ALL IS NOT LOST
Manga : Sekaiichi Hatsukoi
Characters : Kisa Shouta, Yukina Kou and Ijuuin Kyou
Rating : T
DISCLAIMER : All characters belong to Nakamura Shungiku.
Summary : Life takes a hideous downswing for 32 year old Kisa Shouta when his worst suspicion is answered – that of Yukina's messing around with him. The one comforting him at this time is the person to whom his existence scarcely mattered before : Ijuuin Kyou.
A/N : I feel the strong need to say this – Don't like, don't read!
"Don't you think Yukina-kun isn't himself these days?"
"Yeah, I so do. He looks so withdrawn and his smiles seem forced, don't you think?"
"He's been like that for a few days now. When I asked him about his recommendations he started to zone out in the middle of speaking them!"
"I think he got his heart broken by some mean girl. Any girl who dumps him has got to be nuts and…"
Yukina was conscious of these loud whispers coming from his ever loyal customers through some peripheral part of his brain. If his thoughts were showing so clearly on his face then he shuddered to think how he looked. Although he was too busy looking after his own wounds to spare any energy or inclination to soothe the girls' worries. He'd been stricken and dismayed, more at what he had been about to do than what he had done. The past eight days had been rife with overdoses of guilt and shock. Things were very rapidly spinning out of his control.
It began with the small tiff he had with Kisa. The post-production work and making of his anime had gotten started in full swing. As a result he started coming home really late at first, only to stumble back home in the wee hours of dawn within some days. With the normal course of their lifestyles the amount of time they got with each other was zilch. The only way Yukina saw to their situation was to make some efforts himself so that their liaison didn't suffer. Kisa had trusted him to hand over a spare house key. His job while the number of hours the older man put into his work steadily lengthened was to wait, wait and wait some more at home. Once the older man got home, they would rally the few words that passed for conversation, after which Yukina would tuck him into bed and lie next to him. This was the natural, unchanging order of things till he lost his head and good sense that one day. As usual, Kisa came home by two am, tottering back with the only intention of hitting the hay. By that time Yukina had been feeling his patience was gradually dissolving ounce by ounce. So he had done the stupid thing : coax Kisa into sleeping with him, albeit gently. In response, the older man had bristled, pushed Yukina away from himself and come down hard on him. He told him off saying he slogged his ass off in the workplace with the only hope of sleep. And by sleep his definition was of the one where people closed their eyes and assumed a state of deep unconsciousness for a few, pithy hours, not the one with Yukina anywhere on or in him. Slightly put out himself, Yukina had vocalized his thoughts. He had heatedly asked the older man why they needed an editor for an anime, persisting that an author was more than enough for the input and consultations for the dialogue and screenplay. To that Kisa had adamantly insisted that no, they had a good need for an editor as well. The spat then intensified and winged in a totally different dimension. In the face of Kisa's wrath due to lack of sleep, Yukina lost and was thrown out of the bedroom on his ear, with the door shut in his face. He had spent that night and some other unlucky nights on the small, cramped sofa. With no end to Kisa's flaky schedule in sight, Yukina had to swallow the bitter pill of realization that in the act of waiting on Kisa, sometimes even till mid-morning, he couldn't afford to keep missing his college lectures or part-time (which had become part-time in name only, his work hours and pay had increased to that of a full time employee) anymore. So he had, rather unwillingly, gone back to his house and attended his regular lectures with a promise from Kisa that he would carve out some time for them whenever he could. Which had been two times in all up until then. Still, he knew he couldn't push him. The sole option lying before him was to dig in deeper for some more patience from his endless reserves of it.
Roughly a week back, he had been ecstatic at the prospect of meeting the older man after the long gap. But he didn't have much luck to bank on. Right on the day of his anticipated meeting, he had come to know of an important test (which he hadn't been aware of) falling on the next day, along with an assignment that had to be submitted the same day. Thus, with a heavy heart, he had sent Kisa a mail informing him that he couldn't meet him. He had been about to tell the manager that he was taking a day off but because two more part-timers had taken a leave that day, he'd been allowed only a half day off.
Fortunately, there weren't many customers in the store that day, so he had thought his half day would pass quickly. He'd been arranging books on the shelves when an unfamiliar voice called him by his given name – Kou. Surprised, he had turned around to look at the person who addressed him this familiarly. At first glance, he couldn't place him but thought the person definitely resembled someone he knew. The man before him was lanky, had ebony colored hair, was deathly pale and rail thin. But it was his distinct, burnished brown color eyes that extinguished most of his memory's cobwebs. Finding his quizzical gaze on him amusing, he smiled, which cause two deep, well-defined dimples to appear in the hollows of his cheeks. That cleared the last of his doubts. It was Sora, his elementary and middle school best friend.
