The Ride Through Wonderland- Gravitation Fic
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Ride Through Wonderland
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairing: Kitazawa Yuki/Seguchi Tohma, Kitazawa Yuki/Uesugi Eiri
Summary: When Kitazawa Yuki met the beautiful blond strangers from Japan, the world was turned upside down and inside out.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 2540
Rating: R
Warnings: Soft yaoi, references to an adult’s sexual interest in a child.
Author’s Note: This was written for the January challenge at
gravi_fuh_q using the pairing “Tohma x Kitazawa”. Amazingly it didn’t end up nearly as vile or twisted as I thought it would. This is also also being used for the “Poisonous Nurture” series, a collection of Seguchi Tohma centered stories being written for the lj community
ficalbum using songs from the Hole album “Live Through This” as prompts. The prompt for this piece is the song "Doll Parts" particularly the lyric "I fake it so real I am beyond fake." Click here to view the "Poisonous Nurture" progress chart.
The Ride Through Wonderland
Kitazawa Yuki didn’t fall down a rabbit hole. What he did was to follow the prettiest boy he’d ever seen into a used bookstore off Washington Square. The end result was the same; he found himself in a world turned upside down and inside out.
The boy had golden hair and eyes. He was wearing a school uniform, clearly no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. He came to the bookstore almost every day after school. Kitazawa knew this because he started frequenting the place on a daily basis himself to watch the boy. After an hour or so, a man would usually come for him-a slender, white blond and smiling man. They would leave together holding hands.
When they were together, they spoke a foreign language, but Kitazawa could understand them. They spoke Japanese, the language of Kitazawa’s parents; the very language he was studying.
The boy in the bookstore wasn’t the first beautiful child Kitazawa Yuki had ever been drawn to, but he’d never dared approach one of them. This boy, however, was different from the New York City street kids who traveled in packs, riding their skateboards and smoking cigarettes just off school grounds, who would have sneered knowingly at Kitazawa’s friendly overtures as if they were cheap come-ons.
This boy wasn’t like that; he was studious and shy like Kitazawa. They shared a language. If not for this coincidence of language, Kitazawa would never have approached the boy, but, hearing him speak Japanese, it seemed as if they were somehow intended to know each other.
He chose a time well before the man would arrive. “You’re always reading,” he said in Japanese, kneeling beside the boy, steadying the stack of volumes he held in his hands. “Is it a hobby of yours?” The boy smiled radiantly.
“Yes,” he said. “I really like writing, too. I want to become a novelist someday.”
His name was Uesugi Eiri; he was truly an innocent. He seemed both surprised and delighted by the young man’s attention. They talked for ages about books, about writing. By the time the snowy blond man arrived, Kitazawa had won Eiri over completely.
That should have been the end of it, the appearance of the guardian, but it wasn’t. The guardian, Seguchi Tohma, seemed as surprised and delighted as Eiri to make Kitazawa’s acquaintance. Seguchi insisted that Kitazawa join them for dinner in a nearby café.
Eiri ate desserts for dinner and sipped wine from his guardian’s glass, chatting happily with his new friend. Kitazawa learned that they had only recently come to the United States, that Eiri had been very unhappy in Japan where he had been teased mercilessly by his classmates because of his western appearance. Seguchi had brought him to New York in hopes that he would find acceptance.
Throughout the meal, Seguchi ate little and said even less, gazing at Kitazawa with wide, leaf green eyes that were both distantly dreamy and sharply intense. Listening carefully to all Kitazawa said about his studies in language, his visits to Japan as an undergraduate, and his work as a tutor. When they were done, Seguchi picked up the bill, and while his credit card was out, he said, “I would like you to tutor Eiri-kun.”
And Kitazawa Yuki could not help but feel as if there were an outside force over which he had no control conspiring to bring him and Eiri together-magic, or destiny. At first it was wondrous, if strange, to be so compelled.
