The Five Lives Yuki Eiri Never Lived
Author:
ninben
Title: The Five Lives Yuki Eiri Never Lived
Rating: PG mainly
Character/Pairing/Group: Yuki (Uesugi) Eiri
Fandom: Gravitation
Spoilers: None, unless you haven't seen any of the series or read any of the manga.
01 - The Scientist
“By the time Uesugi Eiri was twenty-three, he’d become a legend. His name was placed in the Encyclopaedia Eximius Online and his face emblazoned the walls of teenage revolutionist bedrooms from here to New Shanghai.
“He was, quite possibly, one of the most famous men in history, if not one of the most controversial. His work had travelled every avenue of philosophical debate, every branch of scientific argument. In the end, the authorities left the arguing to those more ethical and absurd than themselves.
“Controversial or not, some might say, he deserved everything he’d ever gotten.
“He’d been born in Yamashina-ku - a ward in the southeast of Kyoto. The house he’d grown up in had been small, almost too small for a family with one child, let alone one with three. It still stands, you know, though it’s boarded up now, silent as a grave.
“The tragedy of his mother’s death had changed his father into something bitter and harsh as steel, with an iron fist that drove his eldest son away into his work.
“But then, this is all speculation, so you can come to your own conclusions. Niisan taught you that much, right?
“Science had been the young Uesugi’s calling - oh, please - and he’d revelled in the knowledge that maybe someday, he’d make a discovery so shocking, so outrageous, that people would remember him for centuries afterwards. Maybe he could invent time travel or find a cure for blood cancer or unlock the key to immortality.
“The thought had pleased him immensely, and he’d imagined how envious his classmates would be when he alone was lavished with honour upon honour and reaped the rewards of all his hard work. He alone would stand in the spotlight, illuminated and golden like a god, untouchable - what kind of sap wrote this book anyhow? Dia Mamoush - ha! It would have been a woman.
“He had strived - don’t give me that look just because the book couldn’t get the details right - he’d had to. Teamwork had not been one of his better skills - ah, I spy a grain of truth to this tale - he was a loner by nature and couldn’t stand being surrounded by mundane fools who were happy with child’s play - that’s a little harsh - when he worked with all his might to make something better of himself - well, we aren’t a suck-up at all, are we?
“Stop scowling at me; it’ll ruin your pretty face and then Niisan will have my balls for breakfast in the afterlife. Ahem. He’d been awarded the highest commendations available for his effort, and still he’d pushed himself harder. An academic mind garners trouble and he’d matched blow for blow. He’d smiled, and his rewards had hurt…”
* * *
Uesugi Tatsuha put down the book he was reading and gently stroked a hand over Shuichi’s hair, careful not to wake him. It was almost humorous that the product of his elder brother’s life’s work was this; a thin, pretty boy with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, mute but wonderfully, impossibly alive.
Tatsuha glared at his brother’s laughing face captured in a photo frame on the boy’s desk as he fiddled with a syringe and some of the numerous bottles that comprised of his brother’s unfinished research. Eiri's heart had been problematic even in its original body. The transplant and adapting to this new body put tremendous strain on the already weak muscle, and Tatsuha thanked whoever might be listening every day that some higher authority figured that it was worth keeping Uesugi Eiri’s masterpiece alive, faulty or not.
He grimaced at the stuff and cursed his brother for dying. As always, it fell to Tatsuha to pick up what Niisan had left behind.
02 - The Spouse
The whole thing was simply a matter of patience.
Uesugi Eiri wasn’t a rocket scientist, or a genius mathematician, or even a top grade glamour model. He worked in an office and wished fervently every day that he could just quit his job and concentrate on his family.
But even if he couldn’t do that, at least this was one thing that he could do.
Another tweak, and the rigging stood in place; it wouldn’t be much longer now. The ticking of the old grandfather clock boomed impossibly loudly through the small house and Eiri glanced at it, willing the hands to turn faster.
Ayaka - beautiful, tender, good-natured Ayaka - stood in the kitchen in front of the oven, balancing a pan of what he hoped was an apple pancake over the flame. The domestic look suited her; her long, dark hair caught up in a clip, a simple white and bronze apron over her clothes. She wasn’t the most stunning of women - her clothes too plain, her personality too dull, her boobs too small et cetera, et cetera. Still, for better or for worse, he had married her, and although it hadn’t been strictly his choice, he wouldn’t abandon her for trivial technicalities.
“Mama, mama! Lookit!”
That was Bairei. His eldest son tugged at his mother’s skirt to show her the doodle he’d made. Eiri, Ayaka, Bairei himself, little brother Arai and their pet cat Jiji all stood in front of their house, all smiling with curved lines for mouths and small dots for eyes. There was even the white picket fence running around the tiny garden, even though Eiri noted with some amusement that the two breaks in real life were missing on the picture. It was a child’s drawing through and through, seeing only the perfect and never the flawed, and inexplicably, Eiri felt more than a little sad.
Ayaka smiled and gently ruffled their son’s hair with her free hand, dividing her attention between child and cooking as women were often apt to do, while Arai giggled and waved his pirate flag happily as Daddy put the finishing touches on his ship. What a happy, perfectly ordinary cereal box family they all made.
But there’s only so much perfection that one can take before one starts to get antsy and has to escape. Eiri had made the mistake of enduring before, and while he had repented a thousand times over, he could never quite shake the image of his wife in the corner of their bedroom, cradling her bruised cheek and gazing up at him in frightened confusion.
His skin crawled, and he rolled his neck as he stood up to dispel the haze of paranoia on the edge of his consciousness. He gently placed the paper pirate flag on the ship and watched his youngest son play until his patience failed him.
The old clock struck five and Eiri abruptly strode from the room, happy that his excuse had finally arrived. He reached the door and pulled on his coat, rifling through his pockets until Ayaka dangled the car keys in front of him.
