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Yuuji stops sleeping in the bedroom somewhere in the first week.
It wasn't really a conscious decision, moving to the sofa. He meant to go to bed, like any other night, the same one he'd been sleeping in for over a decade, but his feet wouldn't listen. They stopped when he reached the sill, glued to the floor. They turned him around. Made him close the door, and refused to go back, to so much as let him pass in front of it.
It's not that he hasn't tried. Yuuji has. No matter how hard, the end result is always the same; there's an invisible barrier placed in the threshold, waiting for him, preventing him from crossing.
He's a little grateful for it.
The night of the memorial service, the one before his feet rebelled, he woke up to cold sweat and the duvet twisted around his waist. His own hand, open, reaching, futilely searching for him. It wasn't a bad dream that woke him up or a sound but that alarming sensation of not finding something you've never before had to seek out. That night, the only thing Yuuji found were the perfectly tucked in sheets, undisturbed.
As perfectly as Yuuji's ever managed to get them. So — not very.
Megumi's always been better at that part.
He lay there with his palms rubbing along the fabric and understood, for the first time, what his mornings were going to look like. That it was always going to be cold, that side. That there weren't side at all anymore. That, from then on, it was one bed, just a bed, his bed, and it was going to stretch out too wide and too long around him every single morning for the rest of his life.
Yuuji thought he might drown in it, that night.
What's one person ever meant to do with all that space?
The sofa, in comparison, is fine. It's a good sofa. They picked it out together, the first piece of furniture for their new apartment. They had to carry it up the stairs themselves too, navigating the narrow corners and sharp turns of the stairway. Twice, Yuuji dropped it on his foot. He spent the rest of the day breaking in their new purchase, with an elevated leg and an icepack over it, while Megumi shoved him down every time he so much as thought about getting up and helping with the rest of the boxes.
It took a while to fully break it in. The slightly scratchy oatmeal linen has been tamed inch by inch, steadily dented in three spots. When Yuuji rests there, he can only just fit lengthwise, and that's if he bends his knees a little. There's no excess space to worry over, no emptiness nipping at his sides, asking to be acknowledged.
It isn't nearly as comfortable as the bed and its memory foam, slowly losing its shape, but it's better for him. Here, he knows the truth from the moment he opens his eyes.
The living room faces east. The morning light comes in early, reaches him before his alarm goes off. Cold and flat, it lands directly on his face. Yuuji blinks at it. Watches the dust catch, motes turning in front of beige walls, listening to NHK News' Ohayo Nippon.
He knows where he is, which is the point. Yuuji lists all the differences in his head. The walls in their bedroom are dusty blue. Yuuji sees them behind his eyelids. He doesn't need to crack the door open to know the exact shade. It was Megumi's idea, the color. He read some study Yuuji never bothered looking up for himself. He had no reason not to take Megumi at his word when he explained how it was going to be good for them. The blue, the blackout curtains, the subdued lights. Every decision another intentional attempt at making the nightmares go away.
Yuuji would sleep better there. Megumi made sure of that.
The sleep he would get, however, pales in comparison to how the living room grounds him.
Here, Yuuji knows immediately. From the second he opens his eyes, he knows Megumi wouldn't let him sleep on the bumpy couch, wouldn't leave the TV on all night, or let him shiver under a blanket barely reaches his ankles. Sleeping out here has successfully eliminated those terrifying few early-morning seconds where he hadn't yet remembered. Those made him consider not sleeping at all. More than once, Yuuji thought about it. If he could find a way to stay awake indefinitely , he would take it without thinking twice. He's been through things that should make the word fear feel distant and quaint, yet none of them have prepared him for this. Constant reaching out of pure habit, certain — certain — that there's still someone to find.
Yuuji gets up. He turns up the volume. Same as every morning, he makes himself a coffee.
It's only as he tips the bottle of milk that he realizes he's doing it again, filling the second cup out of habit. He goes a little bit overboard, distracted, and some splashes over the rim. He's less upset about the spill he's already wiping away with his sleeve than about getting it wrong, about ruining Megumi's coffee
I'll get it right tomorrow, he thinks, then pours it down the drain.
