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it's a study in character, munakata convinces himself. nothing more, nothing less.
the echo of leaking water as it hits the bottom of the sink; the flutter of grayed wings beyond his windowpane; the red numerals encased in his alarm; the silence that shivers through impersonal floorboards and bare, naked walls.
these are the semantics of waiting, time slowly dragging past, and he feels like drowning.
there's no knock on his door but a new presence fills the empty air, the space around him suddenly vibrant with life and meaning and unfathomable sadness. synonyms, repetition, his literature teacher's scowl a reminder that he is a man of many words but little substance - achieving naught beyond white noise and quiet prayers. and he vaguely recalls curt conversations with a man whose words were so few and far between, each syllable that stumbled from his lips sounded like a miracle to munakata, a slice of light cast into the darkness of his crowded mind.
the ghost - he's pretty sure it isn't human - has way too many things to say, in contrast. although the sharp gold eyes and taut worry lines and the stench of ash whenever it breathes are starkly familiar; a name so desperately close he can taste it on his tongue, yet it feels like grasping at someone who's already plummeting from the cliff edge.
reishi, the ghost speaks, saccharine sewn into each clipped sound. missed me?
ah, right. that's the name he was searching for.
suoh mikoto is a shadow on the kitchen floor and an extra, untouched mug on the counter top; an intangible weight on the side of his bed and the smell of death in his sheets; the whisper-light fingertips against his wrist where his blood throbs against his will; the heart-stopping taste of dirt and cigarettes when munakata leans down to kiss him; the unquenchable vacuum in his chest, between his ribs, a hunger that dries his bones and digs crowfeet at the corner of his eyes, has him riveted on the clock every minute suoh isn't here.
the third time munakata buries his nose into a cold, pale neck and mouths at an imaginary pulse, suoh laughs, stills the movement with hands on his shoulders and says, why are you in such a hurry? it's not like i'm just going to disappear.
awashima visits once a month. she tried convincing management to let her come on a weekly basis but they staunchly refused her request, didn't even bother listening to her arguments. she brings him new jigsaw puzzles although the old ones are still wrapped in their plastic covers, a facsimile tower of pisa in cardboard and dust at the corner of his bedroom.
they spend the hour in a pregnant silence, his ex-vice captain stirring her murky coffee and munakata staring out the balcony door. he wonders what the fuck is the point of having a balcony if it's caged in on all sides and the view is obstructed by metal bars. they should really distribute their finances more efficiently - taxpayers' money, after all.
when she leaves, she hands him a brown envelope, which contains a report on recent happenstances and scepter4's operations, and he muses them over for fifteen minutes before it ends up in the recycling bin, alongside a dozen empty cigarette cartons.
fushimi doesn't visit.
to be honest, munakata doesn't care.
(who is fushimi, anyways? besides being awashima's successor as vice captain and a signature on the post-it notes he occasionally finds attached to the monthly file. he stopped reading those altogether upon discovering a confession he couldn't stomach - he burned the papers and the staff were horribly prissy afterwards and it was too much of an inconvenience to warrant a repeat error. munakata learns from his mistakes. not really.)
for the record, the note said:
sometimes i miss him too
he is most surprised on the morning he wakes up to the first day of winter and finds suoh sitting on his windowsill, the glow of morning sunlight a halo around his silhouette and the metal bars in the backdrop an illusion that munakata can't afford to entertain.
"why are you here?"
the smile is wry, teeth yellowed by a decade of careless smoking, and he hasn't seen suoh with his hair down since - since high school. since before.
and the answer, when it comes, is painfully simple, almost childish logic, and so incredibly naive munakata believes it.
because you wanted me to stay.
the last time awashima knocks on his door, toes off her shoes in the entrance way and excuses herself when she walks into his not-so-vacant, not-so-lonely space, now peppered with a few personal belongings and completed puzzles hung to the walls, she has dark bags under her eyes (which is nothing new) and wrinkles at the edges of her mouth when she smiles (which are).
"are you happy?" she asks, voice gravelly and choked in her throat, and he notices the ring on her left hand.
(he notices things because unlike his general sanity, his ocd hasn't changed a bit.)
"yes," he says, and he means it. she doesn't blink away any tears and she's aged well, he thinks. he knows she's become the perfect leader scepter4 needs and requires, and he doesn't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. "are you?"
she nods, short and quick and honest, and replies, "happiest as i can be."
fushimi keeps on sending him post-it notes even after the monthly reports stop coming. at one point, there was a wedding picture, too, and time flies so fast in the world outside his white walls and caged windows. the man holding fushimi's hand in the photograph looks eerily familiar, but it doesn't bug him the way it did with mikoto.
may you find happiness as well, the scribbled words on the backside read.
he huffs a soundless chuckle. why are people so worried about his happiness? he spent eight years in scepter4 denying himself each individualistic desire that flickered across his heart.
already have, he writes on a napkin and has a maid deliver it down to reception. she seems pleasantly surprised and compliments him on his handwriting.
"fushimi-san will be glad," she adds. "yata-san as well."
it's the last day of winter and the liquid sunlight that slides across the bed covers gives mikoto's face a spectral air. red hair falls into ageless eyes and the ghost buried in the crook of reishi's arm looks up at him, perplexed.
you look happy.
"that's not something to be concerned about."
why are you happy?
reishi looks over mikoto's shoulder, looks at the time displayed in red numerals on his nightstand, looks at the date marked on the calendar, the case circled in a red marker.
because he is alive, today.
because they aren't coming to take him away, not yet.
"because you stayed."
mikoto smiles.