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They’re at the end of their high school days when Tsurumaru is standing at the school gates, petals in his hair and on his uniform that he would never wear again with such a fallen expression on his face. His lips twitch and he blinks in the reality of the situation. Ichigo doesn’t feel that much better; he feels like he’s just ripped up his friend’s silly, fragile heart into flower petals and thrown it in the air, joining the storm of pink dancing in the cool air and disappearing into the night.
To be fair, the rejection was delivered as politely and gently as Ichigo could possibly have, the same way as snow would fall onto frozen grass.
When Tsurumaru smiled again, there was no hint of sadness in it. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. He returned to being the prankster folding paper cranes riding paper planes at the back of class, taping doorways down with cello tape and making scary masks to scare the juniors with. “Forget what I said, let’s go home yeah?”
Ichigo breathes in relief, because he was afraid of the long walk home together that might have followed a conversation as sensitive as this, but Tsurumaru has shoved the last three minutes long into the past. They talk about everything—Yamanbagiri being the first to burst into tears during the graduation ceremony, Kasen’s ridiculous speech, future life at university. Anything but their hurting hearts. In a way, Ichigo is glad that when they bade each other goodnight at the crossroads, the confession was the last thing on their minds.
“You’re a dumbass,” Namazuo said when he had finally wrung the truth out of Ichigo later that night. “The guy at school that everybody wants to screw asks you to date him and you turn him down without second thought? That’s a chance that comes only once in a lifetime!”
Ichigo scowled. “Language, Namazuo, and don’t make fun of my name—”
“Just leave him alone,” said Honebami who had been listening to their conversation from the doorway. “Ichinii doesn’t need some random person off the street, he deserves someone equally bright, talented, hardworking and high achieving as he is.”
“Tsurumaru isn’t just some ‘random person off the street!’ His grades are good, he’s good looking, he plays sports and he loves to play pranks on people with me—”
“I’ll take Namazuo to bed now, Ichinii. Goodnight.”
Ichigo laughs. “Thank you, Honebami.”
“Honebami let me go! Ok, you probably just rejected him because you were too nervous—hey Honebami that hurts!—but it’s alright, you’re flatting with him next year right? You have plenty of other opportunities when you two are alone and—” the door slammed shut and the voices of his brothers died away.
=0=
“‘Osteitis Deformans is a skeletal disease characterized by what?’”
Ichigo bit his lip. “Can I have a clue?”
“It’s also called Paget’s Disease.” Tsurumaru grins. “Got any ideas?” He ducks a cushion aimed for his head and looks back into the textbook. “Tell me something about bone structure.”
With an exam only an hour’s time away, it was ridiculous how he was forgetting so many basic diseases. Ichigo sighed and looked outside at the crisp blue sky. “Something about gaining bone mass that’s disordered and prone to fractures,” he said.
“Close enough. Do you want to start heading off to your exam?” Tsurumaru shuts the book and stretches. “Man, how do you even memorize all of this… it’s so terribly boring…”
“Yeah, I’d better.” Ichigo shoves the textbook into his bag and double checks his stationery is in it. “Thanks for quizzing me on bone pathology.” He gets an airy hand and a “good luck” before he stumbles out the door, tugging a jacket on in his haste to catch the earlier bus.
At first, Ichigo had been afraid that flatting would be awkward with what had happened after graduation. As it turned out, however, studying medicine meant that he hardly got to see his friend at all, having to leave before Tsurumaru and coming home barely in time for dinner. With so many hours spent in lectures and labs, he had seldom any time and thought for anything else. “I’d make a terrible boyfriend,” he mused out loud to himself.
“Eh? What’s that?” Uguisumaru slid into the seat beside him. “You’re looking for a boyfriend?”
Ichigo laughed. “Not until I graduate,” he said, shifting his bag to give Uguisumaru more room. “Are you ready for the exam? I didn’t know you caught this bus.”
