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When Morita rejected this life – rejected him – Ginji ran. Yasuda had been right, in some ways. ‘Aren’t you gonna talk some sense into him!?’ If Morita had been a normal business associate, he would have. If Ginji was good at anything, it was making people do as he wanted. He had plenty of people who would love to kill him or worse, he was sure, but they worked for him all the same. Like clockwork, things still ran smoothly in his silver empire. Now, the machinery was all still there, but the spark, the furnace that had fueled his dreams had been smothered.
He thought back to that time in the hospital almost constantly. What he should have said. What he wanted to say more than anything.
After the Kuramae match, Morita had spent increasing amounts of time at Ginji’s apartment. Moments of bliss that disappeared too quickly, like smoke, slipping through his fingers even as he tried to memorize every detail, preserve it in his head for all time.
Lazy mornings spent together, Ginji waking first, Morita blinking at him with sleepy eyes as Ginji tried – and failed – to get out of bed without waking him.
“Gin-san…” he’d say, smiling, and Ginji could never resist turning back, planting a kiss on Morita’s forehead, his cheeks, his lips, running fingers through wild bedhead. It gave him a jumble of feelings, like something squeezing his chest but at the same time bubbling and overflowing like a fountain. He stared at the early rays of sun filtering through the curtains and hitting Morita’s face. He wanted to tell him that he’d never looked more beautiful. He wanted to say that this, this single, ordinary moment, might be the happiest he’d felt in all his life.
He said, “Good morning.”
On the way to the hospital that day, he’d picked up some flowers. Deep, red roses. Things like that signified how he felt better than he could with words. He wasn’t sure if Morita understood all the time, but he persisted nonetheless. Today, he thought it was important to show Morita how he felt, to reassure him. Maybe he could set them at his bedside, and each time Morita saw them, he could remember the person out there who had brought them. He knew what had happened to Morita had been bad. But no worse than other accidents he’d been in, surely.
In the end, it turned out to be much worse.
Morita never talked about what happened, exactly. He never looked Ginji in the eye. But every word he said dripped with a sense of hurt and betrayal, directed straight at him. It felt like someone had knocked the air out of him, though he kept his expression deceptively neutral.
“Fine,” he’d said at the end, and left as quickly as possible, even though he already knew: this is the last time he’d see him.
“Why didn’t you say something, Ginji!?” Yasuda had yelled, confused, frantic. Why? Because everything he wanted to say would have been thrown back in his face. In some ways, Morita had been right to do it. In trying to mold Morita into what he wanted, Ginji had taken something that was already perfect and broken it. Any protest would have been pathetic in light of that.
“But Morita, I need you”
“But Morita, I can’t live without you”
“But Morita, I love you”
Things he should have said before, but on that day, it was far too late. So he said nothing. He ran. And now he was here.
Ginji downed another glass of whisky, quickly, the taste burning his throat a little as he stared out the wide, wide window. His team had celebrated another great victory, reveling in the piles of money they’d squeezed from another rich and arrogant idiot. Unlike the rest, Ginji felt little satisfaction. It was his first job without Morita. The new kid was nice enough, but there was no replacing his wings now that they’d been torn from his back. Anything else would ultimately be a poor and pathetic substitute.
As he stared at the moonlight, far above the streets of the city below, only Morita’s face came to mind. When he was with Morita, he could imagine them as an endless fire, burning grandly on and on, carrying his spirit in it even after his death. Now, there was nothing to do but wait until the flame within him burned out completely, out of kindling, out of all the things that kept it alive. But he would keep going, making money, pleasing those around him, shambling along. Dead, but alive. Burning on, until he turned to ashes.