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Kazutora had always loved high places. There was just something so thrilling, so dangerous about standing on the edge, hovering before death. It made him feel dizzy with excitement and a pit of anxiety drop in his stomach. He boosted himself up onto the chest high ledge, the concrete biting slightly into his torso. The wind howled and a faint siren wailed somewhere off in the depths of the city down below, and Kazutora? Kazutora listened to it like a symphony.
He could finally be free.
It was his birthday after all.
He closed his eyes, about to tip over when a serious voice cut out to him through the night.
“What are you doing.” It interrupted, and Kazutora froze like a deer caught in headlights, only centimeters away from death.
He turned his head ever so slowly as the newcomer emerged from the darkness. He couldn’t have been any older than Kazutora, with long, dark hair bleeding into deep fried highlights. Kazutora didn’t recognize him, yet something about him just seemed so, so familiar for a reason he could just not put a finger on.
He was at a loss for words. So instead Kazutora watched, speechless, as the stranger — not stranger? — strode up next to him. His arms were beginning to shake from the strain of supporting his own weight.
“You planning on jumping off?” The newcomer rested his elbows on the cold concrete of the ledge as he looked over the lip of the building.
They soared over the little lights of the streets and cars and people down below.
“Pretty high up, huh.” He mused casually.
Kazutora’s lips settled into a thin, determined line. “You can’t stop me.” He said, his feet still hovering in the air, and the stranger looked to him with too-familiar whiskey eyes.
Kazutora almost expected for the stranger to try and stop him, open his mouth and tell him all the reasons why he shouldn’t take the leap.
This guy didn’t do any of that.
“Then jump.” He instead motioned carelessly to the drop before them. “Or don’t. I don’t care.”
Kazutora’s mouth then opened and closed like a fish. A couple seconds passed before he lowered himself back down, because honestly he didn’t know what the fuck else he was supposed to do. His feet made a dull thumping sound against the concrete as Kazutora finally settled back down to earth.
“I came up here for a smoke.” The stranger commented, before pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
It was the Marlboro kind, with the scarlet tab near the top. He popped open the box.
Then, he selected one, twirling it in the V of his fingers. Kazutora’s eyes were stuck on his knuckles; they were all busted up, the mark of a fighter.
The stranger glanced sharply at him, pinning Kazutora in place with his uncannily familiar gaze.
“You want one?” He grunted, extending it towards him like an invitation.
Kazutora stared at the cigarette in his hand for a moment before shaking his head. “No. I’m good. Thank you.”
“Okay.” The stranger shrugged, retracting his hand and slipping the box back into his pocket. “Your loss.”
He fished around his pocket some more, and finally, he pulled out a lighter. He brought it to his mouth, his hair whipping in the breeze; it sparked once, twice, before a little flame came to life with a small fwoosh. Kazutora watched, mesmerized, as the little flame danced in the darkness of the wind, casting a glint off the metal chain around the stranger’s neck. He waited until smoke curled from the butt of the cigarette before shaking it out, extinguishing the flame and tucking it back into his pocket.
Then, they stayed there for a while, not speaking. The whistle of the wind roared in their ears and wild honking blared faintly in the streets. It sounded like a traffic jam. Kazutora looked over the lip, watching as it all whizzed together in a mess of brilliant multicolored light.
“So.” The guy exhaled and a long spew of smoke billowed from his mouth, before fanning out into the air of night. “Why’d you decide to come up here.”
It was more-so of a statement than a question. Kazutora resisted the urge to scoff.
“Why should I tell you? You don’t even know who I am.” He pointed out, a bit of a spiteful edge to his voice.
The stranger then lifted a skeptical eyebrow in reply.
“So?” He deadpanned, challenging. “Try me.”
They sat in sobering silence, barely tipping over the edge. By all means, he should not be opening up to this stranger, especially if he just told Kazutora he didn’t care if he died… and yet—
“…It’s my birthday today, my seventeenth.” Kazutora admitted after a while, much to his own surprise.
The guy hummed into his cigarette, prompting him to continue. So he did.
Kazutora didn’t really know what made him spill his guts to this… this stranger. Nothing really, he guessed, but there was something about him that was so achingly familiar.
He talked about the coldness of his mother, and how his father didn’t even show up. He talked about how his mom was apparently called into work before he even came home from school, and how she left nothing but a note apologizing and a bento on the table in her place.
“I fed it to the ants.” He told him.
He talked and talked, and for some god-awful reason, it all came spilling out like a flood from an uncorked dam. He spoke about the loneliness, the isolation… the abuse. Though, he kept those particular details relatively vague and hoped that imagination was enough to fill the gaps.
And the whole time the guy listened to him quietly, filling his lungs with lead-filled poison.
“Really, the only people I could count on were my friends.” He stated.
“Right.” The stranger blew out a haze of smoke and the acrid smell of tobacco cottoned up in Kazutora’s sinuses.
“But in the end, they were just using me to get some fucking cash.” There was a bitter bite to his words. “And the funny thing about that was I didn’t actually have any. I hated the way they kept on begging for it though, so I stole it from my mom, in hopes that they would stay.”
Kazutora’s hands opened, and then closed.
“They didn’t.” He finished.
That particular statement seemed to pique the stranger’s attention, as he shifted ever so slightly, but still, he gave an almost noncommittal hum into his cigarette.
“Can you believe it?” Kazutora scoffed into the wind, resting his elbows on the concrete. “I was with them for years and years and yet I’m only realizing now how they were just… using me.”
“Hm.”
