When everything dies down at last, Majima and Saejima don't settle into each other like they were never apart. The decades between them don't matter as much as they might have expected, but this greater sorrow won't leave them alone.
Yasuko's absence hangs over them like a ghost.
Sometimes in the quiet moments - the good quiet moments, which do exist, of course they do, because Majima is his sworn brother and he didn't make that choice lightly, he did it because he loves him - Saejima almost forgets, almost thinks that the twenty five years of lost time is the biggest tragedy. He wonders if Majima ever forgets.
How sad and tired he sometimes seems in those quiet moments suggests otherwise. It's the eye patch, Saejima thinks. Majima's every waking sight is cut in half, amputated by what he's been through. The constant reminder that things aren't the same as they were before has made him good at recalling tragedy. So how could he forget that Yasuko is dead?
They sit together on the couch in front of the TV, Saejima's arm draped comfortably across Majima's shoulders, and things are almost good. They would be, despite it all, if only Yasuko could be in the next room, calling to them they'd better make space for her on the threadbare futon, because she's bringing snacks and she won't share if she doesn't get a good enough spot. They shift, Majima's long legs splaying over Saejima's lap instead of the sofa arm, and Yasuko squeezes into the vacated space. She grabs the remote and turns up the volume.
She is dead and buried.
xi.
It's a bit of a shock to Saejima when he realizes that Majima always wears that.
He'd considered it a strange fashion choice when he first saw it, but Majima had always been an oddball stylist so Saejima thought little of it. However, when he opens Majima's closet in search of a change of clothes (even Majima must have one or two oversized t-shirts) and is met with the sight of seven identical snakeskin jackets and nothing else, it's the first time his sworn brother's fashion choices actually worry him.
"Bro," he says softly. "What the hell."
Majima hears from the other room, because of course he does. "What?"
"Bro... why do you have so many of this jacket?"
Suddenly Majima is right behind him. "Up yours," he says defensively, gesturing angrily with a lit cigarette. "They get messed up all the time. You think it's classy to go around with one sleeve ripped off and some guy's blood all over? I don't want to look like a slob."
Saejima keeps staring at the jackets, sleeve after sleeve hanging from the rack like a row of python corpses, diamond pattern hypnotic. "What do you want to look like?" he asks, and Majima goes cold - slams the closet shut, nearly taking off his fingers.
Majima smashes the cigarette down in a convenient ashtray like he's trying to kill it, and says nothing. Then he pulls out a new one, haughtily calm once more.
Saejima almost tells him off for lighting up in the house. Then he remembers that Yasuko's lungs can't hurt her anymore.
"I kinda like it," he says, talking about the jacket, and almost means it. It's a half truth - if Majima likes wearing the jacket, Saejima likes it, even if he doesn't like how it looks. Majima has gotten enough shit for the things he wears that Saejima makes a point of not contributing. The closed tenseness on Majima's face - a mask over humiliated anger - reminds him painfully of the first time he caught him looking too casually, too long, at a dress in the thrift store that clearly wasn't Yasuko's size. Saejima joked, then, and regretted it. He hasn't slipped up since. Before now.
He holds his hand out, asking for a cigarette. Majima just passes his, though he still looks wary. Saejima takes a drag, pauses, hands it back.
Winter months, they used to fantasize about being able to smoke indoors. Now it tastes foul.
x.
At the party after Saejima's reinitiation into the Tojo clan, Majima is subdued; so subdued, in fact, that his boys are terrified.
They flinch if he moves too suddenly, like their boss' uncharacteristic stillness under the pulsing lights is a trick to lull them into a false sense of security before he erupts suddenly into manic violence when they least expect it. It keeps them on edge. The Majima family, unintentionally emulating their leader's attitude, is for once far from rowdy. They are too confused, too afraid, to let their guard down. In some ways it is a relief; in other ways it makes the rest of the party nervous in turn. The atmosphere is not a pleasant one, though the food and alcohol are good enough. (But not the music - Saejima recognizes none of it and likes even less.) He is surrounded at all times by important clan figures greeting him and hungry young family members aiming to make a good impression. It is too much. It is almost enough to make him wish he were still locked up.