He puts the cup aside instead of washing it. The grounds are good for the plant. Someone told him that, the last time they visited. He doesn't remember who, but he does know they were impressed by the plant. Impressed he managed to keep something in this apartment alive, more likely. The camellia is sitting on his windowsill even now, soaking up the sparse sunlight. It's starting to bloom. Yuuji hopes she'll be ready to plant outside by the time next winter comes.
He has a place in mind.
After the coffee comes his shower. Yuuji washes his hair, steals a dollop of Megumi's conditioner, then lets the water run over him until the pressure starts dropping. He dries off. Finds a clean shirt on the mounting pile of laundry he keeps on one of the kitchen chairs, now that their closet is impossible to reach. He isn't sure if it's his or if he's actually washed it, but he calls it good enough.
Everyday things take him longer than they used to.
They're not harder, necessarily, not even on the days he feels like his entire body is weighed down by lead, but there's no rush. There's nobody outside the bathroom door, tapping his foot, waiting to tell him he's used up all the hot water.
There's always work. They send requests through, though fewer and easier. Some of the missions he gets are so laughably simple that Yuuji suspects they were invented specifically for him, to give him something to do with himself. He doesn't mind. He minds less than he assumed he would, living this version of a quiet life. Megumi would've had something to say about it. He's had a lot to say about it privately.
Today, there isn't even that much available. Nothing. No work. Today is just a day.
He needs bread, Yuuji notices on his way back to the kitchen, toweling his hair dry. There. That's a reason to leave the apartment.
He's getting better at finding them.
Shortly after they moved in, he made it his life's mission to try and find the best bakery in the neighborhood. Megumi rolled his eyes and called the project unnecessary — Yuuji, half of them are commercial, they're chains, all of them have the same exact things — but came along anyway, because it's what they do. Did. They tried their way through at least a dozen anpan before Megumi was genuinely, reluctantly impressed. The place they settled on, their place ever since, is the only mom-and-pop shop around, about twenty minutes away on foot.
Yuuji's always liked the walk. Always, but especially now. There's fresh appreciation in him for being outside, moving through the world, surrounded by people who don't know him or of him. Who hardly look at him at all, much less stare at him with the expression his friends have started wearing on his behalf.
The bell above the door chimes. The woman at the counter smiles. They talk. Yuuji gets the curry bread he thinks Nanami would've liked, and a free taiyaki the clerk slips into his bag after he agrees with her that no, Megumi hasn't been around in a while but offers that yes, he's fine, just a bit under the weather. It hurts less than explaining it would. This way, he says thank you and she tells him she hopes they both feel better soon, and they exchange their goodbyes, and that's the whole of it.
This way, there exists a spot where Fushiguro Megumi is alive. Nothing has changed. Yuuji's life is yet to be fractured into a before and after. If Yuuji does this in enough places, visits enough people who don't know, keeps enough of these small fires lit, maybe that can be enough. Maybe he can resurrect him through determination alone.
Raindrops hit his shoulders first. The next one, Yuuji feels on the top of his head, dripping down his forehead. Then it's coming down all at once in a torrent, sudden, unexpected, total, like life and weather always are, swallowing the street whole. The gutters fill fast. The squall ruins everyone's day. Most people around him, equally unprepared, rush to find shelter. He hears them complaining nobody warned me and fuck, that came out of nowhere.
Yuuji's umbrella is at home, hung by the door, which is exactly where it'll stay while he hides under the narrow underpass, waiting for the downpour to pass. It doesn't look like it will. Maybe it won't ever stop.
A man walks in front of him, safe under his own umbrella. Across the street, a woman in high heels tries to make a run for it, clutch held over her head doing little to help her. The rain gushes past it. Yuuji watches her teeter, wobbling like she's on stilts, smiling at her stubbornness. He looks left, out of habit.
His smile falls.
