Chapter Text
It was like his lungs were collapsing. The air trapped inside of his body was being squeezed, compressed so rapidly it felt like suffocating. If they were squeezed any harder, his ribs were gonna crack. Well, if it was even possible to break bones from something inside of your mind. God, two days ago… two days ago.
The disgust was tangible on the faces of the friends he made out of luck. Maybe he’d be capable of handling that, if they weren’t looking so betrayed too. Yokoo’s face was pale after saying it. The words must’ve made him sick to his stomach. Sato was just angry. They were all… so angry.
And Kou? He didn’t feel anything, not really. Except for that pressure inside of him, leaving him immobile. Because… well, Mitsuba would never do that. Mitsuba was his friend. Mitsuba said he loved him. Mitsuba liked to act extra bratty, but he was kind, so kind. He didn’t harbor any hatred for others, just for himself. Kou was certain of it.
Now, was he certain of anything?
Because this was real. A girl was sobbing in front of him, at a loss for words. Boys were surrounding him like coyotes, something sinister in their eyes. Did they really care that much about a boy they had scorned, or were they jumping at the opportunity to rip someone else apart? Hormones complicate things.
They really do.
Mitsuba would never do something like this. He would never lie. He would never go out of his way to ruin someone’s life, let alone the life of someone he loved. And if that was the case, then, obviously—
—obviously he wasn’t lying.
Kou ran through his memories, desperately chasing after one where he did something so sick and disgusting. Moments flashed before his eyes, and in all of them, he realized; he was making Mitsuba miserable. He was crying, he was begging, he was shaking, he was sweating. He was vulnerable and everything they’d done together— everything Kou had done to him— their bodies were rejecting it. He withheld important information, information he knew would make Mitsuba uncomfortable, and eventually lead him to stop what they were doing. But it was too late. Mitsuba resigned himself to making Kou happy, fulfilling all of his desires, because he was scared, because he couldn’t say no, because Kou was someone blinded by lust and begging for control in his life. He found someone at rock bottom, and drove that misery deeper.
At fifteen years old, Kou realized he’d done something inexcusable, and everyone around him now knew. His sexuality, his relationship with Mitsuba, the things he did with him— shit, to him— it was written all over his face. And there he was, his mouth a gaping void, eyes wide with fear and regret, when their teacher walked into the classroom.
“What on earth is going on here?” He questioned, a folder for class propped over his shoulder. His eyes scanned the classroom, landing on all his students surrounding Kou, and raised his voice.
“This isn’t some social gathering, get back to your seats!”
Some people scurried back to their desks the moment they were ordered to, but quite a few lingered, unsure of the way this confrontation was ending. The girl who was crying wiped away her tears, and her friend guided her back to her desk. A couple of guys made sure to give him one last good glare before separating. On one of their ways back, a boy kicked Kou’s desk with his hands in his pockets, the weak wooden legs screeching against the floor.
Yokoo and Sato didn’t take their eyes off of him. He returned their stares with one of his own, scared by the realization he lost three friends that day. He wasn’t ready for things to end. He wanted to pull up a chair at lunch, and stuff their faces while they laughed. He wanted to watch Yokoo and Mitsuba climb over one another and finally settle in each other’s laps, less concerned with jealousy, and more with endeared exasperation. He wanted to watch Sato’s stoic face light up with happiness after buying himself sweets, and the way he always gives into sharing with his friends. He wanted to share his notes and study with them even though it made his head ache, he wanted to high five them after passing a pop-quiz. He wanted so desperately to have more than two and a half years with them, to salvage whatever was left of his friendships, to tell them it wasn’t true, and beg for forgiveness. His lips trembled on the words.
‘I didn’t do it.’
But he wasn’t even sure if he was innocent.
The betrayal and the disgust on their faces made him unbelievably afraid, unable to move his legs or pay attention to his rapidly beating heart. Yokoo was the first to look away, shielding his face with his bangs. His hands were shaking in their place on the desk. Sato turned to look at him, his expression morphing into one of concern. Then he flipped his head around, looking Kou directly in the eyes.
Faced with his friend’s honest determination, he managed a syllable.
“I—“
“Leave it, Minamoto,” Sato interrupted, knowing well enough Kou didn’t have anything to left say after that, “class is starting. You need to go.”
Technically, so did he. But Sato wasn’t going to leave Yokoo’s side until Kou did.
“I—,” Kou started again.
“I’m sorry.”
He knew there were tears in his eyes, even if he didn’t have the right to cry. Sato grimaced after seeing it.
“Do you even think what you did was wrong?” Sato asked.
‘Of course, of course I do—‘
“Boys!”
The three of them jumped.
“What did I just say? Get back to your desks!” Their teacher ordered, officially losing all of his patience.