If his memory served correctly, Sora had been a sickly boy even in his childhood. His weak lungs, liver and heart – a gift from the complications during his birth – had hampered his natural growth process, making him the shortest kid in class. The single thing that kept him from becoming the prime target of bullies was the fact that he always hung around Yukina, who was more than capable of standing up for himself and others if necessary. He had been a late bloomer and as a consequence attained his growth spurt much behind the other guys in his grade. But the final outcome was what counted. By the time he was seventeen he had filled out nicely in all the places that mattered and gained those palpable inches in height. Regrettably, by eighteen, when other guys were in the prime of their youth, his health had failed miserably causing him to so much as drop out in the final semester of highschool. The day he came to see Yukina in the store was the first the latter had seen of him since.
Yukina could reminiscence those days, when the girls in his class had compared both of them to debate over who was better in the looks department, with a lot of fondness. An unfathomable number of young, dewy-eyed girls had set their eyes on him, mainly because of his fragile and poetic good looks. But the person in the centre of all attention, Sora, hadn't seemed to give a damn to all the maiden hearts he was undoubtedly stirring. Yukina had been sure about the matter. The other guy was very serious about someone and so had tried to goad him into spilling it. But each time he tried, Sora had gotten a brooding look on his face and had been tight-lipped about that one thing he regarded as his personal secret, the name of the person he loved, to such an extent that Yukina had never gotten wind of the knowledge.
Lugging himself back to the present, Yukina was once more startled by the changes he was seeing in him. If he thought about it, he had always been pale but the current whiteness had to be a result of only two things: either the guy was scared to death of something (which he highly doubted) or the more plausible reason, the pallidity was a result of a recent longtime illness. Added to that, he looked really gaunt, with his bones sticking out painfully through his clothes and appeared somewhat anorexic.
Taking in the newer changes that had come about in him, Yukina returned his smile (which had grown shyer with his non-stop scrutiny) with a warm one of his own. As they started a conversation, Yukina realized with some appreciation that the old sense of camaraderie was very much there between them. Sora was still the walking and talking quintessence of the saying 'never judge a book by its cover,' which was true, at least in his case. At first glance he looked like a delicate, gloomy dunce but on opening up had a truly amazing sense of humor and possessed a cutting tongue. Even as a boy he had been quick to smile and even quicker to bite. In a few minutes, both fell into their pleasant old rhythm of harmless bickering. He made Yukina smile and laugh with some of his quirky tales, courtesy of his astute observation skills. He remembered once again why he'd picked him as his best friend from among the many kids in his grade. In the past he could tell him some of the things which he wouldn't have dared to let slip before others, being in his company was easy, the kind of easy that came from a long acquaintance, like a soothing balm. For a few moments he could put his qualms of not being able to see Kisa to rest.
By way of conversation, Yukina asked him what he was up to these days. His offhand question had the effect of making the other man's face a study in melancholy. He gave Yukina a rueful smile, followed by a humorless, self-depreciating laugh. With a wry twist to his mouth that made Yukina strangely uneasy, he related the time starting from his eighteenth birthday from where he'd gone on to be shuffled to and fro through countless hospitals. He had been making a living by writing and illustrating children's books. Listening to him, Yukina felt no words would provide adequate solace to his friend, and so kept silent while feeling a profound sense of sympathy for him. Passing on some more details of life in hospitals, Sora completed his part by throwing in the final clincher. He told Yukina that time had stopped for him from that last time he had seen him. In highschool Yukina had frequently asked him who the one person he loved was. At present, he felt no fear to hide it. Sora had loved Yukina from the first time he had seen him, from the time they were in kindergarten. He had never revealed it to him for fear that Yukina would start hating him but at present he didn't have those fears any longer. Abruptly taking Yukina's hand in his own, the other man told him he wanted to ask him a last favor, the choice of which he would leave entirely up to him. He wanted to have sex with Yukina. Sora persisted that at least, he should do this for the sake of their childhood friendship.
His admission made something shrivel up inside Yukina, suddenly making him feel sick. His mouth felt dry and his throat parched, as if someone had poured sand down it. He came to the immediate conclusion that this wasn't the friend he knew. As he had said in his own words, because of his infirmities time had ceased to move for him, making him exist in a past that was no longer relevant. Those teen-aged emotions had been given so much time to ferment that they had now mushroomed into an intensely fierce emotion. That emotion would probably never become requited.