The furniture was not on the ceiling of the apartment where Eiri and Seguchi lived. The doors did not open onto other places and times. When Kitazawa walked into their home, he did not shrink or grow larger. He did not change into a monster or a fantastic creature; yet, he found that nothing in their world made sense.
Seguchi Tohma was Eiri’s brother-in-law, husband of the boy’s older sister. They had been married for less than a year. Where was she, the sister, the wife? She was back in Japan, with no plans of joining them. “Mika-san prefers to lead her own life,” Seguchi explained breezily.
Even more improbably, the very proper Seguchi Tohma was a rock star in Japan-the songwriter and keyboardist in one of the country’s top bands, Nittle Grasper. However, for the time being, he was working as a session musician for a studio not far from the bookstore where Kitazawa and Eiri had met. Seguchi’s own band was on indefinite hiatus. He said this with the same airiness with which he spoke of his wife’s absence.
Both Seguchi and Eiri were always smiling, always bright and cheerful, but it quickly became plain to Kitazawa that these smiles were forced. Eiri was excited to be in the United States but frightened as well by the uprooting of everything familiar. There was also a deep sadness in the boy. Though young, he had been often and deeply hurt. As for Seguchi, beyond his radiant smile he was as brittle and fragile as a porcelain figurine. Eiri was the center of his world: he clearly adored the boy, doted on him, worried incessantly about his happiness and well-being. The two clung to each other as if they were both starved for warmth and human contact.
Kitazawa preferred that Eiri cling to him. Early on, he pulled Seguchi aside.
“You shouldn’t hold Eiri’s hand on the street,” he advised. “It’s not done in this country, not with a boy that age. People will think the wrong thing.”
After that, Seguchi kept a certain distance from Eiri in public. He could not know that when Kitazawa and the boy were by themselves and Eiri took his tutor’s hand, he was never refused. For Eiri, he became sly.
Still, Kitazawa tried not to think of Seguchi as a rival because that would mean he thought of Eiri as something indecent. He didn’t want to be like that. He was a nice guy. He had always been a nice guy-a good friend, a devoted son and brother, and beloved by his students. He wasn’t a pervert, wasn’t a homosexual. He and his girlfriend, Naoko, had a normal sex life. If he occasionally found himself drawn to young boys, it was purely aesthetic. Sometimes, he was drawn to young boys, interested in interesting children, but that was because he was a writer. Writers watched people, let themselves be drawn into their lives. There was nothing wrong with that.
There was no reason why he and Seguchi shouldn’t be friends. Beyond Eiri, they had a great deal in common. They were just a few years apart in age, both artists, well-read, intelligent, and sophisticated. He should have enjoyed Seguchi’s company, the exquisite meals he cooked which ranged from traditional Japanese food to experiments in American, Italian and Indian food. Under normal circumstances, he might have found Seguchi charming, been interested in his views on books, art and theater. He might have been moved by Seguchi’s devotion to his young brother-in-law. Listening to Seguchi play piano in the evening after Eiri had finished his studies, Kitazawa Yuki might have felt both admiration and pity for the talented and lonely man who could only relax his restraint and truly feel through music.
Kitazawa felt none of these things for Seguchi, only a vague annoyance at his presence. Seguchi stood between Kitazawa and Eiri, prevented them from being together as they should be; yet, he had to be tolerated. So, Kitazawa pretended to be the nice, guileless guy he wished to be. He pretended that he was actually charmed, interested, and moved by Seguchi. He must have pretended very well because as the months passed Seguchi not only seemed to trust Kitazawa completely with Eiri but began to open up to him.
“I have the chance to give Eiri-kun what I needed when I was his age,” Seguchi confessed to the tutor. “I went through the same thing he did when I was a boy. My father was a Dutch musician; he and my mother never married. That matters a lot more in Japan than it does here. If I had looked like the rest of my classmates, it might not have mattered as much, but I was fair and round eyed. My classmates were very cruel. I couldn’t tell my mother what was happening; she was delicate. It would have upset her to know that I was so unhappy. Until I met Sakuma Ryuichi when I was eighteen, I was very much alone.”
