A/N: Wh00t! Faster than last time! XD

Yuki is always the fastest to write, for some reason. Maybe it's because he speaks so little, so he has a bit more thoughts swirling around in his head. But then, the same could be said about Seth, and his chapters aren't quick to write at all. So much for that theory.

So, dear Yuki gets a tad more complex in this chapter as some of his behaviour from the previous chapters is explained (or rationalized, as the case may be). He may seem to be loading on the angst heavier than usual in this one, but I assure you, there's a reason for that. So stay tuned.

The fact that I have trouble being funny in these author's notes pains me a little. :(

~Chapter Fifteen~

Yuki

I was angry, but not any more so than any other time.

This feeling should be nothing new. After all, I’d been living with the same simmering anger for a few years now. I knew the feeling well; it was like a constant, ever-burning heat, boiling just underneath my skin. Sometimes I thought that if I concentrated hard enough on the anger, kept it going and directed it with my thoughts, I could reach out and burn everything in sight, until it was all gone in a fiasco of ash and smoke.

But I’m no fire-starter, and no arsonist. I wouldn’t do something so stupid. So I kept my anger to myself. Before, I would have said that I was biding my time, but today I know this to be naive. I’ve always been waiting, waiting as though poised for action, but never going beyond the point of wishful thinking.

That is the problem with my life. I know it well, and I don’t pretend to be happy with it.

You could say it’s something I’ve gotten used to. One of the greatest and worst things about both humankind and the smaller race of Celebrity Stardom is that you can get used to anything, no matter how horrible, immoral or obscene.

I wonder sometimes, if it’s really possible to get used to fear. It’s not something immoral or obscene in itself, but I know as well as anyone that fear can be the one thing to drive people to reveal the worst in themselves. I forget, sometimes, that it can also bring out the best in some, because in all my years of living, I’ve yet to see someone act selflessly or bravely out of fear.

I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m man enough to admit it to myself. But no one else is allowed to know these things about me. I won’t let them. As far as I’m concerned, no one as the right to know this stuff about me. Not my famous sister, not my mother and father who pretend to grieve for me back home, and certainly not any of the losers who have come and gone in my apartment, seeking my company for one night. None of them know the real me who lies twisted in some dark corner of my mind. I’ve shut him away for so long that even I hardly know who he is now.

He fought back, though. He fought back recently, broke free of his dark corner, all because of that other thing I’d trapped there with him: that stupid hope I still keep hidden, locked away out of sight because I can’t stand to think of it anymore. Stupid, useless hope. Like a drug. Like a disease. I can’t stand it.

It was all his fault, his fault that this had happened, that the other Yuki and his senseless hope had come stumbling out from their dark little room. That stupid white foreigner, living in our country like it was his right, speaking our language like it belonged to him too. I had heard him talking while in that bar on that distant night, talking, talking non-stop, talking about himself and his brother and how he thought Japan was just swell. It was then that I realized he was just another one of those japanophiles, one of those idiots who collected Japanese trivia like others collect stamps and stick them in an album. The moment I realized this, I almost left him there by himself in that dark, seedy bar. But I didn’t, because he kept talking and talking and I had to admit to myself that I missed the sound of speech a little. Not that I didn’t hear it every day at work. People talked constantly at work, chatting, twittering, gossiping, nattering like flocks of shrill little birds. I hated that talk, that useless, idle chatter.

Sean’s talk was different, just as his name was different, just as his English was different from the English I was used to hearing. His talk was straight and honest, like his eyes that looked right at me as he was speaking, like his voice that was clear in the din of vague, drunken voices around us. It was that talk, those eyes, that voice that had prompted the other Yuki to stir inside me, to cause him to pick himself up and cradle his everlasting spark of hope to his chest. It was those things about Sean that had caused me to go through with my decision to take him home with me and bring him to my bed.

Like a fool, the fool that I thought I had left behind, I was drawn to the honesty I glimpsed in a man I met only that night, and in a sudden urge to experience that warmth again, I invited him to my side. Come here, touch me, kiss me, make me yours while I make you mine. I found that I couldn’t rough him up, couldn’t hurt him in the way I sometimes hurt the others. His tender care drew from me something resembling his own tenderness, his gentle touch inciting gentleness in return. I hated it, how soft and inactive it felt, but at the same time I loved it too. I resented how quickly he fell asleep after just doing it once, but I loved, too, how his body relaxed against mine, totally unassuming, completely trusting.

