells the recruit, holding his hand tenderly. “I swear the nails will grow back. Mine took about half a year. Then your hands will be pretty again.”
Chifuyu laughs. Takemitchy snaps at him.
“What?”
“Don’t coddle him, moron.”
“Jealous?”
Chifuyu throws a huge syringe his way. He easily ducks out of the way.
Takemitchy turns back to the recruit. He grabs the plastic bag from the ground, and boy, does it fucking stink. He casts it in Chifuyu’s direction, who catches the repulsive thing easily. “Your turn, partner.”
Chifuyu nods, jumping off the boxes he was nestled on earlier. “Arg, I hate this part.” He kneels before the recruit, helpless eyes facing sea-green orbs. “Let’s make this easy for both of us.” He takes on his gloves. “I’ll spare you the gruesome details of your lunch today, but please don’t throw up on me.”
*
Koko has a thing for Mikey’s former friend’s friend. He’s pretty and has blond hair that is almost white, and for his friend’s sake, Takemitchy chooses not to say anything when they take detours to go through the motorcycle shop.
His stare would always linger, and Takemitchy, as the driver and a sweet co-worker, would slow the car ever so slightly, until the longing turns his gaze to stone.
None of them would comment on it. Takemitchy never asks.
“Have you ever thought,” Koko asks, one time. “Of having a mirror that instead of seeing yourself, it’ll give you the person you love the most?”
Takemitchy doesn’t know what to answer. He hasn’t looked into a mirror since Bonten. He wants to know what he looks like just like everyone else, but sometimes it doesn’t feel right, like the skin or hair or eyes are all wrong.
Takemitchy asks, “Like the one in Harry Potter ?”
“I’m surprised you know that book.”
“No, I only know the film.” He leans against his seat. “I won’t need it.”
“Uhuh. I’d buy something like that.”
“Of course you would,” Takemitchy says easily. Koko buys anything he likes, anything he dislikes —
His eyes flicker at the rearview mirror where Koko’s grin looks like a corpse’s.
— But he doesn’t always get them.
*
There are three reasons why he doesn’t like whores: They’re loud, touch everything they could, and dance around like the whole ground is playing with them, instead of being a solid thing it is.
Chifuyu doesn’t like them either, and he gets to get away because he has a mission. He thinks Ran has done it on purpose. Bastard.
“Why not? They’re cute,” Kanji says from next to him, grinning ear to ear. Takemitchy inches away. He doesn’t like him because he punched Chifuyu once, and always looks like he would do it again. “C’mon, Takemitchy, loosen up a little.”
“That’s ironic, coming from you. You’ve been frowning the whole night.”
“You gotta live the moment, kid,” he repeats, avoiding the topic. Takemitchy will learn later, that almost all of Bonten’s upper members are hopelessly in love fools. A tragic thing they were, really.
If they weren’t murderers, they’d be great male leads in any sappy romance drama.
He climbs to his feet, and wanders around the bar. The Haitani brothers are surely taking their time planting the fake pieces of evidence. It’s just them doing all the work, he doesn’t know why he has to be here too. Kakucho is enough as a lookout.
He thinks his ears must be deceiving him when he hears a shrieking upstairs. The only coherent thing that pops into his mind is to follow the noise, a gun safely tucked in his pocket.
He sees Mikey first, eyes dead, standing on barefoot, a woman bawling on the ground before him. He sees her wrist, dislocated beyond repair. He doesn’t stop to help her, Mikey should have known the rules. He won’t hurt her without reason.
“Hey,” he starts to say. Mikey’s eyes flicker to him. “What happened?”
Mikey forcefully wipes a smudge of lipstick from his mouth, not saying a word. Takemitchy’s gut twists with disgust. How dare she .
He tosses the girl a sharp glare, but doesn’t follow his instinct to kick her. He grabs Mikey’s arm, his boss, and navigates them towards one of the bar’s private rooms. Once there, they go straight to the bathroom.