Neither of them moved. Kou desperately tried to speak, but nothing worked. Finally, Kou forced his feet to move. He kept his eyes on the ground, feeling the invasive stares of all his classmates. Quiet whispers filled the air around him. When he got to his desk, and lifted his head, the surface of his desk was covered with graffiti. The words made him wobble. He’d need to sit down quickly before his legs gave out, and he toppled over.
‘Rapist.’
His teacher began their lesson, but the words didn’t reach him.
‘Faggot.’
People started pulling out their textbooks, but Kou’s hands stayed rooted in his lap.
‘Perv.’
The lowest of the low. That’s what he was. He had always been this way, so maybe it was better that everyone knew.
‘Sicko.’
Distantly, a thought crossed his mind. He needed his mom. Everything went downhill the moment she was gone, the moment her responsibilities shifted to him, and he started to infect everything he loved with a certain sickness. If she was still here, would she have been able to raise him into a better man? Was the lack of her the reason he became so fucked up? Or was that all him? Born to be a curse on everyone he loved?
He hurt the person he loved most.
Mitsuba wasn’t the one who deserved death; it was him. And that was why he was drawn to him from the start.
When the bell rang for lunch, Kou launched out of the classroom. No one chased after him.
He landed on the floor of the bathroom, recalling the last time he was on his knees in there. Mitsuba above him, breathing so heavily he mistakenly took it as pleasure. The sight was enough to make him come untouched. The perverse reality of it all clattered from the ceiling and hit him like a punch to the gut. He emptied his stomach into the toilet, letting go of the little composure he maintained in front of his classmates. His face leaked with tears and snot, and he wailed like he did as a child, clinging to his mother’s chest. His fingers tightened around the toilet seat, his head throbbing harder than it ever had his whole life. It felt like his head was about to explode from the pressure, and the pain made him cry harder, screaming into the toilet bowl.
Another wave of nausea hit him, and took away his breath. He couldn’t breathe through the sobbing, and the vomiting, and those terrible lights in the bathroom making him squint at the force of his pounding head. He called him by his first name for the first time on this floor. He patted his head, and held him close, even after Kou did something so horrible to him. Mitsuba was so deep in his head, believing he wasn’t kind, that he didn’t deserve love.
His throat burned, and he started choking up bile instead of vomit. The bitter taste reminded him of Mitsuba, of the moment he trusted Kou enough to put himself into Kou’s mouth. After that display of trust, Kou betrayed it by imagining biting down— blood flooding his mouth, blood and semen, cries of pain and pleasure. Iron and flesh and salt. All at once, all the time. Now he was left with only the bitter after taste.
He whimpered into the bowl. Everything ached.
The wetness of his cheeks was starting to burn. His skin felt raw and used, and yet the tears kept coming. He squeezed his eyes shut, leaning his head pathetically against the toilet seat. It didn’t matter how gross that was, he couldn’t hold his head up for any longer.
Drool leaked over the seat from his mouth. The pounding of his heart and head wouldn’t leave him. He stayed in that bathroom through lunch, and then fourth period, and then fifth period, and finally sixth— when he realized, with sore and tired limbs— that he was going to have to leave this bathroom stall. And after everything that happened, it would make it real. His tears had long dried, leaving him numb on the floor. He wiped the ghost of them away with the backs of his hands, and pushed himself off the floor. Teru had student council after school, and Kou couldn’t waste this opportunity to pull himself back together on the walk back from school.
In the hallway, people gave him strange looks. All he could think of was how he used to run through them, dragging Mitsuba along with him by the hand.
Homeroom was empty. He trudged to the back of the classroom to grab his bag, and found it missing. He didn’t bother looking, but an eighth grader would find it dunked in a toilet on the second floor. He was faced with the same emptiness at the foot lockers. He couldn’t even feel frustrated or hurt— he just clambered home barefoot, missing his sneakers.
At home, he lost himself to housework. He vacuumed the whole house, then cleaned the fridge. He took off his siblings’ bedding, and washed them, even though he recently did Tiara’s laundry after she recovered from her cold. Dinner let him waste an hour and a half that would have been spent thinking, and when Teru came home, Kou greeted him with a warm meal, and a practiced smile. Teru was too exhausted to notice how fake it was.
He had other sneakers. When he went to his room after dinner, he sat on his knees in front of his closet, and pulled out an old book bag too. Those things were replaceable. They weren’t things worth crying over.
‘Man up, Minamoto. There’s no point dwelling on it.’
He vowed to himself to be better. He’d done horrible things, but he could be better. He could make things better.
And his friends… well, friends were always just going to be a distraction for him. They took him away from his obligations, specifically those to his family. He needed to refocus his attention again.
High school was coming. When he wasn’t looking after the house, he needed to study, and get his grades up. Right. Self-improvement. He could do this. He could!
