ENTRY #4 Linger Part 1
Title: Linger
Word Count 11,415
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU/Supernatural
Summary: A workaholic twenty-five-year-old man one day stumbles on a youthful boy of fifteen, who is really more than what meets the eye. “You’re all grown up now, Sho-kun,” the boy says, “I hate it.”
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“Be me for a while.”
-Eli, Let The Right One In
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The boy’s name was Satoshi Ohno. He was fifteen when I first met him, but I didn’t remember any of it at first.
Ten years later, we met again.
He still looked fifteen, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.
“You’re all grown up now, Sho-kun,” he said, his gaze deep enough to stir an odd combination of amusement and panic in my gut, but not an inkling of the memories I should’ve had of him.
Not to mention that his eyes had this mesmerizing grit to them that quite literally displaced my senses to another plane. They were soulful and candid and a whole lot of other emotions I could not quite define. I was literally stunned before him, with a dozen questions in my head, but not one word to express any of them.
“I hate it,” he said.
I didn’t really understand what he meant back then. But somehow, I felt like I knew why.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Masaki Aiba wasn’t the first one to disappear, but his disappearance was the one that made the biggest impact in my life.
He wasn’t my friend, nor were we acquainted beyond my duties as sales agent for his 150-million-yen apartment. It was the biggest listing I ever got in my three-year stint with the Matsumoto Realty, Inc. It was also going to be the biggest, most unlikely source of the worst emotional struggle I would ever have to endure.
Fate and I, we had always been at odds with each other. Somewhere along the course of my once cautious and dull-as-nails life, I might have done something really, really terrible to piss her off and she had since then been settling scores I could not even remember owing her, even after I had become less of the cowering quitter I used to be.
Of course, there was always the possibility that she’s working for my dad, because I wouldn’t put it past my old man to jump in the sack with anybody who could screw me up bad enough to prove his point.
No pun intended.
“What did the police say?” my mom asked, her attention divided between grading college papers and trying to indulge her eldest son’s perpetual need to vent.
I let out a frustrated sigh and grumpily buried my face in my arms. “No leads. No clues. No nothing,” I mumbled, my nose wrinkling at the smell of my own curry-flavored breath.
“His family hasn’t heard from him either?”
“No.”
“And you’re here griping to the table about losing a possible nine-figure sale.”
My mom’s words caught my heart in a vice grip. Trust this woman to scold with the sweetest sounding voice and make me feel like an ass and a heel without batting an eyelash.
Maybe this was exactly why I always came running to her whenever I felt like Sho Sakurai needed to be knocked out of his soapbox of entitlement.
I sighed again and leaned back into my chair. “Of course, I feel bad for his family,” I said, trying to defend myself, and also because I really did care. “But how is that going to make up for the hours I could’ve spent finding new clients?”
“Sho, honey,” mom said in that condescending tone she knew I hated, as she casually reached out for her cup of tea. “It isn’t like you get lucky anywhere else.”
That struck an already sore nerve and left me with barely enough pride to pout and mumble, “Shut up, Mom.”
Sometimes, it did bother me that my own mother took this much amusement from the endless stream of irony that seemed to hound my life.
She threw me a sideway glance across the dining table and, seeing my apparent irritation, decided not to tease me anymore. “Are you still doing okay in that apartment?”
Or maybe take a subtler approach to it. “Do you even need to ask?”
My apartment at the time was some odd-thousand-yen a month suburban minimalist unit that’s just large enough to fit a bed, a barely working kotatsu, mounds and piles of clothes and books and not much else. There was a toilet I shared with two other tenants on the same floor that’s usually so filthy that my piss went crawling right back into my kidneys at the sight of it.
There’s a laundry area downstairs where I had already lost two pairs of my better underwear and the ‘Best Aniki In The World!’ shirt I got from Mai and Shu on my twentieth birthday, over which I threw such a fit that almost got me unanimously evicted.
But all these complex-inducing things aside, it was a fairly good neighborhood. Mostly quiet and mostly filled with people self-sufficient enough to not bother anyone else.
There was also a bathhouse down the street that was the only saving grace of this whole sordid rebellion I had going on against my dad.
“You can always move back here, you know,” mom said, her indifferent tone faintly laced with longing, as it always was whenever she said those words.
“And have dad mock me with his I -told-you-so’s whenever he actually remembers he still has a family and comes home? No thanks, mom.”
I realized those words were going to bite even before I finished saying them. And I felt like punching myself in the face when I saw my mom’s jaws tighten and her lips twitch against a sharper rebuttal, which I would’ve deserved.
She wordlessly turned her attention back to her papers.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, bowing my head in shame.
Mom clucked his tongue dismissively. “So young, and already so jaded,” she chanted, still too sore to look me in the eye. “Where did I ever go wrong with you, Sho?”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my mom. She did try hard. And whatever went awry with me was probably more me than her. “I said I was sorry.”
“I heard you,” she said, “And I know.” She finally looked up and gave me a warm smile, the kind that only mothers knew how to give. It was almost magical how a simple twitch at the corner of her lips could tell so much, make me feel so much.
“I know, too,” I sighed, outwardly uncomfortable, but inwardly grateful. I gave her my own smile that said the affections behind my words.
We never did get around to saying I love you’s at the Sakurai residence. This was the closest we could ever get.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
My parents may have had perfectly valid reasons for naming me Sho. They may have even expected me to live up to that name, too.
To soar. To fly high. To achieve great things.
But, as far as I could remember, the only thing that’s constantly been soaring in my life was my temper whenever Fate wanted to be funny and tried to pull a fast one on me.
Especially in front of a man who might be a year younger than me, but was already a million times more successful. And richer.
“Wait, you’re what?!” I practically screamed, taking full advantage of the privacy of the karaoke box that Jun Matsumoto, my friend and soon-to-be erstwhile boss, dragged me to after overtime work ended the following day.
Jun shushed and pulled me back down to the couch before I could bolt out in a blaze of fire and ungracious ill-humor. “Will you please calm down and listen to me first?”
“You’re firing me. I don’t need to hear it twice. Now let go.” But he didn’t. The more I struggled, the more he tightened his grip.
“No. My dad wants me to fire you,” he amended, like that was supposed to make me feel any better. “Goddamit, Sho-kun!” He grabbed my other wrist and literally snarled in my face, “I said, sit still!”
It took everything I had not to gulp at the bile in Jun’s voice and was thus effectively frozen on the wine-colored, two-cushion couch that suddenly felt too small for the two of us.
“So,” Jun cleared his throat and reverted back to the gentle tone I was more familiar with. He let go of my wrists, too, and I made sure they weren’t broken as I listened to him talk. “My dad thinks you bring bad luck to the company-”
“I don’t blame him.”
“I seriously thought we could just laugh about this tonight.” Jun’s smile faltered when I matched his half-assed attempt at a joke with my full-on poker face. “Anyway, you know I can never do that to you, but I’m running out of reasons to tell my Dad without making him suspicious-”
“There’s nothing to be suspicious about-”
“Fuck! Will you quit talking for a moment? Of course there’s nothing to be suspicious about!” Jun cleared his throat again and loosened up his tie, like he’s trying to rid himself of a suffocating memory. “God, Sho-kun! I forget how heartless you can be sometimes.”
I grabbed the half-drunk can of seasonal beer I slammed on the table in my previous outrage and drunk the rest of it in one swig. I could not agree more with what Jun had said. Sometimes, even with my best intentions, I just ended up hurting people without really meaning to.
“But, like I said, I’m not going to let you go,” Jun went on, reclaiming his own can at the same time that I grabbed my second one. “At least, not yet.”
I raised an eyebrow while pulling the tab off my beer, filling the room with the hissing sound of carbonation escaping. “What do you mean?”
“Well, since Kazu’s practically living with me anyway, I’ve convinced him to sell his house and let you handle things for him. So that should keep you busy in the next few days.”
I suddenly felt a rush of discomfort at this sudden make-or-break responsibility dropping unbidden on my lap. “That’s probably not the best idea-”
“It’s the most perfect idea!” Jun, on the other hand, seemed a little too enthusiastic. “You just need to pack it up, clean it a little, do a few repairs here and there. And it’s close to everything, so I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting reasonable offers for it.”
I knew Jun meant well, but I could not help feeling like I was being mocked by his goodwill. “Have you seen my numbers lately, Jun-kun? Give it to someone else with a better track record.” I sighed in frustration and drunk more beer.