The shrewd look she gave him irritated him so much that he snatched the keys from her grasp and slammed the door behind him as he left.
It was snowing outside. Eiri took a brief moment to glare at it as he lit up a cigarette and got in the car. He knew he was hurting Ayaka by being aloof and quick to anger, but it was uncontrollable. Lately, he couldn’t seem to find anything desirable in her. Her knowing smiles infuriated him; her affection sickened him and tied him down. He’d just about had enough of perfection. It was boring, uninteresting and unimaginably dull.
The drive into the inner city was long and winding. It was easy to get lost in the many back alleys and avenues leading off the main road, but Eiri knew exactly where he was going
He parked the car into a secluded side street in front of a cafe called Kafka’s and waited.
Soon enough the car door opened and the young man he normally rented breezed in, bringing the wind and snow with him. Eiri cursed and turned the heater up.
As usual, the boy wore very little. The coat was white and thick and the boots were solid enough to keep the worst of the dirty city slush out, but other than that, he was clad only in shorts and a thin t-shirt.
“Quarter past five as you specified. What can I do for you, Uesugi-san?”
Eiri scowled and dragged the boy over the stick shift by his shirt.
“You know exactly what the fuck you can do for me,” he growled, pushing the pale, rosy-cheeked face into his lap, anxious just to keep his temper calm.
His companion rolled his eyes to heaven, “And to think that you’re normally so polite.” Nevertheless, he did as he was bid and got to work.
Eiri’s head fell back against his seat and he panted, his breath coming out as patches of dense fog in the slowly warming car.
He felt momentarily guilty at what his wife would say if she could see him now. But this was different. Ayaka deserved to be treated with respect and tenderness. She deserved to be loved. And even though Eiri didn’t love her the way he should as a husband, he’d known her since they were both children and that at least made him fond of her on good days.
Eiri’s hips began moving involuntarily, and he felt the boy gag more than once. The twinge of remorse he felt was outweighed by how good the action was to his deprived flesh and his hand refused to let up, buried in the soft, dark hair and pushing down, forcing the boy to swallow or choke.
He couldn’t do this to Ayaka. He couldn’t be forceful, uncaring of her reservations or discomfort like he was with this boy.
He liked this, liked how unrestrained he could allow himself to be. His perfect family had worn him down, and this wasn’t perfect at all. It was harsh and brutal and was exactly what the repressed part of him needed.
He could be violent, because this wasn’t perfect, and wasn’t his family, and this wasn’t someone he had to tiptoe around. This was a whore he could use to his heart’s content and whose bruises he wouldn’t have to see the morning after.
Eiri had to salvage what he could of his marriage to Ayaka, for the boys’ sake especially. If that meant he had to go out and have brutal, unforgiving sex with a boy whose name he didn’t know so that he didn’t end up raping his wife in a fit of fury, then so be it.
Maybe he should go and visit his therapist like his sister was always telling him to. He snorted at that thought, and his companion glanced up in question.
Eiri looked at the big, dark eyes and swollen lips and stroked his hand down a satin smooth cheek in an apologetic caress. The boy leaned into the touch, accepting the simple affection and asking no questions.
This was the best therapy for him. He was sure of it.
03 - The Drunkard
“Well, we were the only two single people there so I thought I might as well ask her out for dinner or something, y’know? Just to pass the time like…”
Shindou Shuichi huffed a sigh as the weirdo continued to lean on his shoulder like he was some kind of oversized teddy bear. Ugh? How glamorous.
“You know, being engaged doesn’t exactly constitute being single.”
Unfocused eyes peered up at him through the thick mane of hair and blinked. “But it’s not like we’re married yet…”
He sighed again and shifted to ease the drunken pressure on his shoulder. “Makes no difference whether you’re married or not; you’re engaged - promised to this person. It’s wrong to be with someone else when you’re bound to someone like that. I bet she was up all night worrying about you.”
The comment took a while to sink in, but once it got there, the man began to pout quite dangerously.
“Don’t care.” Shuichi rolled his eyes and absently wondered how long it would be until the last train.
“You don’t care about the woman you’re going to marry? That’s despicable.”
“S’not. I dun’ even want to marry her. Not my-“The sentence was punctuated by a loud yawn and the blond head turned to nuzzle Shuichi’s collarbone as he mumbled “choice” into his scarf.
“Even so, that’s no reason to betray her,” said Shuichi, though inwardly he was more than a little surprised that the man beside him was part of an arranged marriage. He’d always thought that arranged marriages were reserved for the rich. Although, he thought, wrinkling his nose, the amount of alcohol that his new friend had consumed must have cost a pretty penny.
The announcement for the last train rang through and made Shuichi jump, jostling the blond man on his shoulder. He heaved a weary sigh; he wasn’t uncaring enough to just leave the guy alone in the station.
He carefully guided the man onto the train and manoeuvred the two of them into a seat. The car was practically empty save for an old woman, a man with a fluorescent yellow jacket tucked under his arm and a schoolgirl that looked far too young to be wearing that much eyeliner. She stared sullenly at both of them from beneath heavily-made up eyelids and Shuichi frowned back as disapprovingly as he could with a very attractive, very drunk and very heavy blond man draped over him.
* * *
The door really couldn’t take much more of this, Shuichi mused as he kicked it wide open and staggered through it into his flat, depositing his ungainly load on the sofa. Flopping back into the soft cushions, Shuichi sighed wearily and half-turned to regard his temporary houseguest.
“What’s your name?”
“Eiri…”
“Eiri,” he murmured absently, closing his tired eyes; so sleepy, “I’m Shuichi.”
“Shuichi?” was mumbled back. “S’pretty.”
The half-formed giggle that the remark caused died in his throat as big hands cupped his face and a sloppy, drunken kiss was bestowed on his lips. Then the man passed out, and Shuichi was left, disoriented and very much awake, to calm his racing heart.