He pulls the disposable towel from the hanger, and runs a little water over it. He turns around to face Mikey again—
He drops everything to the floor. “What the fuck?! Why are you naked?!”
Mikey doesn’t throw him a second glance. “I’m taking a bath. What else?”
He resists the urge to facepalm. “Then you should have said so!”
“Stop shouting, Takemitchy, it’s giving me a headache.”
“Oh, sorry Mikey.”
Takemitchy strides toward the bathtub before him, and opens the faucet. Hot water pours in. Mikey gets in the tub, and Takemitchy collects the clothes he discarded earlier and keeps them somewhere safe and clean.
Then, he sits down next to the tub, and tries to memorize Mikey’s face. They’re small, his nose, and his eyes are big and almost round, and his lips are pink but they’re harshly bitten, dry and peelable.
He doesn’t know how the girl forcefully kissed him, he wasn’t there, but he knows one thing: Mikey’s eyes are blank, the look of someone that didn’t experience it as the first time.
Mikey would never let himself be touched. Takemitchy knows this but he still presses a palm over his forehead. Mikey leans into it, just like Takemitchy expects him to.
“I’ve killed people too,” he tells him, and Mikey’s eyes look like a thing drawn several times, too many lines underneath, the shades too dark, and for that same reason, they’ve become beautiful, they really are. “You don’t have to pretend I’m meant for the light.”
Mikey kisses him then and it tastes bitter, like a cold wine. Takemitchy lets himself be touched, knows Mikey is trying to kiss away the feeling of the girl’s lips on his own, and Takemitchy lets him, only because this is Mikey, and he’s greedy and starving and the world has taken too much from him for Takemitchy to return all of it.
When he’s done, Takemitchy pretends it never happened because Mikey would forget anyway.
*
He doesn’t know how to sing, but Chifuyu does, and they both like the rain and music and everything that reminds them of childhood. They don’t remember much from it, maybe that’s why, sometimes, they don’t know how to stop being kids.
Takemitchy takes out his guitar in the rain, and the sound is warped and plays wrong because of the wet, but Chifuyu sings with it anyway, and laughs every time he sings the lyrics wrong.
The rain won’t wash away the blood on their hands, he knows, but it’s in these moments that Takemitchy doesn’t hide from himself, doesn’t lock away his heart from the world, but he lets it be found, lets Chifuyu take it for himself.
Have you ever loved someone, Takemitchy says to him, and if the world ends today, he wouldn’t know until it happens. That you want to see them in your mirror every day?
Chifuyu only takes one look at him to laugh expressively, like he immediately knows those words did not come from him. I do. But he’s always with me, so I wouldn’t exchange the real one for anything, even if it means I don’t get to keep him forever.
Chifuyu whistles an unknown music to keep the act together, and Takemitchy wonders quietly if there’s a reality —or a possible universe —where he gets to keep Chifuyu, or if there’s a reality where they weren’t fucked up, where he could have loved someone else. Maybe a girl, someone with a soft heart and softer smile, and he’ll marry her, have a child together, build a house somewhere near the stars. Chifuyu will love someone else too, maybe a boy, all wild personality to contradict his cool countenance, someone who will catch him easily if he falls, someone who can die in his arms. Maybe there’s a universe made for that, but he knows that even then, even with different roles to play, they would still find each other. He’ll still hate Chifuyu’s absence more than he loves his presence, and Chifuyu would still prefer him to be alone than to be with someone else.
He stares at the back of his arm where his tattoo of Bonten sits, and knows it’s the only skin from his entire body that feels like his.
Ironic thing it is
*
When Mikey can’t sleep, it’s Takemitchy he looks for. Mikey is loved by everyone in Bonten, but it’s not the love he wants, and once upon a time, Takemitchy knows exactly how to give him that.
But he doesn’t, not anymore. He still holds Mikey the same, but he’s his puppet now.
