Note: This draws heavily upon special chapter 15 in volume 17 of the manga, in which Matoba and Natori meet when they're both in high school. The main points: Matoba and Natori have a history in which they were briefly on a first-name basis, Matoba wasn't yet head of the clan when they met, and Natori hadn't yet learnt to adopt his current smiling facade. (There is so much really important Natori characterisation there, augh.)
The section titles are lyrics from the extra verses of Mannen i den vita hatten (16 år senare).
Written for New Year Resolutions 2014.
the opposite of nostalgia
1. and you hate what you've become
It's one thing to think, as Shuuichi does, that their paths have diverged. It's another thing to avoid meeting Seiji. The exorcist community is close-knit in the way that paranoid rivals must be, and the Matoba clan's presence looms large over any gathering. Seiji is there even when he isn't: his name whispered in conversations, his exploits recounted as rumour.
And then, sometimes, he actually is there. As on this afternoon, when he manages to herd Shuuichi onto a veranda overlooking a leaf-strewn courtyard, away from the polite, guarded conversations of the adults.
Seiji leans back on his hands, tilts his face towards the sky. "I hear you're making good progress, Shuuichi-san."
The condescension is expected. It still stings. "I've heard a lot about you too," Shuuichi says, not bothering to sound sincere. "You've certainly been busy."
"Ah, well. We have so many people to protect, you know."
Seiji's smile curves wider. It's an unsubtle dig at Shuuichi, at his weakness and his helplessness, but Shuuichi's not rising to the bait. He doesn't care what Seiji thinks. He doesn't even need to be here. He could leave, right now, get up and walk back into the house and let Seiji waste his cruelty on empty air.
It takes a while to realise that his hands are curling into fists. He relaxes them. The wood of the engawa is dusty beneath his palms.
"When I'm head of the clan," Seiji says eventually, with that easy, irritating certainty of his, "I'll invite you to join us."
"Because you think I'm useful? I don't-"
But Seiji just turns to look at him, and there's something in his gaze which makes Shuuichi pause, anger forgotten. Not amusement, for once. Perhaps not even disdain. His unwavering smile looks falser than ever.
"Take your time to think about it, Shuuichi-san. It won't happen that soon."
As it turns out, it happens sooner than expected.
Sooner than Shuuichi expected, at least. He's not exactly well-connected in that world, not yet, but the news reaches him eventually: an unexpectedly brutal ayakashi, a failed attempt to exorcise it, and now a new leader of the Matoba clan. The one everyone was anticipating.
Shuuichi wonders briefly if one should send condolences or congratulations. But he's not planning to send either, and so he lets the question go, tells himself it's none of his business. The months pass as easily as forgetting. When he catches a glimpse of Seiji at one exorcist meeting, surrounded by hangers-on and eager well-wishers, the new Matoba leader is wearing the same cold, faintly amused expression as before. But his hair is longer, gathered into a loose ponytail, and he's traded his gakuran for a white kimono and a severe black robe. A strip of ink-marked cloth covers the right side of his face - that makes it easier for Shuuichi to stay out of his sight, at least.
Shuuichi's making changes of his own. He learns the social graces needed in that world, the art of polite subterfuge and oblique conversations; learns to swallow his indignation, wear his family name like a battle scar. He graduates from high school. He finds a new face for the surface world, turns charm into a means of living. It suits him better than he'd expected.
It's not long after graduation that another piece of news reaches him, or more accurately, that he overhears it. There's an undercurrent of gloating, as there always is when misfortune befalls that particular house.
"Seems like that youkai tries its luck every time the leadership changes. You'd think they'd be better prepared by now."
"Well, what can you expect? He may be a prodigy, but that just means he's still a child. They should be glad they didn't lose another leader."
Shuuichi leaves before he can hear more, his heart inexplicably racing. He doesn't care. He doesn't want to know the details. It's background noise, irrelevant, not his concern. All he needs to do is keep moving forward, keep finding his own path in this world. Their lives diverged a long time ago.
Until, at yet another gathering, Shuuichi rounds a corner and he's there.
"Matoba!"
Even as he says the name, even before he sees Matoba's default smile smooth out into blank surprise, he knows there's something wrong. The mask takes a moment too long to settle back.
"Natori-san. It's been a while."
The unfamiliarity of that name in that voice is what reminds him. There was a reply he'd half-expected, one he'd heard too many times before: Just Seiji is fine.
