FIC: Stay (Yagyuu-centric, R)
Author: Ociwen
Title: Stay
Wordcount: 8800
Rating: R
Warnings: Chinese food and dinosaurs.
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis is owned by Konomi Takeshi. No profit is made from this piece of fan fiction.
Summary: Niou disappears one day. Yagyuu isn't sure if he cares.
Author's Notes: Thanks to illuminations and longleggedgit, as well as koneko_meow for the beta. This fic was written for meganezilla for rikkai_exchange 2008.
Niou disappears one day.
Two days ago, they were talking.
The plans had been brief and vague. Niou sidled up to Yagyuu in the stairwell where they ate lunch together. Yagyuu had a department store bento and a tokoroten jelly from Sunkrus. Niou had the mystery curry special from the cafeteria. He ate Yagyuu's prawn. Yagyuu said nothing.
"Yaaaagyuu," Niou drawled, "you busy on Wednesday?" He leaned back and scratched his hair.
Yagyuu shook his head.
"You wanna do something?" Niou asked. He cocked his head to the side, but he didn’t look at Yagyuu. The cement walls of the school were much more interesting. "Karaoke?"
Yagyuu shrugged. "I suppose we could do that."
Niou snorted. His hair hid his eyes, but not the smirk on his mouth. "Do something stupid and dress up and sing Disney songs?"
Yagyuu blinked. "If you want."
"If you want," Niou said. He shoved Yagyuu’s side with his shoulder, making Yagyuu back into the wall. Yagyuu pushed his glasses back up his nose. Niou added, "You’re the one who’s into dressing up, I'm just being thoughtful."
Not even Niou’s teasing could make Yagyuu's cheeks burn. "Fine," he said. He slurped his jelly. Niou poked Yagyuu's other shoulder with a chopstick. There was curry on the end. Yagyuu frowned at the small stain on his uniform shirt.
"See you at the station, then. The exit with the coffee shop after school."
"Should we ask the rest of the team to come, too?" Yagyuu asked. Niou stepped up a couple stairs before he half-turned around and shrugged his shoulders. He walked off, hunched over with his awful posture, calling back to Yagyuu, "Maybe make it seven."
Really, it was quite vague.
Cram school ran late on Wednesday. Yagyuu arrived at half-past seven. Niou was always late, so it wouldn't matter too much. Yagyuu reached into his pocket for his cellphone when a shrill voice shouted his name.
The girls flapped around him, all grins, all five of them, all holding heavy shopping bags in their gaudy pink mittens. Yagyuu smiled at his classmates. He said, "Good evening."
"Do you want to get some food?" one girl asked. She was the loudest, but they all nodded and broke into a chorus of cheers. Their voices encouraged Yagyuu to agree and come with them. "We’d love for you to come!"
Yagyuu hesitated. He checked over his shoulder into the coffee shop one last time. He hadn't promised Niou anything. And the plans had been vague; the team was probably in the middle of karaoke right now. It would be rude to interrupt.
He was standing in front of a ramen shop with a tanuki on the sign. It leered like Niou. Yagyuu smiled to himself at the thought.
Besides, the girl who grabbed Yagyuu’s arm-was it Mohko-chan? Or was that her friend-had a big smile and big breasts brushing against Yagyuu. Her chest heaved as she and her friends pleaded.
"All right," he said. "If it doesn't inconvenience anyone." Yagyuu had a girl on each arm and three more behind him. He bit back the self-satisfied smile threatening to form on his mouth.
Niou-kun would understand. He would have done the same thing.
***
Instead, Niou has been gone since then.
Maybe the day of, or the day after. He hasn't been to school. He hasn't been to tennis practice. He hasn't answered calls or text messages, or emails. Yagyuu shows up to Niou's house two days after. It’s a Friday. He knocks on the door and straightens his back. He brushes down the front of his school blazer.
Niou's mother answers the door. Her eyes are red and puffy. She's been crying, but she bows her head and asks Yagyuu to come in. "Please," she says. "If you would." She sniffles.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's fine, but thank you." Hearing Niou's mother sniffle and start to cry is awkward. Yagyuu shifts his weight. He apologizes for intruding. He should have known that Niou hasn't been home, either.
For all Niou liked to think he was a bad kid, a rebel, he wasn't. He did his homework every night. He showed up to tennis practices and he didn't shoplift. He dyed his hair and he blew his money on water guns, but he had never run away from home before.
Yagyuu doesn't know what to think.
He is not dependant on Niou. He doesn't need Niou. If Niou chose to leave-whatever his reasons-Yagyuu can accept that.
***
Without Niou, life is easy.
Yagyuu is entirely himself.
He wakes up, he goes to tennis practice. If he works on rallies, he volleys with Yanagi. They talk in the shower about literature and the English assignment Bronwyn-sensei gave them last week. If Yagyuu works on his backhand, he plays with Jackal. Jackal's balls are fast and strong, whipped across the air. Thrills rush through Yagyuu's body, subdued electricity that courses through his arm as he swings back to return the ball.
Yagyuu goes to class. He goes to prefect meetings with Sanada. He takes notes in his A4 paper pad: there are no scribbles in the margins anymore, or ripped pages. His writing is short and precise. No one steals his pens, he always has three extra ballpoints in his bag now.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, Yagyuu attends cram school. He sits in a hard desk for three hours and ignores the rumbling in his stomach. He fills the A4 pad with notes on math (his least best subject) and pointers for the English exam for university entrance.
At supper, his father mentions Harvard. His mother mentions Canada. "It's cheaper," she says.
"The medical school is better at Harvard," his father says. They don't ask Yagyuu his opinion and he doesn't offer it. He's awake, but tired. He sits up straight and eats his fish dinner. The ivy-draped buildings in his imagination sound nice, pleasantly foreign but still familiar enough to be comfortable. He can live this life without thinking too hard. It's easy to get caught up in the idea of studying abroad if his marks are kept up. It's easy to let his parents decide and to follow the rules and the teachers and to be the good boy. To be himself.
Yagyuu reads before bed. He does his homework, then breaks out his novels. They're bent at the spine and covered with homemade cloth covers in paisley patterns. His mother washed the stains out; there are no more ink balls splattered across the arabesques. He sits in bed, legs crossed, and his shoulders sink. The pages stick together. Some are dog-eared, some are covered in food, crumbs long forgotten from someone else. Yagyuu leans forward and presses the book to his nose. The pages are dry, papery and thin. The ink smells faintly, but mostly it is the perfume of hair wax and wet dirt, rubber balls and Lotte green gum.
Yagyuu's chest feels tight. His insides feel hot. He shifts in his bed and the mattress creaks. A spring pokes him in the butt cheek and he cannot find the place on the page where he left off, despite trying. His eyes blur, glaze and the characters meld, a 'ko' becoming two, becoming Ni-
Yagyuu closes his eyes. He takes off his glasses, folding them by his bedside, and he turns off his lamp. In this spring weather, the low bellows of bullfrogs creep under his window, and sometimes the chorus of crickets too. Yagyuu lies in bed. He stares at the ceiling, but he cannot see it.
He holds his breath, waiting for a phone call, waiting for a tap on his window, waiting for a sign, but nothing ever comes.
***
Without Niou, life is boring.
There is no singed hair. There are no handcuffs, locking him to the railing on the school rooftop. There are no nights past his curfew, when Yagyuu comes home after midnight and has to lie to his parents that he was tutoring a kouhai and lost track of the time. There are no stolen novels, no missed tennis practices, no lost pads of A4 paper found at the back of Niou's shoe cubby three weeks later.
No one invites Yagyuu for cosplay and ramen. No one shows up at Yagyuu's house at half past-eight, lets himself in, and peruses Yagyuu's room. Niou would touch Yagyuu's books. He would rearrange his textbooks and pull the golf balls from their containers out, one by one, and roll them across the Pergo floor. Niou would lick his finger and rub behind Yagyuu's ear. Now, there are no slimy trails to make Yagyuu cringe.
In the school corridors, he glances over his shoulder, but there is no one with bleached hair, except a girl with blond highlights. She and her friends wave, waggling their fingers that catch the light overhead; their painted fingernails are pearly instead of Niou's chewed hangnails. Yagyuu smiles back and nods. He stares at their breasts.
There is no one to lean over his shoulder and whisper in a hot voice, "The one in the middle has the best tits, doesn't she, Yaaaagyuu? Bet it's nice and soft between them…"
Yagyuu works on his laser beam by himself. It is his shot-it always has been, and will be. The machine shoots balls to him, shwook and Yagyuu stiffens. He stands up straight and drops his shoulder. He steps back, swings back and his eyes narrow, focusing on the narrow line of yellow zooming through the gymnasium. He swings. The ball is heavy on the racket gut, and his wrist recoils. The laser zooms, but it doesn't cut.
There is no one to touch his arm with rough fingertips. There is no one to click their tongue and tell him his back is too tense, his legs aren't bent enough and Yagyuu, what the hell are you doing clenching your ass like that, bubble-butt? Yagyuu can hear Niou's words clear as the beeps of the ball machine.
But each day, they fade.
Each day, Niou disappears a little more.
His school shoes, dirty at the toes, leave the cubby one morning. They are replaced by new shoes, a transfer student from Saitama named Kato.
His tennis club house locker empties one afternoon. Takeda, a senior on the high school tennis team, puts everything into a plastic basket. Niou's mother picks it up before practice ends.
Yagyuu sits on the bus, alone. The doors hiss as they open and close. He touches his cellphone, warm from his pocket, and the LCD screen shows kanji too familiar and a number called too many times. Last received call, three weeks ago, four, five. The date becomes irrelevant and time passes as the rice paddies and suburbs and pachinko parlours with flashing lights whir by through the window.
There is no one to ask Yagyuu if he wants to get ramen at the tanuki shop in the station. There is no one to pick at the hairs on Yagyuu's arms-the fine ones that are barely there, but long enough to be picked out and plucked out with a brief intense sharpness.
There is no one to ask, "Wanna be me tonight?"
Yagyuu is only Yagyuu.
And it's lonely.
***
Jackal rides his bike to school and Yagyuu walks beside him. The overcast clouds have parted, but the sun isn't out and there is a cool breeze coming off the canals they walk by. A single plastic garbage bag floats in the water. It is bleached white and Yagyuu feels an odd pressure in his throat. He coughs to clear it.
"It's been over a month," Jackal says.
Yagyuu nods.
"Will you play doubles?" he asks. "I mean, you could probably play with me sometimes and Bunta can rotate, maybe." Jackal's bike chain shifts and he pushes the pedals backwards. The metallic sound swishes like water. The trees stir around them and the last of the sakura trees shed their blossoms, floating in the air like pink tears. It's still cold sometimes at night. Even now, Yagyuu is grateful for wearing his school blazer.
"I imagine I'll play where the captain wants me," Yagyuu says.
Jackal stops pedaling. He plants his feet to the ground. His bike sags sideways as he leans on his elbows and rests on his handlebars. Yagyuu takes two more steps before he realizes Jackal isn't beside him. He turns around far enough to look at Jackal looking at him with a crease in his forehead.
An awkward tension rises. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up-it's a nervous habit, he knows, but he can't stop his fingers from touching the bridge of his nose and the smooth, warm metal of his frames.
"Jackal-kun?"
"Don't you worry about him?" Jackal asks.
Yagyuu blinks.
"Out of everyone, you knew him the best. You guys switched," Jackal says. "You even had me fooled!"