Sakuma Ryuichi, who was Nittle Grasper’s singer, seemed to be a central figure in Seguchi’s life. More so than his wife, more even than Eiri. Ryuichi was the source of his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.
“Our last album was my first as producer as well as songwriter,” Seguchi explained one night after Eiri had gone to bed. “I tried to take our sound in a new direction. I’m afraid I overreached myself. It was very poorly received.”
“That’s expected. People tend to like their pop music predictable,” Kitazawa assured him. “It’s no real reflection on the quality of the material.”
“I wish it were that, but the truth is that I did a poor job. I misread our audience and overestimated my talents. My bandmates count on me to make important decisions for us as a band, and I let them down. Ryuichi-san is very disappointed in me,” Seguchi said, hanging his head. His face was flushed; he usually drank only one glass of wine, but he’d had several that evening. He seemed tired and defeated. “The last few times I saw him, he would scarcely look at me. He wouldn’t talk to me; I couldn’t even get his stuffed rabbit to talk to me.”
“That’s pretty harsh. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes.”
“Not me, not where Ryuichi-san is concerned. Ryuichi expects people to take care of him, to handle things for him. If they can’t, he has no more use for them. He has no use for me right now. I’ve tried to go on with my life, marrying Mika, coming here with Eiri, but it eats me up inside knowing how I’ve failed Ryuichi-san. Knowing how little I meant to him and how easily he’s forgotten me.”
Kitazawa laid a comforting hand on Seguchi’s shoulder.
“You’re too concerned with taking care of other people-your mother, Ryuichi, Eiri-kun. Who takes care of you, Tohma-san?”
Seguchi took Kitazawa’s hand in both of his and kissed it on the palm.
“Stay with me tonight, Yuki-kun,” he said.
Kitazawa Yuki did not want to be the kind of man who cheated on his girlfriend with other men, married men. And yet, compared to what he suspected he really was, this seemed benign. Seguchi Tohma was a consenting adult. Mad as it was, going to bed with him was perhaps the sanest thing Kitazawa did in that apartment.
Seguchi was lovely, truly he was. Having made the decision to open himself to the other man, he surrendered completely, gave of himself wholeheartedly. Seguchi really did trust him, really believed that Kitazawa Yuki was what he pretended to be, and for a few hours, Kitazawa could believe it, too.
Yet, when it was over, when Seguchi was curled beside him sleeping, Kitazawa felt only disgust. Good as he had been, Seguchi Tohma was a poor substitute for the one he really wanted, really needed.
Eiri.
The fourteen-year-old boy asleep in the other room.
Nothing else would do. Not the woman he loved, not the exquisite and consummately skilled man snuggled against him … only Eiri, the one he was meant to be with. Eiri, who made him sly and perverse, who bewildered and turned everything upside down and inside out. He hated the boy a little for doing this to him, and yet, it thrilled him. The world was a horrible fun house; it was wonderland.
Kitazawa got out of bed and began to dress.
“Yuki-kun, where are you going?” Seguchi asked, tossled, a sheet held modestly to his chest. Delectable … but Kitazawa was not interested. Seguchi was only a thing that stood between him and Eiri.
“I made a mistake tonight,” Kitazawa said. The words came to him easily; he was a writer, after all. The words that would hurt Seguchi the most and keep him at the furthest distance without endangering Kitazawa’s position in the household. “I should never have let myself be taken in by you. I’m not gay; I’m not interested in men. I felt sorry for you, that’s all. You may not care about your wife, but I love my girlfriend.”
He walked out, though he didn’t leave. He went to Eiri’s room, kissed the lips of the sleeping child. Eiri opened his eyes and smiled to see Kitazawa there.
“Sensei,” he whispered. Kitazawa smoothed his golden hair.
“I wish I could share your bed, Eiri-chan,” he said. “I wish I could share your dreams.”
“I would like that, Sensei,” the boy said. “I would like that more than anything.”