He won't hear it now. Matoba's gaze is cool, detached, to all intents unreadable, but Shuuichi is an expert in recognising disappointment.
It shouldn't matter. It does. He swallows against the strange tightness in his chest, forces a smile of his own. They make inconsequential small talk, their speech patterned to the formality required in the adult world, and if Matoba notices how Shuuichi's gaze flickers to the eyepatch - how can he not? - then he doesn't comment.
If things had been different, perhaps Matoba might have talked about it, made some flippant remark about having to get used to drawing a bow with just one eye open. Perhaps he might have laughed at Shuuichi's uneasy curiosity, leaned in too close, offered to show him the scar in the knowledge that he would refuse.
It's a silly thing to think, Shuuichi knows.
It doesn't take long before he moves to cut the conversation short. He gives what they both know is a convenient excuse, turns to leave before Matoba can stop him.
"Natori-san," Matoba says. Shuuichi doesn't turn around. "I once said I would ask you..."
"And I told you then. I won't join you, Matoba."
A pause. Then, in that practised, perfectly even voice: "A pity. Well, then - until we meet again."
Later that evening, after Shuuichi's drunk enough for that to be an excuse, he tries the name out in his head. Seiji. Shorn of the weight of that family name, it sounds ludicrously light, childish, out of place in the world in which Matoba now belongs.
It's a name Shuuichi managed to say, once. He doesn't think he can do so again.
Months become years. Shuuichi becomes Natori Shuuichi, grows into that name and all it entails: an idol's lifestyle, an exorcist clan rebuilt. He's vaguely aware that, on some bloodstained parallel path, Matoba Seiji is fulfilling his own role. But that's something he can afford to ignore, as is Matoba himself. Their encounters are brief, in the hallways of one old mansion or another, their conversations meaningless with pleasantries. Matoba barely tries to goad him, now. On the rare occasion that he bothers, it's a half-hearted attempt.
"What a surprise to see you here, Natori-san. I thought your other job was proving more fruitful."
"I have to make an effort," Shuiichi says, with a bright and insincere smile.
He sees it mirrored on Matoba's face, in a flash of recognition that makes Shuiichi think, suddenly: I've changed.
And Matoba hasn't. Or rather, for as long as Shuuichi has known him, Matoba has always had this composure, this fixed smile. When had Shuuichi learnt that that was a better defence than a scowl? Not from Matoba, he'd like to think. But he can't be sure. It bothers him whenever he allows himself to think about it; this uncertain debt he owes to someone he'd rather forget, a debt that began long before that arrow whistled past him, all those years ago.
"Natori-san?"
He blinks. Matoba's still there before him, looking as amused as ever. "Are you feeling all right? You shouldn't push yourself too hard. It can't be easy, after all, having no one to fall back upon."
He's not up to this, not today. "Perhaps," he says, with the requisite self-deprecating laugh. "In which case, Matoba-san, please allow me to take my leave."
There's something familiar in Matoba's gaze, something Shuuichi doesn't want to recognise. He doesn't wait for an answer.
That night he will dream of a voice from a long time ago, of conversations that never happened and a scar he's never seen and a lone figure on the far side of a river, too distant to reach; and then he will wake up, wait for his racing heart to slow, and forget.
Once, after he's gained sufficient distance to do so, he wonders if there was something kind about Matoba's choice of words back then. Perhaps, in insisting upon Shuuichi-san, Matoba had allowed him to be someone who wasn't a Natori, someone who didn't carry the weight of that doomed family's crushed hopes.
It seems at odds with what he knows of Matoba, of course. An unnecessary kindness. Besides, it would require an empathy which Matoba has no reason to possess. Surely, unlike him, Matoba has always embraced what it means to bear a name.
2. and disdain what you once were
He has not been Seiji for a long time. That is to say, there is no one to whom he is simply 'Seiji' - and in the absence of someone to call him by it, what purpose would that name serve?
Thus he is Matoba Seiji to the distant or unfamiliar, boss or chief or leader to those in the clan; simply Matoba otherwise, with one honorific or another. A family name, a designation, a history to be worn as identity. This is what it means to lead a house. This is the culmination of the long years before, when 'Seiji' was just a placeholder, a temporary skin to be shed once he could.
So yes, perhaps there was someone for whom it was different, once; someone who knew him by that name, someone he still thinks of by a first name. But he has no illusions about whether this regard is mutual. And then, why should it matter? Matoba Seiji is not a sentimental man.