fandom: Gouhou Drug (Lawful Drug)
title: silent as ever.
pairing: Rikuou + Kazahaya
rating: pg-13
Description – The silent Rikuou waits for Kazahaya to come back from his 'journey'…
Disclaimer – Gouhou Drug isn't mine. silent as ever.
By miyamoto yui
Yesterday, someone left this place.
Again.
It seems like this is more a college dorm with young people coming to work for the drugstore, only to leave just as quickly in between seasons. For whatever reason, this is just a stopping point in their lives. It is not the end.
No, it certainly isn't. That's what normal people do, don't they? The ones that don't have to think about school tuition, just that their parents will pay for it; they don't have to worry about finding a life partner because the dramas on tv tell them so; these people who complain that the long hours for overtime are not fair even though they are lifetime employees by an unspoken national policy by default.
This is a stopping point for me too, but I don't know when exactly I 'want' to leave, not the 'need' to. There is still a reason to stay and that all branches out like a tree to different reasons growing quietly onto the leaves. The more time goes by, it is not laziness, but the complications cultivate and become deeply rooted in a place that, of course, won't stay the same in time, place, or feelings. It won't stay here forever as I know it to be.
Even now, I see the small pieces chipping away with the marks of time and change.
I woke up again with a start. Looking up at the fluorescent light in the middle of the room, I realize once again I am on the floor with my futon. Or rather, his. I am 'borrowing it' while he's on a journey that I cannot follow or save him from.
In other words, I cannot interfere.
I've taken a dislike for sleeping on the soft twin bed and I've forgotten the reason why. It's been that long. All I know is that I always wake up around 5am. There is no noise outside, but I always wake up abruptly.
There are times that I don't, but there is a lingering taste on my mouth as I sleepily blink at the unlit light above me. A breeze comes into the room through the window and I wait from slumber take me back until it's time to go to work.
It drives me insane because I sleep late due to taking all the extra 'jobs' at night all by myself. There is no reason why.
Well, not a logical one at least.
Deep inside, absurd as it may be, I know it's-I stop myself and I drift off to another unfamiliar, intimate place within my mind.
"Ah~." I managed to grunt when I watched the flame burst up on the stove, but I didn't worry. It happened sometimes. Somehow, he joked around with me but I didn't catch his words as he started to pick up what vegetables had fallen to the ground. I wanted to do that after he left. I tried to send him away, but he wouldn't listen. He was too focused on what he was doing to hear me anymore. "Stop it!" I found myself shouting before I could take it back as I took his wrists and not his hands, fearing of the things he could feel through me. "It's dirty!" He blinked up at me and opened his mouth to say a single word. It was said in a lukewarm, simmered tone and totally out of character: "Fine." Walking out into the crowd of people in the drugstore, he smiled and amazingly acted like nothing had happened. But at night, when I was stepping in to take my shower as he was heading out, he glanced at me severely with red eyes. It was clear as a televised commercial on the big screen tv at the Hachiko Exit in Shibuya: "This is your fault." Two weeks later, Kakei was giving me my paycheck and asked, "So, what time should we make Kazahaya-kun's goodbye party?" "…" This is all I could think. There was too much static in my brain with too many excuses, words, thoughts, memories, and confusion shrieking at one another to be heard by my logical mind. I didn't exactly understand what I just confessed to myself, but it's everything that it's supposed to and can mean. As I heard him bustling in the room, getting himself ready for a place that I couldn't chase after, I turned off the stove and looked at the floor. For one small moment, in an almost sleepy way, my lips tighten at either side of my face. I liked it better when we bickered.
But he came running into the kitchen we'd been fighting inside of every single damn morning and shouted in panic, "Are you okay?!"
I nodded my head coolly. I don't know if it's because of pride at making a mistake or having to acknowledge that I was drifting off again into my own world thinking of her, the woman covered in blood inside my memories.
It's always difficult to talk to you when you're like this…
I inwardly freaked out that I answered with a confused "Fine" as well.
I stood there, at once, numb to the point I thought my ears rang. "Excuse me?"
"Didn't you know he was leaving?" Kakei feigned innocent surprise.
"Why?"
Elusively, Kakei tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders. "That's for him to tell."
Kazahaya strolled in at that exact moment and nodded politely. "I earned enough money and so I will go study abroad. Kei is calling me now. I can feel it."
He strolled out just as casually as he had entered. Like a breeze on a humid and hot summer day, his presence made my spine tingle. I wanted to feel nearly frozen enough to the rush that's coming when something important would be removed from deep inside of me…
In the end, I cooked dinner that night for the both us even though I knew he wouldn't eat it.