Mikey rests his skull on his lap, and Takemitchy leans against the headboard, and wonders if there was a time where Mikey's hair wasn’t silver. He thinks it probably used to be blond, only he has no memories of it. Only a certain feeling that it used to look right .
“Do you still have dreams, Takemitchy?”
It takes him half a minute to answer. “I did once.” He leans down to kiss Mikey’s forehead. “It’s about you.”
He has no memories of dreams, they’re as fleeting as conscience. Chifuyu tells him he cries in his sleep, so maybe they were never good dreams in the first place.
But Takemitchy will lie as much as many nights where Mikey needs someone who can fool him enough that he’ll sleep.
“You were happy. Your old friends were there too.” Do you know Takemitchy, he tells him once, muttering, half-asleep, half-awake, the room too dark to see his face, That I used to be a big brother? “And one of your friends was taking your sister to the altar.”
He feels Mikey shiver. Takemitchy pauses and pulls the blanket on him. “Sorry—”
“No. Continue.”
“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “And the day after the wedding, the two of us were planning to travel the world. Isn’t that cool? I always wanted to go to France, city of love and all that.”
Mikey presses his mouth on his leg, laughs on it. “It’s Paris, Takemitchy. France is the country.”
“Oh.” He chuckles and scratches the back of his neck. “Eh, well. It’s almost the same thing!”
“Sure. If you say so,” he sings.
Takemitchy doesn’t have many memories of his childhood, but knows they must be good ones for him to easily forget them. He wonders if Mikey remembers his, it feels like a privilege to know and forget. “What country would you like to go to, Mikey?”
“Philippines,” he answers, almost instantly. Philippines, huh. It’s a country almost as small as Japan.
“Why?”
“I would like to die there.”
Minutes later, Mikey has gone still, snoring softly. He thinks about Philippines, a place surrounded by waters, one with too many islands, seemingly untouchable from the rest of the world. A country that seems like it's waiting to be found, and Takemitchy knows Japan has stolen from it once, too.
He thinks of Mikey, a person waiting to be found so he can be stolen from.
“Whatever you wish for, Mikey,” he whispers to his ear, a promise one too many. “I’ll give it to you.”
*
Traffic jams are equally as problematic in the evenings as in the mornings. Curse Mikey’s abnormal cravings for his favorite Taiyaki during the ungodly hours. He sees a curious view, and he promptly pulls the car to a stop.
He presses the window down. “Hello. It’s late, do you know this is criminals’ favorite spot?” He knows. He’s here, after all. “What is a pretty lady like you doing here?”
She looks bewildered to see him, trailing her eyes on his face this way and that. Her eyes are the same shade as her auburn hair, and she looks like a delicate thing, someone painters would love as their model. “No,” she says, at long last. “I didn’t know. Can you drive me home?”
How imposing, this girl is. Her voice has an odd melody to it, something he, maybe, used to dance along with.
He opens the car without saying a word, and she climbs in, like a step they’ve memorized countless times. He gets a sniff of her scent, and is caught off guard by the sudden nostalgia.
When he starts driving again, the city glowing like it’s basked with magic, the car close to dim from the inside, she asks this, “How are you doing?”
Takemitchy tells himself this: remembering and knowing, there’s a stark difference between them. Remembering is more of an obligation, because humans have brains and they are meant to store things— good or bad, anything that makes up who you are. But knowledge, it’s something stored in the deepest part of your soul, where no one else would take it and you can’t force it out either.
It’s what he thinks when he looks at her, he knows her name but doesn’t remember it.
“We’re all doing okay,” she continues, even when she doesn’t get a response out of him. “Hakkai is returning from overseas tomorrow, and…”
He allows her to tell him names he knows but doesn’t remember. She tells about Mitsuya, Draken, Kazutora, bunch more others, and he smiles because he’s glad, but doesn’t understand why.
Once she finishes, he says, “I’m doing fine too.” This body feels like a counterfeit sometimes, left behind by someone who used to be loved by the world.