I remember thinking him stupid for trusting a guy like me, especially after a first almost-date. But I couldn’t help the silly grin that I felt pulling at the corners of my mouth. Inside me, I could feel the other Yuki clutching his shining hope like a precious parcel. Was he smiling too? I don’t know. I fell asleep.

Then morning came and ruined everything. As the sun came up and filled my bedroom with light, and I opened my eyes and remembered everything that had happened and everything I had felt, I became horrified and ashamed. How could I, who had forsaken hope and trust long ago, have let myself get reeled in by this man? Already, I was pushing all thought of his honesty and blind trust out of my mind, and making him out to be the bad guy. How dare you, I thought, as I woke him roughly and pitched him from my bed, how dare you make me feel like this again? How dare you wake these feelings in me again, these needs, these desires? How dare you break me without lifting a finger?

How dare you pretend to love me, just as others before you have pretended, and others will keep on pretending forever and ever and ever?

I woke up one day, late in the morning, with the vague knowledge that I was going to die.

It didn’t come right away, this knowledge. Like the sunlight that had crept steadily past my curtains hours earlier, this information took its time insinuating itself into me until I was sure of it, surer than I had ever been of anything in my entire life.

Yuki, you are going to die, I told myself. Get out of bed, you are going to die.

I don’t know where this certainty came from. It was a strange feeling, and weirdly refreshing after months, years, of not quite knowing anything at all. It was a thought that felt like it was worth contemplating, worth turning over and examining.

I got up, but didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry, although I hadn’t eaten since the morning before. There was still food left in the fridge, but it was nothing that I cared to eat, really. The other day, in a fit of mad ecstasy, I had grabbed a jar of something from the cupboard and tossed it from my balcony. When I heard it crash and splinter against the sidewalk, I wanted to laugh and cry and scream and break something else. Instead, I had gone to bed.

Today, I wouldn’t spend the day in bed. There was something I needed to go out and do.

I took a gulp of water, dressed, then went to the bathroom. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror, because I knew that I probably looked hideous. None of the glamorous movie star looks resided in me, never had.

I left my apartment with nothing but my nearly empty wallet and the clothes on my back. I glanced back at my guitar standing in the same corner it had been standing in for a month, untouched. I wouldn’t need it anymore.

It was sunny, brilliantly sunny. Still a perfect summer. Soon, school would be out for a few weeks, to allow the hot weather to pass. Tokyo would be full of wandering off-duty students and festivals, tourists and costumed girls with their eccentric wear. There would be music and fun. Song. Music. The kind I would never be able to make.

Slowly, walking part way then taking the train, I made my way to Toumo Daigaku.

I had heard Sean talk about this school during that one night. He went there, along with his anxious brother. He had spoken of the school with awe, of his brother with affection and concern. He had hoped that he would understand, that he wouldn’t mind overly much that he was out late with a man. Not a man he barely knew, just a man, a person of the same sex as him. I had guessed his brother was not a supporter of Sean’s kind, a lover of men. I had almost asked him if this was the case, but I had stopped myself. It was none of my business. I didn’t really care what his precious brother thought. So I had shrugged it off and continued listening to him and his deep, clear, honest voice.

Finally, I got to the stop I thought I needed to be at, and got off the train. In the distance, I could see the tops of the school buildings. This was the place.

It was a good-sized campus. Not as private as other, even more elite schools. Certainly nothing compared to Tokyo Daigaku. But charming. Nice, I guess. I could have gone here. No, I couldn’t have. My high school grades hadn’t been that great. Ayaka could have gone here, but she never had to go to university.

I reached the gates. Students milled about on the brilliantly illuminated green, but no one was right here by the entrance. I stepped in as though I belonged there. There was a small parking lot to my left, but it was empty, probably because it was too far from the biggest building that dominated the campus, in the middle of a conglomeration of smaller ones. Someone stood smoking by the parking lot, someone with natural-looking chestnut brown hair and Caucasian white skin. For a second, I thought it was Sean, but no, Sean’s hair was long and black, dyed with the roots showing up just a little, and his stance was never so stiff, his expression never so stern. Other than that, he was the spitting image of him. It was a little eerie, staring at this guy and knowing he wasn’t Sean, because he damn well looked like him.

It figured Sean would be too wrapped up in everything that night to inform me his brother was actually his twin.