04 - The Sinner
Sometimes, he still remembered. People said that it was common to feel the phantom pains of what you’d lost. For some, it was supposedly comforting. For Eiri, it was a nightmare.
It looked like a regular accident - an injury that you get from anywhere if you were unfortunate enough. The doctors said he’d been working in his father’s factory when it had happened - a malfunction in the machinery that had nearly cost him his life. It had never ceased to stump them though; how clean the cut was. One straight, perfect slice, even right across the bone where technology should have left the edge rough and jagged. All was smooth. Even. Equal.
Eiri remembered. It was his waking dream, full of pain and blood and despair. He remembered thick, curling smoke and a thunderstorm outside. There had been blood, so much blood that he should have rightfully been dead. It spilled across the floor and over his hands, thick and red and metallic.
The body had been hideous. He didn’t remember much about her, but he’d somehow known that she’d been special, ethereally beautiful. But the body he’d given her had been so hideous. And he had paid for it in spades.
There had been pain and the roiling smell of carbon, artificial and cloying. There had been quiet, and then a terrible stillness where he’d screamed for the beloved teacher lying immobile on the floor, everything from the waist down dissolved into nothing. The blood pooled across the floor and Eiri remembered being too weak, feeling too tired to save the man dying beside him.
He remembered a heart that beat on the outside, an arm reaching out of the darkness and a skull with luminous eyes. He remembered a wet, choking sound, and then nothing but his own screaming.
Life hurt. Especially when he didn’t deserve it.
The clock in his room struck three, making him jump, and he glared at the pistachio green wall in front of him. He’d always loathed hospitals as a rule, but this was just embarrassing.
The door opened slightly and the head of his far-younger-than-expected-physiotherapist peered around it. Eiri glared back and prepared himself for the humiliation he was about to receive.
Five minutes later and even he could not deny that the kid was skilled, even if he was young. He had nice hands - long-fingered and strong - that felt amazingly good kneading the taut muscles in the miserable stump of his thigh.
It made him feel vulnerable. And that made him irritable and short-tempered.
“Why are you doing this?!” he finally exploded, sick to death of being babied. “It’s bad enough that I’m an invalid but do you have to-“
The kiss was quick, soft and barely there, but it was enough to render him speechless.
“I’m preparing the muscles in your leg to accept an automail port. It’ll be painful, but if it’ll save your pride somewhat…”
The wonderful hands grasped Eiri’s shoulders and he gazed bewilderedly up at the determined expression.
“I’m not going to let you waste away, Uesugi Eiri. I promise.”
* * *
05 - The Monster
Shindou Maiko flipped a page in her book. If her brother didn’t get out of there soon, their father would be home and be decidedly unhappy about having his classified files nosed at.
She’d never really understood what was so great about being a detective. Her father clearly loved his job and Shuichi was clearly desperate to follow in his footsteps, but what for? What was the sense in a job where you constantly had to look over your shoulder to make sure that the crook you were after wasn’t standing behind you with a baseball bat?
The front door opened and shut and, hearing their parents’ voices, Maiko looked up to find her brother sitting next to her, doodling in an exercise book as if he’d never been anywhere else.
“When you get caught this time, you’re on your own!” she hissed quietly.
“What makes you think I will?” he asked, grinning as he bit into an apple with a loud crunch.
She rolled her eyes and hoped for his own sake that whatever he’d taken wasn’t too important.
* * *
His name was Uesugi Eiri. He was sixteen years old. He’d been missing for seven years.
Shuichi pored over the file by torchlight. The photograph paper clipped to the top showed a pale-faced blond boy with glasses and a shy smile dimpling his cheeks. A well-educated Buddhist child, the report rambled on, always in the top ten of his class yadda yadda yadda.
Apparently he’d been pulled out of school after being bullied, and he had been tutored privately up until the time of his disappearance. Shuichi’s eyebrows rose - private tuition was expensive enough within Japan, but to hire one from America? It must have cost a small fortune.
Well, that ruled out the theory that he was neglected. A family that was willing to pay such an obscene amount of money for their son’s educational welfare had to have cared about him to at least some degree.
But if the report was to be believed, then why had he vanished? And where had he vanished to?
* * *
Abe Etsumi thought of herself as a smart enough girl. And she could tell when her best friend was trying to be sneaky. It just didn’t suit him; all that steepling of the fingers and curving of the lips and sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, the sly cackling that just proved he was only mere minutes away from wearing his underpants on his head.
It was all backwards with Shuichi. Most people were inconspicuous when they had something to hide. He was inconspicuous when he had something to show.
And Shuichi had been grinning something wicked at her since he’d walked in the door.
Eventually, her head decided that it couldn’t be bothered to reread her chemistry textbook again, so she decided to pounce while the time was right.
“Okay, what’ve you done now?”
Shuichi levelled a look at her that spoke of innocence and twittering birds, and she didn’t fall for it. She’d known him too long.
“Why do you think I’ve done something?”
“Because you’ve been smirking and doing that thing with your pinky finger all morning.”
Shuichi pouted and removed the offending digit from his lip.
“You never used to be this patronizing when we were kids.”
“I’ve had a long time to grow into it. Now what have you been doing that’s making you pull creepy faces?”
His eyes lit up, and Etsumi wished that she hadn’t asked.
“I’ve found a new lead for our extracurricular activities.”
Etsumi grinned. “You pilfered information again? You know, one day someone’s going to catch you, and then you’ll be sorry. Or in prison.”
He scowled back at her. “Are you in or not?”
She really, really shouldn’t. Every sensible bone in her body was telling her not to, but sometimes it was nice not to have to be sensible.
* * *
“Remind me again why I’m doing this,” Etsumi implored.
Shuichi sighed. Why were all the women in his life so intent on ruining his fun?
