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It’s pointless to feel sad, Yagami knows that. He could only accept his own powerlessness in the situation because he had resisted it so hard beforehand. He had come to Kuwana regardless, knowing that.
Being without him is agony. Being with him is agony too, knowing already how everything will end up.
Nobody wants to be sad. Yagami hopes he’s allowed to be. Kuwana won’t comfort him either.
It’d be nice if nothing else existed outside of this room. Yagami imagines that sometimes, taken as he is with Kuwana, of the temporary peace they have while hidden away together.
Perhaps the circumstances of their meeting were all imagined, a bad dream he merely had to awaken from. Perhaps it’s fine to live in a box. Perhaps the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening is nothing extraordinary. Perhaps rent will never be due, nobody will be hungry or lonely, and perhaps what they have is all there is, and all there ever will be.
Yagami imagines if he could be content living in such a small, inconsequential world.
He wishes he would be.
Yagami thinks he can feel Kuwana’s affection for him through his awkwardness. Stilted requests and suggestions; do you want to do this, do you want to do that – no matter the words he uses, it still sounds out of place.
For people like them, politely asking might as well be the same thing as saying: I care about you. I want the things that you want. How vulnerable. How sappy.
Answering is awkward and revealing too, because honesty is revealing.
The water is still cold when Yagami steps under the showerhead, and because Kuwana is here with him (he had asked), it’s too cramped to try and escape. Yagami curses aloud, and Kuwana reaches for the knob to adjust the temperature. Though, rather than needing to adjust the knob, they need to wait for the water to heat. Yagami has to put up with the cold water for a short while. Oh, well.
Kuwana’s face is too close, and touching by accident feels weird, with how damp their skin is. Yagami is trying to act procedurally, unsure what else to do. It’s a shower, so he’s treating this like a shower. He reaches for soap and lathers it over his body like he would if nobody else were here.
Kuwana puts hands on him and gets him to move however he likes. Water pitter-patters loudly on the tiles, filling the silence as Yagami says nothing and obeys. Kuwana holds onto him from behind, tucking his nose into the length of his neck, his arms around his torso. He swipes his hands across Yagami’s body in some facsimile of rinsing the soap off him, and Yagami’s lashes flutter as he lowers his eyes. Kuwana breathes against his wet skin. It’s not so much a shower as much as it is an excuse to touch each other.
Kuwana steps backwards so he can thread his fingers into Yagami’s hair, massaging his scalp. It’s shampoo. Kuwana takes his time, even as the hot water is slowly dwindling, and Yagami can raise no objection. He sighs, and just like that, as though a spell has been cast on him, Yagami forgets everything else. The world shrinks down into the size of a dingy bathroom with too-cold water pattering on the shower tiles, and Kuwana beside him. The emptiness is blissful.
But Yagami remembers himself again, and all of it returns – sadly, this moment will not last forever. Yagami turns and reaches for Kuwana’s chin so that he can pull him into a kiss.
Without a word, Kuwana must understand exactly how he feels.
Dinner is reheated takeaway. Yagami has no room to complain – this is as good as it can get, where they are (in hiding). Kuwana always takes the good stuff. He eats as though he’s picking a fight, like he never wanted to share. He’ll take the last bit of chicken without asking permission, he’ll eat big portions instead of trying to split it fairly, and anything on Yagami’s side of the takeaway container is apparently fair game.
Yagami is annoyed. But he prefers it to eating alone, frankly.
Kuwana will only notice hours later, when it’s too late to be rectified. “Why are you being so bitchy now?”
Yagami grumbles, makes a bitchy kind of face, and gives him a non-answer. “You should know.”
“Do you think I’m asking just for fun?”
Yagami staunchly refuses to answer, and makes a point of stealing Kuwana’s snacks later.
Kuwana gets annoyed at him in turn, and Yagami considers the debt repaid.
Nobody wants to leave first.
Yagami had already been mourning this, even before they outwardly acknowledged it. It’s time to part again.
Kuwana is ready to go, Yagami knows this. Kuwana is always ready to take off. And Yagami always has somewhere else he’s supposed to be. (The place he’s supposed to be is never with Kuwana, coincidentally.)
Yagami goes through the motions slowly. He makes sure he isn’t leaving any trace of himself with Kuwana, and no trace of Kuwana on him. There is no point being sad about it. This is how things are supposed to be. Yagami is sad regardless.
Kuwana is always putting on a brave face, as though he doesn’t care, as though it’s nothing to him. Of course he cares. Yagami knows this.
