Sequel to: but we do not know love

Stories in order:

so we forget what is love

and we pretend this is love

but we do not know love

or we perish with love

FINAL INSTALLMENT

000

Jiroh understands how this will end. But that does not mean he has to be brave.

000

Keigo sits him near a café. His face is withdrawn after Wakashi's funeral. He orders a coffee, black, no sugar. Jiroh smiles and says he will have cake.

Keigo is silent. He is silent and Jiroh is silent and they have no words and everyone else has too many words. So Jiroh will pluck out the words out of everyone and open his mouth.

He speaks. "How is Ryoma?"

Keigo stirs. His fingers are pretty, Jiroh thinks, and long and white and everything else he can think of. Keigo is everything and Jiroh is everything next to him but nothing without him. He pokes his cake that arrived. It is white and full of cream and it will make him happy when Keigo will not.

"He's fine," Keigo says, and adds, "Living."

"That's good." Jiroh smiles. Smiling is good and normal, if there is something that is normal and fine in this world, it would be him smiling and maintaining a presence of happiness. "Living is good."

Keigo sighs. "I didn't mean that in that context," he says. He sounds tired and Jiroh is sick of everyone talking as if they were tired all the time. "I meant that—well. He's okay. He's good. Fuck." Keigo rubs his eyes with his palms rubs and rubs. When Jiroh sees his eyes again they are red from all the rubbing. "I don't know how to say this, Jiroh," he says.

Jiroh shrugs. He pokes at his cake again; poke, poke, poke. The cream would not fall off. "Try," he says, cheerful, in good cheer, with cheer. Or perhaps he is imagining it and he is talking like Keigo in all his tiredness and morbid gloom.

"Let's not talk about Ryoma."

"Okay," he agrees. "But not talking about Ryoma and then talking about us is going to be hard."

Keigo becomes silent and stirs his coffee and Jiroh is still poking at his cake.

"We can talk about us," Keigo articulates slowly, "Without him. I mean, what I am about to say is—"

"Let me eat the cake first," Jiroh says. Loudly. He resumes a smile and pokes at the cake again. "They have good cake here." He divides the cream and the bread and cuts the soft sponge into little pieces and dabs the white cream in each of the pieces. There are small raspberries and strawberries hidden amongst the layers and Jiroh adds them onto the sponge as well. He makes a small pile of little pieces of cakes until everything is a small pile and a glob and looks white and pink and unappetizing as a whole.

Keigo watches the cake. "Okay," he says. "I'll wait."

000

They talk. Or, they will talk. Or, Keigo will talk and Jiroh will listen. As in, Keigo will talk and Jiroh will pretend to listen but he will not really listen because he knows what Keigo will be talking about so he won't need to listen. Or, he will listen and it will hurt but Jiroh will smile throughout it all because he's not a complete idiot and he had expected this. And then the following conversation will end somewhere along the lines of:

"Take care, Keigo."

"You too, Jiroh. Look—I'll pay the bill, don't bother yourself."

And that will be Keigo's last word and Jiroh will allow Keigo to pay for the ruined cake and the coffee that he did not drink and those parting words will rewind through Jiroh again and again and Jiroh will replay them as he heads back to his own bed. He will not look at Keigo again save for photos and old memories and old letters.

But this did not happen yet. Jiroh is still cutting his cake.

000

Keigo had once said, I love you.

He had said those words so many times. But now that he reflects back on it, Keigo had said I, and love, and you. He had not said a name. He had said words that could be replaced with any name. He had said words that were universal and grandiose in its meaning. Back then he was happy with those words that formed a meaning and emotion. He was happy that he was hearing them and that he was the recipient.

Now, he mulls over them and realizes there were never any names.

He comes back to those words again.

And thinks, but Keigo had only said those words to me.

He thinks, he had never said them to Ryoma.

And then again, Oh.

How very stupid I am, he thinks.

Ryoma had said once, words mean nothing, not really. Not in the endgame.

Keigo had agreed and Jiroh had laughed, you're so pessimistic, the both of you!

And Keigo had ruffled his hair and smiled and Ryoma had looked away.

But before that they were not looking at him but at each other.

Words are nothing, Ryoma had said.

I never disagreed, Keigo replied.

Jiroh licks a dab of his cake. He feels weary and drained and lost. But he does not know how to drop his smile.

000

Keigo will say: I'm sorry, Jiroh. This will not work out.