“I do feel you’ll do better with this one-”
“That’s what you said with Aiba’s property.”
“This is going to be different-”
“The same way that Ikuta-kun’s house was different? We were lucky we didn’t get sued when it burned down.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but still-”
“You’re going to take the listing for Kazu’s property, Sho-kun,” Jun insisted, his voice low and commanding. “And you’re going to sell the goddamn house!”
“He’s not going to disappear on me, is he?” I asked, still smarting from latest bad luck.
“If I need to tie him up to my bed just to make sure, I will.”
I almost choked on my beer. “I didn’t need that image in my head, Jun-kun!”
“It helps me cope better when I know you know what you’re missing.” Jun snickered.
I felt like poking him in the eye. “Shut it.”
We drank in silence for a few minutes, just staring at the random sceneries flashing on the idle screen of the bluntly ignored karaoke.
Then Jun started talking and the walls began to close in on us again. “Kazu knows about us, if that’s bothering you.”
“There was never any ’us’, Jun-kun.” I knew he was teasing, but I had already played into his hands before I realized it.
“Yeah, well. I did confess. And you rejected.” He casually reached out for the controller and began fiddling with it, probably feeling drunk enough to let loose.
We never did bother with the karaoke unless one of us was tipsy enough to kick start things.
“I should’ve really stayed away from you afterwards, you know,” I grumbled with fond irritation, then smirked as I watched him enter three of his favorite artist’s songs in a row. I did find it delightful to see this side of him sometimes. Who knew that this wretched slave driver in the morning could be such a dedicated fanboy at night? “You’re annoying!”
“Isn’t that what you love about me?” Jun leered playfully, making me flinch at the tip of his finger brushing a burning trail down my cheek as the now tediously familiar intro to Gackt’s Vanilla started playing. “You still blush like a girl whenever I tease you.”
I had no doubt I did. “Asshole.”
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
I shared a cab with Jun on our way home that night, and I remember telling myself how it would be the very last time I ever did.
Jun was the closest thing to a best friend I had, but sometimes I just loathed being around him. Especially when he had just struck up a disturbingly animated conversation with the cab driver about the alarming rise in the number of missing young adults in East Side Tokyo, which just recently included Masaki Aiba.
And I could not understand, even to this day, how a conversation that began with ”Have you heard about that missing guy?” and replied to with ”Hn. I heard he was taken from his house. We can never be safe these days, huh.” could easily escalate to the most ridiculous theories that did not spare alien kidnappings, cult rituals, and vampire blood-hostages.
Well, what would I have expected from a drunken bookworm and a sober old man who might have been better off drunk?
“It’s horrible, ne?” the driver kept talking, spurred on by Jun’s wide-eyed interest and totally oblivious to my growing discomfort. “You two should be careful with who you let into your house.”
Yes, totally oblivious.
“Come to think of it,” Jun turned to look at me from the passenger’s seat, “I’ve never been to your apartment, Sho-kun.”
”You’re not missing out on anything.” I pulled my fur-lined parka tightly around myself and pretended to be engrossed in the passing sceneries. I was barely able to ignore the tiny shivers slithering through my nerves.
“Maybe you should move back in with your parents for a while. That place kind of worries me.”
I turned to Jun and tried my best to smile when I saw the genuine concern in his eyes. “It’s fine,” I said, but my heart had already begun beating out of sync. Trust a scaredy-cat to overreact at the slightest hint of danger. “I can take care of myself.”
It was just as well that right then and there, the cab parked at the corner street where I had to get off, and Jun was suddenly asking if I wanted him to walk with me.
“It’s less than a hundred steps to my apartment, Jun-kun,” I replied, trying to put up a brave front, because I seriously wanted to say ‘yes’, but it wasn’t like he was less of a scaredy-cat than me anyway. I opened the cab door and stepped out.
“Yeah, well. Call me when you get there, all right?” he said, sounding bossy.
“Sure,” I mumbled before closing the door.
Watching the cab drive off sent a jolting chill up my spine. It became all too clear to me how I was on my own now, with only my briefcase and my shivering backbone to take me home.
You know that feeling when you think that someone is watching you? I suddenly felt that way. Like, I was not entirely alone.
My senses were all fired up and hyper aware of the tiniest sounds around me, the softest shifts in the direction of the wind. I wrapped my arms around myself and soldiered on, literally shaking in my socks as I wobbled down the quiet street leading to the low-rise building that had been my home for the past two years.
I remember looking back every few seconds to check if some shadowy creature was on my tail.
And it was while I was looking over my shoulder that someone did unexpectedly appear right in front of me, though he did not really look any bit of an attacker, now that I think about it.
He was leaning against the lamppost outside my apartment building. He almost made me jump when I turned back and he was there, when I remembered not seeing him there just a second ago. He rendered me speechless, motionless despite the fact that he was just a boy. Perhaps a little strange, perhaps slightly in over his head (why else would he be outside at this hour?), but still a boy.
He did not seem especially strong, either. He wasn’t angry, nor ill-intentioned.
Still, he kept me frozen on my feet as he spoke to me like he knew me. Telling me how grown up I had become and how he hated it like it was the worst plague this side of the earth.
Then he walked towards me, past me. And when I finally could move again and turned around to give him a piece of my mind, he was no longer there.
This was how our first meeting went.
At least, the one I could remember.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Thinking about it now, I could not help but marvel at how perfectly timed the whole encounter with the boy had been. I should’ve really known something was up the very second he appeared in front of me, seemingly out of thin air.
Then again, he said it best himself, “You’re not supposed to know.”
It really riled me up whenever he answered my questions with those words, every-freakin’-time!
What was it exactly that I wasn’t supposed to know? Who was he, and why did he seem to know too much about me? Even to the point of hating me for being all grown up!
Why would anybody hate somebody for growing up? It did not make sense to me at that time.
“You’ve become just like everyone else. It’s gotten kind of easy to read you, Sho-kun,” he said on Sunday night, two days after our initial meeting that I would’ve easily taken for a dream, had it not for him appearing again on Saturday night, then again on Sunday, in front of Kazunari Ninomiya’s two-storey property.
He was waving and grinning at me, like he did yesterday, as though we had known each other for years.
We probably had, but I didn’t know it yet at this point. So I just nodded at him and went on my way, half-expecting him to follow, and half-dreading the fact that he just might.
He did. Both times.
“I don’t mind waiting for you,” he said, striding casually beside me, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans.
I casually tossed one end of my gray wool muffler over my shoulder, more for a stylish flair than functionality since it was luckily not too chilly tonight. Tokyo had yet to see snow this year, but I wasn’t holding my breath for it anymore. I never did. Although the boy had argued and insisted the previous night that there was actually a time when I did wait for snow like any normal kid.
That I was actually a child once, with dreams and aspirations. And time enough to wait for snow.
Imagine that.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked, then immediately regretted it when I realized I may have overstepped my boundaries.
He didn’t seem to mind, though. That, or he was just too naive to accept the fact that I’d rather not have him shadowing my every move for the whole walk back to my place, like he did the previous night. He did seem to give off that kind of aura. “I like walking you home.”
I snorted at this unexpected bluntness, as I adjusted the sling bag strapped across my chest.
He looked up at me with a curious frown, the top of his head only reaching up to the lowest slope of my shoulder. “Don’t you like having me around, Sho-kun?”
As if on some invisible cue, we both stopped walking. Well, he stopped, and for some reason I found myself following his lead.
And there was something both dramatic and comically clichéd about the way his dark, surprisingly soft hair swayed in the light breeze that suddenly past us. It was a scene straight out of those romantic mangas I had just been packing in Ninomiya’s place a while back.
I knew it was ridiculous, but my breath hitched anyway and almost literally stopped at how this brief interlude from Nature had brought all of the boy’s charms into focus. His curtained haircut, his round face, his dopey eyes, his beaked nose, even his worn-out shirt ineptly labeled ‘Nancy’, all came together in a strange mix of perfection, top billed by a pair of pale-pink lips that seemed to harbor both innocence and lies.
Everything looked even more remarkable without the theatrics, really. No music. No minute flakes of snow swirling in the wind.
There was just him.
And there was just me.
And how could I ever be rude to this boy and say ‘No’, when he’s looking like this?
“Sho-kun?”