Yagyuu stiffens. Underneath his tennisbag on his left shoulder and his backpack on his right, his back is sweaty. His left hand tingles and he looks down, turning his hand over to see the palm, faintly pink. He used this hand when he was Niou. Yagyuu curls it up into a fist, keeping it at his side and out of view when he glances up to Jackal again.
"I'm not him," Yagyuu says.
"But you guys were tight."
Not tight enough…Yagyuu thinks. At the same time, he pushes the thought aside. It makes his face warm and he closes his eyes for a moment as a fresh breeze lifts up the ends of his hair and tickles his neck-spring's kiss over his skin.
"I…didn't know everything about him," Yagyuu admits. His throat feels thick and his voice sounds heavy between them. Jackal's sneaker slips on his pedal and the chain zips, metal on metal going nowhere as the silence lingers. Yagyuu doesn't know what to say, or what Jackal expects, waiting and looking at him like that, so he bows his head a little and excuses himself.
Yagyuu takes the bus home, in the opposite direction. As it drives through an underpass, along the side of the road, in a dim corner, Yagyuu can make out the billowing shape of a single white-bleached plastic bag. He feels empty inside.
Neither he nor Jackal mentioned Niou's name at all.
***
There is a picture on Yagyuu's desk from junior high school. It was taken three weeks before their switch. Niou's arm is slung over Yagyuu's shoulder and he looks at the camera with a leer of his eyebrows and a cocky smirk, lopsided. Yagyuu touches his glasses. He's frowning in the picture; now, with a smile tugging on his lips, he remembers why.
It was hot that day. Mid-July and steamy and they'd run laps, maybe fifty or a hundred, but enough to make them all rank and sweaty. Niou offered hugs to the team, but no one accepted. He gave one to Yagyuu. "It's better with sweat," he said. "More essence of me." He slid a sticky arm around the back of Yagyuu's neck and Yagyuu shivered.
"You need all the me you can get soon, ne?" Niou whispered.
Yagyuu shivered again, all the way to his toes. His dick pulsed, hard and swollen with blood in his shorts. It was the first time he thought of Niou in any other way than a friend. At home that night, he unfolded the dirty tennis t-shirt from his bag and sniffed it. It was saturated with his own sweat, but the essence of Niou was there too: hair wax and wet dirt, Lotte Green gum and ballpoint pen ink.
It was something Yagyuu could never duplicate. He could slouch his shoulders and stuff his hands into his pockets. He could wear a wig and contacts and Niou's old grey sneakers. He could play with his left hand and shoot lasers with both. He could talk in a drawl and talk back to Sanada-god, that felt good! Yagyuu had narrowed his eyes and snorted at Sanada.
"I'll take them off when I feel like taking them off," he said. He touched his wrist weights and curled his lip. Sanada nearly slapped him. Yagyuu had felt a rush through his body, a victory of ten times the force from a game.
Once, he and Niou kissed. It was three weeks after the switch. There was an early typhoon; it was afternoon and they were in Yagyuu's bedroom. The air conditioning made Niou's skin cold when his arm brushed against Yagyuu's as he flopped down on Yagyuu's bed. The mattress creaked under their bodies and Yagyuu could see dirt caked under Niou's fingernails-he hadn't washed them after they swept the courts. Not that it mattered now with the wind howling and the water swirling outside.
Niou's mouth was as sticky as his skin. They had rushed back to Yagyuu's in the downpour, and Niou didn't have an umbrella. He never did. He would stand outside in a rainstorm, drenched and smirking, whereas Yagyuu preferred to watch from the porch. The feeling of their mouths touching was the same: at first, hesitant touches on lips as Niou tested how far Yagyuu would go-how far Yagyuu could go with this.
Yagyuu opened his mouth. He was the one to slide his tongue over Niou's teeth and he was the one to weave his hands through Niou's hair. They kissed. Someone moaned. His glasses were skewed. They kissed more, Yagyuu pressing harder and deeper into Niou's mouth until Niou's slack body responded with a tentative hand on his shoulder. Niou tasted wet, and like the green gum he chewed sometimes and the clay dust from the court and salt, too, but that might have been the sweat on his upper lip. Yagyuu's dick was hard. His body was taught and drawn up, a loaded spring coiling tighter and tighter in his belly as Niou started to move underneath him and whisper his name. Yagyuu kissed his throat. Niou fumbled with Yagyuu's zipper. His fingertips grazed the material of Yagyuu's shorts and sent fresh shocks through Yagyuu's body.
He gasped.
And there was a knock on the door. His mother asked if they wanted some of the barley tea and they pulled apart without another word or a second glance.
It was the first and last time they ever kissed.
Yagyuu dreams of turning over the rock in Sanada's backpack. He finds Niou underneath, crouched and small and looking up at him from under that fringe of bleached hair.
"There you are," Yagyuu says. "I've been looking for you."
Niou's eyes are black and he bristles, lurching like a tanuki as he gets up onto unsteady feet. He says nothing, but he licks his lips and his pupils grow larger, wider. They reflect Yagyuu's glasses-he cannot see clearly, but he can feel it, the same way he can feel Niou's cold hand touch his skim, his clammy palm pressed to Yagyuu's.
"Why didn't you look sooner?" Niou whispers. His voice breaks and he turns away. Something twists inside Yagyuu. His glasses slip down his nose, but he doesn't fix them. Instead, he rubs Niou's arm to try to get him to turn and look at him so Yagyuu can apologize properly.
Niou never turns. Yagyuu is always the one to pull his shoulder. Niou moves like the air, fluid and easy. His body flops into Yagyuu, his lips graze Yagyuu's ear, but never closer, never more.
Yagyuu wakes up hard and alone before he can kiss Niou. His hand is wrapped tight around his cock, pulsing under his thumb, and his pajama pants are sticky and twisted around his legs. He masturbates until he comes. It's a visceral reaction and physical pleasure, rubbing his hand fast and hard enough to make the waves wrack his body and his dick to sputter come between his fingers.
In his chest, Yagyuu feels a cold stab. He washes himself in the shower and he makes sure to tie his school cravat extra tight around his neck. He's choked up anyway and he can't figure out why.
***
Maybe he's sick.
Maybe he's lonely.
Maybe he's bored, and without Niou, he's taking on Niou's habits.
Yagyuu follows Sanada. They have art class before lunch, still-life drawing. Yagyuu sketches the Fuji apples in the ceramic dish on the table. He draws round forms and tilts his pencil, rubbing it over and over across the page in smooth arcs. But his eyes look up and focus on Sanada, who sits across the room. Sanada stares with intense, black eyes at the bowl, then they flick down to his paper. He draws with the same diligence he shows to his schoolwork and to his tennis. He may not be a good artist, but his apples are more than adequate. His eyebrows knit on the bridge of his nose. His eyes focus back on the bowl.
It's Hagi ware. The glaze is transparent and the bowl has a yellowish tinge. Sanada's drawing cannot replicate the play of the fluorescent lights on the lip of the bowl, nor does his pencil show the colours of the apple.
Yagyuu watches Sanada with cold calculation. He's no Yanagi, but he can draw enough conclusions on his own. Sanada is predictable: after the class bell sounds, Sanada packs his bags and rushes from the classroom to his locker. Yagyuu slips into the hallway to keep close watch. He darts between students. His eyes never leave Sanada's tall form above the heads of the crowd.
He's been watching Sanada for a week. Sanada locks his bag in his locker, then he goes to the cafeteria. He orders the lunch special and holds the tray against his chest, then he walks up the stairs. Yagyuu shifts his eyes. His backpack shifts on his shoulders as he climbs the steps, always a stair well behind Sanada. His footsteps are light. He's no ninja, but he is quiet.
Sanada eats on the rooftop. Today, Yukimura has a beautification club meeting. Today, Sanada eats in the washitsu. Today, Sanada eats alone. The door slides closed behind him. Yagyuu catches it with his hand and pushes it back open.
He pushes his glasses up his nose. His lips curl up, but Yagyuu doesn't feel the smile. He feels nothing: not fluttering in his stomach, nor a melting twist of his insides. He can feel the softer tatami under his standard school shoes. The floor in the washitsu gives more than the hard linoleum in the hallways.
"Sanada-kun," he says.
Sanada looks up. He sets the piece of fried chicken down that he was about to eat and he narrows his eyes at Yagyuu, just enough for Yagyuu to see the irritation on his face and the stony set of his jaw.
"What do you want?" Sanada asks.
Yagyuu sniffs, laughing through his nose. He touches the bridge of his nose, folding his arm over the other. His eyes shift to the left. Sanada sits on the floor with his legs tucked under himself. Yagyuu stands above him. It would be easier to strike down, but not to launch an attack upwards. It's simple knowledge: Yagyuu has the upper hand.
Yagyuu strikes first. He walks up to Sanada and looks down his nose. Sanada starts to stand up, mouth curving into a scowl when Yagyuu shoots his hands out and pins Sanada to the wall. It's awkward and Sanada blinks. Confusion is written across his face when Yagyuu leans close.
"Sanada-kun," he says.
"What are you doing?" Sanada asks.
Truth be told, Yagyuu doesn't know. He's not thinking-why would he follow Sanada to the washitsu at lunch on the only day of the week when Sanada eats alone? Excuses flash, rapid-fire, through his mind. He could ask about prefect's council, or the history assignment due next Tuesday. He could ask about tennis practice or whether or not there's something wrong with him now that Niou is gone.
Niou is gone.
Something cuts Yagyuu down the middle for an instant. It's so fast that it's gone, but a blush of pain lingers. Yagyuu swallows. His reflection shines in the dim light of Sanada's black eyes: his glasses, the thin set of his lips, and the way he licks them too.
Maybe Yagyuu just wants to find out if he can feel something more than hollow. He presses his mouth to Sanada's. A thrill rips through his body when Sanada stiffens. His shoulders tense under Yagyuu's fingers. Yagyuu has done this before, with three people. The first was when he was thirteen. It was a girl, after golf practice. He walked her home. She thanked him in the alley near the shrine across from school. Her lips were dry. She puckered her lips and she tasted of cherry candies.
The third was last month. A girl from the group he ate ramen with, two weeks after Niou left. Yagyuu slipped his hand under the front of her shirt. Under her bra, he could feel stiff nipples on his palm. Her hair was brittle and bleached. She had sticky lips covered in gloss that took five minutes of scrubbing in the shower to wash away.
The second was Niou. Thinking about it, even for a moment, a flood of physical memories returns to Yagyuu. His dick stiffens. Sanada opens his mouth-maybe it's shock, maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's nothing. His tongue is slack under Yagyuu's. He doesn't fight back like Niou did. He doesn't moan or move. Yagyuu kisses harder. He straddles Sanada's middle, pushing his dick into Sanada's body. He rubs. He closes his eyes, hoping to taste something greener than the fried chicken from lunch. Sanada twists his head. A hand slaps Yagyuu on the arm. He ignores the pain and bites Sanada's top lip. Sanada is still. His hand falls when Yagyuu pushes it away. Sanada doesn't breathe. Yagyuu runs his tongue over Sanada's teeth. They are dull.
When Yagyuu pulls back, he looks at Sanada. His hair is messed on the right side. Yagyuu's glasses are skewed, too. Sanada is blurry around the edges and Yagyuu doesn't see Sanada's hand slap him a second time.
