Tetsuo watched Kaneda pop another capsule into his mouth, and Tetsuo hated him for it.
This was a feeling he was comfortable with. It brought the same kind of comfort as the only torn and filthy blanket he owned; the white one with faded sakura blossoms on it; the one he'd long since outgrown but still kept stuffed in a drawer beside his stained mattress. This feeling, this hate, dripped slowly. It never rushed. It seeped between every laugh and every cracked smile. It whispered between every glance and flicker of movement. It pounded like a constant reminder between every roar of the motorcycle engine. This hate wasn't irrational; it lived eagerly beside Tetsuo's love.
There wasn't anything irrational about his anger, either. The way Kaneda's teeth chomped on the capsule, the way a sly smile spread across his smug face, the way it made Tetsuo's insides burn-all of it was real and raw. It spurred him on, yet it was so distant. As if it should belong to someone else, someone who could only feel the drained out, pure, aftermath of anger; the opposite of hate. Tetsuo felt everything. The intensity might have made his eyes sting. He also saw everything. Kaneda's face opened up to him without reservation. The gleam of his dark eyes. The fall of his curt, short black hair. The firm, adhesive press of his lips. The scorching red of his pants and the jacket draped over his shoulders, flush against his skin. The faded yellow shirt underneath was open at the collar, and the buttons loosened further down to reveal his chest.
Tetsuo's gaze flickered between Kaneda and the ground littered with garbage. He was sitting cross legged, leaning back against a creaking wooden post. Kaneda was lounging on a makeshift throne made of old tires, scraps of metal, and discarded mechanical parts. He popped the capsules from a plastic bag almost absent mindedly. Like candy, Tetsuo thought. Anything to keep the panic down. He swallowed, feeling his dry throat constrict even further. Everything tasted bitter. He could only sit there. And look on.
With a grimace, Tetsuo tore his gaze away. If only for a moment, he found some relief at observing their surroundings. Their motorcycles were parked in the shade of a ripped canvas awning, hastily erected to stave off the heat. It was eerily still. Not a dash of air. Not a cloud in the sky. This place had once been a courtyard. The cracked concrete fountain was covered in spray paint. Withered roots of what used to be verdant trees peeked from underneath the crushing weight of a collapsed apartment building. Rust seemed to leave its residue on everything. Here, at the ground level, the desecration of Neo-Tokyo was an experience that clung to the skin, that shoved its way inside the lungs. That clogged arteries, ripped and gouged and tore and bled until exhaustion was only a mercy, until knees meeting the ground was not a surrender, but merely the continuation of an empty existence.
It was funny, actually. Craning his neck to look up at the floors above and their sagging balconies, Tetsuo reflected on the fact that he still had hope. Suprising. It wasn't hope that kept him going, oh no. It was fear. Sheer terror. Terror that the rest of the building might crumble and crush him at any moment, like right now, and if he wasn't attentive enough, quick enough-good enough-he would die. Just die. And no one would give a damn. The dust would settle on some loser, while the sun would set and rise again. Neo-Tokyo would heave a sigh of relief and keep on breathing, continue to breed poverty and decadence, and rebuild itself on the bones of the nameless ones that came before.
Tetsuo had been given a name, though, he reminded himself. I am Tetsuo. He didn't remember his parents, didn't have to really. But he'd often imagined his mother as a gentle, soft woman always smelling of some sweet fragrance, always ready to give him comfort. He'd touched safety, once. It quivered inside him still, this long lost feeling. He'd often imagined his father as someone who spent years cultivating meticulous routines: white shirts, black ties, the 6:07 train, work, cola and a fried egg in the evenings on weekdays, pachinko on the weekends after he got paid. At night he played online video games and watched the news. His parents lived in an apartment just like this one, yes, on the thirteenth floor. It had a balcony at either end, two rooms, a portable butane stove. They kept a goldfish even though they wanted a dog, and they loved Tetsuo.
They loved him so much they'd given him away to an orphanage.
With nothing but his white blanket, clutched in his hands. Sobbing. Feeling loss crack him open. The fear overtaking him until he was shaking. And then, Kaneda. He hadn't always been a practitioner of duplicity. As a child, Tetsuo remembered him being wilful, but also endearing. He liked collecting racing stickers and kept them in an old cookie tin. Sometimes he would share cookies with Tetsuo. Other times it was his strength, or what passed for wisdom of the year's gap between them. A bandage. A hug. A smile. It felt a whole lot like safety.
Then came the recklessness. Kaneda had suggested spray painting the wall just across the headmaster's office. Tetsuo had agreed instantly, which continued to trouble him years later, but he'd accepted it anyway. Then Kaneda suggested simply taking what they wanted. Especially if they couldn't have it. What they'd wanted one murky spring afternoon was pastries. They'd snuck into the cafeteria, intent on taking packages of pastries, the kind of spongy cakes smothered in icing that Tetsuo's mother probably would have refused to buy, owing to the excessive sugar content. That afternoon Tetsuo picked up first one, then another, before putting both packages down to look at the energy drinks behind him; and then-when he hesitated, finding the whole thing suddenly unnerving-Kaneda had looked directly at the video camera before slipping a bottle into his jacket pocket and walking out of the cafeteria, with Tetsuo trailing behind him. They hadn't touched the cash register. They'd still gotten kicked out of the orphanage after that. It was alright, because they'd graduated into stealing motorcycles, and then they'd banded together with a bunch of other losers they kind of liked. No one else gave a damn. Yeah, it was alright. And it was the opposite of safety.
Tetsuo had lived without it for so long that it became like a collection of bones. Bones he rearranged into his skeleton as needed, anything to support him. Keep him together. Kaneda did that. Kaneda felt right. Kaneda made sense. Kaneda crackled with chaos, yet he was the closest thing Tetsuo had to safety. He needed him. Right here, right now. Always. He needed him to be alive, and well, and just around. Anything, anyone, that would take Kaneda away from him, well he'd fucking kill them in a heartbeat.
But this...Tetsuo dragged his gaze back to Kaneda. He was still popping those damn capsules. Blue on one end, white on the other. Small. Undeniable, offering denial. Too many of them. Readily available. Gathered in a plastic bag that hung limply from Kaneda's left hand. And he took, and took, and hadn't stopped for all the time they'd rested in the courtyard. Kaneda was destroying himself. Tetsuo recognized this, even if he didn't formulate it into a thought that could be used for or against either one of them.
It was maddeningly out of his control. He wanted to scream at Kaneda. Wanted to control him, to make him do the right thing. Instead, Tetsuo stood up. He loomed over Kaneda with his fists clenched. He tried to keep his cool even when Kaneda's looked up lazily, insolently.
"Want some?"
"No!"
Tetsuo glared at him for a moment longer. When Kaneda's face flushed and his eyebrows drew together in the beginnings of a scowl, Tetsuo stormed off towards their motorcycles. He hoped the snarl of the engine would cover up his concern. Kaneda would never give this up. Thinking of this, Tetsuo felt a familiar heaviness in his chest, a sadness that he sometimes thought was all the unused love he'd accumulated throughout the years turned to dust, settling layer upon layer until it had the density of stone.