Granted, it wasn’t exactly safe or wise, tiptoeing around an abandoned warehouse in the dark with a badly drawn map, the borrowed file in his rucksack, a couple of torches and some spare batteries, but that was beside the point!
“I thought you wanted to help me be a great detective - accomplices in action, you said we were.”
“That was before I realised that all those crime stories are just that - stories.”
“Quit whinging! This is the last place that Uesugi Eiri was known to have been seen!”
He heard Etsumi muttering that she wasn’t whinging, she was just stating a fact when his eyes came to rest on the rather large stain covering a good portion of the crumbling stairwell in front of him. Even in the dim glow of the torch, he could tell that it had once been warm and red, and most likely inside of someone else at some point in the distant past.
Etsumi grew quiet, and her hand closed around his elbow like a vice.
“Maybe we should leave. I mean, you always hear about the kind of people that hide out in these places, always ravenous and broke…” She gulped quite audibly, and it set an answering lump growing in his own throat.
“Come on, that stain’s been there for years - you can tell by how dark it is.”
“Maybe that means there was a lot of…strawberry jam…”
Shuichi elbowed her side roughly, because that’s what one does in a panic.
“Just don’t think about it. Let’s go up.”
Her head whipped around to look at him and her eyes were wide and too bright. “’Go up’? Are you insane?! What if something’s up there?”
“Exactly. We won’t know unless we find out,” he replied gently pulling her with him as he began to ascend the stairs. They creaked ominously underfoot, and Etsumi whimpered in the back of her throat.
“I hate you,” she whined miserably.
The stain on the wall wasn’t the only one. Small spatters and puddles trailed up the stairs with them and even Shuichi was beginning to swallow nervously. This was rather more…strawberry jam than one often found in humans. In his mind, that led to only two theories - either that whatever had been…oozing jam here was an awful lot bigger than an average person (and if that was true, then what the hell could’ve been big enough to bring it down?) or, more likely but no less comforting, that there had been multiple oozers.
The stairs widened out onto a large corridor, and both of them made a concerted effort not to look at the suddenly very big brown stain on the floor. It began at the top of the stairwell and streamed down past their feet right to the end like a river. Shuichi tried to stop his brain from telling him that something had obviously been dragged through here, though it probably hadn’t been kicking and screaming at the time.
Despite themselves, both he and Etsumi paused when the stain took an abrupt left and disappeared under a grey door.
“Please tell me that we aren’t going in there,” begged Etsumi.
“We’ve come this far now…” replied Shuichi, and, steeling his resolve, pushed it open.
He vaguely heard Etsumi screaming as his vision blurred and darkened, before everything went deathly quiet.
* * *
When he came to, he was alone in a dimly lit room. Etsumi was nowhere to be seen, and that made his aching head ache worse.
His hands were tied with what felt like rope and his pack and torch were gone. Panic overcame him and he began to struggle. Maybe one day if he ever got out of this mess, he’d remember to listen when people told him that things like this were a bad idea.
A deep chuckle resounded from a corner, and he shook his head carefully, desperately needing to focus. He couldn’t believe how vulnerable he felt just from blurry eyesight.
“You detectives are all the same. Always rushing in with your guns blazing and not thinking for a moment about the consequences - you never learn.”
The voice was deep and even, and rolled over his battered nerves like water.
“W…where’s Etsumi?”
“She is sleeping. The journey has tired her out quite a bit, and she’d prefer it if you didn’t wake her.”
Sleeping? That didn’t sound right. Shuichi groaned then, the throbbing in his head becoming worse.
“Oh come now, I didn’t hit you that hard.” Hands were around his head, feeling briskly but carefully.
Shuichi’s vision eased a bit and he glanced up at the owner of the hands. The mane of thick hair covered most of the face but he glimpsed a strong jaw and the tiny glint of an earring on the left side. There was no matching glint on the right.
The hands moved away and their body sat back. Shuichi looked up slowly and saw skin so pale as to be nearly white and narrow catlike eyes. He realised with startling clarity that the man in front of him was the boy on the file, just older. Nearly eight years older, his brain supplied helpfully.
“You’re…” he began, but his vision swam and he dropped his head with a whimper.
“Yes. I am. And there is a reason that this is classified information, you know,” he waved the file under Shuichi’s nose. “Nosy detectives shouldn’t go poking into what isn’t any of their business.”
“’M not a detective. Just wanted to help,” mumbled Shuichi.
“It’s of no concern to me. Good intentions lead to less than good actions, and that deserves punishment.” He leaned in close, and his eyes were almost golden. “It’s been so long since the last one that I thought the police had finally learned their lesson, but I guess not if this was left lying around.” He waved the paper again.
“Borrowed it,” murmured Shuichi, and it ended with a grunt as he was pushed onto his back. “Not lyin’ ‘round.”
“Ah a thief as well as a nosy little brat.” His head was tipped back, baring his throat and Shuichi could feel it move every time he swallowed.
“Where’s Etsumi? Should be leavin’.” Uesugi Eiri climbed on top of him, making Shuichi shiver at the cold of his skin.
“You won’t be going anywhere for a long time,” replied the blond and as he leaned down, Shuichi wondered absently if a dentist had carved those fangs for him. “Don’t worry. This is just a precaution, so that you won’t feel the need to blab about my location to anyone equally as nosy and unwittingly well-meaning as you.”
Shuichi’s eyes were slipping closed, and the ache inside his head was dulling to a steady throb in the background. There was a tongue running across his skin and the part of his brain that still worked told him that the guy was licking the blood from his head.
“Wouldn’t tell. Pointless to tell,” he whispered, and dimly felt the answering nod against his neck.
“Of course not,” the voice soothed, “Just relax. It won’t be long now.”
Something cool and sharp punctured the skin just above his collar bone, and he gave a tiny hiss as the darkness welled up behind his eyelids to drown him.