Or: Jiroh, I wish we could have worked.

Or: Jiroh.

And pause.

He will mean: Jiroh, I love Ryoma like I could not love you.

Ryoma had once said: words are useless because they mean nothing. They are sounds.

Jiroh is beginning to read between the lines.

000

"How is the cake?" This is the present and this is Keigo in front of him (for the last time). Jiroh takes in his brown hair and grey eyes and small mouth with the tired smile. He takes in the white face and the grey eyes and the mouth. He takes in the hair, the hands, the fragments but never the whole.

"Good." His smile is intact because his mouth hurts and his face is numb. He pokes at his cake again and licks a smear of cream. "Sweet, good," he chirps, "Do you want some?"

Keigo takes a clean fork and chooses one of the ruined pieces and puts a piece in his mouth. Jiroh wishes he would have divided them neater, he would have arranged them nicely if he knew that Keigo would have eaten them. Keigo never eats cake. He does not like sweet things and suddenly he is eating them. He is eating things that he does not normally eat and he chose this time to eat it when Jiroh had ruined the cake. The cake is smeared and divided and full of cream and Keigo chose the ugliest piece. It makes him furious.

The smile drops.

"You don't like cake," he says. "You never eat cake!" He shouts.

Keigo looks at him, surprised. Around, people glance at them and their voices drop.

But still, everyone is talking and they all have too many words and between them they have none. Or, none that matters to him.

He puts his face into his hands and presses his palms hard into his eyes, mouth, nose. They are fragments; he is a fragment; he is not a whole.

000

He remembers: Ryoma's eyes.

When he first looked at them he thinks, I will be able to love him.

This is the beginning, he recollects. This will be the first week he moved in, and he will see Ryoma for the first time since high school and he will think at how Ryoma looks slouched in the hallway. He had looked lost and like a child and Jiroh looked into those eyes and thought: this could work out. We might all be happy together.

Then Ryoma's face contorted into an ugly sneer and Jiroh thought, no, it will never.

But his first words: "We'll have fun together, won't we, Ryoma-chan?"

Ryoma hates the nickname. Jiroh does not call him that merely to spite him. Jiroh does not hate Ryoma. He has never hated Ryoma. He had merely thought, Ryoma is such a child and has never grown up. And so he pities him, and the name is a result of that pity.

He thinks now, well, pity is a far worse vice than hatred.

He pities Wakashi. He pities Keigo. But he does not pity Ryoma, not anymore.

000

"Jiroh." That is Keigo's voice, but with darkness he cannot see. "Jiroh. Get your hands away from you face and talk to me. Jiroh."

Keigo does not like crying and he does not like scenes. He is not doing either, and he will never do either. But he has the right to not see the man sitting across from him and he has the right not to obey. He is tired of obeying when they do not benefit him.

"Jiroh." There is a sigh, and the voice is further away. Keigo had leaned back into his seat again. "Please, Jiroh, don't do this."

Why is he here? Jiroh wonders. They know the words that they will each enact and they know the forthcoming conclusions. Jiroh will cry in his room and Keigo will not cry but go back to Ryoma. Ryoma will be desolate but he will live. Keigo will live. Jiroh too, in the end, will live.

They will all live and forget this.

He presses down on his hand, hard, before he lets go. He sighs. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm fine. It's just…the cake. You never eat cake."

Keigo looks at him, distraught. "No," he says slowly, "I suppose I don't."

And so we are also speaking in signs and signals, Jiroh thinks. It makes up for a tiring conversation.

"I want another," he says.

Keigo looks at him. He doesn't speak but when he does it is tired and resigned. "I'm sorry," he says. "I only have cash with me today. I don't think it'll buy another."

"I'll buy this round," Jiroh counters, and calls the waiter. He smiles again. "I can't believe Keigo doesn't have any money!" He is back, he is in good cheer, he is a complete fake.

Keigo's lips twitch and his eyes are miserable. "There's a first for everything," he says, "I was in a rush."

000

This is how it ends: he has another cake, and another, and Keigo pays for three cakes and a coffee because he has his card with him after all, and Jiroh smiles until his lips hurt and in the end they do not say anything and this is how Jiroh knows that everything is over.

People talk in voices and there are words floating around but Keigo only turns away.

Words do not mean anything, Ryoma said.

In the end, that is all he understands.

Fin.