How could I even think of pushing him away, of denying myself this beautiful sight, when the very thought of not seeing him again was already starting to gnaw at my chest?
“Sho-kun...?”
“Uhm.” I snapped out of my thoughts, which were already bordering on obsession, and looked away, unable to withstand the pure amusement in his eyes. I cleared my throat and resumed walking. “I’m going for soba tonight. You can come if you want to.” I knew I didn’t have to ask.
He quickly caught up with me and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t eat soba, it makes me sick.”
“Are you serious?!” Who the hell gets sick from eating soba?! “What do you eat then?”
“I can’t tell you.”
This tireless play at secrecy was really starting to rub my patience the wrong way. “I won’t know what to feed you if you don’t tell me what you eat.”
“You don’t have to feed me, Sho-kun,” he said, casually brushing a hand through his hair and almost talking my breath away again. “I don’t mind just staying and watching you eat.”
“Suit yourself,” I grumbled, trying hard to appear unaffected. How could anybody be so irritating one moment, and so incredibly adorable the next?
I turned to him and caught him smiling at me. I pulled one end of the muffler off my neck and let out a deep and calming sigh.
It wasn’t much help.
Two nights in and this boy was already growing on me. And I hardly even knew anything about him other than the fact that he’s annoyingly charming and disturbingly beautiful.
Oh, and he’s also just fifteen years old.
Imagine that.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
If I had only been a little more imaginative and a lot less dull, like Jun was when he’s drunk, I would’ve been able to catch the signs that openly hit me in the face at every turn.
But, as it was, Sho Sakurai was too jaded, too dumb, and too grown-up to realize that Satoshi Ohno, the unassuming boy whose only obvious fault was his laid-back simplicity, was, in fact, anything but.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked once we were settled at a corner table in the soba place I frequented. It wasn’t snowing, but the air outside was bitingly cold enough to make me wonder what the kid was thinking, walking around the city in a shirt almost as thin as blotting paper.
“No,” he said, propping his face up in his hands and fixing his gaze on me.
“Eh?” His eyes on me felt like a spell that froze my brain on this one word.
“I don’t really get cold anymore,” he said, pouting and looking up briefly for a pensive flair.
I crossed my arms on the table and leaned slightly forward, clearing my throat and trying to look cool. “And why is that?”
“I just don’t.”
“And I’m not supposed to know, right?” It was getting hard to deny how much this boy was affecting me.
“Hey, you’re catching up, Sho-kun!” He smiled.
I felt my heart flip-flop inside my chest and pulled away just as the bespectacled shop owner herself arrived with my order.
“I’ve never seen this boy before,” Rie Shibata said good-naturedly while setting the tray on the table, the appetizing steam rising from the bowl instantly filling our space with the smell of curry soba. “New friend?”
I was tempted to say ‘visiting relative’, because I didn’t really like the teasing glint in her eyes when she looked at the boy then back at me.
But the boy beat me to it and introduced himself as my friend with such congeniality and charm that spurred the giggling Shibata-san to reach out and try to feel his crotch.
If the boy was horrified by such an unexpectedly brazen act, he didn’t show it much. I almost fainted when Shibata-san did that to me the first time, and was barely able to keep myself from screaming ’she touched me!‘ all over the place.
But this boy just kept laughing as he slapped the playfully persistent woman’s hands over and over again.
“Can we eat our soba now, please?” I said, not even trying to mask my impatience.
Shibata-san tousled the boy’s hair and threw me a spiteful frown. “I like you better than your friend, Satoshi-kun.”
I grimaced at her and fought off the urge to stick my tongue out.
She stuck her tongue out at me anyway before stalking off and quickly finding somebody else to harass in another table.
“The two of you are pretty close, huh,” the boy mused, his nose wrinkling slightly at the smell of food. He seriously looked like he was going to puke from just the sight of my bowl.
And I so easily dismissed it as mere childish whim. Because I was slow like that.
“We get along,” I said while splitting my chopsticks. “You can get anything you want, you know. I’ll pay for it.”
“I told you, soba makes me sick.”
“Don’t let Shibata-san hear you say that,” I warned.
He leaned further on the table, closer to me, and whispered, “I wouldn’t even dare. That furry thing on her head scares me.”
I laughed so hard at that, I almost snorted broth from my nose. I had never even thought of poking fun on Shibata-san’s old-fashioned bun, but that was such a perfect, albeit a little rude, way of describing it.
My laughter died down when I caught the shop owner staring right at me with that teasing glint in her eyes, candidly paired now with a knowing smile.
I turned my attention back to the boy and surprised both of us when I asked, “Are you coming for me tomorrow?”
The boy took a beat to reply, “Would you want me to?”
“Yeah,” I said, his wide, hopeful smile working me up like a truth spell. “Yeah, I guess. You can help me clean the house up or something.”
“Oh.” He suddenly looked unsure. “Well, you don’t own it, right?”
I frowned at the sudden drop in his enthusiasm. “No.”
“Who does?”
“No one, technically. It’s up for sale.” I casually poked my chopsticks into my soba, suddenly wishing I could just take the offer back. I didn’t even know this boy well enough to trust him around somebody else’s house. What was I thinking?
“Hmmm,” he hummed. I looked up, saw him smiling and suddenly felt like a heel for doubting him. “I guess it’s all right then. I’ll come help you tomorrow after sunset.”
“Eh?” I chuckled. “Why’d you have to wait for sunset?”
“Because the sun hates me.”
He said those words so matter-of-factly that I was left with no other choice but to take them as truth. No questions asked. “You’re funny.”
“Nothing wrong with being safe.” He did that thing again with his face in his hands and his gaze trained on me.
“Rii~ght,” I drawled, trying to ignore the tiny prickles of warmth spreading through my heart.
If I had only paid enough attention then... If I had only been less of the grown-up that the boy professed to hate so much, I would’ve known, right then and there, what Satoshi Ohno was.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Shibata-san and I had a pretty special thing going. Nothing of the sexual sort, of course, though she had probably touched me more times than any other person, man or woman, had. She watched over me, and made me feel like I could always count on her on the toughest of times. She was almost like my second mom, a slightly exaggerated version of the real one, really, with the teasing and the mild reprimands, minus the groping hands.
She was a strange sort, too, now that I think about it. Her soba shop did not open until after sunset. I don’t remember ever seeing her roaming around in broad daylight. Her staffs would often joke about her stubborn resolve never to get anywhere near the kitchen area, and I had quoted her once as saying that she could only take the smell of soba a little at a time.
“Too much of it will kill me!” she had exclaimed.
“Why keep a soba shop, then?” I had asked, incredulous and chiding.
“Because this place meant a lot to my special person.”
I never did find out who that special person was or whatever happened to him. Shibata-san had only ever mentioned him in passing, and would refuse to answer any of the prying questions I would occasionally throw at her in hopes of drawing out a knee-jerk response.
I thought it was a really special thing to do, though. To keep this place running in memory of her beloved even though she could hardly bear the mere smell of soba.
Shibata-san said she had always been a romantic at heart. And despite the brazen character I have had to deal with every day since we met, I had never doubted that she was.
So it didn’t really surprise me all that much when I eventually found out that I owed her so much more than what she had already given me.
She was the one who brought Satoshi Ohno back into my life.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
The following day could not past quickly enough. I practically drove myself through the floor, packing up and cleaning up Ninomiya’s place without pause, just so I would not be tempted to sit in a corner and stare at the clock until my eyes bled out.
I exhausted myself so much that by half past five in the afternoon, I was only barely awake on my feet. And Jun was suddenly calling, the doorbell was finally ringing, and all I could really think of doing was curl up on couch and faint.
“Yeah,” I snarled into the phone as I went to get the door.
I hardly really heard what Jun was saying on the other line, but I didn’t miss the rather invigorating sight of the boy standing at the doorway.
“Hey,” he said, smiling and making my heart skip too many beats at once.
“Hey,” I said back, raking a hand through my hair consciously, even though I knew he wouldn’t really mind if I looked like I had just stuck my head in a windbag.
“What?” Jun asked as I gestured for the boy to come in.
My boss kept droning on and on in my ears, trying to explain why Kazunari Ninomiya could not even be bothered to come over and help pack his own things in response to the slightly angry mail I had the gall to send him earlier this afternoon.
“...he’s been working on this game design for weeks! I haven’t even been in bed with him over the weekend!”
