All copywritten characters are the properties of their respective holders and no infringement is intended - no money is being made. "Everything In Its Right Place" is a ethereal song by Radiohead featured on an album of theirs, Kid A - of which I am nothing but a large fan. Unfortunately, it was also featured in a rather dull movie by Cameron Crowe called Vanilla Sky. Perhaps I am just old and twisted; perhaps I just think Tom and Penelope Cruz are boring. Either way - meh, who gives a fuck? I just wanted some suspense and can't help but like the idea Madame Takanaga suggested in a small, uncertain margin that perhaps the entire story-line of "Koi-suru Bo-Kun" was just a product of Morinaga's very fertile imagination... to those who actually enjoyed "Vanilla Sky", well - then you'll get this. Everyone else, well - you're on your own.
Everything... everything... everything... in its right place...
"Wake up... wake up... wake up..."
Tetsuhiro Morinaga couldn't open his eyes for a moment; they were being forced shut by something... white films of cold light dribbled past his somehow fixed lids and somewhere a voice was dripping down into his ears... insistent, quietly furious... frightened... "Wake up..." Machinery beeped like ice on crystal – the pinging radioscopic echoes drawing out in fractal eternities behind his voided eyes...
A white-cold flash blew silently with the fission of a thousand Hiroshima bombs for split second and he was fully awake, dark eyes blinking in the creamy vanilla light of twilit fading sky.
Comings and goings are now irrelevant, Mr. Morinaga, as you well know it...
"You should at least be awake when you're expecting someone, asshole. Get up and let's get this fucking party started.", Souichi Tatsumi bitched from where he was currently kicking his shoes off on Morinaga's threshold.
"Uh, right, Sempai. I'm sorry. I must have dozed off." Morinaga replied in a sleep-slurred voice and began pushing himself off the couch in a slowly vertical climb, his awareness beginning to congeal, alternate realities peeling off around him like invisible layers of dead skin. Morinaga could almost see the translucent myriads of his alternate selves drifting quietly to the floor around his long feet.
The feeling of his spare key bouncing casually off his head with a thump brought Morinaga squawking into the real world.
"OW! Sempai, why?", he moaned, scrubbing at the sore spot on his head, trying to focus his now watery eyes. Damn, that hurt...!
"Quit leaving this under your door-mat. Anyone could have come in here and stolen our beer!", Souichi snarled, throwing his long coat onto a bookshelf and helping himself to the now-vacant couch. "Pass me fucking beer, already... I want to forget this whole rotten day ever happened."
"Sure thing, Sempai..." Morinaga stifled a small late-comer of a yawn, bent down into the bag by his couch and handed his lounging sempai a luck-warm can. "Here's to everything in its right place."
"You drink too fast, Sempai...", Morinaga scolded quietly, trying not to notice the vulnerable way the object of his desire bared his long pale throat as he drunkenly stared at ceiling, lost in inner-space...
"Don't nag me, you. Go get more beer.", Souichi growled, stretching his arms back over the couch, arching his stiff back.
Morinaga wondered if he enjoyed the vertigo or maybe he was just teasing himself in front of his silent admirer. Souichi's long, strange hair curled protectively around everything as the long thin man posed himself this way and that... growling more often than not about America the Strange and Scary Place... not really talking sense anymore, just making himself more aggravated and therefore making him drink faster... the inverse relationship of less peace of mind equaling more alcohol consumption allowing Morinaga to simply enjoy the feast for his eyes being laid out upon his couch, moment by slow moment...
"Hey – Morinaga! Didn't you hear me? Go get some more, will ya? You said you wanted to drink with me tonight so I'm not done drinking – let's go! Get the lead out, dumbshit! Go, go go!", Souichi whipped his head up too fast, yelled and then when inertia caught up with his head, dropped his chin on his chest with a groan.
"What? Yes! I'm going, I'm going... uh, sure – right.", Morinaga swallowed his desire whole and unfolded himself from the floor.
"Get something to eat too...", his drunken sempai slurred out
"Yes – OK, Sempai, hang on – let me find my coat..."
