Work Text:
Yuki was too busy to visit again today, that was what Tenn said. Or so Banri thought—he had made a note of it, on his laptop, in his special secret hidden program, Microsoft Excel, and he knew he had checked it a lot in the—he looked at the file information—four hours, twenty three minutes, and fifty seven seconds since he wrote it down. He knew this because his laptop was warm, but it had only been running Excel—the internet browser was not open, had not been open. He knew this, because he knew the laptop well. Its screen was bright and made his head hurt, and he had been slow and terrible at deciphering the kanji and katakana it contained, but it had been his most constant companion since arriving at Kujo’s other house. Yuki had brought it to him, a gift, a double stroke of luck; he had walked him through setting it up, and using some of the programs on it. He hadn’t mentioned Excel—when Banri had found it, and the files it still contained, he realized why: It was a secret. Yuki simply had not known it was there.
The other Excel files were far more complicated, and Banri had given up trying to read them when he realized that they were his, from before. He didn’t want to know about the other him, who had made them. He didn’t want to know about the other him, who had been good for Yuki, right up until he did something stupid and wrong and got his head bashed in. He hadn’t wanted to know about the grocery budget, show budget, recording budget, schedule date schedule date schedule date. He didn’t want to know how good he had been, before. The person Yuki loved. The person Yuki missed. The person Banri hated more than anything else in the world.
This time, when he opened the warm laptop, Excel was still open. That wasn’t good. Proof that Banri had just been looking at it, yes, but—but easier for anyone else to find. Kujo. Tenn. Yuki. Yuki couldn’t know about this. It had too much of the other Banri hidden in it. It would only make him sad.
Banri looked at the open tab of the spreadsheet. Four hours, thirty six minutes ago. Yuki too busy to come today. Make you food. Eat it.
There was no indication of whether it was good food. It was of course, because Yuki had made it. But no indication meant that Banri hadn’t done what he was supposed to yet, hadn’t eaten it, Yuki would be sad. Four hours meant it might have become less good. Cold, or maybe bad—once Banri had left food out for two days, and then ate it, and then he was horribly sick for a week. Tenn had made him make a new spreadsheet for that one, recording things he definitely shouldn’t do under any circumstances. Eat food a day old. Eat food six or eight hours old, depending on the food. Tenn had had a whole list. He had been very scared.
Banri, for his part, found a better system: he made sure his Yuki spreadsheet knew when the food was come, and added a note to eat it. Then if the numbers since the last edit were right, and the food was still there, he would eat it. Once he did he would write down that the food was good. Then he wouldn’t get sick.
Banri closed Excel properly, this time, opened the computer again to check and make sure that he had. Then he closed it once he was sure, and then checked again, and then took off a scab on his hand with a fingernail to prove that it was done right. Then he went to do as he was supposed to, and eat the food Yuki had sent.
It seemed that he knew that Banri would take a while to get to it: the banana was still in its peel, so it wouldn’t go soft and brown and bad, and the main dish was salted rice in chicken broth, now cold. This was the only kind of food Banri had been getting since he had been sick. He thought he was probably in trouble for being sick, but hopefully it wouldn’t last. He hadn’t been sick again since getting it.
First he ate the rice, with a spoon. Then he drank the broth. Then he examined the banana. It would keep, for a few days, if he got so unlucky Yuki didn’t make food for him again. It was good and easy to save. It was good to save the food that could be saved, because if he had something to eat on the unlucky days he hurt less on the lucky days. This, too, was properly logged in Excel, though nobody knew about this spreadsheet. It was the sort of thing that you were supposed to give to a doctor. Except Banri hadn’t been allowed to see a doctor for a long time now, because it was too much trouble for anyone else. So he didn’t trouble them with his other log either.
Banri waited, for a little while, long enough that the red blood on his hand darkened to a raised bump, almost black. It was still wet to the touch; when he raised his other finger away, something yellowish-clear glistened on it, and he wiped that off onto a napkin. He still didn’t feel sick. This was good, because he didn’t feel sick. This was bad, because it would have been a good time to be sick, when Yuki wasn’t here and wasn’t going to be here. He opened up his laptop and brought out Excel again, went to the right spreadsheet, noted the food as good, saved the spreadsheet, closed it. He opened another, the one Tenn had made, went over to the tab he preferred to use, marked the time, date, food, and that he wasn’t sick. Then he saved it, closed it, put the laptop away. Maybe it would be cool the next time he opened it. That would be nice; that would mean less worries, and less forgetting, too. It would be cool, and he would be opening it not for a spreadsheet but for a video, something fun, something nice. Music, or baby animals. Easy to follow, nice to think about.