“Okay,” I mumbled, my attention almost completely riveted on the boy and his obvious reluctance to walk through the door. I frowned and gestured for him to come in again, as I tried to make as much sense of Jun’s spiel as I could.
“I’ll tell him to come by for a while tomorrow to help move the boxes,” he said as the boy looked at me worriedly before stepping in. One foot first, then the other. The process so painfully slow that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What was that?” Jun asked.
“Nothing,” I said, downplaying my amusement to a smile. “I’ll wait for him then. Tell him to come early.”
The boy stopped moving for a moment, just standing as still as a boulder on the entryway, like he was waiting for something to happen.
“I’ll tell him,” Jun promised, then asked, “Is someone there with you?”
“No,” I lied, then asserted, “I have to go.”
“Sho-kun-!”
I ended the call and shoved the phone into my pocket, snickering as I faced the boy. “What are you doing?”
He hummed, then sighed and was smiling again within the same second, choosing to ignore my question by showing off his loot. “I brought you something to eat. From Shibata-san’s shop.”
“You went there on your own?” I asked in exaggerated surprise, taking the bag from him so he could take his shoes off properly.
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised you got out alive.”
“Not unscathed, though.”
We laughed over this on our way to the dining table. The house was practically bare now, save for the boxes neatly piled in one corner, and a few of the bigger furniture that could not be packed.
“Who was that you were talking to?” the boy asked as I set the bag on the table and slumped down on a chair.
I waved for him to do the same on the side opposite from mine. “That was my boss.”
“Oh,” he said, pulling up a chair and slumping down in the exact same way I did, carelessly and without much regard for either posture or decorum. I felt like something in our newly established bond was strengthened at that exact moment.
“We were talking about moving the boxes tomorrow,” I said, suddenly feeling like I should tell him everything. Like I could talk to him about anything at all.
“I heard,” he said. “I like him. He seemed nice.”
I looked incredulously at him as I set the covered soba bowl on the table. “You haven’t even met him.”
“But you like him, right?”
I stared at his face for longer than I intended to, his teasing smile cutting through a part of my heart. I didn’t really know what I wanted to prove, but I felt like I should make things clear to him. “He’s my friend.”
“I know,” he chanted, his gaze casually sweeping through the house. “I don’t think there’s anything left for me to do here.”
“I’m still glad you came, though,” I said on impulse, surprising myself so much that I almost spilled curry broth on myself.
“I am, too,” the boy said, his smile now mild and a little shy, making me doubt my ability to eat the soba without messing up. “And it’s okay to call me Satoshi-kun, you know.”
“Huh?” I asked, rummaging through the bag to distract myself. I pulled out a couple bottles of what I first assumed were tea.
“You’ve never called me by my name once,” the boy said, his smile quickly turning into a pout.
I showed him one of the bottles and snapped, “This is beer!”
“Yeah,” he said coolly. “Shibata-san said I should bring you some.”
“You could’ve gotten arrested carrying this around!” It amazes me now how quickly I could get from pleasantly fluttering to literally fuming. “What was she thinking?!”
The boy sniggered, annoying me more. “Geez! Calm down, Sho-kun! I made it here, didn’t I?”
“Still!” I shrieked. “I’ll have a talk with that woman!”
“You’ll still drink it, though. Right?”
I looked at the boy and he looked back at me and my nerves were suddenly flooded with the calmness solidly reflected in his eyes.
“Loosen up,” he said, his voice soft yet firm, sounding so much older than his fifteen years. “And please call me Satoshi-kun.” Before I could even make sense of what was happening, his tone had already shifted back to a boyish whine that was more suited to his age. “You feel so distant to me, Sho-kyu~n!”
The way he added that special kind of cutesy flair to the honorific he used with my name, plus the hurt-puppy look he so skillfully matched with it, were my undoing. I practically melted into putty right in front of this boy, and I couldn’t even do anything to help myself.
“Fine. I’ll call you Satoshi-kun!” I huffed, twisting the cap off the first bottle of beer.
“Great!” he exclaimed.
This night could not past quickly enough, either.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Needless to say, being with Satoshi made me feel alive. He brought so much presence with him, so much positive vibes that he made it so easy for me to forget the world beyond our own private space.
In all the three days that I knew him, he had already managed to make me feel a lot of the emotions I would never have admitted I was capable of feeling, and a lot more of those I could not even define.
Without even trying too hard, he could send me doubling over in fits of laughter, hurting my sides and almost peeing in my pants.
The next moment, he would say something that would so stun me out of my wits that I was left wondering if I was still talking with the same boy from before.
And then he would make me laugh again, and I’d remember.
“Why did you reject him, Sho-kun?” he suddenly asked out of the blue.
“What?! Who?!” I thought I was drunk enough not to get shocked anymore.
“Your boss.”
“How’d you know that?!” I squeaked, utterly scandalized.
Satoshi shrugged. “Wild guess?”
“It’s none of your business,” I grunted, slumping lazily on the couch and wishing Satoshi had brought more beer.
“Okay,” he said, slumping just as lazily beside me, our shoulders almost brushing.
We were silent for about a minute before I decided to tell him anyway, because hell! I was tipsy enough not to care. “The kind of relationship he wanted was not the one I needed.”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
I turned to him and smirked. “You’re too young to understand.”
“I’m fifteen, Sho-kun,” he said, his tone almost condescending. “I’m not a baby.”
“Sure.”
“I know what sex is,” he went on, his eyes glinting with mischief.
I was so surprised I almost sobered up. “What?”
“And tops and bottoms... and lube and stuffs. “
“WHAT?!” I was twenty-five, and this boy was fifteen, but for some reason I was the one who ended up all feverish and prickly.
“There’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t understand,” he said with conviction.
I didn’t know which was more disturbing, hearing a fifteen-year-old boy say he knew about sex, or that same fifteen-year-old boy hinting on the possibility that he knew more than I did.
I cleared my throat and gave him what he wanted. “Well. I didn’t wanna bottom for him and he didn’t wanna compromise for me. And can we just leave things at that, please?”
He hummed, but did not say anything more.
I closed my eyes and began relaxing in the silence, the calming warmth of having a person I knew I could trust sitting this close beside me.
“I don’t mind being bottom, though.”
My eyes snapped open and my whole world began spinning all out of sync again. “I wasn’t asking.”
I felt him sidling closer to me and gulped when the sides of our little fingers touched. “Just thought I’d let you know,” he whispered cheekily,
The warmth that began on my cheeks drew a burning trail all the way down to my toes.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
When Satoshi began asking about my dad, I did not even wonder how he knew anymore. Somehow, Satoshi knowing so much about me had become an accepted truth, one that could not challenged, no matter how illogical it seemed to me back then.
Satoshi’s head was now resting on my shoulder, and my cheek was pressed on top of his head. Our voices had become softer, calmer, more comfortable in the close and trusting space we were suddenly sharing.
“When are you going to talk to your dad, Sho-kun?”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
I watched his finger tracing random shapes on the top of my hand, and was both fascinated and soothed by the sight and feel of it. “I don’t know. Maybe, never?”
“Okada-san, the man who took care of me, died about a year ago.”
I felt a sudden painful tug in my chest. “I’m sorry.” I fought off the urge to grab his hand squeeze it, deeming it necessary, but inappropriate.
“It was devastating,” Satoshi’s voice cracked, as did my heart. “But, the knowledge that I was able to tell him everything that I wanted to say, let him know everything that I was feeling, all the things that I wanted to do, with or without his consent, and having him understand me, see eye to eye with me, treat me as a man, an equal... It’s a wonderful feeling, Sho-kun. Please, don’t miss outon it.”
I took a moment to process his words, unshed tears already burning at the back of my eyes and making my head throb. Then I sighed, and dismissed the thought, because I didn’t think that what I had with my dad was anywhere near what Satoshi had with Okada-san.
“Were you able to succeed in what you wanted to do?” I asked instead.
“I’m getting there.”
“Is it worth it?”
He looked up at me and smiled. “More than I ever imagined,” he said, like he was telling me.
“Good for you...” I murmured, my eyes fluttering, suddenly heavy with sleep.
I barely felt the change in my position, but I could somehow tell that Satoshi had laid me out properly on the couch.
And then he was whispering something to me, his breath flitting pleasantly over my face.
“Sometimes, I do wish you’d remember, Sho-kun. But I can never undo what I did.”