“Someday soon, I promise. Go back to sleep, dream of me.”
“Yes, Sensei.” Kitazawa kissed him once more, and as his tutor left, Eiri called after him, softly and shyly. “I love you, Sensei.”
Seguchi Tohma did not fire Kitazawa as Eiri’s tutor, nor did he ever speak again of what had happened between them. To do so would have been an admission that Kitazawa had hurt him, that their night together had meant more to him than to the other man, that he had opened himself to the wrong person. Seguchi Tohma did not allow himself to make mistakes. In falsely claiming the moral high ground, Kitazawa had effectively silenced him.
From then on, Seguchi distanced himself from Kitazawa and-because student and tutor were always together-from Eiri as well. He devoted himself to courting Sakuma Ryuichi with a collection of new songs. Again, unseen forces worked to bring Kitazawa and Eiri together. Over two years after its release, the disastrous Nittle Grasper album Seguchi had produced was given new life when several songs from it were featured in a popular film. Several key taste makers reassessed the album favorably. Ryuichi’s pink bunny once again saw fit to acknowledge Seguchi’s existence, and Nittle Grasper reassembled in New York to work on a new album. Seguchi was away, often for days, leaving Kitazawa and his charge to themselves.
Kitazawa Yuki never planned nor wanted to be obsessed by a teenage boy, to love and hate a child beyond reason. Sometimes, he wondered if he had ever had a choice in the matter. Could he have turned away, resisted? Could he have chosen to be open instead of sly, kind instead of cruel, decent instead of perverse? No, it was never his choice. He was compelled by a force beyond himself-magic, destiny, love. He was a passenger on a fun house ride set in motion the moment he followed Eiri into the bookstore. There was no option of stopping it or of getting off.
“We were meant to be together, Eiri-chan,” Kitazawa told the boy. “You and I, always.”
And because he still believed that love was kind, magic benign, and destiny merciful, Eiri smiled his angel smile, never guessing how soon the ride through Wonderland would crash.
Title: The Ride Through Wonderland
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairing: Kitazawa Yuki/Seguchi Tohma, Kitazawa Yuki/Uesugi Eiri
Summary: When Kitazawa Yuki met the beautiful blond strangers from Japan, the world was turned upside down and inside out.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 2540
Rating: R
Warnings: Soft yaoi, references to an adult’s sexual interest in a child.
Author’s Note: This was written for the January challenge at
gravi_fuh_q using the pairing “Tohma x Kitazawa”. Amazingly it didn’t end up nearly as vile or twisted as I thought it would. This is also also being used for the “Poisonous Nurture” series, a collection of Seguchi Tohma centered stories being written for the lj community
ficalbum using songs from the Hole album “Live Through This” as prompts. The prompt for this piece is the song "Doll Parts" particularly the lyric "I fake it so real I am beyond fake." Click here to view the "Poisonous Nurture" progress chart.
The Ride Through Wonderland
Kitazawa Yuki didn’t fall down a rabbit hole. What he did was to follow the prettiest boy he’d ever seen into a used bookstore off Washington Square. The end result was the same; he found himself in a world turned upside down and inside out.
The boy had golden hair and eyes. He was wearing a school uniform, clearly no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. He came to the bookstore almost every day after school. Kitazawa knew this because he started frequenting the place on a daily basis himself to watch the boy. After an hour or so, a man would usually come for him-a slender, white blond and smiling man. They would leave together holding hands.
When they were together, they spoke a foreign language, but Kitazawa could understand them. They spoke Japanese, the language of Kitazawa’s parents; the very language he was studying.
The boy in the bookstore wasn’t the first beautiful child Kitazawa Yuki had ever been drawn to, but he’d never dared approach one of them. This boy, however, was different from the New York City street kids who traveled in packs, riding their skateboards and smoking cigarettes just off school grounds, who would have sneered knowingly at Kitazawa’s friendly overtures as if they were cheap come-ons.