Hood pulled up, plastic bag knotted twice and pressed hard to his chest, hidden under his shirt, he follows her lead and runs. By the time he arrives home, he's soaked to the bone. The linoleum darkens underneath him, printing wet shapes across the floor as he tracks mud through the kitchen without thinking to take his shoes off.
By some miracle, the bread is largely intact. Colder than it was when he left, but warm enough to make him feel better when he bites into it. Yuuji eats it standing at the counter, still dripping, dropping crumbs. His socks feel disgusting. They squelch every time his weight shifts.
Yuuji looks around the kitchen. Tries to remember where he put the mop. Cracks the window open for his camellia instead. The spring showers never last long, and this one is no different. The torrent has tapered off to a drizzle.
They thrive in the humidity. Yuuji has that written on a note next to her, with the rest of care instructions they wrote down for him in the flower center. He told them he just needed the right flower. Not a chrysanthemum — he said that part firmly. It was the only thing he knew coming in. They have their place, white chrysanthemums. Megumi kept them everywhere after Tsumiki. Her grave, the apartment garden, in the park by the hospital where she'd stayed. Yuuji used to watch him tend to them from the window upstairs, giving him all the space he needed. Megumi, with his hands in the dirt, which seemed to help him.
The camellia came home with him in terracotta pot Yuuji keeps meaning to repot her out of. Deep red blooms, four of them now, dense and clumped, opening slowly toward the slim light coming in through the clouds. The torrent has tapered out to a drizzle. Spring showers never last long. He should've waited it out.
The camellia sways in the breeze that blows through the window.
Yuuji sits down on the floor and watches it go back and forth, left to right, eating his mildly damp bread bun. He brushes the crumbs off of his pants. Rain drizzles. Some of it streaks down the wall. Pools, drop by drop. He chews.
She does look happier, he thinks.
Even now, he thinks about the funeral sometimes. It's the only one Yuuji went to. He decided he'd had enough before he made it back out the cemetery gates and hasn't felt the need to go back since. Not to the memorial, not to the school, not to any of the other places people have suggested might help him. Megumi isn't there. He's not anywhere Yuuji can point to on a map.
It's progress, saying that. Recognizing it.
Most of the time, it doesn't feel like he's missing him, only that he's waiting. Like Megumi has left for a mission he begrudgingly accepted, or on a quick grocery run, or that he's in the garden below, watering the flowers they planted for Tsumiki. He's temporarily out of view, standing in the specific section Yuuji can't see when he cranes his neck through their kitchen window.
What Yuuji can always see, no matter where he stands, is the urn. The centerpiece of his at-home altar. Deep blue-green with a swirling, floral pattern that spirals up from the base. The glaze is slightly uneven where the potter's hands pressed in too hard. Yuuji's proud of the choice; as beautiful as it is unforgiving, never letting him forget what it is. It fits nicely with the rest of the trinkets they've accumulated over the years. Handmade, one of a kind, heavily padded on the inside at his request, so it can be as comfortable to rest in as the memory foam was.
He's not delusional.
Yuuji knows what that sounds like. He heard it even as he first asked Will he be comfortable in there? and the funeral director looked at him, momentarily speechless, with a hand clutched over her heart. Yuuji remembers the ring on her finger. Remembers how she looked at Nobara for help in forming a reply. Remembers thinking it was really bad when even Nobara didn't have anything to say. She put her arm over his. Stroked his forearm, once, twice, slow and comforting, and tried to remind him, it's not really Fushiguro in there.
Of course it's not. Who Megumi is — how important, monumental, life-changing — could never fit inside some small, pretty vase. It isn't him in there, but.
But it's the cleanest surface in the entire apartment, the porcelain urn. Dusted every morning, along with the ring resting in front of it.
But Yuuji talks at it anyway, sometimes.
But he stares at it more than he should, wondering if it feels claustrophobic, being inside it.
He opened it exactly once.