Saejima knows his sworn brother is drinking because for a moment when he isn't being assailed by other patriarchs and prospective Saejima family hopefuls, he catches sight of Majima across the room, standing very still at the bar and knocking back drinks like he aims to drown in them. But either the alcohol isn't affecting him or he isn't showing it, because his somber gaze over the room never wavers. He stands there, eye dark but piercing, drinking whiskey, and the party makes a polite (wary) gap in the revelry around him. The room is packed but no one comes within arm's reach. Saejima has time to reflect that Majima's pensiveness is, indeed, worrisome, before his attention is drawn back to someone respectfully but forcefully introducing himself and offering some exotic drink Saejima is too surprised to decline, but far too annoyed to be grateful for. He forgets the man's name within minutes, distracted by yet another newcomer vying for his attention, and when he thinks to look back to Majima the crowd has shifted and he is no longer visible.
A sip of the drink makes Saejima wrinkle his nose. It is brightly coloured and over-sweet and chemically, like the deserts they sometimes got in jail that he never ate.
Later - an hour maybe? Saejima cannot tell how time passes in the dimness and strobe lights and press of eager figures, in the lack of prison bells - he manages to disentangle himself from the fringes of the throng and sees Majima again, halfway down a hallway. Kiryu has a hand resting on his shoulder and Majima is shaking his head, shaking his head from side to side as though he could deny the whole world if he just did it hard enough, long enough. Then he roughly shrugs off Kiryu's hand, and turns to leave. Kiryu lets him.
Saejima lets him, too, without knowing if he really wants to or not.
ix.
Despite all they've been through since he left jail, Saejima finds himself sleeping like a log, twenty five years of restlessness dissipating like morning mist.
Majima was always a light sleeper, but now he seems mostly not to sleep, and never sleeps well. A deep purple shadow haunts his visible eye. He's cranky. The rare times Saejima sees him sleeping, he mutters and flinches until he wakes up anyway. It seems worse than it used to be.
When Saejima carefully questions him about it one morning, Majima is flippant.
"I got nightmares and shit," he says. He sips his coffee. "Besides, caffeine's the same thing as sleep anyway, so what's the point?"
Saejima doesn't think that's quite accurate, but he doesn't have the facts to prove it so he says nothing. He also says nothing about how it sometimes seems like Majima tries not to sleep, does anything to avoid it. About the odd, glazed, too-intense focus of his eyes some early mornings. "What are the nightmares about?" he asks instead, and Majima winces.
He looks like he doesn't want to answer, and for anyone else he wouldn't, but after a moment he speaks. "Doesn't matter, bro. Stuff from a long time ago, mostly."
It's an answer that Majima would only give to someone he really trusts, so Saejima doesn't press further. It's enough that Majima still trusts him more than anyone else. But he wonders about the 'mostly.'
It makes him sad, too, that Majima never found anyone to trust as much as him in twenty five years. It's a painfully long time to go without it. Saejima knows. He still thinks about the doubts he had about Majima - twenty five years of not being sure if he should hate his favourite man in the whole world. Thinking about it fills him with renewed relief that he doesn't have to. Majima was a victim, same as him, same as all of them. He came out of the whole debacle with scars just as deep.
Or deeper. Saejima's sleep is dreamless.
He goes to grab Majima's hand right as Majima tries to drain the coffee cup. It doesn't spill, but the moment goes sour and Majima gives him a funny, trapped look - kicked dog, an ugly part of Saejima thinks - like affection doesn't even cross his mind as a possible cause for the sudden gesture. "Watch it, bro! I'm trying to drink, here."
Leave him to his nightmares, Saejima can't help thinking savagely.
It is all too easy to hate him.
viii.
They argue over the stupidest things, they yell and break furniture and chase each other in futile circles. They make up. They get drunk and Majima gets high, and they laugh together until they argue again. Saejima learns to always flush the toilet (the smell of old urine makes Majima nauseous and on-edge, ever since his year in the hole). Majima learns not to make certain prison jokes (they aren't funny).
It's nothing like the good old days, really, because they're broken and the jagged pieces don't fit.