* * *
ninben
Title: The Five Lives Yuki Eiri Never Lived
Rating: PG mainly
Character/Pairing/Group: Yuki (Uesugi) Eiri
Fandom: Gravitation
Spoilers: None, unless you haven't seen any of the series or read any of the manga.
01 - The Scientist
“By the time Uesugi Eiri was twenty-three, he’d become a legend. His name was placed in the Encyclopaedia Eximius Online and his face emblazoned the walls of teenage revolutionist bedrooms from here to New Shanghai.
“He was, quite possibly, one of the most famous men in history, if not one of the most controversial. His work had travelled every avenue of philosophical debate, every branch of scientific argument. In the end, the authorities left the arguing to those more ethical and absurd than themselves.
“Controversial or not, some might say, he deserved everything he’d ever gotten.
“He’d been born in Yamashina-ku - a ward in the southeast of Kyoto. The house he’d grown up in had been small, almost too small for a family with one child, let alone one with three. It still stands, you know, though it’s boarded up now, silent as a grave.
“The tragedy of his mother’s death had changed his father into something bitter and harsh as steel, with an iron fist that drove his eldest son away into his work.
“But then, this is all speculation, so you can come to your own conclusions. Niisan taught you that much, right?
“Science had been the young Uesugi’s calling - oh, please - and he’d revelled in the knowledge that maybe someday, he’d make a discovery so shocking, so outrageous, that people would remember him for centuries afterwards. Maybe he could invent time travel or find a cure for blood cancer or unlock the key to immortality.
“The thought had pleased him immensely, and he’d imagined how envious his classmates would be when he alone was lavished with honour upon honour and reaped the rewards of all his hard work. He alone would stand in the spotlight, illuminated and golden like a god, untouchable - what kind of sap wrote this book anyhow? Dia Mamoush - ha! It would have been a woman.
“He had strived - don’t give me that look just because the book couldn’t get the details right - he’d had to. Teamwork had not been one of his better skills - ah, I spy a grain of truth to this tale - he was a loner by nature and couldn’t stand being surrounded by mundane fools who were happy with child’s play - that’s a little harsh - when he worked with all his might to make something better of himself - well, we aren’t a suck-up at all, are we?
“Stop scowling at me; it’ll ruin your pretty face and then Niisan will have my balls for breakfast in the afterlife. Ahem. He’d been awarded the highest commendations available for his effort, and still he’d pushed himself harder. An academic mind garners trouble and he’d matched blow for blow. He’d smiled, and his rewards had hurt…”
* * *
Uesugi Tatsuha put down the book he was reading and gently stroked a hand over Shuichi’s hair, careful not to wake him. It was almost humorous that the product of his elder brother’s life’s work was this; a thin, pretty boy with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, mute but wonderfully, impossibly alive.
Tatsuha glared at his brother’s laughing face captured in a photo frame on the boy’s desk as he fiddled with a syringe and some of the numerous bottles that comprised of his brother’s unfinished research. Eiri's heart had been problematic even in its original body. The transplant and adapting to this new body put tremendous strain on the already weak muscle, and Tatsuha thanked whoever might be listening every day that some higher authority figured that it was worth keeping Uesugi Eiri’s masterpiece alive, faulty or not.
He grimaced at the stuff and cursed his brother for dying. As always, it fell to Tatsuha to pick up what Niisan had left behind.
02 - The Spouse
The whole thing was simply a matter of patience.
Uesugi Eiri wasn’t a rocket scientist, or a genius mathematician, or even a top grade glamour model. He worked in an office and wished fervently every day that he could just quit his job and concentrate on his family.
But even if he couldn’t do that, at least this was one thing that he could do.
Another tweak, and the rigging stood in place; it wouldn’t be much longer now. The ticking of the old grandfather clock boomed impossibly loudly through the small house and Eiri glanced at it, willing the hands to turn faster.
Ayaka - beautiful, tender, good-natured Ayaka - stood in the kitchen in front of the oven, balancing a pan of what he hoped was an apple pancake over the flame. The domestic look suited her; her long, dark hair caught up in a clip, a simple white and bronze apron over her clothes. She wasn’t the most stunning of women - her clothes too plain, her personality too dull, her boobs too small et cetera, et cetera. Still, for better or for worse, he had married her, and although it hadn’t been strictly his choice, he wouldn’t abandon her for trivial technicalities.
“Mama, mama! Lookit!”
That was Bairei. His eldest son tugged at his mother’s skirt to show her the doodle he’d made. Eiri, Ayaka, Bairei himself, little brother Arai and their pet cat Jiji all stood in front of their house, all smiling with curved lines for mouths and small dots for eyes. There was even the white picket fence running around the tiny garden, even though Eiri noted with some amusement that the two breaks in real life were missing on the picture. It was a child’s drawing through and through, seeing only the perfect and never the flawed, and inexplicably, Eiri felt more than a little sad.
Ayaka smiled and gently ruffled their son’s hair with her free hand, dividing her attention between child and cooking as women were often apt to do, while Arai giggled and waved his pirate flag happily as Daddy put the finishing touches on his ship. What a happy, perfectly ordinary cereal box family they all made.
But there’s only so much perfection that one can take before one starts to get antsy and has to escape. Eiri had made the mistake of enduring before, and while he had repented a thousand times over, he could never quite shake the image of his wife in the corner of their bedroom, cradling her bruised cheek and gazing up at him in frightened confusion.
His skin crawled, and he rolled his neck as he stood up to dispel the haze of paranoia on the edge of his consciousness. He gently placed the paper pirate flag on the ship and watched his youngest son play until his patience failed him.
The old clock struck five and Eiri abruptly strode from the room, happy that his excuse had finally arrived. He reached the door and pulled on his coat, rifling through his pockets until Ayaka dangled the car keys in front of him.