“Well, you always stay in the library for much longer than I do, so I never see you catch this bus either,” Uguisumaru hummed, looking at the notes Ichigo had been reading. “Ah, I’m afraid I am not the best person to be studying medicine. I’m switching majors after this year.”
“Huh? But your grades aren’t that bad, right? Hey what happened to your hand—”
Uguisumaru snatched his hand out of Ichigo’s reach. “It’s nothing, cut myself the other night. Well I’m not failing, but on a day like this, I’d rather sit outside having tea instead of trying to cram an entire pathology textbook into my head,” he answered. Ichigo could see no trace of disappointment or regret in his eyes. “I just don’t like doing so much work, that’s all,” he said, smiling at Ichigo. “One day, when you’re a renowned physician, I’ll come to your clinic for seminoma, aye?”
“Don’t make crude jokes like that!” Ichigo laughed, slapping Uguisumaru’s arm with his notes. Then, as a second thought, “I’ll give you 60% off chemotherapy if you do.”
“I gotta write this down so you don’t forget 50 years from today.” He sighed and pulled out his textbook. “Though I doubt I’ll ever need it. I wonder what Ookanehira would say if he knew I was dropping out of med school.”
“That’s your older brother, right?”
“Yeah. Told me multiple times that I shouldn’t even attempt it, but what’s life if you don’t give yourself a challenge? It’s not like I’m incapable of continuing anyway.” Instead of reading the book, Uguisumaru began to doodle a bird on the contents page. “I’ll probably switch to cell biology or something chemistry related.”
“My flatmate is majoring in cell biology. I’m sure he’d be happy to give you some pointers if you like.”
Uguisumaru doesn’t seem to hear him. Instead he closes the book and sits back. “I’m envious of how motivated you are about your studies.”
This makes Ichigo look at him. “Where’s this coming from? Say, I’m jealous of how well you can do without pulling as many hours as the rest of us do.”
“I find life and its sciences quite mundane,” Uguisumaru admits vaguely, closing his eyes. A few seconds later, he had dozed off, and Ichigo did not get a chance to ask him what he meant.
The bus pulled up at the university stop and students jostled and shoved past each other to get off. Ichigo slipped Uguisumaru a page out of his notebook that said “60% off seminoma chemotherapy for Uguisumaru’s balls.” Uguisumaru smiled and tucked it away into his back pocket, and the both of them said nothing else to each other as they entered their exam room. As the exam papers were passed around, Uguisumaru turned in his seat and mouthed good luck.
That was the last time Ichigo ever saw Uguisumaru again. By the time Ichigo had finished writing and looked up to check the time, Uguisumaru had long left the exam. He stared at his seat for a few seconds before the examiner clicked his tongue impatiently and he lowered his gaze back to the exam paper. The piece of paper Ichigo had given him for seminoma chemotherapy discount lay abandoned on the ground under the desk.
=0=
The day that Tsurumaru left for university, Shokudaikiri traces his scars in light circles as he pulls on his boots in the doorway. “Rejection is part of life, isn’t it?” he tries to reason. “Once the words are out of your mouth, even the best horses cannot get them back for you.”
“You sound like Kasen, but I don’t think that line applies to this situation.”
“Hmm maybe I do. That guy likes to read poetry and old texts to anybody who will listen, but you’re right. Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now. You’re moving in together but if you feel that’s too much you’re welcome to come back here, even if it means an extra two hours’ travel every day.”
“I’ll be fine.” He flicks Shokudaikiri’s forehead playfully. “I—I mean, we—have had worse, and we’ve turned out pretty rad! I think I’ll live.”
Shokudaikiri pauses in half smile. “Promise me you won’t pull another one of those again.”
“Pull another what.”
“That thing.”
“Which thing?”
He sighs. “I don’t want Ichigo calling me at eleven in the evening in hysterics about coming home and finding a bloody bathtub and—”
“Oh that thing. Sorry, I just—”
“Couldn’t remember which one I’m talking about because there have been so many of them? I’m serious, Tsurumaru. It’s not funny.”