Majima buries his face in Saejima's shoulder, and he isn't quite crying but it's close, his voice is high and rough and he sounds like he hates it.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Like a broken record, skipping over the same ugly, meaningless sounds over and over and over. Saejima holds him and says nothing. He is beginning to tire of forgiving him. He thinks he may have very little forgiveness left to give.
They must have played out this scene a hundred times since being reunited, but no matter how many times he forgives, Majima won't be forgiven. He's stubborn like that. From the guilt he feels, you would think a year of torture and decades of loneliness were luxuries he bought at the price of his sworn brother's freedom. Majima won't say what he's apologizing for, not out loud, and Saejima won't ask.
Later Majima comes into the room where Saejima is watching TV and throws himself down on the sofa.
"It should have been me," he growls. "I should have taken that fucking bullet."
Saejima doesn't say anything, because he doesn't know if he agrees or not. But after twenty five years of separation he is glad that if he can't have his sister, or both of them, he can at least have Majima. He shifts over to make space and offers him his beer.
Majima takes a careful swig before handing it back. He says nothing.
"Game's a good one so far, bro," Saejima says. "Stay and watch?"
Majima remains silent.
They watch the game. There is more than enough room for both of them on the spacious couch. The extra space sits between them like a presence, watching.
vii.
They fight.
Of course they fight, they always have, but something isn't quite right. Something about the energy between them, Saejima thinks. It's punches at the wrong moment, violence whenever tenderness starts to creep up on them. It's cuts and black bruises that Majima won't even ice, wounds over skin stained with unfamiliar scars.
Majima whirls and cackles like he still finds joy in it, but he fights recklessly, far more than he ever did before. Saejima notices he still crosses his legs over when he advances with his tanto blade out. It makes him laughably easy to knock over, which Saejima believes is a weakness to exploit, until he learns how dangerous Majima can be from the ground. He kicks Saejima's legs out from under him without missing a beat and Saejima's cheek breaks on the pavement, sending a spray of pain behind his eyes.
It should probably have ended with the facefull of dirty gravel. But Saejima could swear Majima lets him get up again, on purpose.
After that Saejima is able to understand what they mean when they speak of the mad dog. Majima's manic grin is bloody and his onslaught is relentless, all spinning limbs and energy so tightly focused it is baffling that his movements can be so chaotic at the same time. He reconciles the contradictions, makes beauty out of brutality. It's something Saejima used to love about fighting him - but the feral gleam in his eye is something between madness and ecstasy and suddenly Saejima doesn't want to fight anymore.
He says so. And Majima doesn't stop.
And there, tanto ripping by his face, barely missing him, Saejima fears his sworn brother for the first time. The fight doesn't end until Saejima makes it end, cracking Majima's head against the alley wall, cutting off his wild laughter abruptly.
He is unconscious for a moment too long and Saejima hates that it doesn't even scare him, but how could he be scared when his sworn brother's face, ragged with blood and gravel, actually looks peaceful for the first time since their reunion?
When Majima comes to, he gives a gory grin - humorless, really a grimace - and dusts himself off like he isn't even in pain.
It's the first time that Majima ever ignored a serious request like that. But it's also the first time Saejima tried to back down from a fight. The first time Majima made him want to.
He doesn't say Majima has gone crazy, and Majima doesn't say he has gone soft.
It's a silent truce; horrible that they need it, but comforting that they can still arrange such a thing without needing to open their mouths. Maybe what really matters hasn't changed all that much, after all. (Except for Yasuko. Of course.)
They walk home together in silence. If Majima is hurting, he gives no outward sign with which to prove it and Saejima is left to guess. He guesses, and he puts an arm around Majima and feels that he is trembling, very slightly.
When they get back to Majima's apartment they spit trails of blood into the sink, and pick the gravel out of each other's faces and put hydrogen peroxide on their wounds; and Majima laughs and he actually looks happy, in a quiet way, as they do it.
That feels like progress. Even if Saejima can't forget how just a little more force might have cracked Majima's skull and made him a murderer for real, and how Majima seemed to want it.
vi.
Saejima talks to Kiryu. Because as little as Kiryu actually knows about Majima, he still knows more than everyone else does. And he's not the kind of man to say something just because he's expected to - if he speaks, it's because he has something to say. He won't lie. He won't evade hard questions in the way talkative men do. Saejima appreciates that.