This time, he doesn't ignore the pain. Yagyuu hisses. He cups his cheek with a hand. His face flushes warmer by the second as he climbs off Sanada's lap. Sanada, though, is hard. He gasps. His eyes flutter shut when Yagyuu's hips move in that moment between contact and leaving. Their thighs brush. Their cocks almost rub through the thin material of their summer uniform trousers.
In the filtered light of the washitsu Sanada's lips seem swollen. His lunch has gone cold; no more steam rises from the cafeteria tray. Yagyuu falls back to the opposite wall. The tatami absorbs the squeaks of his shoes as he kneels down. Yagyuu swallows the taste of fried chicken. The grease is thick in his mouth. It chokes off the air in his throat. He coughs to clear it, and says, "Please excuse me, Sanada-kun."
Yagyuu expects to be slapped again. His cheek tingles with anticipation. He expects to be called a lazy ass. He expects Sanada to glower and yell. Yagyuu looks at the weave in the tatami mat. Dust modes float in the air between them. Through the walls, the sound of other students in the hallway is dulled.
"Why aren't you looking for Niou?" Sanada asks. His mouth is a thin line. His eyes are black, like his hair and his cap. He smells like deodorant and temple incense, not wet dirt and green gum. Yagyuu's chest feels tight.
He stands up and says nothing. When he leaves, he bows to Sanada. An apology seems too trifling. Sanada won't say a thing to anyone.
***
Jackal and Yanagi wait at the bike racks at the front of the school. "Bunta has band practice," Jackal says. Yanagi wears his glasses. Yagyuu assumes that Yanagi has cram school tonight-he doesn't. It is a Tuesday and the weather is sunny.
"Do you even know where to look?" Jackal asks. He walks next to his bike, pushing it beside Yanagi as they walk through a park. There is a takoyaki stand near the shrine at the west end, and a fountain to the north. The water spray is cool. It mists on Yagyuu's bare arms. The earth is soft and the trees have the first flush of green leaves bursting into bloom.
"I don't know," Yagyuu says.
A crow sits on the cement ledge around the fountain. It looks at Yagyuu with a liquid black eye. Fool, it says.
"Presumably he can't have gone far," Yanagi says. "With limited money and no passport, he is likely still within a hundred kilometer radius."
Jackal looks at Yanagi. Yanagi blinks. For a moment, he looks flustered. Yagyuu could be on the verge of laughing, but he holds back. Yanagi saves face when he adds, "Give or take a few." He turns to Yagyuu. Their pace has slowed from a comfortable walk into an amble through the evergreens. Needles litter the cracked pavement and they crunch under Yagyuu's shoes. Across the road from the park, there is a family-style yakiniku restaurant with a red sign. Yagyuu turns away from it. His arms feel colder than before.
"Do you really have no idea?" Yanagi asks.
"You guys were each other," Jackal says.
Yagyuu stops. He looks up at the sky. It rumbles. But it might also be a passing train rattling the tracks behind a row of houses and drooping power lines.
"What if he's pretending to be you?" Jackal asks.
The dark clouds shift. They overlap and the first drops of rain patter down around them. Yagyuu frowns. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. The taste of fried chicken is long gone, but when he swallows, he can almost find a lingering green sweetness.
The clouds seem to cry the tears Yagyuu can't. Yanagi and Jackal whip their umbrellas out. Yagyuu stands in the shower of rain that pours down, wetting his clothes and gluing them to his skin. He exhales, then he walks the other direction. From the branch of a zelkova tree, the crow stares at him. He can smell BBQ smoke from the restaurant in the air, mixing with the nitrogen of a storm.
There is a pain in his ribs. It comes in a sharp jab. Yagyuu clutches his chest and he gasps. He digs at the material of his shirt and wrinkles the white fabric. The crow keeps watching him. It tilts its head. It ruffles its wings and picks at them with its black beak.
Jackal and Yanagi have left the park. The rain falls. Droplets slide down Yagyuu's glasses, making it hard to see properly. He sits down at the fountain ledge. His bum is warm and wet. As much as Jackal's word cloy to his ears, Yagyuu knows Niou isn't him.
Once Niou said I like me. He should have said, I like you too. Just once Yagyuu wanted to hear that. He didn't know then. Now, he does.
The storm comes from the east. The winds come from the north. The warm, sticky rain seeping through Yagyuu's clothes settles deep in his bones. Somehow, he knows where to go.
***
In English class, they have presentations. Each student has five to ten lines about a place they like would like to visit, written in the future conditional. Yagyuu writes his presentation three days in advance. He edits the grammar twice. He wants to visit Augusta, Georgia. He wants to visit to see the Master's tournament. It is a golf tournament. Yagyuu likes golf. He writes this on a sheet of A4 paper from his notebook.
The presentations are alphabetical in the Western system. Abe Mohko-chan presents first. Bronwyn-sensei smiles and tells her to begin. Yagyuu looks at Mohko's tits. Her shirt is unbuttoned halfway down her chest and she is wearing a white lace bra. She holds her sheet of paper and shifts her weight. Today, her skirt is short. One of the boys whistles. Sanada scowls; his pen scratches his notes and he doesn't look up. Yagyuu rarely speaks to Sanada in class.
He hasn’t spoken to Sanada since that day.
"I want to visit Kisarazu," Mohko says. "I want to see Shojoji. My favourite nursery rhythm is Shojoji no Tanukibayashi. Shojoji no Tanukibayashi is about a raccoon. Raccoon's temple is in Kisarazu. That is why I want to visit Kisarazu."
Yagyuu sets his pen down. He leans forward and blinks. His intestines have gone cold and twisted inside. He cannot feel his pulse, but his heart pounds. Yagyuu touches his temple. His skin is clammy. He stands up. Bronwyn-sensei nods to him. Yagyuu says, "It is 'rhyme' not 'rhythm'". His voice is hollow. When he sits down, bile rises in his throat.
The only word Yagyuu has written down in his notebook for class is Kisarazu.
A wind from the east blows through the open window of the classroom. Yagyuu stands at the front of the room. He holds his piece of A4 paper-he is the last student to present. The wind smells of the sea, salty and fishy. He glances down at the words he has written. His tongue is woolen when he opens his mouth to speak. No sound comes. His eyes glance across the paper. Through the natural light that makes the white sheet translucent, he can make out the invisible cartoon of a tanuki. It is the same doodle that Niou used to draw.
Yagyuu sucks in a breath. "Excuse me," he mutters.
For the first time, Yagyuu skips class. He doesn't return to the classroom. Instead, he takes his bag from his locker. He walks out the front doors of the school after he changes into his sneakers. The sun beams down. It is faint through the overcast clouds.
Yagyuu has 2000 yen in his wallet.
A train ticket to Kisarazu costs 1890.
***
It is Wednesday and Yagyuu is skipping class. He steps out of the train station with the map in his hands. He doesn't have a clue where to begin to look.
For all his chaos and illusions, Niou is ruled by logic. Logically, Yagyuu assumes the first place to check is Shojoji temple. He adjusts his glasses and begins to walk. Kisarazu smells of the fishy sea, and also the peanuts of Chiba. The sky is grey and, despite the traffic, the air is filled with the squawk of gulls. His sneakers crunch on the pavement running alongside the main road. Yagyuu squints into the intermittent sun. He follows the signs.
The temple grounds are the same as a thousand others. Walkways cut through green bushes and ruffled hostas. The wooden gazebos and shrines have fresh, pale timber. Birds titter. There is incense in the air, and the sea, but no hair wax or green gum.
There is no one else around. Across the street, through the sakura trees long have shed their blossoms, Yagyuu can see suburban homes. Their raw domesticity is ugly: futons drape over railings and rubbish bins are stacked outside. Yagyuu turns a corner. Niou's name is on the tip of his tongue, but Yagyuu says nothing.
In the centre of the grounds is the main shrine. The gables are curved and ornate. Purple hangings drape from the roofline. Old sepia photographs sit framed and adored, ancestors worshipped by no one but the quiet of midday. Around the shrine are hundreds of leering statues. Yagyuu searches their empty grins and glazed eyes and round white bellies, but they all remain silent and lifeless. Yagyuu places a five yen coin at the foot of one of the statues. It has been bleached by the sun and weathered by the elements. Still, it continues to smile at him.
"Please," Yagyuu whispers. He closes his eyes and claps his hands.
The tanuki says nothing.
Niou is not with the tanuki. He is not a tanuki, as much as he leered and smirked and rolled his eyes. Yagyuu leaves the temple complex. He frowns.
"Now what?" he whispers. His watch reads ten past two. His stomach growls and he hasn't eaten since breakfast at seven. He wore his school uniform out the doorway of high school when he left. He changed in the alley behind the train station. Switching with Niou last year-and Kaidoh, too-has made him quick.
He walks back to the area around the train station, then he turns right. He walks toward the sea. The sky swirls. Rain will come soon, and the sea is swollen. Yagyuu walks west. In the distance across the bay is Yokohama, home. He doesn't know if Niou would want to get away completely, or not. Part of Yagyuu wants Niou to feel something for his home and for him. The other part of him wonders if Niou would want to throw it all behind himself forever.
Yagyuu cannot choose which. He does decide on a bowl of udon for lunch. There is a draft in the tiny noodle bar and he slurps the udon. He wipes the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief, then he leaves.
He still doesn't know where to go. The wind has picked up. The sky has deepened and darkened, but it hasn’t begun to rain yet. Yagyuu crosses at a set of lights. He passes a row of shops and a Familymart. Through the window is a rack of chewing gum; on it is a row of Lotte Green packages. Yagyuu touches his chest. His lungs ache.
He keeps walking. Wind cuts through his jacket. The sea spits salt into the air that bites Yagyuu's face. He closes his eyes and turns down a quiet street. Lonely plastic bags collect in a ditch and scrappy metal bike sheds give way to abandoned lots covered in scrappy grass. Yagyuu looks behind his shoulder. In the distance, he can see a train from Tokyo pulling into Kisarazu station. In the seaward direction, boats bob on the choppy waters. The pavement is speckled with rain. Yagyuu shivers.
Ahead of him is another abandoned lot. A fence rings the perimeter, and above the bent wooden planks are heads. They stare at Yagyuu. The monsters have horns and snaking necks and fangs and purple bellies. The sign says "Dinosaur Park". A second sign pasted over the first says, "CLOSED".
A gust of wind prickles the back of Yagyuu's neck. His hair whips up, but he doesn't pat it down. Instead, he walks to the fence. He walks around the fence, which gives way to a painted mural on the far side. Painted dinosaurs chip and fall at his feet. Their remains crunch under Yagyuu's sneakers.
This is the sort of place Niou might be. Yagyuu exhales. The gates are locked at the front but Yagyuu can see inside the compound. The walls are eight feet high; to Yagyuu's, though, right is a security code box. Yagyuu inhales and grabs it. He's not as limber as Niou, nor as skilled at climbing trees and tool sheds, but he drags himself up. His foot totters. Yagyuu grabs the top of the fence. With a heave, he throws his body over.
There is a single, dull echo when he lands.
The Dinosaur Park is empty. No one hears when Yagyuu groans. His ankle snaps when he stands. He gasps at the air to fill his winded lungs. Yagyuu stumbles when he walks. His ankle throbs. The park looks lonelier on the inside: the grey sky dulls the grins of the dinosaurs. Abandoned bicycles and forlorn vending machines-long-emptied-sit vacant in the corners. There is dust and garbage blowing around with the rain. The wind howls as it weaves through the fiberglass monsters.