“Hey, you.”

I don’t know why I called out to him. The moment the words left my lips, I wished I could take them back, just take them back and creep away, but fate wouldn’t have it that way. With only a split’s second delay – he was quick for someone who seemed engrossed in his smoking – he looked toward me and fixed me with a stare that made the instant difference between him and cheerful, friendly Sean.

He said to me, with oddly formal speech, “What do you want?”

We stood staring at each other for a moment, as we sized each other up. This was my last chance to turn around and head back to my apartment, but instead I stepped forward.

“Can I have a smoke?”

I saw his eyebrows raise over his clear, light eyes. He hesitated, standing there as though frozen. Then he took a box of cigs out of his pants pocket and jerked it in my direction.

I walked over to him and took the cigarette that he was tipping out of the box for me. As I stuck it between my lips, he put the box away and took a plain silver lighter of his other pocket. I let him light me up.

I didn’t move away after he had stowed the lighter away, so we stood facing each other in silence, lost in our own thoughts for a few, long minutes.

I watched him as he exhaled and caught the half-spent cigarette between his fingers. It was a smooth, practiced gesture that should have been paired with a sophisticated smile, but all he did was glower.

“You’re Yukinojo Yuki, aren’t you?” he said suddenly. His voice was deep and a little rough, like most men’s voices are, but his speech had a sort of lilt that would probably always brand him a foreigner.

The first rush of smoke down into my lungs had steadied me. I wasn’t so intimidated by this guy’s stare anymore, so I could answer with a confidence I didn’t feel.

“Yeah, that’s me. How’d you know?”

“My brother showed me pictures of you. While he was still infatuated with you.”

He took another drag and fell silent, averting his gaze to the bright blue sky. Although his words were as formal and polite as before, his tone betrayed the same anger I had just glimpsed in his eyes, not quite hidden by the glasses on his face.

With a snort I couldn’t contain, I said, “So he’s not anymore?”

He exhaled again, caught the cigarette again. “No. He is not.”

“Figures. I thought he was the flighty sort.”

“Are you angry?”

“No.”

I knew it was a lie. He didn’t, and took on a sudden look of satisfaction that was gone as quickly as the look of anger. I was a little surprised at how easily I could read this guy. Most Japanese people wouldn’t let their inner thoughts show so clearly on their face. This was why a lot of us didn’t appreciate Westerners too much.

He dropped his finished cigarette on the asphalt, ground it with the ball of his foot, and took another from the box in his pocket. I looked as he lit up again and inhaled deeply. He did so with the same easy, almost elegant gesture, which made it seem like he’d been doing this for a while. Maybe for as long as me.

I wanted to make conversation with him. For some reason, I wanted to know just how different, or similar, he was to his twin brother.

I started by saying, in an offhand voice, “You’re a bit young to be a chain smoker, Buraku-san.”

He exhaled with the same carefulness before replying. “Approximately forty five percent of men in Japan smoke, a lot of them young men. I don’t see why you find it strange.”

“Just saying. You’re not even legal, are you?”

“It shouldn’t matter to you.”

“It doesn’t. It’s just that I was remembering how old you really are. The same age as Shon, right? He’s not even old enough to buy drinks. I had to buy them all for us that time.”

He didn’t look at me, but the next pull he took from the cigarette seemed more tense than the last.

“You drank together, did you?” he said after a minute.

I felt myself smirk around the cigarette in my mouth. “Yeah. Then he came home with me.”

Something like amusement or spite leapt in my chest as I noticed him stiffen even more.

“So I heard,” he said quietly.

“What did you hear? Did he tell you how good it was? Or are you not privy to that kind of information about your brother’s love life?”

He turned his head to stare at me again, the look in his eyes sharp now that he had caught on to my teasing. His features were drawn and tight. He looked nothing like Sean with that kind of expression.

He plucked the cigarette from his own lips, tossed it down unfinished beside the first one, and lit up another, all the while keeping his eyes on me. I met his gaze with a haughtiness and pride I fabricated on the spot.

Slowly, not bothering with the formal speech anymore, he said, “I won’t let you make a mockery of me, or my brother.”

I answered with a slow drag of the cigarette I’d bummed off him, and let myself grin.

“I’m not mocking you or him, Buraku-san. I’m just saying.”

“You say a lot of things.”

“I’m not usually this chatty. You must bring it out of me. With those dashing good looks, no doubt.”