They spend a mostly-silent evening at the bar. Saejima is put a little on edge from being unable to read Kiryu's mood, but he thinks the silence is a comfortable one. It is for his part, anyway, and at least there is no pressure to make small talk.
He says that he's worried about Majima. It's an indirect request for advice, but Kiryu reads it clearly, nodding very slowly.
He thinks for so long that Saejima is worried he forgot the question. Then, "I don't think you can help Majima unless he wants to be helped," he says slowly. "I think - some people are like that."
Saejima huffs into his drink in assent. Kiryu is remarkably perspicacious given the limits of his concrete knowledge of the situation. "So I gotta make him want to be helped."
Something in Kiryu's stoic expression adopts a hint of sorrowful pity that Saejima wants to resent but can't. "Only he can do that," Kiryu says. "Just keep an eye on him and try to keep him from doing anything too stupid."
Saejima thinks that God himself probably couldn't stop Majima from doing whatever came into his head.
Kiryu must read the thought in some minute change in Saejima's expression, because he smiles a little (as much as he ever does). It's a tiny smile, and haggard, but it's genuine in a way that Majima's manic grins aren't. He looks like a man who's seen all the world's ugliness and hate, and refused to let it make him ugly and hateful. That kind of stubbornness could create beauty from nothing, Saejima thinks, and he wishes that Majima could stop annoying Kiryu long enough to see it. It might do him some good.
"Thanks," Saejima says awkwardly when they part at the end of the night.
Kiryu nods seriously and turns to go. But right before he does, he hesitates. "Be careful, Saejima no oniisan," he says. "People in the outside world can change more than you think when you're in jail for a long time."
It's a good piece of advice. Being careful always is. He doesn't think too hard about the second part. He doesn't want to.
He doesn't ask Kiryu how to live after a loved one dies for you. He doesn't want to know, but suspects, the answer. It's not a comforting one.
v.
Yasuko never came to the batting cages, so it's there that things feel most unchanged. They stay for hours, making hits in companionable silence, both pretending that nothing is wrong, nothing is different. It's nice. It's better to pretend once in awhile, Saejima thinks, than to revel in sadness forever, constantly.
They're both quite good. Saejima is less consistent, but his hits have more power when they do connect. Majima, if anything, is better than he was with two eyes, which is disconcerting somehow. You would think depth perception would be important for playing baseball.
The batting center isn't a perfect oasis, however. Majima's cellphone rings with important business at least once every few hours, and he never turns it off even though Saejima thinks he looks miserable taking the calls.
He takes it out on whoever is on the line. Saejima has only met Nishida twice, but he likes him. He doesn't talk too much when he has nothing to say, and he's polite. He's like a less numinous Kiryu.
"You shouldn't threaten him like that," Saejima says mildly one time after overhearing one side of a particularly nasty exchange, in which he knows Nishida was not giving as good as he got.
Majima turns on him sharply and every muscle in his body becomes dangerous, like a switch being flicked on. "Oh? Are you patriarch of the Majima family, bro?"
"No..."
"Then don't fucking tell me how to run my family."
Saejima nods and puts down his bat and leaves, and doesn't look back to see if Majima even cares.
iv.
It's sunny in the penthouse apartment. The panorama view of Kamurocho is beautiful, and with a pang Saejima realizes Yasuko probably never got the chance to see the city from this angle. It's too bad, he thinks. She would have liked it.
Majima sits at his desk, chewing on a pen. He's ostensibly working, but his bloodshot gaze stares right through the papers before him as his teeth tear at he plastic, and the tight set of his shoulders betrays a deep and uncomfortable tension. The fingers of his left hand tap anxiously on the desk, drumming, drumming until Saejima can't take it anymore. Majima looks like a man waiting to die.
Saejima would know.
"Yasuko wouldn't have wanted it to be like this, bro."
Majima looks up from his paperwork with an expression that is at once familiar and foreign, like Saejima has forgotten his face. It's somehow in between grief and indifference and cruelty. "Yasuko is dead."
"She wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself."
"She wouldn't have wanted to be dead," Majima spits back.