Behind me, he stood at the doorway. "I'm sorry I interfered. I promise I won't do it again."
When I turned around, he was still standing at the threshold to the kitchen, holding on to the wooden sides for support.
"I'm sorry too," I quietly replied, and I looked at him straight in the eye. "But may I ask what were you thinking this time?"
"I didn't want you to do it alone. If we worked together, we could get it done faster."
It was at this point, before he left, that I finally understood, within all the frustration and obsessive thinking that didn't surface onto my rocklike expressions, he was the only person who let me tell my hidden disappointments and didn't use them against me.
Without another word, he went back to the room. Satisfied with the nodding of my head, I watched him turn around quickly. As he was getting ready in the room, I looked at the food and mumbled, astonishingly, to myself, "It's out of your kindness."
I wake up as usual to go to work. I make breakfast for two and eat it, knowing that I won't eat too much for lunch or dinner with all the things that I have to do in order to earn more money in exchange for those hints to find Tsukiko.
It is at that moment that Kakei comes into my room while I'm reading the newspaper to hand me the broom. "Switch with Sagai this morning. He has an order to fulfill at this moment."
"Ah." I answer and he leaves to go open the drugstore as well as turn on the computer and celphone to get the information for tonight's 'special customer'.
The sun lights up the tar street and I look up at the overpass with a train that passes every five minutes, in both directions. The people on the street stop and wait for the railroad crossing bars to lift themselves up.
I wipe my face with the white towel that's in my apron pocket. It's humid though it's starting to get cloudy. As the day goes on, I know there will be a multitude of people here.
Only during the early morning is it ever quiet or the streets have no people walking on them.
I like sweeping even though others who worked here thought it was tedious. You can only know the place you live in by feeling it, right? You pass your life trying to get from one place to another, but you don't know any of the details of the place where you are living. I think that's very sad because you don't know where you are if you aren't aware of your surroundings.
The Earth helps you without you knowing. It's ironic like that.
But to explain all my thoughts, even to him, are always difficult. It's easier to keep quiet because most people are weak or won't take responsibility for their feelings or actions.
When I put my towel away, I almost drop the broom when my grip loosens. I see a familiar silhouette heading towards me - wordless, wise, and with the times.
Sunglasses and a long white blouse with a black crisscross vest and ripped jeans, he approaches me and stands there before me.
But when he takes off his sunglasses, his gleeful, childlike eyes are the same. Nothing has changed in all these long days?
Was that possible?
Where did you go? What did you do? Where will you stay? Are you done with what you left for?
There is no time to think. Not even a hello.
After all, these questions didn't need to be answered in 'terms of trust', just minor clarifications over slight details. A true connection with someone doesn't require time, it's understanding.
I only understood this while waiting and pursuing my own life at the same time.
Dramatic as ever, he pushes me against my past self by saying the things I wrote to him long ago:
"Even though you didn't tell me, I had a feeling that our time was short. Maybe we had been connected from the beginning when we first met, but I always felt that you wanted to talk to me. I don't know why, but I always felt like I wanted to be next to you though I didn't even know who you were.
And then, as time passed, I got used to seeing you every morning. I said good morning to you, knowing you would go soon too because that's what people did here. Living here for a year and a half, there were always people who left and I was one of the few that stayed here for a while.
Still, I thought you had a comforting aura. You always greeted me off, though begrudgingly, and when I saw you during the nighttime, you seemed to know when I didn't look at you in the eye, I didn't want to talk to anyone. And when I did, I could smile in my own stern way and you never moved from your place. You continued to talk to me even though you knew I would just listen.
You were the one who first looked at me as you were dying on the snow, "Are you an angel?" I never forgot that because those were the first words I ever heard from you. I learned your name way later.
So, when I found out the news, I was shocked, but I should have known. The Saturday of the week before you were going to leave, you had talked to me for hours and I had a feeling you were already saying bye to me. That was your way: You could tell everyone that you were going but you couldn't tell me directly.
I thought you really didn't care for what I had to say until I looked at you and realized you were, for the first time, averting your eyes away to look at the television that same night. You couldn't look at me as honestly as you always were to me.
I wracked my brain to find something for you. I obsessed over it. Usually, I didn't care to do such a thing because I'd seen so many people say goodbye that it became easier for me to say bye, something that was always hard for me to.
I searched all over, even with the small amount of money I had. But I wanted to give you something that you could use.
You want to be a graphics designer, designing a world of your own, but one that everyone can live in and be themselves. And I am still trying to find what I am. I know how hard it is to come up with something creative, marketable, and original. So, when there was no one to talk to, I always listened to music. So that's when I went all the way to the electronics store two stations away just to get it after a long day of work (or rather several days rolled together but I still wanted to get the best one for you even though I walked all over).