Word Count 11,415
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU/Supernatural
Summary: A workaholic twenty-five-year-old man one day stumbles on a youthful boy of fifteen, who is really more than what meets the eye. “You’re all grown up now, Sho-kun,” the boy says, “I hate it.”
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
“Be me for a while.”
-Eli, Let The Right One In
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
The boy’s name was Satoshi Ohno. He was fifteen when I first met him, but I didn’t remember any of it at first.
Ten years later, we met again.
He still looked fifteen, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.
“You’re all grown up now, Sho-kun,” he said, his gaze deep enough to stir an odd combination of amusement and panic in my gut, but not an inkling of the memories I should’ve had of him.
Not to mention that his eyes had this mesmerizing grit to them that quite literally displaced my senses to another plane. They were soulful and candid and a whole lot of other emotions I could not quite define. I was literally stunned before him, with a dozen questions in my head, but not one word to express any of them.
“I hate it,” he said.
I didn’t really understand what he meant back then. But somehow, I felt like I knew why.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Masaki Aiba wasn’t the first one to disappear, but his disappearance was the one that made the biggest impact in my life.
He wasn’t my friend, nor were we acquainted beyond my duties as sales agent for his 150-million-yen apartment. It was the biggest listing I ever got in my three-year stint with the Matsumoto Realty, Inc. It was also going to be the biggest, most unlikely source of the worst emotional struggle I would ever have to endure.
Fate and I, we had always been at odds with each other. Somewhere along the course of my once cautious and dull-as-nails life, I might have done something really, really terrible to piss her off and she had since then been settling scores I could not even remember owing her, even after I had become less of the cowering quitter I used to be.
Of course, there was always the possibility that she’s working for my dad, because I wouldn’t put it past my old man to jump in the sack with anybody who could screw me up bad enough to prove his point.
No pun intended.
“What did the police say?” my mom asked, her attention divided between grading college papers and trying to indulge her eldest son’s perpetual need to vent.
I let out a frustrated sigh and grumpily buried my face in my arms. “No leads. No clues. No nothing,” I mumbled, my nose wrinkling at the smell of my own curry-flavored breath.
“His family hasn’t heard from him either?”
“No.”
“And you’re here griping to the table about losing a possible nine-figure sale.”
My mom’s words caught my heart in a vice grip. Trust this woman to scold with the sweetest sounding voice and make me feel like an ass and a heel without batting an eyelash.
Maybe this was exactly why I always came running to her whenever I felt like Sho Sakurai needed to be knocked out of his soapbox of entitlement.
I sighed again and leaned back into my chair. “Of course, I feel bad for his family,” I said, trying to defend myself, and also because I really did care. “But how is that going to make up for the hours I could’ve spent finding new clients?”
“Sho, honey,” mom said in that condescending tone she knew I hated, as she casually reached out for her cup of tea. “It isn’t like you get lucky anywhere else.”
That struck an already sore nerve and left me with barely enough pride to pout and mumble, “Shut up, Mom.”
Sometimes, it did bother me that my own mother took this much amusement from the endless stream of irony that seemed to hound my life.
She threw me a sideway glance across the dining table and, seeing my apparent irritation, decided not to tease me anymore. “Are you still doing okay in that apartment?”
Or maybe take a subtler approach to it. “Do you even need to ask?”
My apartment at the time was some odd-thousand-yen a month suburban minimalist unit that’s just large enough to fit a bed, a barely working kotatsu, mounds and piles of clothes and books and not much else. There was a toilet I shared with two other tenants on the same floor that’s usually so filthy that my piss went crawling right back into my kidneys at the sight of it.
There’s a laundry area downstairs where I had already lost two pairs of my better underwear and the ‘Best Aniki In The World!’ shirt I got from Mai and Shu on my twentieth birthday, over which I threw such a fit that almost got me unanimously evicted.
But all these complex-inducing things aside, it was a fairly good neighborhood. Mostly quiet and mostly filled with people self-sufficient enough to not bother anyone else.
There was also a bathhouse down the street that was the only saving grace of this whole sordid rebellion I had going on against my dad.
“You can always move back here, you know,” mom said, her indifferent tone faintly laced with longing, as it always was whenever she said those words.
“And have dad mock me with his I -told-you-so’s whenever he actually remembers he still has a family and comes home? No thanks, mom.”
I realized those words were going to bite even before I finished saying them. And I felt like punching myself in the face when I saw my mom’s jaws tighten and her lips twitch against a sharper rebuttal, which I would’ve deserved.
She wordlessly turned her attention back to her papers.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, bowing my head in shame.
Mom clucked his tongue dismissively. “So young, and already so jaded,” she chanted, still too sore to look me in the eye. “Where did I ever go wrong with you, Sho?”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my mom. She did try hard. And whatever went awry with me was probably more me than her. “I said I was sorry.”
“I heard you,” she said, “And I know.” She finally looked up and gave me a warm smile, the kind that only mothers knew how to give. It was almost magical how a simple twitch at the corner of her lips could tell so much, make me feel so much.
“I know, too,” I sighed, outwardly uncomfortable, but inwardly grateful. I gave her my own smile that said the affections behind my words.
We never did get around to saying I love you’s at the Sakurai residence. This was the closest we could ever get.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
My parents may have had perfectly valid reasons for naming me Sho. They may have even expected me to live up to that name, too.
To soar. To fly high. To achieve great things.
But, as far as I could remember, the only thing that’s constantly been soaring in my life was my temper whenever Fate wanted to be funny and tried to pull a fast one on me.
Especially in front of a man who might be a year younger than me, but was already a million times more successful. And richer.
“Wait, you’re what?!” I practically screamed, taking full advantage of the privacy of the karaoke box that Jun Matsumoto, my friend and soon-to-be erstwhile boss, dragged me to after overtime work ended the following day.
Jun shushed and pulled me back down to the couch before I could bolt out in a blaze of fire and ungracious ill-humor. “Will you please calm down and listen to me first?”
“You’re firing me. I don’t need to hear it twice. Now let go.” But he didn’t. The more I struggled, the more he tightened his grip.
“No. My dad wants me to fire you,” he amended, like that was supposed to make me feel any better. “Goddamit, Sho-kun!” He grabbed my other wrist and literally snarled in my face, “I said, sit still!”
It took everything I had not to gulp at the bile in Jun’s voice and was thus effectively frozen on the wine-colored, two-cushion couch that suddenly felt too small for the two of us.
“So,” Jun cleared his throat and reverted back to the gentle tone I was more familiar with. He let go of my wrists, too, and I made sure they weren’t broken as I listened to him talk. “My dad thinks you bring bad luck to the company-”
“I don’t blame him.”
“I seriously thought we could just laugh about this tonight.” Jun’s smile faltered when I matched his half-assed attempt at a joke with my full-on poker face. “Anyway, you know I can never do that to you, but I’m running out of reasons to tell my Dad without making him suspicious-”
“There’s nothing to be suspicious about-”
“Fuck! Will you quit talking for a moment? Of course there’s nothing to be suspicious about!” Jun cleared his throat again and loosened up his tie, like he’s trying to rid himself of a suffocating memory. “God, Sho-kun! I forget how heartless you can be sometimes.”
I grabbed the half-drunk can of seasonal beer I slammed on the table in my previous outrage and drunk the rest of it in one swig. I could not agree more with what Jun had said. Sometimes, even with my best intentions, I just ended up hurting people without really meaning to.
“But, like I said, I’m not going to let you go,” Jun went on, reclaiming his own can at the same time that I grabbed my second one. “At least, not yet.”
I raised an eyebrow while pulling the tab off my beer, filling the room with the hissing sound of carbonation escaping. “What do you mean?”
“Well, since Kazu’s practically living with me anyway, I’ve convinced him to sell his house and let you handle things for him. So that should keep you busy in the next few days.”
I suddenly felt a rush of discomfort at this sudden make-or-break responsibility dropping unbidden on my lap. “That’s probably not the best idea-”
“It’s the most perfect idea!” Jun, on the other hand, seemed a little too enthusiastic. “You just need to pack it up, clean it a little, do a few repairs here and there. And it’s close to everything, so I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting reasonable offers for it.”
I knew Jun meant well, but I could not help feeling like I was being mocked by his goodwill. “Have you seen my numbers lately, Jun-kun? Give it to someone else with a better track record.” I sighed in frustration and drunk more beer.