Saejima can't argue with that. Some horribly uncharitable part of him, though, feels it is ridiculously unfair that he has to comfort Majima, convince him that all this is not his fault when on some level it is - he didn't abandon them by choice but if he hadn't been gone, if he had just been there, then -
Saejima swallows these thoughts down. These are what are driving Majima mad.
He is trying to figure out what to say when Majima speaks again.
"She's dead," he says, and it sounds like he's begging Saejima to understand something, as though he didn't know his own sister was gone, didn't feel that pain every time he thought of her. "She's dead and it's my fault. I thought I could make it better but I can't - I can't - everything's fucked - I couldn't even pay my respects-"
"Being locked up makes you miss a lot of things, bro. It's what you do once you get out that matters."
For a moment Majima looks like he is thinking that over, but then he bares his teeth slightly. "Well, ain't you a fucking philosopher. What do you know about it?"
Stupid. Saejima sees he regrets saying it as soon as the words leave his mouth, but he's not about to let Majima get away with it. "Plenty," he says. "If Yasuko is dead and I hate you, then I've lost you both. So I don't hate you."
"Maybe you fucking should," Majima says, standing up, tanto flicking into his hand out of nowhere. "Maybe you're a blind fucking idiot!"
Saejima shakes his head slowly. "I'd lost both of you, but now I have you back. You'd lost both of us, but now you have me back. Doesn't that count for anything?"
Majima deflates instantly, sags back into the chair, and all at once he looks very old and tired. "Of course it does. Of course it does, bro."
It's not enough.
iii.
One afternoon while Saejima is walking aimlessly around the city he ends up in a record store. He enters with some vague idea of catching up a bit on music, but instead his eye is caught by a familiar album cover.
The two of them never had their own record player, but they used to drink and listen to the radio on hot summer nights - outside, sitting on the curb, because Yasuko was already sleeping. It was a crummy transistor radio and Majima would kick it when the signal went fuzzy, but it did the job like a champ and never stopped working altogether. They would crank up the volume when songs they liked came on; they often knew all the lyrics before they even knew what a song was called. When time allowed they used to go into the record store and listen to all the albums they would buy if they could afford to. The store employees could tell they didn't plan on purchasing anything (from their clothes, their attitude, their laughter, everything), but couldn't prove it, so Majima was left to put on the headphones and wiggle his eyebrows at Saejima as he lip-synced along to the inaudible music, bopping his head and dancing just a little too enthusiastically.
It's a good memory.
Better is another one: after a few beers they would sing along to the radio, and Majima's voice isn't always in tune but it's never anything short of stunning in its sincerity. Saejima remembers him singing a song he hasn't even thought about for twenty five years: remembers the beautiful lopsided grin and the sweat marks on the ugly shirt he was wearing, the way he looked, half in blue shadow and half illuminated by the sputtering yellow glow of a street lamp; remembers his perfect voice and the way the alcohol and music and heat made them just crazy enough to feel like the whole world was open to them, like they were going somewhere, somewhere good.
As Saejima focuses back on the record, he is filled with a sort of muted, bittersweet delight. They can have all the records they want, now; listen to whatever they want. (Sing along as loud as they want, as late as they want, indoors. Because Yasuko can't be woken.) They'll play the record, and Majima will sing and smile for real when he sees how much Saejima loves to see it. And for just a moment, Majima will be happy.
Saejima picks up the record and buys it.
He buys it, and when he presents the gift Majima isn't impressed.
"The hell?" he says. "What did you buy a record for?"
Saejima swallows. He's too surprised to be angry. "To listen to."
The look on Majima's face is one of total confusion and contempt. "I can't play that! I don't have a turntable!"
"But you're rich..."
IMajima's eye narrows. "Bro... nobody listens to records anymore. I threw it out. Fuckin'... ages ago. Like a decade."
Saejima nods. He puts the album away carefully.
That evening when he knows he is alone he takes it out again, and snaps it in half, and puts it in the trash. It's easy to do. He wonders if it was as easy to throw away the record player; probably, it was. The past is set, unchangeable, but it's also as fragile as glass. It's strange to think that people could just stop listening to records; it's like sneakers becoming obsolete. There are kinds of shoes that are better for certain occasions, sure, but sneakers are comfortable and easy and they have timeless style. The world Saejima entered after leaving jail seems senseless.