He'd been considering putting the ring inside, thought it might be the right thing, letting Megumi wear it, and talked himself into lifting the lid. Yuuji held his breath, staring at the fine and pale grey-white pile of ash gathered at the bottom. He looked at it for a long time. Turned the urn in his hands, tipped it back and forth, and thought, surely not. No. That can't be it, can it? A person can never be reduced to this. He had to stop himself from picking up the phone and calling the funeral director back and saying: I'm sorry, but I think there's been a mistake. I think you forgot something. Can you check for me? Can you track down the rest of him? You didn't know him, so I understand, but I did, and this can't be all there's left.
The bookcase underneath his growing shelf-shrine is different. That's much closer to a proper resting place, in Yuuji's opinion. He's more inclined to believe Megumi is there — in the annotations, between the tight cursive cramped into every available margin, existing in the passages underlined twice, and yellowed tabs that mark his reading progress.
Yuuji is making his way through them, chipping away at pages for Megumi.
Well, he picks a book at random, then reads it out loud. He tried feigning polite interest in the subject at first, but he could feel Megumi's fond, judgmental eyes on the back of his neck, finding his pretense transparent. Could hear the soft click of his tongue, fighting a smile. Braced for hand that should have reached over and tugged the book away or pushed through Yuuji's hair depending on the mood, and Yuuji would catch himself pausing mid-sentence, expecting exactly that, so when neither happened—
He mostly reads the underlined passages now. Them and the scribbled comments, the ones that were never intended to be seen. He follows every slanted, looping l with the tip of his index, pretending the ink is fresh, in risk of being smudged. Megumi's gaze softens when Yuuji reads those out loud, asking the empty sofa: was this it? Did you feel like this?
Death has been on Yuuji's mind for most of his life. It came with the job, with the curses, came with the life he got to experience. It's been there for him from the start, if he thinks about it, since his birth. The conception. He's spent enough time living side by side with it, talked it through enough times, so that he feels confident in saying he knows what it should look like, dying. What he'd want it to look like.
What it wouldn't, just as much.
Yuuji lights the incense first. Sets it in the holder and watches the smoke rise in a thin, pale, perfectly straight thread until the draft from the window catches it. It dances. Coils, turning in swirls as it lifts through the air. He moves it further away from the plant.
There were signs. He knows that. Small ones, first, then less small. Yuuji saw them and he told himself: we survived once. We made it. The worst is behind us. We'll be okay. He'll be okay. Because he wanted to, he believed it.
He walks around, looking for a candle to light.
Megumi knew exactly what Yuuji's opinion on death was, he thinks, rummaging through the kitchen drawers.
They talked about it enough times. About not wasting their lives like the people that came before them. About making the most of it instead. Meaning something. Megumi listened, he nodded, he smiled. Agreed when prompted. And on the bad days — the ones where he'd look through Yuuji entirely, where his hands would cycle between the motions of summoning the shadows he lost, always only the ones that couldn't answer — Yuuji would put the kettle on. Lemon-ginger. They'd sit on the floor, huddled under one blanket, warming their hands on their mugs, and Megumi would link his pinky with Yuuji's middle finger. Yuuji would make them switch hands, just to see their rings sit side by side. Gold next to gold. Childishly, he liked clicking them together, liked how Megumi learned to meet the gesture halfway.
He thought that was enough. He really did.
Yuuji lights the candle. One of the last ones he has. Nobara's housewarming gift, three wicks, bergamot and sandalwood. Red, for good luck. Yuuji sets it on the coaster they bought the first time they visited Okinawa. Lays out two more for the tea he's about to make. He shields the little flame from the breeze with his palm until he's sure it can survive on its own.
That wasn't it. Certain, furious, the thought arrives the same way every time. You knew that wasn't it. That wasn't what we talked about.
He's not sure, still, if he's angrier at Megumi or at himself. Part of him — the worst part, the part Yuuji resents — understands. It can follow the logic behind the decision, arrive at the same simple conclusion. Yuuji was there for it, after all. Everything.
They lived through the nightmares together, and the shakes. Took turns taking care of each other. There were the tears, yes, and the sleepless nights, but there was laughter too. There was Megumi, scrunching his face whenever Yuuji pretended to come in for a kiss, only to blow raspberries against the scars underneath his eyes. Megumi, nudging him awake every time he dozed off on the couch. Fitting next to him, impossibly, when Yuuji couldn't get his body to cooperate and get up.