It was true that he was rather good-looking. He would probably be considered handsome in his own country, but I wasn’t especially fond of his pale skin and light, washed-out eye colour. What colour were they, anyway? I thought green at first, like Sean, but when I looked again they were lighter than that, tending more toward blue than green. His eyes were the same shape as Sean’s though, and the shape of his jaw. His profile was also the same. Twins indeed.

“What do you want?” he asked again. Something in his blue eyes was smouldering like the end of his cig. He no longer spoke with all those unnecessary formalities, or even the ordinary ones. And he had yet to use any form of my name. I shrugged.

“Just to talk. I was wondering how your wonderful brother was doing.”

“Not so well. He’s having trouble.”

“Oh? With his new boyfriend?”

His eyes narrowed like he had just had a thought, but he only said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it doesn’t. I don’t have anything to do with him anymore, do I?”

“It’s a private matter,” he snapped, rounding on me again with those piercing sharp eyes. “Personal. Nothing to do with you. You’re an outsider, so stay on the outside and leave us alone.”

“ ‘Us’? I don’t see him here.”

He glared at me then, a true, all out glare. I’d have backed up a step if I hadn’t been poised for his reaction. I was getting in deep, but couldn’t seem to stop.

“You guys are true blue twins, aren’t you? Never one without the other, even in your thoughts. Always ‘we’, never ‘I’. Always got each other’s back, huh?”

He scowled, but stayed silent. I went on, feeling myself filled with a savage, sadistic glee, eager to hurt this guy for some reason I couldn’t explain.

“Oh, but wait. I don’t remember him calling you that night, to tell you not to wait up. I guess your special bond isn’t so important that he’d call you just to say he’s off to have sex.”

“Stop it.”

“Yeah, I told him that too, but he was pretty eager, so who was I to stop hi–...”

“I said shut up, Yukinojo.”

With a movement full of contempt, he pitched his cigarette to the pavement, where it sizzled and rolled as though in protest. Then he grabbed a fistful of my shirt and jerked it, so that I dropped my cig too. I tipped my head at him and lowered my empty hand.

“Touched a nerve, huh, fag hater?”

“You shut your mouth, Yukinojo,” he growled through his teeth. “Shut your mouth before you start talking about things you don’t understand.”

This was a development that I had to see through.

“Buraku-san, with all due respect, if you want to insult me, you should consider calling me by name.”

He said nothing, just continued to hold me by the front of my shirt.

“It’s Hiroyuki,” I told him. “Kotobanwa Hiroyuki. Spelled with the characters for ‘great’ and ‘happiness’. Yukinojo Yuki is just my stage name.”

I thought I saw his brows lift just a little in surprise, but his expression was still hard. Then he said, “I don’t give a damn how your name is spelled, Kotobanwa. Just stay away from me and my brother.”

I raised my hands in a sign for peace, though the mocking smile was still stretching my lips in an unnatural way.

“Will do. I don’t want anything more to do with your stupid brother anyway.”

“Then what are you doing here at this school? You don’t study anymore.”

“No. But I get nostalgic.”

He stared at me as though he knew this to be an outright lie, but he didn’t comment on it. Slowly, his fingers unclenched and released my shirt. I pulled away from him and smoothed the wrinkles away, allowing myself to lightly say, “You’re pretty violent, Buraku. Nothing like your precious brother. I guess the resemblance is only skin deep.”

“World and protect.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

“Sesu. With the characters for ‘world’ and ‘protect’.”

He was looking at me very hard, obviously in no mood for sharing. So why did he just give me his name?

I couldn’t bring myself to fake a smile anymore. I thought I had this guy all figured out, but I had probably only scratched the surface. So much for white people being transparent.

“Sesu,” I repeated, testing the sounds on my tongue. “ ‘World’ and ‘protect’. Classy. Weird name, though. You could just write it in katakana.”

He turned away and looked out toward the wall at the edge of the campus. “I do.”

“So you can write in our language? How long did it take you to do that?”

“Not long. Learning to speak it was more work.”

“Well, I’m impressed. Now if you could just learn to argue like a Japanese, I’d maybe have more respect for you.”

“I don’t care for respect.”

“You should. You won’t last long here without it.”

“I don’t care for yours,” he corrected, crossing his arms. “Not from men like you.”

“How like me? You mean homos?”

