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The autumn rain lashing down from the sky is frigid and soaks right through Kazuya’s hoodie. He vaguely recalls someone — Youichi, probably — telling him to wear a real damn coat outside, but he hasn’t listened to Youichi for the past ten years they’ve been together. Now isn’t the time to start.
Not when everything is so messed up.
Soil squelches beneath his sneakers, which are also waterlogged. His toes are curling up inside his socks for warmth that isn’t there, but Kazuya doesn’t want the feeling to go away. Physical pain is an old friend, a true cloak of safety in the hailstorm of nebulous things like love, hate, sadness, and all that other garbage.
Kazuya doesn’t want to feel any of those today, so he lets the downpour drench him even more. When the shivering starts, he screws his eyes shut and wills it away. It’s just another thing he can use to distract himself from the ache in his gut where something, someone, was carved out of him.
Now he knows why it’s always raining at funerals in movies. It’s an appropriate companion to this strange limbo stage of grief, the part where you know someone is never coming back but still expect to see them when you walk into a room. It never fails to catch him by surprise to walk into his regular gym and see the empty locker two slots down from his.
It was never supposed to end like this. He and Mei have been sparring since they were twelve, neither letting the other get ahead very far. Neck and neck, they had barreled into adulthood wrapped in this childlike habit of bickering for the hell of it.
But when it came down to it, they were one hell of a battery. Mei hated when Kazuya knew exactly what he was thinking, despite futile efforts to appear coy. He never had been one for hiding an emotion he could just as soon broadcast to the world. It didn’t matter who knew what Mei was going to do; they were too good together to be bested by much of anyone.
Life is a strange creature, a fickle one, he thinks. Kazuya had managed to be annoyed and enthused all at once when Mei, an all-star in his own right, had been traded to his team. He would never get a moment’s peace, but he’s never needed peace from baseball. It is his peace.
They worked hard to find a rhythm, and once they did, he couldn’t go anywhere without hearing sports fans gush over Mei. His name comes up very little, but that’s okay. Making the pitcher shine is his job, and nobody talks about the catcher until they screw up.
Kazuya isn’t the one who screwed up. This time, it had been Mei.
High on victory from a hard-fought league championship, their entire team had celebrated in the fine tradition of getting hammered and staggering onto the nearest bus to get home with or without all their clothing still on their person.
Though Kazuya never partakes in these bouts of revelry, he did tag along to make sure Mei didn’t pick a fight with a biker or a member of the yakuza. It sounds farfetched, but that was just Mei.
It had been Mei’s first such night on the town of this ilk, and Kazuya frowned when a glittering red sports car pulled up in front of the bar.
You know how the rest of the story goes. Kazuya tells Mei to hand over his keys, Mei tells him where he can shove it, Mei gets wasted and tries to drive home. Mei finds a streetlamp to hit hard enough to snap his stupid neck on impact.
Maybe Kazuya is cold, after all.
“Put a coat on, you dumb son of a bitch,” comes a hoarse voice from behind him, and a lurid green umbrella stanches the flow of rain. A well-worn trench coat drapes over his shoulders. “If you get pneumonia, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
A laugh escapes Kazuya’s lips. “You would make a terrible nurse.”
“Ha!” Youichi rolls his eyes. “Only because you’d be the worst patient ever.” He rests his forehead on Kazuya’s shoulder and sighs. “Getting soaked to the bone isn’t going to bring him back. You know that.”
Kazuya looks out once again over the pristine grounds of the temple, awash with a tranquility which belies the pouring rain. “He probably would have liked the idea of it.”
Arms wrap around his waist from behind, and Kazuya feels the warmth of Youichi’s breath as he sighs. “Yeah, probably.”
The swarm of strangers loudly grieving a man they never met finally starts to disperse, and some of the tension leaches from Kazuya’s shoulders.
Only Mei’s parents linger at the family’s grave site, and Kazuya spies Mei’s mother Emilie staring off into space while Mei’s father Hideo conducts business with the temple staff to sew things up. Blonde and beautiful, Emilie had most certainly been the biggest donor to Mei’s looks and personality. They were a lot alike. Maybe that’s why they hated each other.
From across the soggy meadow, Emilie’s gaze meets his. She has always enjoyed Kazuya’s company and vice versa, despite the lingering smell of menthols that oozed out of her skin. He imagines she is what Mei would’ve been like in twenty years, only with baseball instead of smoking and drinking to fill his days.
They stand there until Kazuya’s icy toes protest loudly enough to be heard. A shiver lances through him, and his entire body starts to shake. Youichi’s grip tightens enough that Kazuya can tell Youichi is trying to will away the icy cloud swirling in his chest. They’ve always been like that, though: Kazuya is emotionally constipated and Youichi reminds him that he’s fine the way he is.
“You ready to go?” Youichi murmurs against his damp shoulder.
Hideo and Emilie are already leaving in the back of a gleaming black town car, and nothing is left but the rain.
There would definitely be a swarm of media around his usual haunts, accompanied by a slew of questions about tragedy and all the typical junk that goes along with publicized grief. He won’t acknowledge a single one of them. He doesn’t need any of them in his business. He has Youichi for that.
“Yeah.” Kazuya’s pruning fingers lace with Youichi’s, and they leave side by side.