But not now, not right now. Instead, Banri took his banana and went across his room, placing it nicely on his bedstand. There had been another banana there this morning, but he had already eaten it when it became clear that today was a no-breakfast day; he had regretted this in the late afternoon when Tenn dropped off his lunch and the news of Yuki, but at least he had replaced it already. That was good. Yuki and Tenn had been more and more busy lately, and Kujo had already been unhappy with them visiting Banri. That wasn’t good. Nobody liked it when Kujo was unhappy. So both Tenn and Yuki had to play off his mood for things like bringing Banri food—he wasn’t allowed to eat with the rest of them. He didn’t know if he ever had been.
But that didn’t matter. This was what Yuki wanted; this was all that Tenn had. The least Banri could do was try not to be a burden.
After putting the banana away, Banri put the bowl and spoon by the door, in his special place for used dishes. Then all that was left on the flimsy card table was a glass, full of water; before he could clear away everything, he had to drink the water in the glass. There was no time like the present; Banri picked up the glass and lifted it up towards his lips.
Four hours ago, the contents of the glass had been mostly ice, chilling the water inside and inviting condensation to bead on the outside of its surface. Now, the ice was all gone, but the condensation remained, cool and wet and slippery. The glass skidded against Banri’s fingers, dropped through his grip, hit the edge of the table, spilled water out onto him in an arc before hitting the ground and exploding into a thousand clear shards of crystal, among three or four larger pieces.
“Fuck!” Banri said, looking down at the broken glass and the splatter of water all over his clothes. “Fuck!” he said again, just because he could, and because it was situationally appropriate. He did not say it for a third time, though, because there was nobody there to hear it; there was no point in trying to say things when you couldn’t use the trying to communicate to somebody, Yuki or Tenn. Yuki mainly. Tenn didn’t listen like Yuki did, Tenn didn’t always care about what Banri was trying to say. This was okay. Tenn was little, and cute, and sweet, Banri’s little brother, good and warm and soft. A baby. Banri’s baby.
But it was Tenn who would be coming up next and seeing this, not Yuki, and Tenn was little, and soft, and sweet, and gentle, and Banri couldn’t let him get involved in this mess. It had been almost five hours; he might be coming back soon. Banri had to get rid of the broken glass, and quickly.
He knelt down on the hardwood floor, scooped the bigger pieces of glass into his hand, scooped the smaller ones, too. He couldn’t get all of them, but he clenched his fist around the pieces that he could—and then regretted that, because where glass touched flesh it itched something terrible. He stood and walked it over to the trash can, and when he let it fall inside it was wet with not only water but blood; for a moment, Banri wondered where on earth that blood could have come from before deciding that he was simply seeing things that weren’t there, again, and returning for another handful, again and again until there was nothing left but glittering dust and red streaks of liquid on the floor.
The red liquid was odd, almost like the blood Banri had been seeing really was real. But where had it come from? His head had mostly healed, and anyway he didn’t hurt anywhere. His hands just itched—badly—a sharp and clean and terrible itch, one that graduated into relieving pain when he scratched it—but that wasn’t the kind of pain that brought blood. So blood couldn’t be here. Maybe it had been something other than water in that cup, something red. Maybe he was just misremembering.
Banri didn’t like misremembering. It upset Yuki. It was frightening, too—but then again many things were. He needed to suck it up, get over it. He needed to mop up the red liquid on the ground, the liquid that wasn’t, couldn’t be blood, because it made no sense for blood to be here. He considered, then took the sheet from his bed, staining it damp and crimson. Then he thought: this was a bad idea. Now Tenn would come, and would have to sleep in a dirty bed. This was a really bad idea.
Banri tried to wipe it off with his hands, only to leave more and more streaks of distressing red. It wasn’t going away. It was just getting dirtier and dirtier… Well, maybe Tenn wouldn’t come back tonight. Maybe things would be okay in that way. Lonely, but not dirty.
Banri eyed the red streaks angrily. His fingers were getting gummed up now, stiff, stinging. He’d scratched the itches too much and now they hurt. He always forgot that things did that. It was annoying. He wished he could cut it out, or at least not realize when he was doing it, but now…
Banri put the sheet back on the bed, took out the laptop with gummed itching fingers. It was cool now; that was good. Time to update his spreadsheet; time to look at videos. Songs, he thought; he was in the mood for music. So, leaving behind red smears on his keys, he did; so the afternoon went.