This time, his glare was cursory, almost exasperated. I couldn’t decide if I was closer or further from getting to him. Then a thought came to me, so delicious that I almost couldn’t contain my grin.

“Oh, wait. Let me guess. Shon isn’t the fag here...it’s you.”

“I told you to stop talking about things you don’t understand.”

“But am I right or wrong? Come on, you can tell me. I won’t tell a soul.”

“You’re wrong,” he said tersely. “You are wrong about me, and you are wrong about my brother. He isn’t flighty at all. He’s good and honest. He left you because you are not.”

“Hah. Hah hah.”

Of course, I knew this. Of course, Sean was good and honest. I had known about this since the night of our meeting. What was funny was that he was trying to convince me of this!

I wanted to laugh out loud, suddenly. I wanted to laugh and laugh till my sides ached and tears rolled down my face, upon which I would probably give up and start crying in earnest. I couldn’t do that in front of this child.

Fortunately, he solved my problem by announcing, “I think you should leave, Hiroyuki.”

Finally, some real cheek. I smirked, extending my hand a little as though to shake his, or to touch him. Imagine my delight when he flinched away from me.

“Go away,” he said stiffly. “The school won’t be happy to find an intruder on the grounds.”

“As you wish. See you around...Sesu.”

I waved as he stood stiller than ever. Then I turned and left the way I had come, across the parking lot, down a wide cement path, and through the gated entrance. It wasn’t until I reached the train station and was waiting around for the next arrival that I realized the hilarity and utter sadness of that first meeting. We had barely known each other ten minutes and already we hated each other’s guts.

As I stepped onto the train, I felt the strange urge to laugh again, but inside, the other Yuki was screaming, clutching his ever-fading light of hope to his chest.

When I returned to my apartment, it seemed even dingier than when I had left it. A bunch of papers littered the front of the door, probably scattered by the gust of wind from the closing door. I picked them up. They were copies of my resume, printed out to be sent to anyone who would care to take a look. I hadn’t actually given any of them away.

I set the pile of papers back on the low table by the door and kicked off my shoes. I felt very tired suddenly, drained of all energy after my encounter with Sean’s surly brother. I no longer felt any of the fierce joy I had nursed while pushing that guy’s buttons. I didn’t even have the energy to be ashamed.

I threw myself down onto the couch and lay down, my eyes toward the shadowy ceiling. I never opened the blinds in the living room anymore. I lay there motionless for some time, eyes open but unseeing, just listening to the sound of my own breathing.

You hear that you’re never so aware of your body than when you’re on the verge of death. I could say that it’s true. As I lay there on my couch, as good as dead, as far as anyone was concerned, I could sense everything about my body with surprising clarity. I could feel the clamminess of my skin and the greasiness of my hair. I could feel the tightness in my limbs and in my starving gut, the numbness in my extremities from lying down too long. When I rose to a sitting position, there was a nausea assaulting my brain and heart that was sharper than any I had ever felt. My spine seemed to creak, my hips to stiffen and lock. I was arthritic with despair.

As I moved, or tried to, the couch crackled underneath me, not like fabric but like paper. I stood and removed the random sheets from between the cushions. Only one of the sheets I pulled from the couch had writing on it.

You, you, bright eyes

Your eyes betray your soul

You’ll be robbed, robbed away

In the night

By those who desire your light

In the night

Come, come, bright eyes

Look at me and only me

Or you’ll be robbed, robbed away

In the night

By the one who desires your light

In the night

What was this? I squinted at the words, and after another second or two, recognized my own handwriting. When had my penmanship gotten so careless? The words were barely legible. A couple of the kanji were wrong too, but I had never been good at that in the first place anyway.

I leaned my elbow on my knee and my chin on my palm, gazing down at that first page that I held loosely in my other hand. I remembered that they were lyrics, and shitty ones at that. In the life that was once mine, that faraway life, I had nurtured a dream of becoming a songwriter, and of singing those songs out to an adoring public.

What a lofty goal that had been, how charming and how ideal. How removed the aspiration felt from me now, like it had never actually been mine.

A fantasy, that’s what it had been. Nothing more substantial than a wistful dream, a sad longing for a career and a life that I would never have.

But wasn’t it incredible, being able to fool myself for so long? It was a feat in itself, I suppose. Since high school, I’d been forsaking common sense in order to chase that impossible dream, with the hopes that with enough will and enough luck, I would soar to the top of the charts in the blink of an eye.