“I didn’t think it was at the time.” Tsurumaru looks down at where Shokudaikiri’s fingers had stopped moving on his wrist and pulls his sleeve over the thin scars. A short pause. “I’m sorry.”
His younger brother looks away. “You should go catch your train.”
“Whoa, is that the time already? Well, I’ll see you later then.” He opens the door and looks back at Shokudaikiri. “You sure Ookurikara doesn’t want to see me off? Hahaha, is he still mad at me about the pink bath bomb I made for him yesterday? Heh, so ungrateful.”
“I’m sure he found that more of a murder scene than a bath bomb, but,” Shokudaikiri leans in. “Maybe he’s just afraid he’ll cry if he’s here to say goodbye—”
A loud crash from somewhere in the house makes both of them jump. “Right, I’d better go,” Tsurumaru says, hastily stepping out of the house. “Good luck with your studies, bro. And don’t sleep with too many guys and gals out there.”
Shokudaikiri waves as he watches his brother shut the door. Tsurumaru had always liked to swath himself in layers of white. White shirt, white jersey, white jackets. Even his scarf was white. It always felt a bit ironic, those pure layers hiding those thin, delicately crafted bone that had snapped more times than they should have in any one lifetime.
=0=
Their flat was pitch black when Tsurumaru returned, not bothering to lock the door because he knew Ichigo would come back soon anyway. Flicking on all the lights in the kitchen and dining room, he dumped the groceries down and collapsed onto his back on the sofa.
“Life is mundane,” he whispered, staring up into the ceiling lights until they hurt his eyes too much. Not for the first time, he wondered if he had made the wrong choice, coming here instead of a more prestigious university that had offered him a place but unfortunately no scholarship. There was no competition in this place and he could feel boredom eating away at the stiches fabricating his sanity together. Almost like high school but worse because there are no juniors to scare.
He lay there for a while, listening to the sound of traffic and chattering city outside before his back began to ache from lying in such an ungraceful position. When he finally got up and started putting away the groceries, he found he had forgotten to buy toast for breakfast the next day.
“Hahaha are you kidding me? God.” His head throbbed against the cool steel of the refrigerator door. “Tsurumaru Kuninaga, who can recite up to 300 useless digits of pi, recalls the amino acid sequences for obscure proteins, can’t even remember to buy what he needs to eat tomorrow.” He gave his head a few more thumps for good measure and picked up his keys again. The supermarket was a good five miles away but God forbid him take the bus because he already used that money to pay for the bus ride home. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” he grumbled, as he left their flat again, remembering that he would have to run if he was to make it home in time for dinner duties.
“I’m home,” Ichigo called, shaking water out of his umbrella as he opened the door to the flat. Strangely enough, the lights were on, but there was no sign of his friend. “Tsurumaru, I swear if you’re hiding because you forgot to defrost meat for dinner or something—”
“I didn’t,” Tsurumaru appeared, panting at the doorway behind him, drenched from head to toe. “I just, forgot, I left my lab report at university so I ran back to get it.”
Ichigo frowned. “You could have asked me to get it for you.”
“Yeah but my phone is out of cred—” he sneezed into the dry towel Ichigo handed him. “Sorry, I haven’t started on dinner at all.”
“It’s fine, I can take over tonight. Just go and get cleaned up.”
When he’s finally warm and dry again, Ichigo has finished making dinner and already eating while reading his notes. Wow I’m such a nuisance, Tsurumaru thinks guiltily, having to get Ichigo to do his share of the chores on his busiest day of the week. Ichigo looks up when he enters the room.
“You forgot to get the toast didn’t you?”
Tsurumaru froze. Of course, the toast was still in his room in a sopping wet bag after he’d left it there the second time he came home. “No I didn’t.”
“I just checked and I couldn’t find it anywhere?”
“It’s in my room. I got hungry when I was studying earlier.”
Ichigo’s attention goes right back to his papers. “Just remember to put it back in the cupboard.”
The bag of toast is in relatively good condition when he slips it into the cupboard later, despite it being shaken around violently in April rain. Thank God for plastic.