But in the following weeks, his studies were the least of his worries. The entire grade turned their backs on him after the news spread. Mitsuba never came back to school, which was both a relief and torture. He kept thinking the worst had happened; that maybe Mitsuba had attempted again, or he was doing so bad mentally he was hospitalized. Kou knew where he lived, but he banished himself from going anywhere near his neighborhood. They never got any calls from Mitsuba’s house on the landline, so he didn’t bother reaching out. Mitsuba wanted nothing to do with him, and he was going to respect that.
Every morning, he’d wipe off the marker stains of insults and slurs from his desk, and sit down, only to let his mind wander to the worst places, and not pay attention to his lessons. Eventually, the graffiti was made permanent, carved into the faded wood.
He started resigning himself to being pushed around by the more righteous boys, letting himself fall to the ground, tearing rips in the knees of his trousers, and scraping the palms of his hands. Whenever teachers weren’t paying attention, someone would take the opportunity to trash his stuff. Textbooks, papers, lunch. Torn to shreds, stepped on, dunked in the river on his way home.
He counted down the days someone would report him. Surely someone would tell an adult, and he’d be suspended. Maybe expelled. Maybe taken to jail. These things scared him, and they scared him more when he realized he wouldn’t hesitate to confess. Because he did it.
He did it.
Girls avoided him, but sometimes they put things like thumb-tacks in his shoes. He made a habit of checking them before slipping them on. The days wore on, but as more time was spent with little changing, his punishment began to get more violent, and more difficult to hide.
He wasn’t getting much sleep either. Being deprived of it made him loopy— he started to forget basic things, and the holes in his memory of everyday grew larger and larger. He started to genuinely forget where the bruises on his face came from when Teru would ask about them. He just remembered that he probably deserved it.
He was losing himself, and he wasn’t very good at hiding it.
“Kou,” Teru begged one evening. It was late at night, and his older brother finally came back from his shift at work. He must’ve seen the light leaking out from Kou’s bedroom; another night spent awake, staring at the wall. He took down Mitsuba’s photos, tucking them away in a drawer somewhere.
Teru should have been getting to bed, but Kou was selfishly keeping his brother awake with worry. He vowed to himself to keep the lights off after ten PM.
He got onto his knees, bracing one hand on Kou’s leg. It reminded him of their father, and the way he felt so large compared to them, even when crouching. When did Teru become… so adult? It was patronizing, but also vulnerable. Up until this point, Teru had taken a much stricter approach to asking about the bullying. Kou remained stubborn, withholding as much information as possible. He’d usually blame himself for the fights, claiming he picked them. But his brother knew him well, so when the toughness wasn’t working, he became gentle.
“You’re destroying yourself,” he said firmly. His eyes gave away how lost he was. It didn’t suit him. This wasn’t like the strong big brother he had always admired.
“Please, tell me what’s happening.”
He didn’t.
Teru wouldn’t find out from words how bad things were, unfortunately, he would see for himself.
Maybe a week had passed, or maybe a few days, but Kou was cornered on his way home from school, and the beating he received was so bad he blacked out halfway through. Waking up in a hospital bed was haunting; his eyes searched the walls and the floors, the iv in his arm, and the beeping of the machine connected to him. Traitorously, his mind asked one question.
‘Is this the hospital Mitsuba stayed at?’
His siblings weren’t in the room with him. The person sitting in the chair next to his bed made the air catch in his throat. The machine beeped next to him, racing to catch up to his heartbeat.
‘Why is he here?’
He noted what a stupid question that was.
When your son is beaten black and blue, a father sits by him until he wakes.
Hard lines sculpted the face of his father, a man with a sharp jawline and small eyes. They were blue, the colour of his children’s. His hair was a darker blonde than their mother’s, trimmed neatly to his head. He was the spitting image of an ideal businessman, still in his suit and tie. But his jacket was off, and his button up was wrinkled. The bags underneath his father’s eyes were normal, and not new, the result of being a chronic workaholic, but everything else about the man screamed specifically tired. The machine beeped faster.
“Kou-kun,” his father began, filling the room with the sound of his strong voice. It wasn’t especially deep, but it held power. Kou could recognize it among a thousand screams.
“How are you feeling?”
The question stumped him. Despite finally getting some sleep, he felt exhausted. His face hurt, but that hurt wasn’t unique to his face. It was everywhere, and it was constant.
Kou didn’t answer his question, believing it to be obvious. Instead, he said something else.
“I’m sorry… Dad.”
His father shook his head. He didn’t have to clarify what he meant. Kou wasn’t great with people, but he could read his father, no matter how distant he became.
“Tell me what happened,” his father ordered. It wasn’t like a command. It was soft and caring, in his father’s own special way.
So, he did.