This boy wasn’t like that; he was studious and shy like Kitazawa. They shared a language. If not for this coincidence of language, Kitazawa would never have approached the boy, but, hearing him speak Japanese, it seemed as if they were somehow intended to know each other.
He chose a time well before the man would arrive. “You’re always reading,” he said in Japanese, kneeling beside the boy, steadying the stack of volumes he held in his hands. “Is it a hobby of yours?” The boy smiled radiantly.
“Yes,” he said. “I really like writing, too. I want to become a novelist someday.”
His name was Uesugi Eiri; he was truly an innocent. He seemed both surprised and delighted by the young man’s attention. They talked for ages about books, about writing. By the time the snowy blond man arrived, Kitazawa had won Eiri over completely.
That should have been the end of it, the appearance of the guardian, but it wasn’t. The guardian, Seguchi Tohma, seemed as surprised and delighted as Eiri to make Kitazawa’s acquaintance. Seguchi insisted that Kitazawa join them for dinner in a nearby café.
Eiri ate desserts for dinner and sipped wine from his guardian’s glass, chatting happily with his new friend. Kitazawa learned that they had only recently come to the United States, that Eiri had been very unhappy in Japan where he had been teased mercilessly by his classmates because of his western appearance. Seguchi had brought him to New York in hopes that he would find acceptance.
Throughout the meal, Seguchi ate little and said even less, gazing at Kitazawa with wide, leaf green eyes that were both distantly dreamy and sharply intense. Listening carefully to all Kitazawa said about his studies in language, his visits to Japan as an undergraduate, and his work as a tutor. When they were done, Seguchi picked up the bill, and while his credit card was out, he said, “I would like you to tutor Eiri-kun.”
And Kitazawa Yuki could not help but feel as if there were an outside force over which he had no control conspiring to bring him and Eiri together-magic, or destiny. At first it was wondrous, if strange, to be so compelled.
The furniture was not on the ceiling of the apartment where Eiri and Seguchi lived. The doors did not open onto other places and times. When Kitazawa walked into their home, he did not shrink or grow larger. He did not change into a monster or a fantastic creature; yet, he found that nothing in their world made sense.
Seguchi Tohma was Eiri’s brother-in-law, husband of the boy’s older sister. They had been married for less than a year. Where was she, the sister, the wife? She was back in Japan, with no plans of joining them. “Mika-san prefers to lead her own life,” Seguchi explained breezily.
Even more improbably, the very proper Seguchi Tohma was a rock star in Japan-the songwriter and keyboardist in one of the country’s top bands, Nittle Grasper. However, for the time being, he was working as a session musician for a studio not far from the bookstore where Kitazawa and Eiri had met. Seguchi’s own band was on indefinite hiatus. He said this with the same airiness with which he spoke of his wife’s absence.
Both Seguchi and Eiri were always smiling, always bright and cheerful, but it quickly became plain to Kitazawa that these smiles were forced. Eiri was excited to be in the United States but frightened as well by the uprooting of everything familiar. There was also a deep sadness in the boy. Though young, he had been often and deeply hurt. As for Seguchi, beyond his radiant smile he was as brittle and fragile as a porcelain figurine. Eiri was the center of his world: he clearly adored the boy, doted on him, worried incessantly about his happiness and well-being. The two clung to each other as if they were both starved for warmth and human contact.
Kitazawa preferred that Eiri cling to him. Early on, he pulled Seguchi aside.
“You shouldn’t hold Eiri’s hand on the street,” he advised. “It’s not done in this country, not with a boy that age. People will think the wrong thing.”
After that, Seguchi kept a certain distance from Eiri in public. He could not know that when Kitazawa and the boy were by themselves and Eiri took his tutor’s hand, he was never refused. For Eiri, he became sly.