Yagyuu taps a Brontosaurus on the bulbous knee. It is hollow. He touches the armour of an Ankylosaur. Its red eyes stare at nothing. There are no children to climb its back anymore. The thick smell of salt and nitrogen in the air dull Yagyuu's senses. His fingers are cold and the dinosaurs are colder still.
At the fence, a piece of A4 paper has blown flat against the planks. Yagyuu picks it up. The edges are worn and the sheet has yellowed. It is nothing more than a doodle on the back of a permission form, dated three years ago. Yagyuu sets it back down on the ground, but he folds it over first to protect the crayon scrawl.
"Where are you?" Yagyuu whispers.
The shadows move against the dimming light. The pavement is as grey as the clouds overhead. Yagyuu tucks his hands into the hems of his jacket, but his fingers are numb. His toe hits a pebble. It skips across the shadow of a looming carnivore. Yagyuu looks at it. The Tyrannosaurus Rex grins back. The sharp leer makes a lump congeal in Yagyuu's throat. He touches the pale belly. It has two claws on each hand and there is a hole in the fiberglass knee.
For a moment, the wind stops. Silence falls, except for the soft patter of the salty rain on the ground. Yagyuu holds his breath and listens. Another shadow moves, followed by the crunch of a sneaker on gravel. Except it isn't his own. Yagyuu stands stiff and still.
His shoulders tighten. His glasses slip down his nose. There is a name murmured on his lips that is lost in the whistle of a fresh wind. He strikes, as though he's playing tennis, and shoots a look over his shoulder.
Niou is hunched against the fence. The tanuki leer and smirk are gone. Only his black eyes are the same.
The only words Niou says are, "You came."
***
Not far from the ocean, wedged into a row of strip clubs and seedy bars, is a single Chinese restaurant. Niou decides on it. Yagyuu buys a set meal with cashew chicken and glass noodles. He buys three steamed pork buns. He isn't hungry, but his stomach twists.
Niou's cheeks are hollow and his skin is pale. His hair has grown out-the black roots are an inch from his scalp. His clothes have holes and he smells like salt water and sweat, wet earth but no green gum. He stuffs the pork buns into his mouth. There is black dirt under his fingernails.
Under the table, Yagyuu touches Niou's leg. Niou closes his eyes. His body tenses, his Adam's Apple bobs. If it were possible, he seems to retreat into the grungy hoodie he's wearing-the colour was probably originally blue. Yagyuu can't look at Niou's thin body, but he can't look away either.
"Why did you run away?" he asks.
Niou drops his chopsticks. His knee jerks away from Yagyuu's touch-his fingers reach out to cold air instead. "Not here!" Niou hisses.
Yagyuu cannot see any waitresses. Johnny Cash music plays behind them, low and mournful. The sound makes Yagyuu cringe. Seeing Niou pull back makes Yagyuu's hesitancy fall. "You ran away," he says. "You left without a word and you're not even glad I came for you, Niou-kun?"
It hurts to lean back in his seat and cross his arms. Yagyuu forces himself to scowl. Niou's mouth opens. His wide eyes behind translucent skin stab Yagyuu through the ribs. It is a sharp jab that makes breathing difficult. Yagyuu holds his breath. He waits for Niou to answer.
Niou flings his chair back and runs out the front door. A waitress rushes from the kitchen. Noren curtains flap over the doorway when he runs out. Yagyuu scrapes his chair back, but he pauses and bows his head. He apologizes to the waitress and leaves the last of his yen on the table.
"Please excuse us," he says on his way out.
Niou runs down the pier. Yagyuu isn't far behind him. He shouts Niou's name-the sea has calmed, but the sun hasn't returned. The light is dim and the sea slate, the colour of Niou's ratty jeans. His sneakers slap the pavement; the heels have broken off and they seem to smile at Yagyuu in an ironic way.
Niou is fast, but Yagyuu is faster. He pushes his body until he runs into Niou, grabbing Niou's arm with a tight grip. Niou struggles. Saliva flies from his mouth and his dark eyes have an eerie glow to them. This close, Yagyuu can see the cracks in Niou's lips and the bruises on his hands and the side of his face. It makes Yagyuu feel sad inside. His chest is empty and cold, like Niou's skin.
"Why did you leave?" Yagyuu asks again. Niou cringes. He wriggles. Yagyuu's grip strains, so he digs his fingers in deeper. It hurts Niou-and Yagyuu knows this-but he won't let go when Niou hisses and yelps.
"Why?" Yagyuu asks. Niou squirms. He knees Yagyuu in the thigh. His aim is dangerously close to Yagyuu's dick and only with the failed contact does Yagyuu realize his dick is hard and aching. He steps closer to bridge the distance between them.
Niou pants, hot and laboured. He is so close than Yagyuu can feel the heat on his neck. It sends a shiver down his spine. When Niou speaks, the frisson thickens to electricity.
"You never came that day," Niou whispers. His voice cracks. He turns away and yanks his hand. He tries to dive under Yagyuu's armpit. Yagyuu steps in the way. He's played Niou well enough before to anticipate Niou's escape. He's practiced playing Niou enough before to mirror his movements and block him.
Yagyuu is bigger and heavier. Niou is thin; these months away have left his limbs wirier, but he gives up quickly. Niou sinks to his knees. His back shudders. Yagyuu kneels down beside him. His throat has closed up and his glasses slip when he looks at Niou. Yagyuu touches Niou's jaw, mindful of the bruises. The dark blotches might be dirt, but they might be more.
Yagyuu swallows, but the words are hard to get out. "What day?" he asks.
Niou starts to laugh. The sound haunts Yagyuu. Niou looks up at him with dead eyes. The dim sky reflects in them, then dulls into nothing as Niou's pupils consume them. He looks over Yagyuu's shoulder, but not at Yagyuu.
"It was a Wednesday," Niou says.
Yagyuu remembers.
"It was supposed to be a date," Niou mutters.
Yagyuu thought it was a joke.
Niou closes his eyes. His lips part to speak, but he never does. His body leans to the left, reminiscent of a tanuki's drunken lolling. Niou spreads his palms across the pavement. His back shakes. Yagyuu leans over to him. He slides an arm around Niou's middle to support him and he can feel the tremble in Niou's body.
The wind has stopped. Seagulls gather in the sky above them. Yagyuu can see one, two, three birds soaring on the wind. They float on the draft and they are as silent as Niou.
It was supposed to mean something, Niou never says.
Yagyuu doesn't know how to even begin to apologize.
***
What light there is fades in the direction of the west and Tokyo. Nothing remains except a thin ribbon of red behind the glowing cityscape that ripples on the sea's surface. Yagyuu walks beside Niou. His sneakers are wet from the edge of the water. Niou walks on the sand. His shoes are dry.
Yagyuu said nothing when Niou had tears in his eyes. He yelled and called Yagyuu an asshole. He punched Yagyuu in the arm. He grabbed Yagyuu by the jacket and shook him. Yagyuu still said nothing, until Niou collapsed onto his chest. Wet patches spread on his shirt, gluing the material to his skin. He touched Niou's hair and his cheek. For the first time in weeks, Yagyuu felt something warm inside.
There is no one else around, underneath the wooden pier, or on the pebbly beach, when Yagyuu kisses his apology onto Niou's mouth. He presses his hands against the wooden pillar. Niou's back is to the pillar also, but his body is warm and pliable against Yagyuu. His kisses are salty and wet. His tongue moves with Yagyuu's and Yagyuu groans. He's hard. His erection brushes Niou's leg. Yagyuu sticks his hand under Niou's shirt and tugs. Niou leans his head back. His lips are swollen and shiny. In the darkening light, it is hard to make out the colours of his skin as he flushes and tells Yagyuu it's gross, you megane retard.
"I don't care," Yagyuu murmurs. He drags his tongue over Niou's neck. His skin tastes of dirt and dried blood in the crevices. Yagyuu cleans him with the pad of his tongue. He groans on Niou's collar. He pushes away the hoodie and the scummy t-shirt Niou wears underneath. There are hands in his hair messing up his part. There are hands on his face pulling his glasses away.
It doesn't matter if Yagyuu can see or not. He can taste and touch the contours of Niou's body. He can drag his teeth over Niou's chest and suck the hardened nipples. He can slip Niou's jeans from his hips-he's thin enough now that the belt does nothing to hold them up. Niou doesn't complain about the cold or the discomfort. He only complains when Yagyuu's mouth slips for a moment. With his hands, he weaves his fingers through Yagyuu's hair and pushes him down. Niou's voice is shuddered and breathy when it whispers Yagyuu's name. Yagyuu licks Niou's belly. Niou sucks his stomach in.
The darkness gathers, more and more. Dimly, Yagyuu can hear the rush of pachinko parlours and the low hum of motorboats in the harbour. Mostly, he can only hear Niou's panting when Yagyuu opens his mouth and Niou thrusts hard. Yagyuu gags. The primal urge to pull back flashes through Yagyuu's brain-the rational part of his mind-but his heart throbs against his ribs. Blood roars in his ears, louder than the ocean, when Niou shudders and comes in Yagyuu's mouth.
Yagyuu doesn't last long, either. He rises on shaky legs. His knees have turned to tokoroten jelly. He never felt this with Sanada. He never kissed Sanada hard enough that his breathing stopped and he saw stars in his vision. The tightness in Yagyuu's belly explodes when Niou touches a sliver of Yagyuu's skin under his shirt. He moans, "Masaharu" and falls to Niou's chest. Niou's skin is wet: with sweat, with salt water, maybe with tears, too.
They pull their clothes back on. Niou washes his hand in the water. The come on his fingers drifts toward the fishy homes of the deep. The rest is rubbed into Yagyuu's pants. There is still no one else around and the night is cool. Niou walks and his arm brushes Yagyuu. Carefully, he slings his arm around Yagyuu's shoulder. His solid body, rubbing against Yagyuu's side, has never felt more right.
Their sneakers crunch on the gravelly sand in perfect tandem. Niou stops walking. Yagyuu stops, too. He turns to Niou and a cold worry seeps through his stomach. Everything is uncertain, except for the new warmth in Niou's body. Niou sighs. Yagyuu frowns.
Niou faces the water. His arm slips from Yagyuu's shoulder and the worry deepens. Yagyuu stands on edge. His body stiffens and his throat catches. He watches Niou bend down and pick up a stone. It skips across the water twice, then sinks below the dark, glassy surface.
"Yaaaagyuu, you wanna do something like karaoke?" Niou asks. Pain is written across his face in the thin smile he offers Yagyuu. It's a joke, but the trick has failed. Yagyuu shakes his head-he doesn't have any money anyway.
It would be simple enough to call home and to leave Niou here. It would be the right thing to do to go back home and pretend he never found Niou. Yagyuu could live his life by himself. He could attend university in America and study medicine. His life could be planned out and taken step by step into adulthood.
But Niou would never he a part of that.
Yagyuu could choose those ivy-covered buildings and university lectures, or he can choose the dirty boy on the gravelly beach who wants him more than he would ever admit.
There is no choice, not really.
Yagyuu takes Niou's hand in his. He threads their fingers together. Niou's hand is limp in his until Yagyuu squeezes tight. He steps into an embrace and Niou holds back. His hair tickles Yagyuu's nose. It's unwashed and smells like salt water and the grease from the Chinese restaurant. This close, and with the lights of the shops and pachinko parlours on the pier above them, Yagyuu can see the tanuki colours in Niou's hair: black on bleached white.
Yagyuu closes his eyes and mutters, "Let’s stay here a while."