=0=
The first time he gets a bad grade, it’s neither exciting nor surprising, but disappointing. Not surprising because he didn’t study for it—no, not at all, histology was a bull subject in itself—but still disappointing because he was set extra homework for it.
“This stuff just looks like modern art to me,” he said, scowling at the blobs of pink and purple on the page. “How was I supposed to get this right?”
“Because this has been covered at least ten times in class,” the guy beside him mutters under his breath. Tsurumaru bites back the vile comment rising at the back of this throat and decides to stay silent. People who almost failed a test should do that much at least.
He draws faces of Japanese emperors into the blobs of cells he has to annotate for extra practice. “Who cares if this is the pancreas or the spleen?” he reasons to his professor the next time they meet. “When organisms die, everything just becomes one gunky mess of dead cells.”
Tsurumaru barely manages to pass the subject, and he learns that just one bad grade is enough to bring his otherwise brilliant GPA down to an unimpressive figure. Sometimes, in life, maybe there was just no point in trying to bite back at your superiors. Or at anybody at all.
Sometimes it was better to just shut up and listen.
(But like the hell he was going to do that. Later, he was scolded by the same professor when she caught him trying to convince one of her younger students that recent research demonstrated sperm could be found in the oesophagus as in the testes. He made sure to never be present in one of her classes again.)
=0=
Mikazuki Munechika was attractive. Terribly so. It wasn’t just those pale blue eyes with an odd streak of yellow; he carried the air of someone who knew more than he let on, and the thought was both comforting and intimidating at the same time.
“People run away when they are afraid,” he had said on morning, holding both of Tsurumaru’s hands in his own, much larger ones. “But staying doesn’t guarantee courage. In fact, they’re probably more afraid of something else than what they think they are afraid of.” His hands linger a bit too long.
Tsurumaru sighs. “Do you always say vague things like this? Because that doesn’t say anything about my future.”
Mikazuki’s eyes close briefly. “You stopped living long ago,” he says, finally retreating his hands to brush away a leaf that had fallen into his hair. Tsurumaru stared at him for a few seconds before getting up from his seat.
“Okay, I guess my future’s a bit too dark to peer into and make any sense of then? Can’t you at least tell me if I’m going to graduate or not?”
“I can tell you that much. Keep working hard and you will.”
“Thanks, that’s all I wanted to know.” Tsurumaru hoisted his bag over his shoulder. “How much is that? Ten bucks?
He received a wave in reply. “It’s fine. I told you, only living people have a future for me to look into.”
Tsurumaru didn’t know whether to laugh or punch the guy, but decided to shrug it off. “Well more dinner for me tonight, I guess. Thanks for your time.”
He doesn’t remember a word of what Mikazuki said to him about his future, not until a few days later when Mikazuki’s got him pinned against the vine-covered brick wall at the back of the campus gardens, lips pressed onto his cheeks, his hands, his hair, his ears. He gasps into the heavy grip Mikazuki has around his wrists. “Strangle me,” he manages to breathe out when he pulls away for air.
“Come again?”
“You heard me. Here.” He guides Mikazuki’s burning hands to the base of his neck, pulling down his collar and letting his fingers rest against an ugly brown scar. “Choke me here.”
He waits for those large thumbs to press down on his windpipe, but nothing happens. Instead, Mikazuki holds his face in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
Mikazuki presses his open mouth to his and Tsurumaru can feel something wet burning into the back of his eyes. When the taller male finally pulls away, Tsurumaru doesn’t think he has ever seen somebody look as sad as he felt.
“I’m so sorry, Tsurumaru,” Mikazuki says gently. “But I think you deserve to live.”
=0=
“Hey, did you forget to add the medium into the first four wells?”
Kousetsu Samonji’s voice snapped Tsurumaru out of his thoughts. “Sorry?”
“The first four wells of the plate. It doesn’t look like there’s enough liquid in them.”
“That’s because we haven’t added the cell culture to them yet.” Tsurumaru puts his head back into his arms. His lab partner looks at him exasperatedly.