A moon can’t shine on its own. Someone from somewhere at somewhen, Takemitchy was told those exact words. He doesn’t remember the person, but there are days when he can feel his blood on his skin. The first person he ever killed.
She smiles back, and his phone rings.
Rindou’s name flashes in.
He picks up on the third ring. “What is it?”
“I’m stuck. Come pick me up. ”
“Are you serious? I’m not your driver.”
“Come on, you’re the nearest one .”
“Where’s Ran?”
“God knows where. ”
Huh. A wonder. They rarely get separated. But then again, he sounds breathless, and the line sounds like the wind is slicing through. He really— doesn’t want to take a detour, but Ran is actually one of the few people he tolerates in Bonten. If he lets his younger brother die, well…
“Fine.” He ends the call, and turns upward to meet her eyes at the rearview mirror. “I think I’m dropping you at the nearest bus stop. Is that fine with you?”
She nods, ponytailed hair nearly bouncing. “Sure. You’ve already taken me so far.”
He checks the car GPS for direction, and takes some turns here and there, the car quiet for the rest of their time together.
He stops the car at the terminal, and when she drags the door open, November air sweeps in. She bids him goodbye and offers a wisp of a smile, and he thinks she stops herself before she can touch him.
He’s never had someone look at him that way for so long.
Then she goes and fades into the night like an autumn ghost.
.
.
.
He catches purple locks and indigo streaks flit into the car. “Damn, what took you so long?”
From the looks of it, Rindou is stabbed, and it will take a lot of washing to clean the bloodstains out of Mikey’s car tomorrow. “I took a smoke break.”
He puffs in the air. “You don’t smoke.”
“I just started smoking a while ago. I guess Akashi-san is rubbing off on me.”
“Don’t call Akashi with -san, it’s weird.”
Takemitchy shrugs with no heart. Rindou keeps wincing in his seat, clutching his wounded leg. Takemitchy grins, because it’s more acceptable than opening his mouth and saying you look pathetic . “Do you think I had a name before I was Takemitchy?”
Rindou’s eyes flash to him, curious. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I just feel like I was someone else before this. You know, like I need to build a grave for that someone sometimes.”
Rindou snickers like it’s a joke. “You think? Who cares about names, anyway?”
“Humans do.”
This isn’t the first time he wants to know, but Mikey, once he realized he was looking through his past, dragged him to his torture room for days, and maybe he even lasted a month there. Time is lost in that room, all white, no noise, until his mind restarted again.
Rindou leans his head to the car window, breathing steadily. “But you like it, don’t you, Takemitchy? We’ll keep calling you that and you’ll keep responding to it, and when it comes to it, you’ll kill for that name too, won’t you?”
He blinks, and it’s the first time he feels an emotion in his heart for weeks. “Yeah,” he answers. “I would.”
Rindou waves his hand smeared with blood. “There you have it.”
“You’re a good conversationalist, aren’t you?”
“Ha. Believe me, Koko is more philosophical when he’s drunk.”
Takemitchy laughs at that.
He doesn’t care about names, but he cares about Chifuyu’s, because he never had anything before it. And he knows Mikey is his only name because he has thrown away his other one. The other Bonten members too like, say, Sanzu, who wasn’t born as Sanzu but is Sanzu now anyway. And there’s Koko, who keeps that name but buries the other letters because it’s the only thing he ever had.
So he knows, at some point, they cared about names too.
He wonders if Bonten used to have some other name. The realization was almost at the tip of his tongue. Almost.
Sometimes, people can’t be saved, because the ending they want never includes a peaceful one, and perhaps it’s for the best that they live their own worlds now.
There’s no good or bad, or heroes or villains, just empty people trying to make the best out of their lives, finding a home where light does not touch, where flowers don’t grow.
He remembers the girl, and is thankful she left the car in one piece, because she still has somewhere to go back to. Like those friends she mentioned. Friends that used to belong with him and perhaps, with Mikey as well.
He’s thankful too, that he has a new name now, so the previous one will stay undefiled forever.