“Actually. I think I did know, deep down, but I just didn’t want to admit it.” Kazutora’s hands clenched into fists. “Because if I did, then it meant that the people that I chose, the people that I trusted, didn’t actually… want me.”
“Huh.”
“And, I lived in denial for the longest time, because I was scared that they would ditch me.” His mouth once again settled into a thin line. “And they did. It was only now, only today when I was suddenly forced to come to grips with how little they actually cared.”
It was a long time before the stranger gave an indecipherable “…hm.”
“Then I thought, what if I was gone, huh?” Kazutora stared down into the lines of his palms. “And I realized that nobody would really give a damn. Not my mom, not my dad, not my friends.” He trailed off, grimly looking over the ledge. “Everybody in my life just has something to exploit from me and, I don’t know, but. I’m just getting…”
He stopped, and the stranger waited for him to continue.
“I’m getting kinda sick of it.” He finished.
The breeze bit viciously at their cheeks.
It was a while before the stranger opened his mouth.
“And you’re just going to let them push you around like that?” He asked solemnly.
Kazutora didn’t answer. Honestly he had no idea what to say.
They then stood there in silence, as if absorbing each other’s words. There were no crickets up here to fill it, leaving only the harsh whistle of the wind and the faint traffic jam down below to enter their ears.
“To be honest,” The stranger tapped the end of his cigarette on the ledge. Cherry-red flecks fizzled out to dull specks of gray on the concrete. “You’re pretty pathetic.”
Kazutora snorted humorlessly in response. “Tell me about it.”
“Not only that, but you’re an idiot.” The stranger paused. Then he added, “And a waste of space. Even on top of that, I don’t even know you.”
And Kazutora took an eye-roll to that, because oh. Throw more fuel onto the fire why don't you.
“But,” He put the cigarette back up to his lips. “I like you.”
Kazutora’s eyes widened in sudden surprise as the stranger blew out a steady stream of smoke, but, it was quickly erased by the wind.
“You’re bold. Especially for coming up here. My kinda guy.” He took a final drag before flicking the cigarette over the ledge. It fell down somewhere into the oblivion of the streets, never to be seen again. “Let’s be friends.”
Kazutora had to take a couple seconds to absorb what he just said. “…what?”
“You heard me.” The stranger pushed off the wall, the soles of his shoes scuffing against the concrete as he turned to face him.
The cold wind stung at their faces as it violently ripped their hair back and forth.
The stranger held his hand out, a serious expression on his face. “Without ulterior motives, or drawbacks, let’s be friends.”
And, as Kazutora just stared at him for a while, stunned, he couldn’t help but get the feeling that somewhere, some place, this has all happened before.
And then, he laughed. “Imagine that. Preventing someone you don’t even know from taking their own life, listening to their problems, proceeding to call them pathetic, and then asking them to be friends with you. You’re pretty crazy, you know that?”
The stranger barked a sudden laugh at that, before saying “Yup. So I’ve been told.”
Kazutora nodded noncommittally. “Right.”
They listened a while more to the symphony of traffic down below.
The stranger cocked an eyebrow, stretching his hand out further. “So? We got a deal or not.”
Kazutora’s eyes flickered down to his still-extended hand. Something told him that the stranger was telling him the truth. That he can trust him.
“Yeah…” Kazutora clasped it firmly, before repeating, “A friendship without ulterior motives or drawbacks… huh?”
The stranger gave a chuckle. “You sound almost foreign to the concept.”
“Mind telling me your name?”
“Baji.” The stranger answered shortly, and for some reason that itch of recognition was resurfacing in the back of Kazutora’s subconscious. It just fit him so goddamn perfectly. “Baji Keisuke. And yours?”
Baji’s palm was rough and callused in his.
“Kazutora.” Kazutora replied. Then, he inhaled, and exhaled in tandem with the wind, before continuing with “Just Kazutora is fine.”
“Just Kazutora…” Baji repeated the syllables slowly, like he was committing them to memory. “Interesting name.”
A sudden gust of wind caused shivers to crawl down his arms, and up his spine.
“You said it was your birthday today, right?”
Kazutora nodded in response. “Right.”
“Well then,” Baji brusquely turned on his heel before tucking his hands back into his pockets. “Let’s get down from here. If your birthday’s been shit, that only gives you the right to run wild, yeah?”
He walked a little aways, the soles of his shoes tapping against the concrete. He didn’t turn back, not even once, like he instinctively trusted that Kazutora would follow.
But, Kazutora’s feet were stuck in place. The stranger’s — no — Baji’s half-deep fried hair whipped this way and that in the wind as he watched him from behind, getting smaller and smaller.
Was it really alright?
To have someone who wanted him?
Something indecipherable curled up in the pit of Kazutora’s chest cavity. It was something like anxiety, but also something like hope. Excitement.
As if sensing his hesitation, Baji stopped, before kicking the door open.
“So?” He rested his sharp whiskey eyes on him again, as if analyzing him. “You coming or what.”
He was about to open his mouth, to refuse, but again, that too-familiar sensation was back. Something that tugged Kazutora toward him. Something that just felt… right.
The leap of faith was directly in front of him. The only thing left for Kazutora to do was jump.
“…yeah.” He finally decided, “I’m coming.”
Kazutora trotted after him, leaving the ledge between life and death behind.
After all, he could only follow where that something would lead, right?
“Well then, ‘Just Kazutora.’” Baji said as they started their descent down the stairwell, their footsteps echoing against the walls.
He threw a sharp grin over his shoulder at his newfound friend.
“You like peyoung yakisoba?”