Title: Stay
Wordcount: 8800
Rating: R
Warnings: Chinese food and dinosaurs.
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis is owned by Konomi Takeshi. No profit is made from this piece of fan fiction.
Summary: Niou disappears one day. Yagyuu isn't sure if he cares.
Author's Notes: Thanks to illuminations and longleggedgit, as well as koneko_meow for the beta. This fic was written for meganezilla for rikkai_exchange 2008.
Niou disappears one day.
Two days ago, they were talking.
The plans had been brief and vague. Niou sidled up to Yagyuu in the stairwell where they ate lunch together. Yagyuu had a department store bento and a tokoroten jelly from Sunkrus. Niou had the mystery curry special from the cafeteria. He ate Yagyuu's prawn. Yagyuu said nothing.
"Yaaaagyuu," Niou drawled, "you busy on Wednesday?" He leaned back and scratched his hair.
Yagyuu shook his head.
"You wanna do something?" Niou asked. He cocked his head to the side, but he didn’t look at Yagyuu. The cement walls of the school were much more interesting. "Karaoke?"
Yagyuu shrugged. "I suppose we could do that."
Niou snorted. His hair hid his eyes, but not the smirk on his mouth. "Do something stupid and dress up and sing Disney songs?"
Yagyuu blinked. "If you want."
"If you want," Niou said. He shoved Yagyuu’s side with his shoulder, making Yagyuu back into the wall. Yagyuu pushed his glasses back up his nose. Niou added, "You’re the one who’s into dressing up, I'm just being thoughtful."
Not even Niou’s teasing could make Yagyuu's cheeks burn. "Fine," he said. He slurped his jelly. Niou poked Yagyuu's other shoulder with a chopstick. There was curry on the end. Yagyuu frowned at the small stain on his uniform shirt.
"See you at the station, then. The exit with the coffee shop after school."
"Should we ask the rest of the team to come, too?" Yagyuu asked. Niou stepped up a couple stairs before he half-turned around and shrugged his shoulders. He walked off, hunched over with his awful posture, calling back to Yagyuu, "Maybe make it seven."
Really, it was quite vague.
Cram school ran late on Wednesday. Yagyuu arrived at half-past seven. Niou was always late, so it wouldn't matter too much. Yagyuu reached into his pocket for his cellphone when a shrill voice shouted his name.
The girls flapped around him, all grins, all five of them, all holding heavy shopping bags in their gaudy pink mittens. Yagyuu smiled at his classmates. He said, "Good evening."
"Do you want to get some food?" one girl asked. She was the loudest, but they all nodded and broke into a chorus of cheers. Their voices encouraged Yagyuu to agree and come with them. "We’d love for you to come!"
Yagyuu hesitated. He checked over his shoulder into the coffee shop one last time. He hadn't promised Niou anything. And the plans had been vague; the team was probably in the middle of karaoke right now. It would be rude to interrupt.
He was standing in front of a ramen shop with a tanuki on the sign. It leered like Niou. Yagyuu smiled to himself at the thought.
Besides, the girl who grabbed Yagyuu’s arm-was it Mohko-chan? Or was that her friend-had a big smile and big breasts brushing against Yagyuu. Her chest heaved as she and her friends pleaded.
"All right," he said. "If it doesn't inconvenience anyone." Yagyuu had a girl on each arm and three more behind him. He bit back the self-satisfied smile threatening to form on his mouth.
Niou-kun would understand. He would have done the same thing.
***
Instead, Niou has been gone since then.
Maybe the day of, or the day after. He hasn't been to school. He hasn't been to tennis practice. He hasn't answered calls or text messages, or emails. Yagyuu shows up to Niou's house two days after. It’s a Friday. He knocks on the door and straightens his back. He brushes down the front of his school blazer.
Niou's mother answers the door. Her eyes are red and puffy. She's been crying, but she bows her head and asks Yagyuu to come in. "Please," she says. "If you would." She sniffles.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's fine, but thank you." Hearing Niou's mother sniffle and start to cry is awkward. Yagyuu shifts his weight. He apologizes for intruding. He should have known that Niou hasn't been home, either.
For all Niou liked to think he was a bad kid, a rebel, he wasn't. He did his homework every night. He showed up to tennis practices and he didn't shoplift. He dyed his hair and he blew his money on water guns, but he had never run away from home before.
Yagyuu doesn't know what to think.
He is not dependant on Niou. He doesn't need Niou. If Niou chose to leave-whatever his reasons-Yagyuu can accept that.
***
Without Niou, life is easy.
Yagyuu is entirely himself.
He wakes up, he goes to tennis practice. If he works on rallies, he volleys with Yanagi. They talk in the shower about literature and the English assignment Bronwyn-sensei gave them last week. If Yagyuu works on his backhand, he plays with Jackal. Jackal's balls are fast and strong, whipped across the air. Thrills rush through Yagyuu's body, subdued electricity that courses through his arm as he swings back to return the ball.
Yagyuu goes to class. He goes to prefect meetings with Sanada. He takes notes in his A4 paper pad: there are no scribbles in the margins anymore, or ripped pages. His writing is short and precise. No one steals his pens, he always has three extra ballpoints in his bag now.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, Yagyuu attends cram school. He sits in a hard desk for three hours and ignores the rumbling in his stomach. He fills the A4 pad with notes on math (his least best subject) and pointers for the English exam for university entrance.
At supper, his father mentions Harvard. His mother mentions Canada. "It's cheaper," she says.
"The medical school is better at Harvard," his father says. They don't ask Yagyuu his opinion and he doesn't offer it. He's awake, but tired. He sits up straight and eats his fish dinner. The ivy-draped buildings in his imagination sound nice, pleasantly foreign but still familiar enough to be comfortable. He can live this life without thinking too hard. It's easy to get caught up in the idea of studying abroad if his marks are kept up. It's easy to let his parents decide and to follow the rules and the teachers and to be the good boy. To be himself.
Yagyuu reads before bed. He does his homework, then breaks out his novels. They're bent at the spine and covered with homemade cloth covers in paisley patterns. His mother washed the stains out; there are no more ink balls splattered across the arabesques. He sits in bed, legs crossed, and his shoulders sink. The pages stick together. Some are dog-eared, some are covered in food, crumbs long forgotten from someone else. Yagyuu leans forward and presses the book to his nose. The pages are dry, papery and thin. The ink smells faintly, but mostly it is the perfume of hair wax and wet dirt, rubber balls and Lotte green gum.
Yagyuu's chest feels tight. His insides feel hot. He shifts in his bed and the mattress creaks. A spring pokes him in the butt cheek and he cannot find the place on the page where he left off, despite trying. His eyes blur, glaze and the characters meld, a 'ko' becoming two, becoming Ni-
Yagyuu closes his eyes. He takes off his glasses, folding them by his bedside, and he turns off his lamp. In this spring weather, the low bellows of bullfrogs creep under his window, and sometimes the chorus of crickets too. Yagyuu lies in bed. He stares at the ceiling, but he cannot see it.
He holds his breath, waiting for a phone call, waiting for a tap on his window, waiting for a sign, but nothing ever comes.
***
Without Niou, life is boring.
There is no singed hair. There are no handcuffs, locking him to the railing on the school rooftop. There are no nights past his curfew, when Yagyuu comes home after midnight and has to lie to his parents that he was tutoring a kouhai and lost track of the time. There are no stolen novels, no missed tennis practices, no lost pads of A4 paper found at the back of Niou's shoe cubby three weeks later.
No one invites Yagyuu for cosplay and ramen. No one shows up at Yagyuu's house at half past-eight, lets himself in, and peruses Yagyuu's room. Niou would touch Yagyuu's books. He would rearrange his textbooks and pull the golf balls from their containers out, one by one, and roll them across the Pergo floor. Niou would lick his finger and rub behind Yagyuu's ear. Now, there are no slimy trails to make Yagyuu cringe.
In the school corridors, he glances over his shoulder, but there is no one with bleached hair, except a girl with blond highlights. She and her friends wave, waggling their fingers that catch the light overhead; their painted fingernails are pearly instead of Niou's chewed hangnails. Yagyuu smiles back and nods. He stares at their breasts.
There is no one to lean over his shoulder and whisper in a hot voice, "The one in the middle has the best tits, doesn't she, Yaaaagyuu? Bet it's nice and soft between them…"
Yagyuu works on his laser beam by himself. It is his shot-it always has been, and will be. The machine shoots balls to him, shwook and Yagyuu stiffens. He stands up straight and drops his shoulder. He steps back, swings back and his eyes narrow, focusing on the narrow line of yellow zooming through the gymnasium. He swings. The ball is heavy on the racket gut, and his wrist recoils. The laser zooms, but it doesn't cut.
There is no one to touch his arm with rough fingertips. There is no one to click their tongue and tell him his back is too tense, his legs aren't bent enough and Yagyuu, what the hell are you doing clenching your ass like that, bubble-butt? Yagyuu can hear Niou's words clear as the beeps of the ball machine.
But each day, they fade.
Each day, Niou disappears a little more.
His school shoes, dirty at the toes, leave the cubby one morning. They are replaced by new shoes, a transfer student from Saitama named Kato.
His tennis club house locker empties one afternoon. Takeda, a senior on the high school tennis team, puts everything into a plastic basket. Niou's mother picks it up before practice ends.
Yagyuu sits on the bus, alone. The doors hiss as they open and close. He touches his cellphone, warm from his pocket, and the LCD screen shows kanji too familiar and a number called too many times. Last received call, three weeks ago, four, five. The date becomes irrelevant and time passes as the rice paddies and suburbs and pachinko parlours with flashing lights whir by through the window.
There is no one to ask Yagyuu if he wants to get ramen at the tanuki shop in the station. There is no one to pick at the hairs on Yagyuu's arms-the fine ones that are barely there, but long enough to be picked out and plucked out with a brief intense sharpness.
There is no one to ask, "Wanna be me tonight?"
Yagyuu is only Yagyuu.
And it's lonely.
***
Jackal rides his bike to school and Yagyuu walks beside him. The overcast clouds have parted, but the sun isn't out and there is a cool breeze coming off the canals they walk by. A single plastic garbage bag floats in the water. It is bleached white and Yagyuu feels an odd pressure in his throat. He coughs to clear it.
"It's been over a month," Jackal says.
Yagyuu nods.
"Will you play doubles?" he asks. "I mean, you could probably play with me sometimes and Bunta can rotate, maybe." Jackal's bike chain shifts and he pushes the pedals backwards. The metallic sound swishes like water. The trees stir around them and the last of the sakura trees shed their blossoms, floating in the air like pink tears. It's still cold sometimes at night. Even now, Yagyuu is grateful for wearing his school blazer.
"I imagine I'll play where the captain wants me," Yagyuu says.
Jackal stops pedaling. He plants his feet to the ground. His bike sags sideways as he leans on his elbows and rests on his handlebars. Yagyuu takes two more steps before he realizes Jackal isn't beside him. He turns around far enough to look at Jackal looking at him with a crease in his forehead.
An awkward tension rises. Yagyuu pushes his glasses up-it's a nervous habit, he knows, but he can't stop his fingers from touching the bridge of his nose and the smooth, warm metal of his frames.
"Jackal-kun?"
"Don't you worry about him?" Jackal asks.
Yagyuu blinks.
"Out of everyone, you knew him the best. You guys switched," Jackal says. "You even had me fooled!"