The shrewd look she gave him irritated him so much that he snatched the keys from her grasp and slammed the door behind him as he left.
It was snowing outside. Eiri took a brief moment to glare at it as he lit up a cigarette and got in the car. He knew he was hurting Ayaka by being aloof and quick to anger, but it was uncontrollable. Lately, he couldn’t seem to find anything desirable in her. Her knowing smiles infuriated him; her affection sickened him and tied him down. He’d just about had enough of perfection. It was boring, uninteresting and unimaginably dull.
The drive into the inner city was long and winding. It was easy to get lost in the many back alleys and avenues leading off the main road, but Eiri knew exactly where he was going
He parked the car into a secluded side street in front of a cafe called Kafka’s and waited.
Soon enough the car door opened and the young man he normally rented breezed in, bringing the wind and snow with him. Eiri cursed and turned the heater up.
As usual, the boy wore very little. The coat was white and thick and the boots were solid enough to keep the worst of the dirty city slush out, but other than that, he was clad only in shorts and a thin t-shirt.
“Quarter past five as you specified. What can I do for you, Uesugi-san?”
Eiri scowled and dragged the boy over the stick shift by his shirt.
“You know exactly what the fuck you can do for me,” he growled, pushing the pale, rosy-cheeked face into his lap, anxious just to keep his temper calm.
His companion rolled his eyes to heaven, “And to think that you’re normally so polite.” Nevertheless, he did as he was bid and got to work.
Eiri’s head fell back against his seat and he panted, his breath coming out as patches of dense fog in the slowly warming car.
He felt momentarily guilty at what his wife would say if she could see him now. But this was different. Ayaka deserved to be treated with respect and tenderness. She deserved to be loved. And even though Eiri didn’t love her the way he should as a husband, he’d known her since they were both children and that at least made him fond of her on good days.
Eiri’s hips began moving involuntarily, and he felt the boy gag more than once. The twinge of remorse he felt was outweighed by how good the action was to his deprived flesh and his hand refused to let up, buried in the soft, dark hair and pushing down, forcing the boy to swallow or choke.
He couldn’t do this to Ayaka. He couldn’t be forceful, uncaring of her reservations or discomfort like he was with this boy.
He liked this, liked how unrestrained he could allow himself to be. His perfect family had worn him down, and this wasn’t perfect at all. It was harsh and brutal and was exactly what the repressed part of him needed.
He could be violent, because this wasn’t perfect, and wasn’t his family, and this wasn’t someone he had to tiptoe around. This was a whore he could use to his heart’s content and whose bruises he wouldn’t have to see the morning after.
Eiri had to salvage what he could of his marriage to Ayaka, for the boys’ sake especially. If that meant he had to go out and have brutal, unforgiving sex with a boy whose name he didn’t know so that he didn’t end up raping his wife in a fit of fury, then so be it.
Maybe he should go and visit his therapist like his sister was always telling him to. He snorted at that thought, and his companion glanced up in question.
Eiri looked at the big, dark eyes and swollen lips and stroked his hand down a satin smooth cheek in an apologetic caress. The boy leaned into the touch, accepting the simple affection and asking no questions.
This was the best therapy for him. He was sure of it.
03 - The Drunkard
“Well, we were the only two single people there so I thought I might as well ask her out for dinner or something, y’know? Just to pass the time like…”
Shindou Shuichi huffed a sigh as the weirdo continued to lean on his shoulder like he was some kind of oversized teddy bear. Ugh? How glamorous.
“You know, being engaged doesn’t exactly constitute being single.”
Unfocused eyes peered up at him through the thick mane of hair and blinked. “But it’s not like we’re married yet…”
He sighed again and shifted to ease the drunken pressure on his shoulder. “Makes no difference whether you’re married or not; you’re engaged - promised to this person. It’s wrong to be with someone else when you’re bound to someone like that. I bet she was up all night worrying about you.”
The comment took a while to sink in, but once it got there, the man began to pout quite dangerously.
“Don’t care.” Shuichi rolled his eyes and absently wondered how long it would be until the last train.
“You don’t care about the woman you’re going to marry? That’s despicable.”
“S’not. I dun’ even want to marry her. Not my-“The sentence was punctuated by a loud yawn and the blond head turned to nuzzle Shuichi’s collarbone as he mumbled “choice” into his scarf.
“Even so, that’s no reason to betray her,” said Shuichi, though inwardly he was more than a little surprised that the man beside him was part of an arranged marriage. He’d always thought that arranged marriages were reserved for the rich. Although, he thought, wrinkling his nose, the amount of alcohol that his new friend had consumed must have cost a pretty penny.
The announcement for the last train rang through and made Shuichi jump, jostling the blond man on his shoulder. He heaved a weary sigh; he wasn’t uncaring enough to just leave the guy alone in the station.
He carefully guided the man onto the train and manoeuvred the two of them into a seat. The car was practically empty save for an old woman, a man with a fluorescent yellow jacket tucked under his arm and a schoolgirl that looked far too young to be wearing that much eyeliner. She stared sullenly at both of them from beneath heavily-made up eyelids and Shuichi frowned back as disapprovingly as he could with a very attractive, very drunk and very heavy blond man draped over him.
* * *
The door really couldn’t take much more of this, Shuichi mused as he kicked it wide open and staggered through it into his flat, depositing his ungainly load on the sofa. Flopping back into the soft cushions, Shuichi sighed wearily and half-turned to regard his temporary houseguest.
“What’s your name?”
“Eiri…”
“Eiri,” he murmured absently, closing his tired eyes; so sleepy, “I’m Shuichi.”
“Shuichi?” was mumbled back. “S’pretty.”
The half-formed giggle that the remark caused died in his throat as big hands cupped his face and a sloppy, drunken kiss was bestowed on his lips. Then the man passed out, and Shuichi was left, disoriented and very much awake, to calm his racing heart.