He misses the way Majima looked when he had two eyes. He misses the way Majima was when he had two eyes. He wishes he could remember properly. He wishes Majima would be the same, but he isn't, he isn't, he's so different that the moments where he comes close to his old self are agonizing for how they remind Saejima of all he's lost. Every time happiness comes close to his sworn brother's eyes and doesn't quite make it, he wants the old Majima back and hates himself for not being able to make the new Majima - the real Majima! The only Majima! - better. It feels like they're both corpses, living on stolen time.
Suddenly the penthouse apartment is too big, too cold, and Saejima gets up from the couch, takes his coat and wallet, and walks to the door. He doesn't know where he'll go, he doesn't know how he'll get money or what he'll do, but he knows that this isn't fucking working and he can't stay in this big, cold space anymore, not without Yasuko, not without being able to help his sworn brother - can't stay here watching him slowly destroy himself -
He pauses, hand on the doorknob.
Drifting over the sound of the shower across the apartment comes the faint but unmistakable sound of singing. And it's a song Saejima doesn't recognize and he couldn't bring himself to sing along if he did, but - Majima's voice is still beautiful.
And if Majima still sings, there's still hope.
ii.
As the sun rises one morning Saejima dresses Majima up and drags him out of the apartment and into the light and onto the train, and they pick up flowers and go to the place where she is buried.
It's early enough that no one else is around. The sky overhead is bright and empty and despite the season the stone is warm. Majima stands before it at a slight distance, surveying it with a critical eye.
"Damn rock isn't as pretty as she was," he says sadly. "Even with flowers."
Saejima squeezes his shoulder.
For a long time they just stand there, looking.
"I wish-" Majima says suddenly, and his voice is hoarse and uncharacteristically somber. "I wish it could've been you two, moanin' over my grave. You could've cried just a little - that would make me happy - and then gone home together. She wouldn't be stirring up shit all the time. You could be together and laugh over how much you missed each other, but now it's all in the past and you can just be happy together. No fuckin' lunatic around to get in the way."
The bitterness there is enough to break Saejima's heart.
"If you think I'd be happy without you," he says simply, "You're wrong."
Majima nods, not quite looking like he believes it. After a moment he opens his mouth again. "Bro... I gotta talk to just her. Could you...?"
Saejima nods. He walks away, leaving Majima standing still against the sky.
He wanders around the cemetery for awhile, weaving between the rows, drinking in the sunlight and waiting. He wonders if Majima is crying, or yelling, or still in silent agony. He wonders if Majima will even be there when he gets back - in body or in spirit, because his sworn brother is unpredictable, especially when he's hurting, and somehow Saejima feels that their imperfect reunion is only partial, like something is missing from Majima, or himself, or both of them collectively -
Then he realizes. Of course there is - it's Yasuko that's missing from them, it's her absence that's spoiling what they have left, it's the lack of her love that's tearing them apart and eating them up from the inside out and twisting their hearts into coils, and it's Yasuko that's killing them.
And it would kill her, a second time over, if she could see it.
Saejima stops, and realizes all at once that the problem is learning to be whole with the shattered pieces they have left. Learning how to make something of what feels like worse than nothing.
He just doesn't know if he can do it.
When he returns, Majima is sitting comfortably on the ground before the headstone, long legs spread, face turned upwards to the sun like its warmth is keeping him alive. He hears Saejima's footsteps approaching, and he turns and cracks his eye open.
He smiles for real.
"I missed you," he says.
Saejima blinks. It feels like the sun is rising for the second time that day.
"I missed you too, bro." He leans down to help him up. Instead Majima takes the proffered hand and yanks him hard to the ground.
Caught off guard, Saejima yelps and grumbles; but then Majima is leaning on his chest, and Yasuko is nearby and the sun is warm on both of them and the sky is blue - and that's the best he could hope for, really.
It's enough.
They doze under the sunshine and by the time they drift back to wakefulness, Saejima is at least certain that happiness is still possible in a world without Yasuko, even if it's difficult to find and harder to hold on to.
i.
They still chase each other in circles, but they're getting closer to the center all the time.