Yuuji chose to focus on that, at the end of the day.
On how fulfilled his days felt. How the burden got easier once it was shared. The warm body next to him whenever he woke up disoriented and panicked. There's simmering resentment in him, he can own up to it, because if that was enough for him, why couldn't it have been enough for Megumi? Why would he take that away from them?
It wasn't a good death.
Yuuji burns the incense anyway. Lights the candle. Makes the tea, sets out the extra cup, keeps doing all the things people have told him might help. Because what's the alternative? Sitting here, with this understanding, following it all the way to the end — to the last year, the things he missed, what he could've said or done differently. To the question he still can't finish asking himself. Whether. Maybe. Had he. If only.
None of them change anything.
Yuuji gets up. He shakes himself off. A shiver goes down his spine, and he goes to shut the window.
The show is bad.
Yuuji doesn't remember it being this awful. He didn't see much of the first few episodes, admittedly, too busy rolling around the couch with Megumi and preening at all the sounds he could drag out of him, but the parts he did see were interesting. It was their Thursday-night ritual. Eventually, they even managed to get through entire episodes without distractions. Most of the time.
It started going downhill last season. They both knew it. Complained about it at length, had the argument about whether to keep watching for the sake of tradition or simply cut their losses and keep it a nice, pleasant memory. Megumi said to stop. Yuuji argued they should finish it. And now Yuuji sits with the consequences of that, alone, watching the credits roll on what is, objectively, one of the worst hours of television he has ever witnessed
Thank god, he thinks, with complete sincerity, you didn't live to see that.
He feels horrible immediately. Disgusted with himself, then guilty, then - worse - guilty about that. Yuuji laughs at the absurdity. Out of everything, this is his silver lining. Megumi no longer has to suffer through awful TV. Yuuji looks at the urn, considers apologizing, then stops when he isn't sure if he should address it or Megumi's vacant spot.
It's not funny, he tries to tell himself, that's not something to be grateful for or joke about. Stop it.
Yet crystal clear, in his mind, he sees Megumi turning off the TV for him. He sees the hour-long rant that would've followed this episode, and the argument on how Yuuji should've just listened to him in the first place, should've known better than to keep going past the point of no return. Should've let it end well. And then, after, how Megumi would move through the apartment, still shaking his head, complaining under his breath, thinking of new details to nitpick up until the next episode airs.
He sees him. Sees Megumi blow out the candle. Move the incense to a safe spot, away from anything flammable. Press two of his fingers into the camellia's dark soil to see if it needs water. Chest rising and falling in a sigh because Yuuji waterlogged it, overwhelmed it with his generosity.
Yuuji sees Megumi's fingers brush over the bright red blooms. The petals open for him. Sees Megumi gathering the mugs and coasters, adding them to the pile of dishes Yuuji has to deal with in the morning. Yuuji watches him until Megumi rounds the corner, disappearing in the direction of their room.
He sees what was, and what could've been, then what it is.
The sofa that's two inches too short for him. The puddle of rain that he hasn't mopped up, steadily warping the linoleum. The thin blanket that has, without him quite noticing when, stopped smelling like Megumi and started smelling only like him.
Yuuji sees it. He has to wake up. Staying on the couch does nothing, changes nothing, and Megumi isn't in the plot or in the urn or somewhere just out of reach, down the hall, but he will probably be kind enough to join Yuuji next Thursday. He'll sit across the kitchen table, pressing his thumb to the back of Yuuji's when he finally feels ready to return Nobara's calls. He'll be there to smile at every first warm bite into freshly baked anpan, and will always be the voice in Yuuji's head, chiding him for forgetting to bring an umbrella. Again. He'll be there, Yuuji knows, when the camellia is ready for planting.
He gathers his pillow and his blanket. Stands up. He lets air fill his lungs; then slowly lets it go.
Yuuji walks into their bedroom.