04 - The Sinner
Sometimes, he still remembered. People said that it was common to feel the phantom pains of what you’d lost. For some, it was supposedly comforting. For Eiri, it was a nightmare.
It looked like a regular accident - an injury that you get from anywhere if you were unfortunate enough. The doctors said he’d been working in his father’s factory when it had happened - a malfunction in the machinery that had nearly cost him his life. It had never ceased to stump them though; how clean the cut was. One straight, perfect slice, even right across the bone where technology should have left the edge rough and jagged. All was smooth. Even. Equal.
Eiri remembered. It was his waking dream, full of pain and blood and despair. He remembered thick, curling smoke and a thunderstorm outside. There had been blood, so much blood that he should have rightfully been dead. It spilled across the floor and over his hands, thick and red and metallic.
The body had been hideous. He didn’t remember much about her, but he’d somehow known that she’d been special, ethereally beautiful. But the body he’d given her had been so hideous. And he had paid for it in spades.
There had been pain and the roiling smell of carbon, artificial and cloying. There had been quiet, and then a terrible stillness where he’d screamed for the beloved teacher lying immobile on the floor, everything from the waist down dissolved into nothing. The blood pooled across the floor and Eiri remembered being too weak, feeling too tired to save the man dying beside him.
He remembered a heart that beat on the outside, an arm reaching out of the darkness and a skull with luminous eyes. He remembered a wet, choking sound, and then nothing but his own screaming.
Life hurt. Especially when he didn’t deserve it.
The clock in his room struck three, making him jump, and he glared at the pistachio green wall in front of him. He’d always loathed hospitals as a rule, but this was just embarrassing.
The door opened slightly and the head of his far-younger-than-expected-physiotherapist peered around it. Eiri glared back and prepared himself for the humiliation he was about to receive.
Five minutes later and even he could not deny that the kid was skilled, even if he was young. He had nice hands - long-fingered and strong - that felt amazingly good kneading the taut muscles in the miserable stump of his thigh.
It made him feel vulnerable. And that made him irritable and short-tempered.
“Why are you doing this?!” he finally exploded, sick to death of being babied. “It’s bad enough that I’m an invalid but do you have to-“
The kiss was quick, soft and barely there, but it was enough to render him speechless.
“I’m preparing the muscles in your leg to accept an automail port. It’ll be painful, but if it’ll save your pride somewhat…”
The wonderful hands grasped Eiri’s shoulders and he gazed bewilderedly up at the determined expression.
“I’m not going to let you waste away, Uesugi Eiri. I promise.”
* * *
05 - The Monster
Shindou Maiko flipped a page in her book. If her brother didn’t get out of there soon, their father would be home and be decidedly unhappy about having his classified files nosed at.
She’d never really understood what was so great about being a detective. Her father clearly loved his job and Shuichi was clearly desperate to follow in his footsteps, but what for? What was the sense in a job where you constantly had to look over your shoulder to make sure that the crook you were after wasn’t standing behind you with a baseball bat?
The front door opened and shut and, hearing their parents’ voices, Maiko looked up to find her brother sitting next to her, doodling in an exercise book as if he’d never been anywhere else.
“When you get caught this time, you’re on your own!” she hissed quietly.
“What makes you think I will?” he asked, grinning as he bit into an apple with a loud crunch.
She rolled her eyes and hoped for his own sake that whatever he’d taken wasn’t too important.
* * *
His name was Uesugi Eiri. He was sixteen years old. He’d been missing for seven years.
Shuichi pored over the file by torchlight. The photograph paper clipped to the top showed a pale-faced blond boy with glasses and a shy smile dimpling his cheeks. A well-educated Buddhist child, the report rambled on, always in the top ten of his class yadda yadda yadda.
Apparently he’d been pulled out of school after being bullied, and he had been tutored privately up until the time of his disappearance. Shuichi’s eyebrows rose - private tuition was expensive enough within Japan, but to hire one from America? It must have cost a small fortune.
Well, that ruled out the theory that he was neglected. A family that was willing to pay such an obscene amount of money for their son’s educational welfare had to have cared about him to at least some degree.
But if the report was to be believed, then why had he vanished? And where had he vanished to?
* * *
Abe Etsumi thought of herself as a smart enough girl. And she could tell when her best friend was trying to be sneaky. It just didn’t suit him; all that steepling of the fingers and curving of the lips and sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, the sly cackling that just proved he was only mere minutes away from wearing his underpants on his head.
It was all backwards with Shuichi. Most people were inconspicuous when they had something to hide. He was inconspicuous when he had something to show.
And Shuichi had been grinning something wicked at her since he’d walked in the door.
Eventually, her head decided that it couldn’t be bothered to reread her chemistry textbook again, so she decided to pounce while the time was right.
“Okay, what’ve you done now?”
Shuichi levelled a look at her that spoke of innocence and twittering birds, and she didn’t fall for it. She’d known him too long.
“Why do you think I’ve done something?”
“Because you’ve been smirking and doing that thing with your pinky finger all morning.”
Shuichi pouted and removed the offending digit from his lip.
“You never used to be this patronizing when we were kids.”
“I’ve had a long time to grow into it. Now what have you been doing that’s making you pull creepy faces?”
His eyes lit up, and Etsumi wished that she hadn’t asked.
“I’ve found a new lead for our extracurricular activities.”
Etsumi grinned. “You pilfered information again? You know, one day someone’s going to catch you, and then you’ll be sorry. Or in prison.”
He scowled back at her. “Are you in or not?”
She really, really shouldn’t. Every sensible bone in her body was telling her not to, but sometimes it was nice not to have to be sensible.
* * *
“Remind me again why I’m doing this,” Etsumi implored.
Shuichi sighed. Why were all the women in his life so intent on ruining his fun?