Those were the days of the other Yuki, the shining, hopeful Yuki who sang and played the guitar at school events, the Yuki who wrote tunes and ballads on the backs of all his notebooks. Young, carefree Yuki, chasing his dream with such gusto. Darling Yu-chan, talented Yu-chan, lovely singing Yu-chan.

I didn’t sing anymore. I hadn’t for a while. All that remained of my stupid dream was the desire to write lyrics, as though the perfect verse would somehow reconnect me with the hope that I had lost. During the time where I had diligently worked at the agency that made Doki Doki Heart, I had come home with words and phrases whirling around in my head, all ready to be put down on paper. I wrote almost non-stop back then, pausing only when a tune managed to insinuate itself into my mind and demanded instant attention. Sometimes I could spend hours and hours doing this, sitting in my apartment, writing and playing with conviction in my heart, and joy, and hope. Always that debilitating hope.

Sitting in the dark of my living room, I looked back on that former self of mine with a feeling that clenched my gut and twisted my lips with disgust. All groundless hope and silly, senseless dreams. The moment I realized it, about a year ago, I stopped writing even lyrics. I no longer felt the drive to put pen to paper and write out my thoughts in rhythm and song.

But the page in my hand was strange, because it was recent. I somehow knew it was. Slowly, I got up and crossed the room to search around in my desk drawers. The folder of loose papers I found at last was thicker and heavier than I remembered it being, and the lyrics handwritten onto every single sheet were more uplifting and more saccharine than anything I would ever have thought myself capable of writing. They were the only vestiges of the life I had left behind: my poor, sweet, forgotten lyrics, most of them without even a tune to carry them.

I tossed the folder onto the top of my already cluttered desk, with such carelessness that some of the papers slipped and fanned out like tattered white feathers. I reread the stupid, sappy lyrics on the page I had found in the couch. I was certain now that it was more recent than the collection in the folder. It was briefer than the others, for one, and lousy with a longing I hadn’t exhibited in my older work.

The weirdest thing is that I didn’t remember writing this at all. Had it come to me in a fit of desperate inspiration, during one of the particularly painful spells I had experienced while trapped up in this apartment? Was it possible that during those moments of near-delirium, I had allowed some of my thoughts to leak out onto paper again?

No. I decided that this was not possible. It was not possible because I had no idea whom this stupid song could be about.

I set the new lyrics down on the desk, on top of the other ones, and as I did this the phone rang.

I jumped at the sound. It wasn’t something I was used to hearing anymore. How long had it been since I had called Ayaka to ask her to call me by my childhood name?

I stared at the phone as it continued to ring, filling the apartment with the loudest noise in ages. I couldn’t make up my mind. Should I let it go to the answering machine? Or should I grasp the chance at this last taste of human contact? I was going to die, after all. That much was certain. There would be no harm in allowing myself this one last concession. Yes, even after hating people for so long, I couldn’t help but miss the pseudo-company I had had while still employed.

Finally, just a ring or two before the machine would kick in, I strode back across the room and picked up the receiver. As soon as I put it to my ear, before I could even respond, a loud, excited voice shouted, “Hello? Is this Yuki-san? Yuki-san?”

Yuki-san. I only knew one person who called me that, but I couldn’t believe that I was actually hearing his voice. I didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, the voice on the other end was getting frantic.

“Hello? Hello? Is this Yuki-san’s house? Or do I have a wrong number?”

Finally, my voice unstuck from my throat and I said, “Depends. Who are you?” although I already knew.

The person on the phone took a slow breath. “It’s...it’s Shon. Shon Buraku. Is that you, Yuki-san?”

I didn’t answer for a second. Let him sweat a bit. I let myself slowly fall onto the couch again, right where the lyric papers had been hidden.

Sean was getting more and more worried. The line scraped like he was rubbing the receiver with his hands. “Yuki-san? Is that you?” he repeated. His voice was strained in the way that it had been the last time we met. I didn’t remember that time clearly. Some moments were vivid and blasted with colour, but these moments were few and far apart, isolated by long stretches of blurred, faded snatches of memory.

I sat back on the badly stuffed cushions of my couch, and said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Really? Yuki-san?” He sounded ecstatic. More line scrapings. “Yuki-san, you can’t believe how happy I am to have reached you. You didn’t make it easy, did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, not using your real name, of course. You gave me your handle when we met, didn’t you? That’s why I couldn’t find you in any phonebook!”