"And Morinaga -"
"Yes?"
"WAKE UP!", the voice in his cold ear yelled suddenly and then his heart began beating again after the shock was delivered. Who was screaming...?
Yesterday I awoke, smelling smoke... smelling smoke... everything... everything... what was that you tried to say... tried to say...
Echoes swooped and dived, birds in his aural net, turning - wheeling above his head in a vanilla sky until they broke apart into stars, screaming... screaming... Wake up... wake up... the seagulls were screaming 'Wake up!"...
He'd been sleeping with his eyes open again. Suddenly the screaming sirens and birds drew back into the pipping of the infrared scanner hopping in the hands of the bored convenience store clerk before Morinaga... the cans of beer go marching in... marching in...
Shaking his head, Tetsuhiro Morinaga rubbed his watering right eye and began looking for money to pay the man.
His eye wouldn't stop watering. Wiping it off again, Morinaga noticed blood on the back of his hand. Fresh, red and dripping... no, not dripping. Running, gushing onto his old tennis shoes.
"Oh fucking Jesus!", he swore and shook his hand hard, sending a splattered stream onto the bland man before him. "Do you see that?", Morinaga's shaky voice warbled out in panic.
"See what, man?" The clerk furrowed his brows in bored puzzlement and didn't notice a thing.
Wake up... wake up... what was that you were trying to say... what was that you were trying to say...?
"Help me up, you bastard – hurry! I can't stand!", Souichi grimaced, his numb face falling back into Morinaga's shoulder. The weight of his sempai's smoldering body upon his own was its own special kind of reality, snapping Morinaga up out of the dregs of uneasy sleep.
"Oh for the love of god, Sempai – get up already! Don't puke on my futon!" Morinaga blurted out, surprised as hell, too shocked to react with any subtlety.
"Easy for you to say asshole! Wait – don't move! I can do this..."
Something hard throbbed against Morinaga's leg as Souichi rode him in his blind attempt at freedom.
Suddenly, both men were very, very still.
"Sempai...?", Morinaga managed to squeak out. His sempai's brilliant red ears were the definition of embarrassment... and his flushed chest the very picture of desire. Morinaga's heart squeezed to life for a split second and then those far-away gulls were screaming for him to wake up... wake up... it's time... open your eyes...
Wake up... wake up... wake up... it's time...
"STOP!" Souichi's moaning scream begged Morinaga for the exact opposite.
"Mmmm..." Warm wet flesh slid through his aching hand.
"I mean it, if you don't stop here... ugh... I'll never be able to forgive you...!" Souichi panted as his body shook like a flag in a storm, trying not to come again in his kohai's wicked pestering hand.
Morinaga laughed bitterly at himself, at fate, at everything. Pushing Souichi's legs over his sweating shoulders he nudged his sempai's body closer to his own, lining himself up to begin.
"Even if I stopped here, you wouldn't forgive me anyway, Sempai.", Morinaga's acidic voice growled and then in one swift, wet thrust he was home.
It's time gentlemen... call it... call it... everything's in its right place... right place...
Someone accidentally pulled off the tape from his right eye, the glass shards poking out like obscene crystals, growing in an abyssal cave without light or hope. They left the pads on his chest, the endotracheal tube between his cold lips... borrowed air whistled slowly out of Tetsuhiro Morinaga's slashed throat, past the make-shit ambu-mask in one final drift of life... Souichi Tatsumi's final say in the matter of his traumatic deflowering stuck fast in glowing shards, the broken elixir bottle put to efficient if gory use.
The paramedics, deflated on their own dregs of wasted adrenaline, slowly trooped out into the creamy yellow light of a morning's vanilla sky. Past Souichi's huddled numb form curled silently under the bloody coverlet, his own mutilated eyes cold long before. Somehow, Tetsuhiro Morinaga managed to continue, swathed in blankets of re-running pleasure, and even when his soul again came screaming within his lover's gorgeous tortured body, he kept on...
Until finally without his notice, his soul simply came for the last time and then went.
Wake up... time to wake up... time... wake... everything... everything in its right place...