Yagami is ready to leave, but never approaches the door.
This is agony.
“You don’t need anything while I’m still here, do you?” Kuwana asks. He’s dressed to go out, probably to restock the supplies they’ve burnt through. Yagami knows it should be his cue to leave.
“No.” Yagami answers. He’s not as good at disguising his feelings. “I have everything.”
“Okay, well.” Kuwana turns to the door. “I won’t expect... when I come back, I won’t expect you.”
You’ll be gone by the time I return here, won’t you?
It’s some twisted form of kindness. It’ll be easier for Yagami to leave when Kuwana is out of here, busy doing other things. Kuwana isn’t here to make him sad, to hold him down.
It’s the opposite. Yagami will be sadder for the fact he wasn’t able to spend every last moment with him.
“Sure.” Yagami answers instead. There’s no point differentiating between which parting hurts more. They both hurt, don’t they?
“Mm.” Kuwana acknowledges him one last time, and fumbles with his front door key to leave. With how he staunchly refuses to look at him, Yagami knows that he’s having trouble hiding the feelings on his face.
Kuwana is always trying to be brave, and for his sake too. Yagami wishes he knew it was okay to be weak. But it’s Yagami’s fault for never telling him so. Even now, Yagami won’t tell him to turn around and look at him one last time, because he’s too afraid to see the pain he knows will be there.
The door opens with a loud creak, and Kuwana leaves as though it’s an ordinary day running chores, as though he isn’t leaving Yagami behind.
The door shuts.
Yagami sits within these four walls, alone. All at once, he realises he is terribly lonely, and the weight is unbearable.
Has he always been living like this?
Yagami grows stubborn, refusing to leave right away – it’s not as though Kuwana will know the difference, will he? And he busies himself by lying down restlessly, scrolling on his phone, doing nothing for nothing’s sake.
He wants to prove Kuwana wrong, so he’ll be here. Yagami still wants to be here. (He can’t find the strength to leave.)
Yagami listens to the radio, half-heartedly singing along. Absently, he notices the sun going down.
Still, he has no intention of leaving. At least not yet. (This is what he tells himself.)
He grows hungry, so he checks their supplies one more time, eating the tinned food he’d been avoiding. It’s not good, but it does the trick. Yagami checks the time. It’s weird for Kuwana to be out this long.
Yagami stays up late into the night, and by then he’s already realised what’s happened, but he doesn’t want to admit it.
The room is dark and empty, nobody else in it. Yagami stares into nothing, having nothing to do but to wait.
Yes, that’s right, he gets it now. He understands Kuwana’s trick. Yagami hadn’t realised it at first, but he’d already lost.
Expecting that Yagami will still hesitate to leave – even after going to the effort of leaving first – Kuwana had abandoned this temporary hideout, never intending to return for the night. He had already probably checked into some hotel room somewhere to stay for the next day or so, however long he expects Yagami’s willpower to last.
Yagami had no chance of winning right from the start. Kuwana had chosen the method that would guarantee that Yagami would leave. He had used Yagami’s stubbornness against him, waiting for his strength to collapse under the weight of it. The longer he tried to wait for Kuwana, the more hopeless he’d feel.
It was devastating.
Knowing there would be no witnesses, unable to hold it in any longer, Yagami cried. He cried and cried and cried; full of hate and anger and terrible, terrible pain. How could Kuwana do this? (The fact that Yagami was still here proved he was right to do so.) How could he? How dare he? (Yagami understood why so badly it hurt.)
The hours stretched on, and even then, Yagami sometimes imagined Kuwana stumbling in late, hands full of all the things he had bought: food and booze and everything anybody could possibly need, but it wasn’t going to happen. It was a foregone conclusion. No delusion would change that.
He slipped into sleep unknowingly, and had an empty dream.
Yagami had accepted everything by the time he woke up. He moved groggily, only doing enough so he could be ready to go. There was no room for him here, not anymore. Not without Kuwana.
Their small peace collapses of their own hand, and Yagami returns to the real world, where Kuwana would never be found. Nothing he had with Kuwana could ever be real, after all. Yagami started the long trip home and remembered that.
There was no point being sad. He knew that from the beginning.
It’s raining when he returns to Kamurocho, walking down its familiar streets. He keeps his head lowered, having nothing to shield him from the rain.
The water is cold, and his skin is damp. He remembers Kuwana’s touch, and it’s agony.