Music would always help you wherever you were, if you couldn't ask someone for help towards a resolution. So, that's why I went all over the places I could to find you earphones.
You'll get bored easily with no one who could understand you to talk to.
I didn't know if they are practical or if they'll be useful. I wasn't so confident to give this to you in front of people because I didn't want another misunderstanding.
Without knowing, you'd reminded me of someone I knew and admired most in the world until now."
I look at him. He memorized my letter word-for-word: The only letter I'd ever written that explained anything about me.
He continues with his eyes watching me without breathing, "And you wouldn't let me open this in front of you when I asked you that rainy day. You didn't let me say thank you because you just turned around. And when we had the party later on with the others in our group, we pretended that we didn't need to talk about it. The next day, you left to go to work and I left without saying a word to you."
It is all there on the sidewalk, spelled out in the invisible letters of 'W-H-Y'.
I turn my back towards him, the tranquil and serene rock as I ever was. I know he is about to open his mouth when I say, "I saw them. When you were on tv, they were over your neck like you never used them. They were as white as the day I'd given them to you.
"I saw them in the newspapers. In the magazines. I could not escape from you."
Your silence is clear as the water that wants to drop from the clouds, heavy in the sky above us: Had you been waiting for me? But didn't you…
…you had only smiled your true smile towards that person? Isn't that why you couldn't see me at that time?
"I haven't become that famous," he laugh.
It makes my insides curl up.
It is my turn to hit him with the thunder that rumbled inside my chest. "The cards told me. And you would always come into my thoughts even though I didn't think of you, or at least tried not to, but your thoughts overwhelmed me. I was so sure in three years you'd have forgotten me, having gone to a foreign country, and getting such a gift from me-"
He takes one step closer and interrupts, "When I was alone and there was no one who spoke the same language as me, let alone my feelings, I listened with these earphones. When I stood in front of my canvas of a computer with its widescreen, I had these on even if there was no music. They always were warm. And I'd curse myself if there was even a slight mark on them. It was like hurting a piece of you, damaging some part of you."
Silence.
Composed once more, I turn around to meet his gaze once more. He is only two feet away from me.
"I really am proud of you. You really such a good person even though I know you your palm said you were trying to hide so many things. But I knew because you didn't force me to smile in front of you and always made me feel I could be myself around you, that you were truly pure from the bottom of your heart.
"I couldn't say what you'd gone through because other people were around us, but ever since that time, I always felt like we looked at one another and knew what the other thought. This couldn't be love but it wasn't just a regular friendship, was it?
"Still, we had said no goodbye to one another at that time so this time-
Firmly, you finish, "Because I'd be back."
"Certainly not for me," I retort.
Quick as ever, you end, "Like always, you thought that all by yourself."
Putting the earphones over my head and without shame, softly, you put your hands over mine, feeling the tips of your fingers on my hair and parts of the skin of my head. I feel a shiver through all of my body, as if rising from near-death.
"I wish I could feel peace like this," my own voice, said from years before and recorded in a memory within the earphones, touches both of us.
And even though you were the one who always cried, you had learned to keep your tears inside. Did you really grow up without me? Or did I push you so that you could light my way?
I look up to the sky that can't decide what weather it wants to be today,
silent as ever.
The clouds are certainly magnificent today, despite the humidity and the near rainfall, weirdly, in the beginning of July. There is lightning inside the deep clouds but there is no rain.
Those heavy ones are headed here very very quickly, just like in exactly three years, you come back to me.
You hit my head lightly with your soft fist. And a tear falls without prideless from my right eye.
Just as quickly, you wipe the tear away with your thumb and pull my face towards yours. Taking off the left earphone, whispering into my ear and touching cheek to cheek with both our eyes closed, you tell me:
"I'm sorry I couldn't come back faster."
Still, I couldn't say anything because I kept on wishing that this wasn't just a dream…
Owari./The End.
-
Author's note: Lately, I have been very inspired to the point of not sleeping so much. But I feel very fulfilled, though sick physically. I have a lot of things to say. They are happy and they are sad at the same time.
With this fic, I found myself wanting to write about Rikuou and Kazahaya again. I wanted to write something that could or couldn't happen. One day, I had woken up with the thought of knowing the person I was close to left to go to Switzerland. Somehow, this person keeps coming back into my thoughts even though I don't think of him. So, I wanted a mature Rikuou who was so quiet but thought obsessively and a Kazahaya who grew up but still had an innocent soul.
Thank you for reading!
Love always,
Yui
7/9/2008 9:04:36 AM – LA
7/10/08 01:04 AM – Tokyo