“Have you been sleeping alright? You can’t just doze off in the middle of a lab.”
“But it’s boring, waiting for the incubation. Unless you’d like to play hangman?” Tsurumaru lifts his head to see Kousetsu shake his head. “See, there’s nothing to do right now. Or,” he added as a side thought, “you could tell me about yourself. We hardly know each other, even though we’ve been in classes together for three years already.”
He thinks that Kousetsu is going to reject the suggestion, but he doesn’t. “I have 2 brothers.”
“Both younger than you?”
“Yeah. One of them is still in high school, the other’s graduating from primary this year.”
“It must be tough being the oldest, isn’t it?”
Kousetsu gives him a rare smile. “I love my brothers very much.”
Tsurumaru’s thoughts turn to Shokudaikiri and his ruined eye, Ookurikara always bottling himself up with his own emotions and the awful flat they had to live together in because Ookurikara wasn’t old enough to work yet. He thinks about red pigment on the floor and on the walls. Something hurts inside him, not unlike the time Shokudaikiri had first tried to use a kitchen knife and almost hacked his entire finger off, or when Ookurikara climbed onto the balcony on a rainy day to save a wet cat, slipped and fell—
“What’s up? It’s not like you to call me in the middle of the day,” Shokudaikiri asks. Tsurumaru can hear the school bell chiming from the other end and students rushing out to get their lunch. “Is everything ok?
“Yeah, just wanted to see how you are. Oh yeah, I’ll come home at the end of this month after my exams end.”
“Well duh, we know that. I’m doing fine, Ookurikara’s good too although he needs to put more time into doing his math homework if he wants to pass this year hahaha. Aren’t you going to apply for any summer scholarships this year?”
“Nah, I just want to have some time at home this year. The scholarships here are rubbish anyway, it can hardly pay for our rent on time.”
“Well I’ll tell Ookurikara to get your room cleaned up, he’s doing some sort of experiment in it. I think it involves feeding the house rats some steroids he got off some shady dealer—oops I need to go to class, talk to you later!”
Tsurumaru doesn’t hang up immediately, listening to the dull beeping until Kousetsu pokes his head out of the lab. “Hey, the incubation period is up. We need to do the next experiment now.”
“Sorry, my bad.” He stands up and follows Kousetsu back into the lab, but his mind is left thinking about what kind of gigantic rat he would be sharing a room with this summer.
=0=
“I’m graduating this month.”
Ichigo looks up from the pile of heavy books he’s pouring over and a small smile surfaces from his tired face. “Congratulations,” he says, taking off his glasses and leaning back in his chair to look up at Tsurumaru properly. “Any plans after that?”
“I got a scholarship to do a PhD overseas,” Tsurumaru says, feeling the outline of the fresh Band-Aids on the back of his hand, well concealed behind his back. “It’s a lab that’s developing drugs for treating multiple sclerosis.” He accidentally touches a sensitive spot and winces, but Ichigo doesn’t notice.
“As expected from a high achieving honours student. But that still comes as a surprise, I thought you were interested in genetics and cloning.”
“Maybe in my next life,” Tsurumaru said, his heart sinking when he realized Ichigo had remembered that minute detail about his loudmouthed bragging during high school to clone himself. “So… I’ll be moving out soon I guess. You’ll have to find a new flatmate to help pay the bills.”
“Ah yeah that’s true.” Ichigo rubs his eyes, brows furrowing slightly. “I’ll put up some notices if Namazuo and Honebami decide not to come here next year.”
“They’re starting university already? How surprising. What about you though, are your studies going ok? You’ve still got another three years, haven’t you?”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” he groans. “It’ll be a lot of practical work from now on though, and I hear it doesn’t get that much better, if at all? I’ll survive though, it’s too late for me to drop out for this point and not let everything go to waste.”
“Well, good luck for the next three years,” Tsurumaru says, turning to leave the room. “It makes me kind of jealous, actually.”