“I do feel you’ll do better with this one-”
“That’s what you said with Aiba’s property.”
“This is going to be different-”
“The same way that Ikuta-kun’s house was different? We were lucky we didn’t get sued when it burned down.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but still-”
“You’re going to take the listing for Kazu’s property, Sho-kun,” Jun insisted, his voice low and commanding. “And you’re going to sell the goddamn house!”
“He’s not going to disappear on me, is he?” I asked, still smarting from latest bad luck.
“If I need to tie him up to my bed just to make sure, I will.”
I almost choked on my beer. “I didn’t need that image in my head, Jun-kun!”
“It helps me cope better when I know you know what you’re missing.” Jun snickered.
I felt like poking him in the eye. “Shut it.”
We drank in silence for a few minutes, just staring at the random sceneries flashing on the idle screen of the bluntly ignored karaoke.
Then Jun started talking and the walls began to close in on us again. “Kazu knows about us, if that’s bothering you.”
“There was never any ’us’, Jun-kun.” I knew he was teasing, but I had already played into his hands before I realized it.
“Yeah, well. I did confess. And you rejected.” He casually reached out for the controller and began fiddling with it, probably feeling drunk enough to let loose.
We never did bother with the karaoke unless one of us was tipsy enough to kick start things.
“I should’ve really stayed away from you afterwards, you know,” I grumbled with fond irritation, then smirked as I watched him enter three of his favorite artist’s songs in a row. I did find it delightful to see this side of him sometimes. Who knew that this wretched slave driver in the morning could be such a dedicated fanboy at night? “You’re annoying!”
“Isn’t that what you love about me?” Jun leered playfully, making me flinch at the tip of his finger brushing a burning trail down my cheek as the now tediously familiar intro to Gackt’s Vanilla started playing. “You still blush like a girl whenever I tease you.”
I had no doubt I did. “Asshole.”
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
I shared a cab with Jun on our way home that night, and I remember telling myself how it would be the very last time I ever did.
Jun was the closest thing to a best friend I had, but sometimes I just loathed being around him. Especially when he had just struck up a disturbingly animated conversation with the cab driver about the alarming rise in the number of missing young adults in East Side Tokyo, which just recently included Masaki Aiba.
And I could not understand, even to this day, how a conversation that began with ”Have you heard about that missing guy?” and replied to with ”Hn. I heard he was taken from his house. We can never be safe these days, huh.” could easily escalate to the most ridiculous theories that did not spare alien kidnappings, cult rituals, and vampire blood-hostages.
Well, what would I have expected from a drunken bookworm and a sober old man who might have been better off drunk?
“It’s horrible, ne?” the driver kept talking, spurred on by Jun’s wide-eyed interest and totally oblivious to my growing discomfort. “You two should be careful with who you let into your house.”
Yes, totally oblivious.
“Come to think of it,” Jun turned to look at me from the passenger’s seat, “I’ve never been to your apartment, Sho-kun.”
”You’re not missing out on anything.” I pulled my fur-lined parka tightly around myself and pretended to be engrossed in the passing sceneries. I was barely able to ignore the tiny shivers slithering through my nerves.
“Maybe you should move back in with your parents for a while. That place kind of worries me.”
I turned to Jun and tried my best to smile when I saw the genuine concern in his eyes. “It’s fine,” I said, but my heart had already begun beating out of sync. Trust a scaredy-cat to overreact at the slightest hint of danger. “I can take care of myself.”
It was just as well that right then and there, the cab parked at the corner street where I had to get off, and Jun was suddenly asking if I wanted him to walk with me.
“It’s less than a hundred steps to my apartment, Jun-kun,” I replied, trying to put up a brave front, because I seriously wanted to say ‘yes’, but it wasn’t like he was less of a scaredy-cat than me anyway. I opened the cab door and stepped out.
“Yeah, well. Call me when you get there, all right?” he said, sounding bossy.
“Sure,” I mumbled before closing the door.
Watching the cab drive off sent a jolting chill up my spine. It became all too clear to me how I was on my own now, with only my briefcase and my shivering backbone to take me home.
You know that feeling when you think that someone is watching you? I suddenly felt that way. Like, I was not entirely alone.
My senses were all fired up and hyper aware of the tiniest sounds around me, the softest shifts in the direction of the wind. I wrapped my arms around myself and soldiered on, literally shaking in my socks as I wobbled down the quiet street leading to the low-rise building that had been my home for the past two years.
I remember looking back every few seconds to check if some shadowy creature was on my tail.
And it was while I was looking over my shoulder that someone did unexpectedly appear right in front of me, though he did not really look any bit of an attacker, now that I think about it.
He was leaning against the lamppost outside my apartment building. He almost made me jump when I turned back and he was there, when I remembered not seeing him there just a second ago. He rendered me speechless, motionless despite the fact that he was just a boy. Perhaps a little strange, perhaps slightly in over his head (why else would he be outside at this hour?), but still a boy.
He did not seem especially strong, either. He wasn’t angry, nor ill-intentioned.
Still, he kept me frozen on my feet as he spoke to me like he knew me. Telling me how grown up I had become and how he hated it like it was the worst plague this side of the earth.
Then he walked towards me, past me. And when I finally could move again and turned around to give him a piece of my mind, he was no longer there.
This was how our first meeting went.
At least, the one I could remember.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Thinking about it now, I could not help but marvel at how perfectly timed the whole encounter with the boy had been. I should’ve really known something was up the very second he appeared in front of me, seemingly out of thin air.
Then again, he said it best himself, “You’re not supposed to know.”
It really riled me up whenever he answered my questions with those words, every-freakin’-time!
What was it exactly that I wasn’t supposed to know? Who was he, and why did he seem to know too much about me? Even to the point of hating me for being all grown up!
Why would anybody hate somebody for growing up? It did not make sense to me at that time.
“You’ve become just like everyone else. It’s gotten kind of easy to read you, Sho-kun,” he said on Sunday night, two days after our initial meeting that I would’ve easily taken for a dream, had it not for him appearing again on Saturday night, then again on Sunday, in front of Kazunari Ninomiya’s two-storey property.
He was waving and grinning at me, like he did yesterday, as though we had known each other for years.
We probably had, but I didn’t know it yet at this point. So I just nodded at him and went on my way, half-expecting him to follow, and half-dreading the fact that he just might.
He did. Both times.
“I don’t mind waiting for you,” he said, striding casually beside me, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans.
I casually tossed one end of my gray wool muffler over my shoulder, more for a stylish flair than functionality since it was luckily not too chilly tonight. Tokyo had yet to see snow this year, but I wasn’t holding my breath for it anymore. I never did. Although the boy had argued and insisted the previous night that there was actually a time when I did wait for snow like any normal kid.
That I was actually a child once, with dreams and aspirations. And time enough to wait for snow.
Imagine that.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked, then immediately regretted it when I realized I may have overstepped my boundaries.
He didn’t seem to mind, though. That, or he was just too naive to accept the fact that I’d rather not have him shadowing my every move for the whole walk back to my place, like he did the previous night. He did seem to give off that kind of aura. “I like walking you home.”
I snorted at this unexpected bluntness, as I adjusted the sling bag strapped across my chest.
He looked up at me with a curious frown, the top of his head only reaching up to the lowest slope of my shoulder. “Don’t you like having me around, Sho-kun?”
As if on some invisible cue, we both stopped walking. Well, he stopped, and for some reason I found myself following his lead.
And there was something both dramatic and comically clichéd about the way his dark, surprisingly soft hair swayed in the light breeze that suddenly past us. It was a scene straight out of those romantic mangas I had just been packing in Ninomiya’s place a while back.
I knew it was ridiculous, but my breath hitched anyway and almost literally stopped at how this brief interlude from Nature had brought all of the boy’s charms into focus. His curtained haircut, his round face, his dopey eyes, his beaked nose, even his worn-out shirt ineptly labeled ‘Nancy’, all came together in a strange mix of perfection, top billed by a pair of pale-pink lips that seemed to harbor both innocence and lies.
Everything looked even more remarkable without the theatrics, really. No music. No minute flakes of snow swirling in the wind.
There was just him.
And there was just me.
And how could I ever be rude to this boy and say ‘No’, when he’s looking like this?
“Sho-kun?”
How could I even think of pushing him away, of denying myself this beautiful sight, when the very thought of not seeing him again was already starting to gnaw at my chest?