Still, Kitazawa tried not to think of Seguchi as a rival because that would mean he thought of Eiri as something indecent. He didn’t want to be like that. He was a nice guy. He had always been a nice guy-a good friend, a devoted son and brother, and beloved by his students. He wasn’t a pervert, wasn’t a homosexual. He and his girlfriend, Naoko, had a normal sex life. If he occasionally found himself drawn to young boys, it was purely aesthetic. Sometimes, he was drawn to young boys, interested in interesting children, but that was because he was a writer. Writers watched people, let themselves be drawn into their lives. There was nothing wrong with that.
There was no reason why he and Seguchi shouldn’t be friends. Beyond Eiri, they had a great deal in common. They were just a few years apart in age, both artists, well-read, intelligent, and sophisticated. He should have enjoyed Seguchi’s company, the exquisite meals he cooked which ranged from traditional Japanese food to experiments in American, Italian and Indian food. Under normal circumstances, he might have found Seguchi charming, been interested in his views on books, art and theater. He might have been moved by Seguchi’s devotion to his young brother-in-law. Listening to Seguchi play piano in the evening after Eiri had finished his studies, Kitazawa Yuki might have felt both admiration and pity for the talented and lonely man who could only relax his restraint and truly feel through music.
Kitazawa felt none of these things for Seguchi, only a vague annoyance at his presence. Seguchi stood between Kitazawa and Eiri, prevented them from being together as they should be; yet, he had to be tolerated. So, Kitazawa pretended to be the nice, guileless guy he wished to be. He pretended that he was actually charmed, interested, and moved by Seguchi. He must have pretended very well because as the months passed Seguchi not only seemed to trust Kitazawa completely with Eiri but began to open up to him.
“I have the chance to give Eiri-kun what I needed when I was his age,” Seguchi confessed to the tutor. “I went through the same thing he did when I was a boy. My father was a Dutch musician; he and my mother never married. That matters a lot more in Japan than it does here. If I had looked like the rest of my classmates, it might not have mattered as much, but I was fair and round eyed. My classmates were very cruel. I couldn’t tell my mother what was happening; she was delicate. It would have upset her to know that I was so unhappy. Until I met Sakuma Ryuichi when I was eighteen, I was very much alone.”
Sakuma Ryuichi, who was Nittle Grasper’s singer, seemed to be a central figure in Seguchi’s life. More so than his wife, more even than Eiri. Ryuichi was the source of his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.
“Our last album was my first as producer as well as songwriter,” Seguchi explained one night after Eiri had gone to bed. “I tried to take our sound in a new direction. I’m afraid I overreached myself. It was very poorly received.”
“That’s expected. People tend to like their pop music predictable,” Kitazawa assured him. “It’s no real reflection on the quality of the material.”
“I wish it were that, but the truth is that I did a poor job. I misread our audience and overestimated my talents. My bandmates count on me to make important decisions for us as a band, and I let them down. Ryuichi-san is very disappointed in me,” Seguchi said, hanging his head. His face was flushed; he usually drank only one glass of wine, but he’d had several that evening. He seemed tired and defeated. “The last few times I saw him, he would scarcely look at me. He wouldn’t talk to me; I couldn’t even get his stuffed rabbit to talk to me.”
“That’s pretty harsh. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes.”
“Not me, not where Ryuichi-san is concerned. Ryuichi expects people to take care of him, to handle things for him. If they can’t, he has no more use for them. He has no use for me right now. I’ve tried to go on with my life, marrying Mika, coming here with Eiri, but it eats me up inside knowing how I’ve failed Ryuichi-san. Knowing how little I meant to him and how easily he’s forgotten me.”
Kitazawa laid a comforting hand on Seguchi’s shoulder.
“You’re too concerned with taking care of other people-your mother, Ryuichi, Eiri-kun. Who takes care of you, Tohma-san?”
Seguchi took Kitazawa’s hand in both of his and kissed it on the palm.
“Stay with me tonight, Yuki-kun,” he said.
Kitazawa Yuki did not want to be the kind of man who cheated on his girlfriend with other men, married men. And yet, compared to what he suspected he really was, this seemed benign. Seguchi Tohma was a consenting adult. Mad as it was, going to bed with him was perhaps the sanest thing Kitazawa did in that apartment.