Ichigo stops mid-yawn. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Tsurumaru sticks out his tongue and skips out of the room. “I’m going to go start making packing arrangements,” he called out as he goes, leaving Ichigo trying to remember when he had heard that same line before.
=0=
Art had never been his forte, but at least he knew the basics. That red and blue made purple, red and yellow made orange, but orange and purple did not make red or blue or yellow. Some things could not be purified once they were mixed into the crowd.
Fortunately for him, snow was neither blue nor purple but white. It was a bright, fresh canvas, and in the early hours of the morning, there were no footprints on it at all. He checked his appearance one last time in the mirror, brushing out stray hair and straightened his tie before leaving the house and locking the door securely behind him.
Despite his daily complaints about how he needed some surprises for stimulation, there was also something enchantingly intriguing about whiteness. Whiteness, nothingness, emptiness. Not a single drop of blood or soot; it was almost unreal. Could such a thing actually exist in this world? Tsurumaru finally leaned his head back and felt years of weight lifted from his body.
For the first time for as long as he could remember, he wasn’t wearing white. After all, regardless of whose funeral it was, people usually went to them garbed in black.
=0=
“You’re such a dumbass.”
Ichigo didn’t even have the energy to rebut the insult. In fact, he wholeheartedly agreed with Namazuo’s blunt words, on multiple levels. “I know.”
“Namazuo, don’t you think—”
“Why do I feel like we’ve had the same conversation four years ago? Come on, Ichinii, don’t you think it’s time we sat down and talked about things?”
Honebami bites his lip. “Ichinii is very busy.”
“I wouldn’t have given him the attention he deserves,” Ichigo admitted. “It would have been cruel to accept his feelings.”
“We’re not even on the same page anymore. Tsurumaru moved on from that ages ago,” Namazuo said crossly. “We’re talking about how you had a flatmate—no, a friend slitting his wrists open every other Sunday for four years without your notice? That’s a bit farfetched.”
Ichigo blanched at Namazuo’s words, but Yagen cut in.
“I don’t think you’re at fault. If he needed help, he should have gone to talk to someone. There’s no need for you to feel guilty for his ill-being. You’re way too busy to be burdened by someone else’s problems.”
“But I—”
Yagen shuts his book with a snap. “I’m pretty sure Tsurumaru thought the same, which is why you were able to come this far without detecting anything wrong. He wouldn’t have wanted you to worry about him when your schedule is packed overflowing with work. Cut yourself some slack.” He settled back into his book with a last glance at his older siblings.
“I heard he was already having problems before university anyway. There wasn’t much you could have done for him at this point.”
“Yagen’s right, Ichinii. It’s unfair for you to have to blame yourself for something as big as this. Stop bugging him about it, Namazuo.”
Namazuo looked like he had ten thousand other things on his mind that needed to be said, but he sat back. “I guess you’re right. When are you going to see him?”
“I was thinking about this afternoon, actually.” Ichigo stood up and stretched his legs. “I’m going to get ready to go.”
“Don’t take too long,” Honebami called after him as he left the room. “You have to go back to university later this evening.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I have many bones to pick with you, Tsurumaru.”
The brown leaves crackled in the bitter winter wind that bit at his cheeks as he stared down at the clean slab of stone. He sighed at the silence.
“My brothers scolded me because of you.”
The snow on the stone was white, without a trace of dirt or anything else on it except for the remains of a few pink petals left behind by his brothers. Ichigo reached into his bag and pulled out a small bouquet of red flowers. Against the snow, they looked like blood—bold, heavy and dead. He cocked his head to the side, staring at the crimson contrasted against white. It didn’t remind him of Tsurumaru at all.
“Well, I suppose you aren’t listening to me anyway, so I’ll save it for next time.”
He turned his back and started walking away. Perhaps next winter, or the one after that, or even ten winters after that, he would understand how a boy could lie in the snow and drift to sleep thinking of a world of purity and gratification and his hands at his own heart, not giving a thought to the proceeding spring or summer—for there was nothing else that this world could have offered him to see him smile again.