Yagyuu stiffens. Underneath his tennisbag on his left shoulder and his backpack on his right, his back is sweaty. His left hand tingles and he looks down, turning his hand over to see the palm, faintly pink. He used this hand when he was Niou. Yagyuu curls it up into a fist, keeping it at his side and out of view when he glances up to Jackal again.
"I'm not him," Yagyuu says.
"But you guys were tight."
Not tight enough…Yagyuu thinks. At the same time, he pushes the thought aside. It makes his face warm and he closes his eyes for a moment as a fresh breeze lifts up the ends of his hair and tickles his neck-spring's kiss over his skin.
"I…didn't know everything about him," Yagyuu admits. His throat feels thick and his voice sounds heavy between them. Jackal's sneaker slips on his pedal and the chain zips, metal on metal going nowhere as the silence lingers. Yagyuu doesn't know what to say, or what Jackal expects, waiting and looking at him like that, so he bows his head a little and excuses himself.
Yagyuu takes the bus home, in the opposite direction. As it drives through an underpass, along the side of the road, in a dim corner, Yagyuu can make out the billowing shape of a single white-bleached plastic bag. He feels empty inside.
Neither he nor Jackal mentioned Niou's name at all.
***
There is a picture on Yagyuu's desk from junior high school. It was taken three weeks before their switch. Niou's arm is slung over Yagyuu's shoulder and he looks at the camera with a leer of his eyebrows and a cocky smirk, lopsided. Yagyuu touches his glasses. He's frowning in the picture; now, with a smile tugging on his lips, he remembers why.
It was hot that day. Mid-July and steamy and they'd run laps, maybe fifty or a hundred, but enough to make them all rank and sweaty. Niou offered hugs to the team, but no one accepted. He gave one to Yagyuu. "It's better with sweat," he said. "More essence of me." He slid a sticky arm around the back of Yagyuu's neck and Yagyuu shivered.
"You need all the me you can get soon, ne?" Niou whispered.
Yagyuu shivered again, all the way to his toes. His dick pulsed, hard and swollen with blood in his shorts. It was the first time he thought of Niou in any other way than a friend. At home that night, he unfolded the dirty tennis t-shirt from his bag and sniffed it. It was saturated with his own sweat, but the essence of Niou was there too: hair wax and wet dirt, Lotte Green gum and ballpoint pen ink.
It was something Yagyuu could never duplicate. He could slouch his shoulders and stuff his hands into his pockets. He could wear a wig and contacts and Niou's old grey sneakers. He could play with his left hand and shoot lasers with both. He could talk in a drawl and talk back to Sanada-god, that felt good! Yagyuu had narrowed his eyes and snorted at Sanada.
"I'll take them off when I feel like taking them off," he said. He touched his wrist weights and curled his lip. Sanada nearly slapped him. Yagyuu had felt a rush through his body, a victory of ten times the force from a game.
Once, he and Niou kissed. It was three weeks after the switch. There was an early typhoon; it was afternoon and they were in Yagyuu's bedroom. The air conditioning made Niou's skin cold when his arm brushed against Yagyuu's as he flopped down on Yagyuu's bed. The mattress creaked under their bodies and Yagyuu could see dirt caked under Niou's fingernails-he hadn't washed them after they swept the courts. Not that it mattered now with the wind howling and the water swirling outside.
Niou's mouth was as sticky as his skin. They had rushed back to Yagyuu's in the downpour, and Niou didn't have an umbrella. He never did. He would stand outside in a rainstorm, drenched and smirking, whereas Yagyuu preferred to watch from the porch. The feeling of their mouths touching was the same: at first, hesitant touches on lips as Niou tested how far Yagyuu would go-how far Yagyuu could go with this.
Yagyuu opened his mouth. He was the one to slide his tongue over Niou's teeth and he was the one to weave his hands through Niou's hair. They kissed. Someone moaned. His glasses were skewed. They kissed more, Yagyuu pressing harder and deeper into Niou's mouth until Niou's slack body responded with a tentative hand on his shoulder. Niou tasted wet, and like the green gum he chewed sometimes and the clay dust from the court and salt, too, but that might have been the sweat on his upper lip. Yagyuu's dick was hard. His body was taught and drawn up, a loaded spring coiling tighter and tighter in his belly as Niou started to move underneath him and whisper his name. Yagyuu kissed his throat. Niou fumbled with Yagyuu's zipper. His fingertips grazed the material of Yagyuu's shorts and sent fresh shocks through Yagyuu's body.
He gasped.
And there was a knock on the door. His mother asked if they wanted some of the barley tea and they pulled apart without another word or a second glance.
It was the first and last time they ever kissed.
Yagyuu dreams of turning over the rock in Sanada's backpack. He finds Niou underneath, crouched and small and looking up at him from under that fringe of bleached hair.
"There you are," Yagyuu says. "I've been looking for you."
Niou's eyes are black and he bristles, lurching like a tanuki as he gets up onto unsteady feet. He says nothing, but he licks his lips and his pupils grow larger, wider. They reflect Yagyuu's glasses-he cannot see clearly, but he can feel it, the same way he can feel Niou's cold hand touch his skim, his clammy palm pressed to Yagyuu's.
"Why didn't you look sooner?" Niou whispers. His voice breaks and he turns away. Something twists inside Yagyuu. His glasses slip down his nose, but he doesn't fix them. Instead, he rubs Niou's arm to try to get him to turn and look at him so Yagyuu can apologize properly.
Niou never turns. Yagyuu is always the one to pull his shoulder. Niou moves like the air, fluid and easy. His body flops into Yagyuu, his lips graze Yagyuu's ear, but never closer, never more.
Yagyuu wakes up hard and alone before he can kiss Niou. His hand is wrapped tight around his cock, pulsing under his thumb, and his pajama pants are sticky and twisted around his legs. He masturbates until he comes. It's a visceral reaction and physical pleasure, rubbing his hand fast and hard enough to make the waves wrack his body and his dick to sputter come between his fingers.
In his chest, Yagyuu feels a cold stab. He washes himself in the shower and he makes sure to tie his school cravat extra tight around his neck. He's choked up anyway and he can't figure out why.
***
Maybe he's sick.
Maybe he's lonely.
Maybe he's bored, and without Niou, he's taking on Niou's habits.
Yagyuu follows Sanada. They have art class before lunch, still-life drawing. Yagyuu sketches the Fuji apples in the ceramic dish on the table. He draws round forms and tilts his pencil, rubbing it over and over across the page in smooth arcs. But his eyes look up and focus on Sanada, who sits across the room. Sanada stares with intense, black eyes at the bowl, then they flick down to his paper. He draws with the same diligence he shows to his schoolwork and to his tennis. He may not be a good artist, but his apples are more than adequate. His eyebrows knit on the bridge of his nose. His eyes focus back on the bowl.
It's Hagi ware. The glaze is transparent and the bowl has a yellowish tinge. Sanada's drawing cannot replicate the play of the fluorescent lights on the lip of the bowl, nor does his pencil show the colours of the apple.
Yagyuu watches Sanada with cold calculation. He's no Yanagi, but he can draw enough conclusions on his own. Sanada is predictable: after the class bell sounds, Sanada packs his bags and rushes from the classroom to his locker. Yagyuu slips into the hallway to keep close watch. He darts between students. His eyes never leave Sanada's tall form above the heads of the crowd.
He's been watching Sanada for a week. Sanada locks his bag in his locker, then he goes to the cafeteria. He orders the lunch special and holds the tray against his chest, then he walks up the stairs. Yagyuu shifts his eyes. His backpack shifts on his shoulders as he climbs the steps, always a stair well behind Sanada. His footsteps are light. He's no ninja, but he is quiet.
Sanada eats on the rooftop. Today, Yukimura has a beautification club meeting. Today, Sanada eats in the washitsu. Today, Sanada eats alone. The door slides closed behind him. Yagyuu catches it with his hand and pushes it back open.
He pushes his glasses up his nose. His lips curl up, but Yagyuu doesn't feel the smile. He feels nothing: not fluttering in his stomach, nor a melting twist of his insides. He can feel the softer tatami under his standard school shoes. The floor in the washitsu gives more than the hard linoleum in the hallways.
"Sanada-kun," he says.
Sanada looks up. He sets the piece of fried chicken down that he was about to eat and he narrows his eyes at Yagyuu, just enough for Yagyuu to see the irritation on his face and the stony set of his jaw.
"What do you want?" Sanada asks.
Yagyuu sniffs, laughing through his nose. He touches the bridge of his nose, folding his arm over the other. His eyes shift to the left. Sanada sits on the floor with his legs tucked under himself. Yagyuu stands above him. It would be easier to strike down, but not to launch an attack upwards. It's simple knowledge: Yagyuu has the upper hand.
Yagyuu strikes first. He walks up to Sanada and looks down his nose. Sanada starts to stand up, mouth curving into a scowl when Yagyuu shoots his hands out and pins Sanada to the wall. It's awkward and Sanada blinks. Confusion is written across his face when Yagyuu leans close.
"Sanada-kun," he says.
"What are you doing?" Sanada asks.
Truth be told, Yagyuu doesn't know. He's not thinking-why would he follow Sanada to the washitsu at lunch on the only day of the week when Sanada eats alone? Excuses flash, rapid-fire, through his mind. He could ask about prefect's council, or the history assignment due next Tuesday. He could ask about tennis practice or whether or not there's something wrong with him now that Niou is gone.
Niou is gone.
Something cuts Yagyuu down the middle for an instant. It's so fast that it's gone, but a blush of pain lingers. Yagyuu swallows. His reflection shines in the dim light of Sanada's black eyes: his glasses, the thin set of his lips, and the way he licks them too.
Maybe Yagyuu just wants to find out if he can feel something more than hollow. He presses his mouth to Sanada's. A thrill rips through his body when Sanada stiffens. His shoulders tense under Yagyuu's fingers. Yagyuu has done this before, with three people. The first was when he was thirteen. It was a girl, after golf practice. He walked her home. She thanked him in the alley near the shrine across from school. Her lips were dry. She puckered her lips and she tasted of cherry candies.
The third was last month. A girl from the group he ate ramen with, two weeks after Niou left. Yagyuu slipped his hand under the front of her shirt. Under her bra, he could feel stiff nipples on his palm. Her hair was brittle and bleached. She had sticky lips covered in gloss that took five minutes of scrubbing in the shower to wash away.
The second was Niou. Thinking about it, even for a moment, a flood of physical memories returns to Yagyuu. His dick stiffens. Sanada opens his mouth-maybe it's shock, maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's nothing. His tongue is slack under Yagyuu's. He doesn't fight back like Niou did. He doesn't moan or move. Yagyuu kisses harder. He straddles Sanada's middle, pushing his dick into Sanada's body. He rubs. He closes his eyes, hoping to taste something greener than the fried chicken from lunch. Sanada twists his head. A hand slaps Yagyuu on the arm. He ignores the pain and bites Sanada's top lip. Sanada is still. His hand falls when Yagyuu pushes it away. Sanada doesn't breathe. Yagyuu runs his tongue over Sanada's teeth. They are dull.
When Yagyuu pulls back, he looks at Sanada. His hair is messed on the right side. Yagyuu's glasses are skewed, too. Sanada is blurry around the edges and Yagyuu doesn't see Sanada's hand slap him a second time.