Granted, it wasn’t exactly safe or wise, tiptoeing around an abandoned warehouse in the dark with a badly drawn map, the borrowed file in his rucksack, a couple of torches and some spare batteries, but that was beside the point!
“I thought you wanted to help me be a great detective - accomplices in action, you said we were.”
“That was before I realised that all those crime stories are just that - stories.”
“Quit whinging! This is the last place that Uesugi Eiri was known to have been seen!”
He heard Etsumi muttering that she wasn’t whinging, she was just stating a fact when his eyes came to rest on the rather large stain covering a good portion of the crumbling stairwell in front of him. Even in the dim glow of the torch, he could tell that it had once been warm and red, and most likely inside of someone else at some point in the distant past.
Etsumi grew quiet, and her hand closed around his elbow like a vice.
“Maybe we should leave. I mean, you always hear about the kind of people that hide out in these places, always ravenous and broke…” She gulped quite audibly, and it set an answering lump growing in his own throat.
“Come on, that stain’s been there for years - you can tell by how dark it is.”
“Maybe that means there was a lot of…strawberry jam…”
Shuichi elbowed her side roughly, because that’s what one does in a panic.
“Just don’t think about it. Let’s go up.”
Her head whipped around to look at him and her eyes were wide and too bright. “’Go up’? Are you insane?! What if something’s up there?”
“Exactly. We won’t know unless we find out,” he replied gently pulling her with him as he began to ascend the stairs. They creaked ominously underfoot, and Etsumi whimpered in the back of her throat.
“I hate you,” she whined miserably.
The stain on the wall wasn’t the only one. Small spatters and puddles trailed up the stairs with them and even Shuichi was beginning to swallow nervously. This was rather more…strawberry jam than one often found in humans. In his mind, that led to only two theories - either that whatever had been…oozing jam here was an awful lot bigger than an average person (and if that was true, then what the hell could’ve been big enough to bring it down?) or, more likely but no less comforting, that there had been multiple oozers.
The stairs widened out onto a large corridor, and both of them made a concerted effort not to look at the suddenly very big brown stain on the floor. It began at the top of the stairwell and streamed down past their feet right to the end like a river. Shuichi tried to stop his brain from telling him that something had obviously been dragged through here, though it probably hadn’t been kicking and screaming at the time.
Despite themselves, both he and Etsumi paused when the stain took an abrupt left and disappeared under a grey door.
“Please tell me that we aren’t going in there,” begged Etsumi.
“We’ve come this far now…” replied Shuichi, and, steeling his resolve, pushed it open.
He vaguely heard Etsumi screaming as his vision blurred and darkened, before everything went deathly quiet.
* * *
When he came to, he was alone in a dimly lit room. Etsumi was nowhere to be seen, and that made his aching head ache worse.
His hands were tied with what felt like rope and his pack and torch were gone. Panic overcame him and he began to struggle. Maybe one day if he ever got out of this mess, he’d remember to listen when people told him that things like this were a bad idea.
A deep chuckle resounded from a corner, and he shook his head carefully, desperately needing to focus. He couldn’t believe how vulnerable he felt just from blurry eyesight.
“You detectives are all the same. Always rushing in with your guns blazing and not thinking for a moment about the consequences - you never learn.”
The voice was deep and even, and rolled over his battered nerves like water.
“W…where’s Etsumi?”
“She is sleeping. The journey has tired her out quite a bit, and she’d prefer it if you didn’t wake her.”
Sleeping? That didn’t sound right. Shuichi groaned then, the throbbing in his head becoming worse.
“Oh come now, I didn’t hit you that hard.” Hands were around his head, feeling briskly but carefully.
Shuichi’s vision eased a bit and he glanced up at the owner of the hands. The mane of thick hair covered most of the face but he glimpsed a strong jaw and the tiny glint of an earring on the left side. There was no matching glint on the right.
The hands moved away and their body sat back. Shuichi looked up slowly and saw skin so pale as to be nearly white and narrow catlike eyes. He realised with startling clarity that the man in front of him was the boy on the file, just older. Nearly eight years older, his brain supplied helpfully.
“You’re…” he began, but his vision swam and he dropped his head with a whimper.
“Yes. I am. And there is a reason that this is classified information, you know,” he waved the file under Shuichi’s nose. “Nosy detectives shouldn’t go poking into what isn’t any of their business.”
“’M not a detective. Just wanted to help,” mumbled Shuichi.
“It’s of no concern to me. Good intentions lead to less than good actions, and that deserves punishment.” He leaned in close, and his eyes were almost golden. “It’s been so long since the last one that I thought the police had finally learned their lesson, but I guess not if this was left lying around.” He waved the paper again.
“Borrowed it,” murmured Shuichi, and it ended with a grunt as he was pushed onto his back. “Not lyin’ ‘round.”
“Ah a thief as well as a nosy little brat.” His head was tipped back, baring his throat and Shuichi could feel it move every time he swallowed.
“Where’s Etsumi? Should be leavin’.” Uesugi Eiri climbed on top of him, making Shuichi shiver at the cold of his skin.
“You won’t be going anywhere for a long time,” replied the blond and as he leaned down, Shuichi wondered absently if a dentist had carved those fangs for him. “Don’t worry. This is just a precaution, so that you won’t feel the need to blab about my location to anyone equally as nosy and unwittingly well-meaning as you.”
Shuichi’s eyes were slipping closed, and the ache inside his head was dulling to a steady throb in the background. There was a tongue running across his skin and the part of his brain that still worked told him that the guy was licking the blood from his head.
“Wouldn’t tell. Pointless to tell,” he whispered, and dimly felt the answering nod against his neck.
“Of course not,” the voice soothed, “Just relax. It won’t be long now.”
Something cool and sharp punctured the skin just above his collar bone, and he gave a tiny hiss as the darkness welled up behind his eyelids to drown him.
* * *