Seguchi was lovely, truly he was. Having made the decision to open himself to the other man, he surrendered completely, gave of himself wholeheartedly. Seguchi really did trust him, really believed that Kitazawa Yuki was what he pretended to be, and for a few hours, Kitazawa could believe it, too.
Yet, when it was over, when Seguchi was curled beside him sleeping, Kitazawa felt only disgust. Good as he had been, Seguchi Tohma was a poor substitute for the one he really wanted, really needed.
Eiri.
The fourteen-year-old boy asleep in the other room.
Nothing else would do. Not the woman he loved, not the exquisite and consummately skilled man snuggled against him … only Eiri, the one he was meant to be with. Eiri, who made him sly and perverse, who bewildered and turned everything upside down and inside out. He hated the boy a little for doing this to him, and yet, it thrilled him. The world was a horrible fun house; it was wonderland.
Kitazawa got out of bed and began to dress.
“Yuki-kun, where are you going?” Seguchi asked, tossled, a sheet held modestly to his chest. Delectable … but Kitazawa was not interested. Seguchi was only a thing that stood between him and Eiri.
“I made a mistake tonight,” Kitazawa said. The words came to him easily; he was a writer, after all. The words that would hurt Seguchi the most and keep him at the furthest distance without endangering Kitazawa’s position in the household. “I should never have let myself be taken in by you. I’m not gay; I’m not interested in men. I felt sorry for you, that’s all. You may not care about your wife, but I love my girlfriend.”
He walked out, though he didn’t leave. He went to Eiri’s room, kissed the lips of the sleeping child. Eiri opened his eyes and smiled to see Kitazawa there.
“Sensei,” he whispered. Kitazawa smoothed his golden hair.
“I wish I could share your bed, Eiri-chan,” he said. “I wish I could share your dreams.”
“I would like that, Sensei,” the boy said. “I would like that more than anything.”
“Someday soon, I promise. Go back to sleep, dream of me.”
“Yes, Sensei.” Kitazawa kissed him once more, and as his tutor left, Eiri called after him, softly and shyly. “I love you, Sensei.”
Seguchi Tohma did not fire Kitazawa as Eiri’s tutor, nor did he ever speak again of what had happened between them. To do so would have been an admission that Kitazawa had hurt him, that their night together had meant more to him than to the other man, that he had opened himself to the wrong person. Seguchi Tohma did not allow himself to make mistakes. In falsely claiming the moral high ground, Kitazawa had effectively silenced him.
From then on, Seguchi distanced himself from Kitazawa and-because student and tutor were always together-from Eiri as well. He devoted himself to courting Sakuma Ryuichi with a collection of new songs. Again, unseen forces worked to bring Kitazawa and Eiri together. Over two years after its release, the disastrous Nittle Grasper album Seguchi had produced was given new life when several songs from it were featured in a popular film. Several key taste makers reassessed the album favorably. Ryuichi’s pink bunny once again saw fit to acknowledge Seguchi’s existence, and Nittle Grasper reassembled in New York to work on a new album. Seguchi was away, often for days, leaving Kitazawa and his charge to themselves.
Kitazawa Yuki never planned nor wanted to be obsessed by a teenage boy, to love and hate a child beyond reason. Sometimes, he wondered if he had ever had a choice in the matter. Could he have turned away, resisted? Could he have chosen to be open instead of sly, kind instead of cruel, decent instead of perverse? No, it was never his choice. He was compelled by a force beyond himself-magic, destiny, love. He was a passenger on a fun house ride set in motion the moment he followed Eiri into the bookstore. There was no option of stopping it or of getting off.
“We were meant to be together, Eiri-chan,” Kitazawa told the boy. “You and I, always.”
And because he still believed that love was kind, magic benign, and destiny merciful, Eiri smiled his angel smile, never guessing how soon the ride through Wonderland would crash.