So his charming brother had told him all about me. Great. I had thought that he wouldn’t care enough to relate anything about our conversation, but I guess he was the type to share everything with his dear twin.

I wanted to sigh and roll my eyes, but instead I slumped farther down in the lumpy couch cushions. “Hey, you were the one who asked if I was Yukinojo Yuki. It’s one of my names, so I said yes. It’s your fault you used the wrong name, not mine.”

“Well, whatever,” said Sean in a cheery voice. “I’m just glad I found out your real name. Kotobanwa Hiroyuki, eh? It’s a nice name.”

“It’s a weak name. I never liked it to begin with.”

“So do you get everything to call you Yuki?”

“I guess.”

“That’s cool. I get you. I mean, my real name is Shon-Maikaru...” He pronounced the foreign name awkwardly, in the Japanese manner. I didn’t bother telling him I could have understood the name Michael just fine. “...but, you know, it doesn’t suit me much, so I’m just Shon to everyone ‘cept my great aunt. She’s picky about birth names.”

His voice was so happy I could practically see the grin on his face. He was truly glad to be talking to me, which was odd if one thought about how our last encounter had ended.

I waited for him to ramble on about himself, but after that tangent about his great aunt, he fell silent, as though waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he started again, his voice more subdued. “So, uh...how are you doing?”

I snorted despite myself. “Me? Oh, I’m fine. Just great.”

“Really? That’s good. My brother said you looked out of sorts, so I...anyway...”

“So he told you he met me.”

“Yeah. Didn’t go so well, huh? He was so angry when he got home, it was like a storm in here. But, then again, that may have something to do with me too.”

“What’d you do this time?”

“N-Not much. But he must have been in a touchy mood because he made a big stink abou­–...just a second...I’m talking to Yuki-saaaannn!”

The last bit had been yelled away from the receiver, in Sean’s weird English. Although I recognized the words, the extended vowel in “talking” – tawlking – threw me off for a bit.

There was a moment of fuzzy noise on the other end of the line, where Sean conversed in foreigner English with someone with a rougher, deeper voice than his. Both of them sounded on edge. A second or two later, Sean returned to the phone.

“Sorry,” he said, going back to Japanese. “It was Sesu. He was wondering who I was talking to.”

“What is he, your mom? What the hell does he care? And why do you have to tell your stupid brother everything, anyway?”

“He’s not stupid,” Sean told me in a voice that had suddenly gotten very quiet, like he feared being overheard. “And I tell him everything because I would like him to tell me everything too. It’s a strategy, you see.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, I’m glad. That’s the first time he’s spoken to me in almost four hours. After telling me about his meeting with you, it’s been nothing but the silent treatment from him. He’s really good at it, too.”

“I’m sure he is. A rock would make better conversation.”

Sean laughed a little on the other end. “Yeah, maybe. But he’s a really nice guy once you know him. Would never hurt a fly, honest.”

“He hurt my shirt.”

“Really? He didn’t tell me about that part.”

Somehow, this bit of information made me smile with a grim sort of satisfaction. So little Sesu didn’t bother telling his darling brother how he had manhandled his one-night stand? That was kind of interesting.

“What happened? Did he hurt you? He didn’t, did he?”

“He didn’t. Don’t you trust him? You said he’d never hurt a fly just now.”

“I...yeah, of course I trust him. And he wouldn’t.”

“So there.”

“Yeah.”

Another silence stretched out between us. Even over the phone, it had a tense feel to it. My gaze wandered as I sat slouched in my living room. I wondered why I was still talking to this freak.

My gaze landed on the pile of papers on the desk, the ones with all the scribblings of my former life. On top of the folder of lyrics lay the single sheet with the words I had written maybe days ago. You, you, bright eyes...

No.

No, no.

This can’t be right.

“Shon.”

“Huh? Yuki-san? What is it?”

“I’m going to die soon.”

“You...wait, what?”

“I’m going to die,” I repeated slowly, making sure he heard through his continued spluttering. “I’m going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Yuki-san, wait, l-let’s not be hasty...”

“Thanks for the drinks and the company that time. I appreciate it more than you think.”

“Yuki-sa–...”

“Bye.”

“Yuki!”

I hung up before I could hear any more of his babbling. Then I stood up, taking care not to spare the desk another look, and went to my room to prepare.