He told him that he’d lost his friends. He told him about the bullying. He told him how it started to escalate into something violent. Then, he described what he could of the fight, pulling it from his broken mind. His father listened patiently, not bothered by his scratchy voice.
When he was done, he asked a single question.
“Why didn’t you fight back?”
He should have expected this response. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
“I deserved it,” he admitted, his eyes trailing out into the hallway, watching nurses fly by, and hospital beds be pushed along, some with patients, and some without.
His father dropped his head into his hand, and they stayed quiet for a minute as he collected his thoughts.
“You are much too similar to your mother.”
Kou turned back to face him, shocked that his father would willingly bring her up, all on his own.
“You have many responsibilities, Kou-kun. The actions of others is not one of them,” his father said.
“Maybe,” he dared to reply, pinching the sheets of the hospital bed between his thumb and fore-finger.
His father shook his head again, but didn’t grace him with an answer.
A couple minutes later, his father got up from the chair, and brushed himself off.
“I’ll be bringing your siblings. I’m taking you out of that school. We’ll find you another.”
“Wait, Dad,” he fumbled, feeling useless as his father started to walk away, “the semester’s almost over, it’d be a total waste—“
His father paused. He spared a glance over his shoulder, then turned around.
“You are already wasting everything you’ve worked for. I won’t let your pride get in the way of your success. You will be transferring to another school as soon as I can arrange it, and I don’t want to hear any more complaints from you.”
Kou lowered his head. “Yes, Sir.”
With that, his father left him. His siblings filtered in soon after, smothering him with hugs and scolding words. His attention drifted to his father outside of the room, talking with a nurse.
At his new school, the kids didn’t know him. Curiosity calmed down after the first week, leaving him to his studies by himself. He started sleeping better, slowly healing from that month of harassment. But with his head foggy for so long, certain memories slipped through the cracks. He knew he was bullied. He knew he deserved it. He knew that he and Mitsuba fell apart, and that every time he thought of him, it hurt. But why? Probably the stress of high school entrance exams. Probably because Mitsuba didn’t feel the same way that Kou felt about him. Probably because something was just off with Kou. Something had always been wrong with him, so it wasn’t all that unbelievable that a classroom of kids would grow tired of his antics. His other friends took Mitsuba’s side, and that’s why he didn’t have friends anymore. He remembered that they stopped talking to him, and that was all that mattered.
By the skin of his teeth, he was able to get into a high school. Things were lonely at first, until a girl arrived late for class on the first day of school, tripping over her feet in front of the entire classroom. Kids laughed, but nobody moved to help her up, not even Kou. When she sulked right into the seat next to him, he reassured her.
“It’s ok,” he said, “everyone’ll forget a week from now.”
And she smiled.
The present
He watched the rolling waves, the tide gone far out compared to last night. He woke up frigid with the cold, leaving Mitsuba from where he laid just moments ago with him. The clothes he shucked on did little to protect him from the temperature, but the eyes from last night were gone, and that brought him some comfort. Now that he’d remembered, maybe they’d be gone for good. Probably not, though; Minamoto Kou isn’t that lucky.
With it fresh in his mind, he felt raw all over. After years of repressing it, he was left with the same question he had since he was fifteen. Why?
It was possible that Mitsuba didn’t have a reason for what he did. That maybe he got the impulse to spread false accusations, and did before he could think twice about it. Maybe he really did just like seeing Kou cry. Maybe that made him happy. Maybe that got him off.
What all this questioning really did was make him think about the ways things could have been different if Mitsuba didn’t do what he did. The water didn’t change with his train of thought, it remained the same, waves breaking into white peaks, the tide sweeping in far away from him, and then back out. Would they have gone to high school together? Would they have started dating? Maybe they’d be one of those on-and-off couples, knowing how moody they both could be. Maybe Mitsuba would’ve finished high school, instead of dropping out and meeting Sharpy at that party.
Neither of them were particularly good at traditional schooling, but they could’ve gotten grades good enough for Mitsuba’s art school. His portfolio would take him the rest of the way. Would his mother still be in his life? Would Kou be living out of his car?
He wanted to believe that in at least one other universe, things worked out. That they weren’t as fucked up as they were in this one.
‘Not possible.’
It all hurt; the pain lingered in places he didn’t know it could be stored. But something similar to peace washed over him. He chose this for himself. Maybe he could salvage some semblance of control in his turbulent life. They were close to Hokkaido. Once they reached the top of this island, their destination would be a ferry ride away. It was the home stretch. Nothing was certain after that; if they’d be found, if they’d grow to hate each other, if they were capable of rebuilding a life together. One thing was certain. Kou was never going to give up on Mitsuba again, even if it hurt him, even if it ruined his life. He was prepared to lie in this grave they dug together, even if that meant burying another memory or two with them.