This time, he doesn't ignore the pain. Yagyuu hisses. He cups his cheek with a hand. His face flushes warmer by the second as he climbs off Sanada's lap. Sanada, though, is hard. He gasps. His eyes flutter shut when Yagyuu's hips move in that moment between contact and leaving. Their thighs brush. Their cocks almost rub through the thin material of their summer uniform trousers.
In the filtered light of the washitsu Sanada's lips seem swollen. His lunch has gone cold; no more steam rises from the cafeteria tray. Yagyuu falls back to the opposite wall. The tatami absorbs the squeaks of his shoes as he kneels down. Yagyuu swallows the taste of fried chicken. The grease is thick in his mouth. It chokes off the air in his throat. He coughs to clear it, and says, "Please excuse me, Sanada-kun."
Yagyuu expects to be slapped again. His cheek tingles with anticipation. He expects to be called a lazy ass. He expects Sanada to glower and yell. Yagyuu looks at the weave in the tatami mat. Dust modes float in the air between them. Through the walls, the sound of other students in the hallway is dulled.
"Why aren't you looking for Niou?" Sanada asks. His mouth is a thin line. His eyes are black, like his hair and his cap. He smells like deodorant and temple incense, not wet dirt and green gum. Yagyuu's chest feels tight.
He stands up and says nothing. When he leaves, he bows to Sanada. An apology seems too trifling. Sanada won't say a thing to anyone.
***
Jackal and Yanagi wait at the bike racks at the front of the school. "Bunta has band practice," Jackal says. Yanagi wears his glasses. Yagyuu assumes that Yanagi has cram school tonight-he doesn't. It is a Tuesday and the weather is sunny.
"Do you even know where to look?" Jackal asks. He walks next to his bike, pushing it beside Yanagi as they walk through a park. There is a takoyaki stand near the shrine at the west end, and a fountain to the north. The water spray is cool. It mists on Yagyuu's bare arms. The earth is soft and the trees have the first flush of green leaves bursting into bloom.
"I don't know," Yagyuu says.
A crow sits on the cement ledge around the fountain. It looks at Yagyuu with a liquid black eye. Fool, it says.
"Presumably he can't have gone far," Yanagi says. "With limited money and no passport, he is likely still within a hundred kilometer radius."
Jackal looks at Yanagi. Yanagi blinks. For a moment, he looks flustered. Yagyuu could be on the verge of laughing, but he holds back. Yanagi saves face when he adds, "Give or take a few." He turns to Yagyuu. Their pace has slowed from a comfortable walk into an amble through the evergreens. Needles litter the cracked pavement and they crunch under Yagyuu's shoes. Across the road from the park, there is a family-style yakiniku restaurant with a red sign. Yagyuu turns away from it. His arms feel colder than before.
"Do you really have no idea?" Yanagi asks.
"You guys were each other," Jackal says.
Yagyuu stops. He looks up at the sky. It rumbles. But it might also be a passing train rattling the tracks behind a row of houses and drooping power lines.
"What if he's pretending to be you?" Jackal asks.
The dark clouds shift. They overlap and the first drops of rain patter down around them. Yagyuu frowns. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. The taste of fried chicken is long gone, but when he swallows, he can almost find a lingering green sweetness.
The clouds seem to cry the tears Yagyuu can't. Yanagi and Jackal whip their umbrellas out. Yagyuu stands in the shower of rain that pours down, wetting his clothes and gluing them to his skin. He exhales, then he walks the other direction. From the branch of a zelkova tree, the crow stares at him. He can smell BBQ smoke from the restaurant in the air, mixing with the nitrogen of a storm.
There is a pain in his ribs. It comes in a sharp jab. Yagyuu clutches his chest and he gasps. He digs at the material of his shirt and wrinkles the white fabric. The crow keeps watching him. It tilts its head. It ruffles its wings and picks at them with its black beak.
Jackal and Yanagi have left the park. The rain falls. Droplets slide down Yagyuu's glasses, making it hard to see properly. He sits down at the fountain ledge. His bum is warm and wet. As much as Jackal's word cloy to his ears, Yagyuu knows Niou isn't him.
Once Niou said I like me. He should have said, I like you too. Just once Yagyuu wanted to hear that. He didn't know then. Now, he does.
The storm comes from the east. The winds come from the north. The warm, sticky rain seeping through Yagyuu's clothes settles deep in his bones. Somehow, he knows where to go.
***
In English class, they have presentations. Each student has five to ten lines about a place they like would like to visit, written in the future conditional. Yagyuu writes his presentation three days in advance. He edits the grammar twice. He wants to visit Augusta, Georgia. He wants to visit to see the Master's tournament. It is a golf tournament. Yagyuu likes golf. He writes this on a sheet of A4 paper from his notebook.
The presentations are alphabetical in the Western system. Abe Mohko-chan presents first. Bronwyn-sensei smiles and tells her to begin. Yagyuu looks at Mohko's tits. Her shirt is unbuttoned halfway down her chest and she is wearing a white lace bra. She holds her sheet of paper and shifts her weight. Today, her skirt is short. One of the boys whistles. Sanada scowls; his pen scratches his notes and he doesn't look up. Yagyuu rarely speaks to Sanada in class.
He hasn’t spoken to Sanada since that day.
"I want to visit Kisarazu," Mohko says. "I want to see Shojoji. My favourite nursery rhythm is Shojoji no Tanukibayashi. Shojoji no Tanukibayashi is about a raccoon. Raccoon's temple is in Kisarazu. That is why I want to visit Kisarazu."
Yagyuu sets his pen down. He leans forward and blinks. His intestines have gone cold and twisted inside. He cannot feel his pulse, but his heart pounds. Yagyuu touches his temple. His skin is clammy. He stands up. Bronwyn-sensei nods to him. Yagyuu says, "It is 'rhyme' not 'rhythm'". His voice is hollow. When he sits down, bile rises in his throat.
The only word Yagyuu has written down in his notebook for class is Kisarazu.
A wind from the east blows through the open window of the classroom. Yagyuu stands at the front of the room. He holds his piece of A4 paper-he is the last student to present. The wind smells of the sea, salty and fishy. He glances down at the words he has written. His tongue is woolen when he opens his mouth to speak. No sound comes. His eyes glance across the paper. Through the natural light that makes the white sheet translucent, he can make out the invisible cartoon of a tanuki. It is the same doodle that Niou used to draw.
Yagyuu sucks in a breath. "Excuse me," he mutters.
For the first time, Yagyuu skips class. He doesn't return to the classroom. Instead, he takes his bag from his locker. He walks out the front doors of the school after he changes into his sneakers. The sun beams down. It is faint through the overcast clouds.
Yagyuu has 2000 yen in his wallet.
A train ticket to Kisarazu costs 1890.
***
It is Wednesday and Yagyuu is skipping class. He steps out of the train station with the map in his hands. He doesn't have a clue where to begin to look.
For all his chaos and illusions, Niou is ruled by logic. Logically, Yagyuu assumes the first place to check is Shojoji temple. He adjusts his glasses and begins to walk. Kisarazu smells of the fishy sea, and also the peanuts of Chiba. The sky is grey and, despite the traffic, the air is filled with the squawk of gulls. His sneakers crunch on the pavement running alongside the main road. Yagyuu squints into the intermittent sun. He follows the signs.
The temple grounds are the same as a thousand others. Walkways cut through green bushes and ruffled hostas. The wooden gazebos and shrines have fresh, pale timber. Birds titter. There is incense in the air, and the sea, but no hair wax or green gum.
There is no one else around. Across the street, through the sakura trees long have shed their blossoms, Yagyuu can see suburban homes. Their raw domesticity is ugly: futons drape over railings and rubbish bins are stacked outside. Yagyuu turns a corner. Niou's name is on the tip of his tongue, but Yagyuu says nothing.
In the centre of the grounds is the main shrine. The gables are curved and ornate. Purple hangings drape from the roofline. Old sepia photographs sit framed and adored, ancestors worshipped by no one but the quiet of midday. Around the shrine are hundreds of leering statues. Yagyuu searches their empty grins and glazed eyes and round white bellies, but they all remain silent and lifeless. Yagyuu places a five yen coin at the foot of one of the statues. It has been bleached by the sun and weathered by the elements. Still, it continues to smile at him.
"Please," Yagyuu whispers. He closes his eyes and claps his hands.
The tanuki says nothing.
Niou is not with the tanuki. He is not a tanuki, as much as he leered and smirked and rolled his eyes. Yagyuu leaves the temple complex. He frowns.
"Now what?" he whispers. His watch reads ten past two. His stomach growls and he hasn't eaten since breakfast at seven. He wore his school uniform out the doorway of high school when he left. He changed in the alley behind the train station. Switching with Niou last year-and Kaidoh, too-has made him quick.
He walks back to the area around the train station, then he turns right. He walks toward the sea. The sky swirls. Rain will come soon, and the sea is swollen. Yagyuu walks west. In the distance across the bay is Yokohama, home. He doesn't know if Niou would want to get away completely, or not. Part of Yagyuu wants Niou to feel something for his home and for him. The other part of him wonders if Niou would want to throw it all behind himself forever.
Yagyuu cannot choose which. He does decide on a bowl of udon for lunch. There is a draft in the tiny noodle bar and he slurps the udon. He wipes the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief, then he leaves.
He still doesn't know where to go. The wind has picked up. The sky has deepened and darkened, but it hasn’t begun to rain yet. Yagyuu crosses at a set of lights. He passes a row of shops and a Familymart. Through the window is a rack of chewing gum; on it is a row of Lotte Green packages. Yagyuu touches his chest. His lungs ache.
He keeps walking. Wind cuts through his jacket. The sea spits salt into the air that bites Yagyuu's face. He closes his eyes and turns down a quiet street. Lonely plastic bags collect in a ditch and scrappy metal bike sheds give way to abandoned lots covered in scrappy grass. Yagyuu looks behind his shoulder. In the distance, he can see a train from Tokyo pulling into Kisarazu station. In the seaward direction, boats bob on the choppy waters. The pavement is speckled with rain. Yagyuu shivers.
Ahead of him is another abandoned lot. A fence rings the perimeter, and above the bent wooden planks are heads. They stare at Yagyuu. The monsters have horns and snaking necks and fangs and purple bellies. The sign says "Dinosaur Park". A second sign pasted over the first says, "CLOSED".
A gust of wind prickles the back of Yagyuu's neck. His hair whips up, but he doesn't pat it down. Instead, he walks to the fence. He walks around the fence, which gives way to a painted mural on the far side. Painted dinosaurs chip and fall at his feet. Their remains crunch under Yagyuu's sneakers.
This is the sort of place Niou might be. Yagyuu exhales. The gates are locked at the front but Yagyuu can see inside the compound. The walls are eight feet high; to Yagyuu's, though, right is a security code box. Yagyuu inhales and grabs it. He's not as limber as Niou, nor as skilled at climbing trees and tool sheds, but he drags himself up. His foot totters. Yagyuu grabs the top of the fence. With a heave, he throws his body over.
There is a single, dull echo when he lands.
The Dinosaur Park is empty. No one hears when Yagyuu groans. His ankle snaps when he stands. He gasps at the air to fill his winded lungs. Yagyuu stumbles when he walks. His ankle throbs. The park looks lonelier on the inside: the grey sky dulls the grins of the dinosaurs. Abandoned bicycles and forlorn vending machines-long-emptied-sit vacant in the corners. There is dust and garbage blowing around with the rain. The wind howls as it weaves through the fiberglass monsters.