“Sho-kun...?”
“Uhm.” I snapped out of my thoughts, which were already bordering on obsession, and looked away, unable to withstand the pure amusement in his eyes. I cleared my throat and resumed walking. “I’m going for soba tonight. You can come if you want to.” I knew I didn’t have to ask.
He quickly caught up with me and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t eat soba, it makes me sick.”
“Are you serious?!” Who the hell gets sick from eating soba?! “What do you eat then?”
“I can’t tell you.”
This tireless play at secrecy was really starting to rub my patience the wrong way. “I won’t know what to feed you if you don’t tell me what you eat.”
“You don’t have to feed me, Sho-kun,” he said, casually brushing a hand through his hair and almost talking my breath away again. “I don’t mind just staying and watching you eat.”
“Suit yourself,” I grumbled, trying hard to appear unaffected. How could anybody be so irritating one moment, and so incredibly adorable the next?
I turned to him and caught him smiling at me. I pulled one end of the muffler off my neck and let out a deep and calming sigh.
It wasn’t much help.
Two nights in and this boy was already growing on me. And I hardly even knew anything about him other than the fact that he’s annoyingly charming and disturbingly beautiful.
Oh, and he’s also just fifteen years old.
Imagine that.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
If I had only been a little more imaginative and a lot less dull, like Jun was when he’s drunk, I would’ve been able to catch the signs that openly hit me in the face at every turn.
But, as it was, Sho Sakurai was too jaded, too dumb, and too grown-up to realize that Satoshi Ohno, the unassuming boy whose only obvious fault was his laid-back simplicity, was, in fact, anything but.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked once we were settled at a corner table in the soba place I frequented. It wasn’t snowing, but the air outside was bitingly cold enough to make me wonder what the kid was thinking, walking around the city in a shirt almost as thin as blotting paper.
“No,” he said, propping his face up in his hands and fixing his gaze on me.
“Eh?” His eyes on me felt like a spell that froze my brain on this one word.
“I don’t really get cold anymore,” he said, pouting and looking up briefly for a pensive flair.
I crossed my arms on the table and leaned slightly forward, clearing my throat and trying to look cool. “And why is that?”
“I just don’t.”
“And I’m not supposed to know, right?” It was getting hard to deny how much this boy was affecting me.
“Hey, you’re catching up, Sho-kun!” He smiled.
I felt my heart flip-flop inside my chest and pulled away just as the bespectacled shop owner herself arrived with my order.
“I’ve never seen this boy before,” Rie Shibata said good-naturedly while setting the tray on the table, the appetizing steam rising from the bowl instantly filling our space with the smell of curry soba. “New friend?”
I was tempted to say ‘visiting relative’, because I didn’t really like the teasing glint in her eyes when she looked at the boy then back at me.
But the boy beat me to it and introduced himself as my friend with such congeniality and charm that spurred the giggling Shibata-san to reach out and try to feel his crotch.
If the boy was horrified by such an unexpectedly brazen act, he didn’t show it much. I almost fainted when Shibata-san did that to me the first time, and was barely able to keep myself from screaming ’she touched me!‘ all over the place.
But this boy just kept laughing as he slapped the playfully persistent woman’s hands over and over again.
“Can we eat our soba now, please?” I said, not even trying to mask my impatience.
Shibata-san tousled the boy’s hair and threw me a spiteful frown. “I like you better than your friend, Satoshi-kun.”
I grimaced at her and fought off the urge to stick my tongue out.
She stuck her tongue out at me anyway before stalking off and quickly finding somebody else to harass in another table.
“The two of you are pretty close, huh,” the boy mused, his nose wrinkling slightly at the smell of food. He seriously looked like he was going to puke from just the sight of my bowl.
And I so easily dismissed it as mere childish whim. Because I was slow like that.
“We get along,” I said while splitting my chopsticks. “You can get anything you want, you know. I’ll pay for it.”
“I told you, soba makes me sick.”
“Don’t let Shibata-san hear you say that,” I warned.
He leaned further on the table, closer to me, and whispered, “I wouldn’t even dare. That furry thing on her head scares me.”
I laughed so hard at that, I almost snorted broth from my nose. I had never even thought of poking fun on Shibata-san’s old-fashioned bun, but that was such a perfect, albeit a little rude, way of describing it.
My laughter died down when I caught the shop owner staring right at me with that teasing glint in her eyes, candidly paired now with a knowing smile.
I turned my attention back to the boy and surprised both of us when I asked, “Are you coming for me tomorrow?”
The boy took a beat to reply, “Would you want me to?”
“Yeah,” I said, his wide, hopeful smile working me up like a truth spell. “Yeah, I guess. You can help me clean the house up or something.”
“Oh.” He suddenly looked unsure. “Well, you don’t own it, right?”
I frowned at the sudden drop in his enthusiasm. “No.”
“Who does?”
“No one, technically. It’s up for sale.” I casually poked my chopsticks into my soba, suddenly wishing I could just take the offer back. I didn’t even know this boy well enough to trust him around somebody else’s house. What was I thinking?
“Hmmm,” he hummed. I looked up, saw him smiling and suddenly felt like a heel for doubting him. “I guess it’s all right then. I’ll come help you tomorrow after sunset.”
“Eh?” I chuckled. “Why’d you have to wait for sunset?”
“Because the sun hates me.”
He said those words so matter-of-factly that I was left with no other choice but to take them as truth. No questions asked. “You’re funny.”
“Nothing wrong with being safe.” He did that thing again with his face in his hands and his gaze trained on me.
“Rii~ght,” I drawled, trying to ignore the tiny prickles of warmth spreading through my heart.
If I had only paid enough attention then... If I had only been less of the grown-up that the boy professed to hate so much, I would’ve known, right then and there, what Satoshi Ohno was.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Shibata-san and I had a pretty special thing going. Nothing of the sexual sort, of course, though she had probably touched me more times than any other person, man or woman, had. She watched over me, and made me feel like I could always count on her on the toughest of times. She was almost like my second mom, a slightly exaggerated version of the real one, really, with the teasing and the mild reprimands, minus the groping hands.
She was a strange sort, too, now that I think about it. Her soba shop did not open until after sunset. I don’t remember ever seeing her roaming around in broad daylight. Her staffs would often joke about her stubborn resolve never to get anywhere near the kitchen area, and I had quoted her once as saying that she could only take the smell of soba a little at a time.
“Too much of it will kill me!” she had exclaimed.
“Why keep a soba shop, then?” I had asked, incredulous and chiding.
“Because this place meant a lot to my special person.”
I never did find out who that special person was or whatever happened to him. Shibata-san had only ever mentioned him in passing, and would refuse to answer any of the prying questions I would occasionally throw at her in hopes of drawing out a knee-jerk response.
I thought it was a really special thing to do, though. To keep this place running in memory of her beloved even though she could hardly bear the mere smell of soba.
Shibata-san said she had always been a romantic at heart. And despite the brazen character I have had to deal with every day since we met, I had never doubted that she was.
So it didn’t really surprise me all that much when I eventually found out that I owed her so much more than what she had already given me.
She was the one who brought Satoshi Ohno back into my life.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
The following day could not past quickly enough. I practically drove myself through the floor, packing up and cleaning up Ninomiya’s place without pause, just so I would not be tempted to sit in a corner and stare at the clock until my eyes bled out.
I exhausted myself so much that by half past five in the afternoon, I was only barely awake on my feet. And Jun was suddenly calling, the doorbell was finally ringing, and all I could really think of doing was curl up on couch and faint.
“Yeah,” I snarled into the phone as I went to get the door.
I hardly really heard what Jun was saying on the other line, but I didn’t miss the rather invigorating sight of the boy standing at the doorway.
“Hey,” he said, smiling and making my heart skip too many beats at once.
“Hey,” I said back, raking a hand through my hair consciously, even though I knew he wouldn’t really mind if I looked like I had just stuck my head in a windbag.
“What?” Jun asked as I gestured for the boy to come in.
My boss kept droning on and on in my ears, trying to explain why Kazunari Ninomiya could not even be bothered to come over and help pack his own things in response to the slightly angry mail I had the gall to send him earlier this afternoon.
“...he’s been working on this game design for weeks! I haven’t even been in bed with him over the weekend!”