Yagyuu taps a Brontosaurus on the bulbous knee. It is hollow. He touches the armour of an Ankylosaur. Its red eyes stare at nothing. There are no children to climb its back anymore. The thick smell of salt and nitrogen in the air dull Yagyuu's senses. His fingers are cold and the dinosaurs are colder still.
At the fence, a piece of A4 paper has blown flat against the planks. Yagyuu picks it up. The edges are worn and the sheet has yellowed. It is nothing more than a doodle on the back of a permission form, dated three years ago. Yagyuu sets it back down on the ground, but he folds it over first to protect the crayon scrawl.
"Where are you?" Yagyuu whispers.
The shadows move against the dimming light. The pavement is as grey as the clouds overhead. Yagyuu tucks his hands into the hems of his jacket, but his fingers are numb. His toe hits a pebble. It skips across the shadow of a looming carnivore. Yagyuu looks at it. The Tyrannosaurus Rex grins back. The sharp leer makes a lump congeal in Yagyuu's throat. He touches the pale belly. It has two claws on each hand and there is a hole in the fiberglass knee.
For a moment, the wind stops. Silence falls, except for the soft patter of the salty rain on the ground. Yagyuu holds his breath and listens. Another shadow moves, followed by the crunch of a sneaker on gravel. Except it isn't his own. Yagyuu stands stiff and still.
His shoulders tighten. His glasses slip down his nose. There is a name murmured on his lips that is lost in the whistle of a fresh wind. He strikes, as though he's playing tennis, and shoots a look over his shoulder.
Niou is hunched against the fence. The tanuki leer and smirk are gone. Only his black eyes are the same.
The only words Niou says are, "You came."
***
Not far from the ocean, wedged into a row of strip clubs and seedy bars, is a single Chinese restaurant. Niou decides on it. Yagyuu buys a set meal with cashew chicken and glass noodles. He buys three steamed pork buns. He isn't hungry, but his stomach twists.
Niou's cheeks are hollow and his skin is pale. His hair has grown out-the black roots are an inch from his scalp. His clothes have holes and he smells like salt water and sweat, wet earth but no green gum. He stuffs the pork buns into his mouth. There is black dirt under his fingernails.
Under the table, Yagyuu touches Niou's leg. Niou closes his eyes. His body tenses, his Adam's Apple bobs. If it were possible, he seems to retreat into the grungy hoodie he's wearing-the colour was probably originally blue. Yagyuu can't look at Niou's thin body, but he can't look away either.
"Why did you run away?" he asks.
Niou drops his chopsticks. His knee jerks away from Yagyuu's touch-his fingers reach out to cold air instead. "Not here!" Niou hisses.
Yagyuu cannot see any waitresses. Johnny Cash music plays behind them, low and mournful. The sound makes Yagyuu cringe. Seeing Niou pull back makes Yagyuu's hesitancy fall. "You ran away," he says. "You left without a word and you're not even glad I came for you, Niou-kun?"
It hurts to lean back in his seat and cross his arms. Yagyuu forces himself to scowl. Niou's mouth opens. His wide eyes behind translucent skin stab Yagyuu through the ribs. It is a sharp jab that makes breathing difficult. Yagyuu holds his breath. He waits for Niou to answer.
Niou flings his chair back and runs out the front door. A waitress rushes from the kitchen. Noren curtains flap over the doorway when he runs out. Yagyuu scrapes his chair back, but he pauses and bows his head. He apologizes to the waitress and leaves the last of his yen on the table.
"Please excuse us," he says on his way out.
Niou runs down the pier. Yagyuu isn't far behind him. He shouts Niou's name-the sea has calmed, but the sun hasn't returned. The light is dim and the sea slate, the colour of Niou's ratty jeans. His sneakers slap the pavement; the heels have broken off and they seem to smile at Yagyuu in an ironic way.
Niou is fast, but Yagyuu is faster. He pushes his body until he runs into Niou, grabbing Niou's arm with a tight grip. Niou struggles. Saliva flies from his mouth and his dark eyes have an eerie glow to them. This close, Yagyuu can see the cracks in Niou's lips and the bruises on his hands and the side of his face. It makes Yagyuu feel sad inside. His chest is empty and cold, like Niou's skin.
"Why did you leave?" Yagyuu asks again. Niou cringes. He wriggles. Yagyuu's grip strains, so he digs his fingers in deeper. It hurts Niou-and Yagyuu knows this-but he won't let go when Niou hisses and yelps.
"Why?" Yagyuu asks. Niou squirms. He knees Yagyuu in the thigh. His aim is dangerously close to Yagyuu's dick and only with the failed contact does Yagyuu realize his dick is hard and aching. He steps closer to bridge the distance between them.
Niou pants, hot and laboured. He is so close than Yagyuu can feel the heat on his neck. It sends a shiver down his spine. When Niou speaks, the frisson thickens to electricity.
"You never came that day," Niou whispers. His voice cracks. He turns away and yanks his hand. He tries to dive under Yagyuu's armpit. Yagyuu steps in the way. He's played Niou well enough before to anticipate Niou's escape. He's practiced playing Niou enough before to mirror his movements and block him.
Yagyuu is bigger and heavier. Niou is thin; these months away have left his limbs wirier, but he gives up quickly. Niou sinks to his knees. His back shudders. Yagyuu kneels down beside him. His throat has closed up and his glasses slip when he looks at Niou. Yagyuu touches Niou's jaw, mindful of the bruises. The dark blotches might be dirt, but they might be more.
Yagyuu swallows, but the words are hard to get out. "What day?" he asks.
Niou starts to laugh. The sound haunts Yagyuu. Niou looks up at him with dead eyes. The dim sky reflects in them, then dulls into nothing as Niou's pupils consume them. He looks over Yagyuu's shoulder, but not at Yagyuu.
"It was a Wednesday," Niou says.
Yagyuu remembers.
"It was supposed to be a date," Niou mutters.
Yagyuu thought it was a joke.
Niou closes his eyes. His lips part to speak, but he never does. His body leans to the left, reminiscent of a tanuki's drunken lolling. Niou spreads his palms across the pavement. His back shakes. Yagyuu leans over to him. He slides an arm around Niou's middle to support him and he can feel the tremble in Niou's body.
The wind has stopped. Seagulls gather in the sky above them. Yagyuu can see one, two, three birds soaring on the wind. They float on the draft and they are as silent as Niou.
It was supposed to mean something, Niou never says.
Yagyuu doesn't know how to even begin to apologize.
***
What light there is fades in the direction of the west and Tokyo. Nothing remains except a thin ribbon of red behind the glowing cityscape that ripples on the sea's surface. Yagyuu walks beside Niou. His sneakers are wet from the edge of the water. Niou walks on the sand. His shoes are dry.
Yagyuu said nothing when Niou had tears in his eyes. He yelled and called Yagyuu an asshole. He punched Yagyuu in the arm. He grabbed Yagyuu by the jacket and shook him. Yagyuu still said nothing, until Niou collapsed onto his chest. Wet patches spread on his shirt, gluing the material to his skin. He touched Niou's hair and his cheek. For the first time in weeks, Yagyuu felt something warm inside.
There is no one else around, underneath the wooden pier, or on the pebbly beach, when Yagyuu kisses his apology onto Niou's mouth. He presses his hands against the wooden pillar. Niou's back is to the pillar also, but his body is warm and pliable against Yagyuu. His kisses are salty and wet. His tongue moves with Yagyuu's and Yagyuu groans. He's hard. His erection brushes Niou's leg. Yagyuu sticks his hand under Niou's shirt and tugs. Niou leans his head back. His lips are swollen and shiny. In the darkening light, it is hard to make out the colours of his skin as he flushes and tells Yagyuu it's gross, you megane retard.
"I don't care," Yagyuu murmurs. He drags his tongue over Niou's neck. His skin tastes of dirt and dried blood in the crevices. Yagyuu cleans him with the pad of his tongue. He groans on Niou's collar. He pushes away the hoodie and the scummy t-shirt Niou wears underneath. There are hands in his hair messing up his part. There are hands on his face pulling his glasses away.
It doesn't matter if Yagyuu can see or not. He can taste and touch the contours of Niou's body. He can drag his teeth over Niou's chest and suck the hardened nipples. He can slip Niou's jeans from his hips-he's thin enough now that the belt does nothing to hold them up. Niou doesn't complain about the cold or the discomfort. He only complains when Yagyuu's mouth slips for a moment. With his hands, he weaves his fingers through Yagyuu's hair and pushes him down. Niou's voice is shuddered and breathy when it whispers Yagyuu's name. Yagyuu licks Niou's belly. Niou sucks his stomach in.
The darkness gathers, more and more. Dimly, Yagyuu can hear the rush of pachinko parlours and the low hum of motorboats in the harbour. Mostly, he can only hear Niou's panting when Yagyuu opens his mouth and Niou thrusts hard. Yagyuu gags. The primal urge to pull back flashes through Yagyuu's brain-the rational part of his mind-but his heart throbs against his ribs. Blood roars in his ears, louder than the ocean, when Niou shudders and comes in Yagyuu's mouth.
Yagyuu doesn't last long, either. He rises on shaky legs. His knees have turned to tokoroten jelly. He never felt this with Sanada. He never kissed Sanada hard enough that his breathing stopped and he saw stars in his vision. The tightness in Yagyuu's belly explodes when Niou touches a sliver of Yagyuu's skin under his shirt. He moans, "Masaharu" and falls to Niou's chest. Niou's skin is wet: with sweat, with salt water, maybe with tears, too.
They pull their clothes back on. Niou washes his hand in the water. The come on his fingers drifts toward the fishy homes of the deep. The rest is rubbed into Yagyuu's pants. There is still no one else around and the night is cool. Niou walks and his arm brushes Yagyuu. Carefully, he slings his arm around Yagyuu's shoulder. His solid body, rubbing against Yagyuu's side, has never felt more right.
Their sneakers crunch on the gravelly sand in perfect tandem. Niou stops walking. Yagyuu stops, too. He turns to Niou and a cold worry seeps through his stomach. Everything is uncertain, except for the new warmth in Niou's body. Niou sighs. Yagyuu frowns.
Niou faces the water. His arm slips from Yagyuu's shoulder and the worry deepens. Yagyuu stands on edge. His body stiffens and his throat catches. He watches Niou bend down and pick up a stone. It skips across the water twice, then sinks below the dark, glassy surface.
"Yaaaagyuu, you wanna do something like karaoke?" Niou asks. Pain is written across his face in the thin smile he offers Yagyuu. It's a joke, but the trick has failed. Yagyuu shakes his head-he doesn't have any money anyway.
It would be simple enough to call home and to leave Niou here. It would be the right thing to do to go back home and pretend he never found Niou. Yagyuu could live his life by himself. He could attend university in America and study medicine. His life could be planned out and taken step by step into adulthood.
But Niou would never he a part of that.
Yagyuu could choose those ivy-covered buildings and university lectures, or he can choose the dirty boy on the gravelly beach who wants him more than he would ever admit.
There is no choice, not really.
Yagyuu takes Niou's hand in his. He threads their fingers together. Niou's hand is limp in his until Yagyuu squeezes tight. He steps into an embrace and Niou holds back. His hair tickles Yagyuu's nose. It's unwashed and smells like salt water and the grease from the Chinese restaurant. This close, and with the lights of the shops and pachinko parlours on the pier above them, Yagyuu can see the tanuki colours in Niou's hair: black on bleached white.
Yagyuu closes his eyes and mutters, "Let’s stay here a while."