“Okay,” I mumbled, my attention almost completely riveted on the boy and his obvious reluctance to walk through the door. I frowned and gestured for him to come in again, as I tried to make as much sense of Jun’s spiel as I could.
“I’ll tell him to come by for a while tomorrow to help move the boxes,” he said as the boy looked at me worriedly before stepping in. One foot first, then the other. The process so painfully slow that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What was that?” Jun asked.
“Nothing,” I said, downplaying my amusement to a smile. “I’ll wait for him then. Tell him to come early.”
The boy stopped moving for a moment, just standing as still as a boulder on the entryway, like he was waiting for something to happen.
“I’ll tell him,” Jun promised, then asked, “Is someone there with you?”
“No,” I lied, then asserted, “I have to go.”
“Sho-kun-!”
I ended the call and shoved the phone into my pocket, snickering as I faced the boy. “What are you doing?”
He hummed, then sighed and was smiling again within the same second, choosing to ignore my question by showing off his loot. “I brought you something to eat. From Shibata-san’s shop.”
“You went there on your own?” I asked in exaggerated surprise, taking the bag from him so he could take his shoes off properly.
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised you got out alive.”
“Not unscathed, though.”
We laughed over this on our way to the dining table. The house was practically bare now, save for the boxes neatly piled in one corner, and a few of the bigger furniture that could not be packed.
“Who was that you were talking to?” the boy asked as I set the bag on the table and slumped down on a chair.
I waved for him to do the same on the side opposite from mine. “That was my boss.”
“Oh,” he said, pulling up a chair and slumping down in the exact same way I did, carelessly and without much regard for either posture or decorum. I felt like something in our newly established bond was strengthened at that exact moment.
“We were talking about moving the boxes tomorrow,” I said, suddenly feeling like I should tell him everything. Like I could talk to him about anything at all.
“I heard,” he said. “I like him. He seemed nice.”
I looked incredulously at him as I set the covered soba bowl on the table. “You haven’t even met him.”
“But you like him, right?”
I stared at his face for longer than I intended to, his teasing smile cutting through a part of my heart. I didn’t really know what I wanted to prove, but I felt like I should make things clear to him. “He’s my friend.”
“I know,” he chanted, his gaze casually sweeping through the house. “I don’t think there’s anything left for me to do here.”
“I’m still glad you came, though,” I said on impulse, surprising myself so much that I almost spilled curry broth on myself.
“I am, too,” the boy said, his smile now mild and a little shy, making me doubt my ability to eat the soba without messing up. “And it’s okay to call me Satoshi-kun, you know.”
“Huh?” I asked, rummaging through the bag to distract myself. I pulled out a couple bottles of what I first assumed were tea.
“You’ve never called me by my name once,” the boy said, his smile quickly turning into a pout.
I showed him one of the bottles and snapped, “This is beer!”
“Yeah,” he said coolly. “Shibata-san said I should bring you some.”
“You could’ve gotten arrested carrying this around!” It amazes me now how quickly I could get from pleasantly fluttering to literally fuming. “What was she thinking?!”
The boy sniggered, annoying me more. “Geez! Calm down, Sho-kun! I made it here, didn’t I?”
“Still!” I shrieked. “I’ll have a talk with that woman!”
“You’ll still drink it, though. Right?”
I looked at the boy and he looked back at me and my nerves were suddenly flooded with the calmness solidly reflected in his eyes.
“Loosen up,” he said, his voice soft yet firm, sounding so much older than his fifteen years. “And please call me Satoshi-kun.” Before I could even make sense of what was happening, his tone had already shifted back to a boyish whine that was more suited to his age. “You feel so distant to me, Sho-kyu~n!”
The way he added that special kind of cutesy flair to the honorific he used with my name, plus the hurt-puppy look he so skillfully matched with it, were my undoing. I practically melted into putty right in front of this boy, and I couldn’t even do anything to help myself.
“Fine. I’ll call you Satoshi-kun!” I huffed, twisting the cap off the first bottle of beer.
“Great!” he exclaimed.
This night could not past quickly enough, either.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
Needless to say, being with Satoshi made me feel alive. He brought so much presence with him, so much positive vibes that he made it so easy for me to forget the world beyond our own private space.
In all the three days that I knew him, he had already managed to make me feel a lot of the emotions I would never have admitted I was capable of feeling, and a lot more of those I could not even define.
Without even trying too hard, he could send me doubling over in fits of laughter, hurting my sides and almost peeing in my pants.
The next moment, he would say something that would so stun me out of my wits that I was left wondering if I was still talking with the same boy from before.
And then he would make me laugh again, and I’d remember.
“Why did you reject him, Sho-kun?” he suddenly asked out of the blue.
“What?! Who?!” I thought I was drunk enough not to get shocked anymore.
“Your boss.”
“How’d you know that?!” I squeaked, utterly scandalized.
Satoshi shrugged. “Wild guess?”
“It’s none of your business,” I grunted, slumping lazily on the couch and wishing Satoshi had brought more beer.
“Okay,” he said, slumping just as lazily beside me, our shoulders almost brushing.
We were silent for about a minute before I decided to tell him anyway, because hell! I was tipsy enough not to care. “The kind of relationship he wanted was not the one I needed.”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
I turned to him and smirked. “You’re too young to understand.”
“I’m fifteen, Sho-kun,” he said, his tone almost condescending. “I’m not a baby.”
“Sure.”
“I know what sex is,” he went on, his eyes glinting with mischief.
I was so surprised I almost sobered up. “What?”
“And tops and bottoms... and lube and stuffs. “
“WHAT?!” I was twenty-five, and this boy was fifteen, but for some reason I was the one who ended up all feverish and prickly.
“There’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t understand,” he said with conviction.
I didn’t know which was more disturbing, hearing a fifteen-year-old boy say he knew about sex, or that same fifteen-year-old boy hinting on the possibility that he knew more than I did.
I cleared my throat and gave him what he wanted. “Well. I didn’t wanna bottom for him and he didn’t wanna compromise for me. And can we just leave things at that, please?”
He hummed, but did not say anything more.
I closed my eyes and began relaxing in the silence, the calming warmth of having a person I knew I could trust sitting this close beside me.
“I don’t mind being bottom, though.”
My eyes snapped open and my whole world began spinning all out of sync again. “I wasn’t asking.”
I felt him sidling closer to me and gulped when the sides of our little fingers touched. “Just thought I’d let you know,” he whispered cheekily,
The warmth that began on my cheeks drew a burning trail all the way down to my toes.
~☼~☼~☼~☼~
When Satoshi began asking about my dad, I did not even wonder how he knew anymore. Somehow, Satoshi knowing so much about me had become an accepted truth, one that could not challenged, no matter how illogical it seemed to me back then.
Satoshi’s head was now resting on my shoulder, and my cheek was pressed on top of his head. Our voices had become softer, calmer, more comfortable in the close and trusting space we were suddenly sharing.
“When are you going to talk to your dad, Sho-kun?”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
I watched his finger tracing random shapes on the top of my hand, and was both fascinated and soothed by the sight and feel of it. “I don’t know. Maybe, never?”
“Okada-san, the man who took care of me, died about a year ago.”
I felt a sudden painful tug in my chest. “I’m sorry.” I fought off the urge to grab his hand squeeze it, deeming it necessary, but inappropriate.
“It was devastating,” Satoshi’s voice cracked, as did my heart. “But, the knowledge that I was able to tell him everything that I wanted to say, let him know everything that I was feeling, all the things that I wanted to do, with or without his consent, and having him understand me, see eye to eye with me, treat me as a man, an equal... It’s a wonderful feeling, Sho-kun. Please, don’t miss outon it.”
I took a moment to process his words, unshed tears already burning at the back of my eyes and making my head throb. Then I sighed, and dismissed the thought, because I didn’t think that what I had with my dad was anywhere near what Satoshi had with Okada-san.
“Were you able to succeed in what you wanted to do?” I asked instead.
“I’m getting there.”
“Is it worth it?”
He looked up at me and smiled. “More than I ever imagined,” he said, like he was telling me.
“Good for you...” I murmured, my eyes fluttering, suddenly heavy with sleep.
I barely felt the change in my position, but I could somehow tell that Satoshi had laid me out properly on the couch.
And then he was whispering something to me, his breath flitting pleasantly over my face.
“Sometimes, I do wish you’d remember, Sho-kun. But I can never undo what I did.”