He pictured Kisa, who unaware of the dilemma Yukina was in, was perhaps working hard at his endless job. Thinking of Kisa gave his flagging resolve the strength to do what he felt was right. Pulling his hand from Sora's grasp, Yukina gave him a vehement no and for his part, cried out against it. Fervent in his refusal, Yukina told him that there was no way he could do it. He had a partner whom he loved and whom he couldn't betray. Coming up with the same mirthless laugh he'd shown him before, Sora blindsided him with his next words. He told him his doctors had detected a malignant tumor in his brain and his life expectancy was a bare few weeks. This was probably the last time he would be seeing him because he would soon be joining his ancestors wherever God deemed suitable for him, either heaven or hell. As it was, he would promise to never meet him again after the deed was done. Packing his words with much more force, he told him almost conversationally that it was the least he could do for him. As to any sense of unfaithfulness he feared he would subject his partner to, he could seal his lips and no one would be the wiser.
It was like Yukina had been sucker punched. The position he was in was bleak and dismal. He was of two, distinct minds. In his state of indecision as to what was right and what wasn't, a small part of his brain was telling him to go ahead and do it. The countless days when he had gone without and stayed celibate came to his mind. That immoral part of his brain was pushing him, telling him he could take this one clandestine act with him to his grave. There was no danger of Kisa coming to know of it if he wasn't the one breaking it out to him, which he wouldn't. It was almost as if he was signing a pact with the devil. This man who stood before him, whom he had considered a friend for the better part of his life seemed far-away and alien. Yukina would never have done the thing he was telling him to out of his own will. Not saying anything, Yukina stared at him despondently, willing him with his eyes to take back the words he had spoken. But of course, he did no such thing. As he vacillated between the odds he'd been presented with, he suddenly blurted a yes. Yukina was ashamed at himself for the action he was about to take. As if on autopilot, he mechanically removed his staff apron and told one of the other part-timers that he was leaving. Looking him over, the now hateful Sora gave him a small smile of approval. While he made his way to the exit, Sora matched his steps and twined his fingers with Yukina's. At his remorseless action, Yukina felt the urge to wrench his hand out of his disgusting hold and slap him. But again, he didn't do any of those things.
As they began to walk the cemented footpath, Yukina shook his hand out of Sora's hold and remained aloof. Once they hailed a taxi, Yukina got inside and remained firmly rooted to his side of the seat, abhorring even the slightest of physical contact. He let Sora direct the driver to their destination and drifted off with his thoughts. His mind conjured up an image of Kisa laughing at something he had found funny at sometime and the mental image and his own act of unfaithfulness wrung his heart to a zillion smithereens. Again, he thought he didn't deserve a man like Kisa. The older man tried to encase himself in an impenetrable armor so that his soft, kind heart didn't get hurt. Hiding behind the hesitant façade was a very competent, passionate, compassionate and vulnerable man.
In the end, he was all talk. He constantly kept telling Kisa that the shoujo manga world was real. That the sentiments, the pure emotions, the trust, the faith in true love wasn't the figment of someone's overactive imagination but true. Some men testified to being one-woman men. That would make him Kisa's exclusive and only man since he had eyes for no one but him. All he thought, felt and idealized would crumble like dominoes with this one act of infidelity. And he would never be able to forgive himself. The few times the older man had spoken about his past, he had been able to catch on to the kind of men he had dated. All of them were either behind his body or attracted to his young, boyish face. Even if they found odd ways to profess their love to him, Kisa didn't feel a thing for them. All they had been and would be was fuck partners for him. Kisa had admitted to loving him and started being open about his feelings after a long time. Yukina knew that expressing his feelings wasn't easy for the older man. Finally, when they had an established relationship, he didn't want to become a reason for its end. Nor did he want to become one among the many men in his past. He made it a point to listen to his heart almost always. That same heart had persistently been telling him that he would be mad to go through with it.
Within twenty minutes, which slipped away almost cruelly, they arrived at an area comprising of love hotels.
Not feeling the least bit forthcoming or cooperative, Yukina snubbed him by making him pay the taxi fare. Getting out from his side of the taxi, he started walking ahead without waiting for Sora. The other man, in his eagerness, caught up to him quickly and stood behind him as he booked a room for both of them. He could feel him veritably thrumming with excitement. Both got a room on the first floor and seemed to reach there in almost no time. Yukina was gingerly putting one foot in front of the other, while the other man more or less leapt into the room, closing the door behind him with an impatient slam.
Yukina felt sick to his stomach just thinking of the prospect of screwing the other man. Under five minutes, Sora had discarded all his clothes and waited expectantly. When Yukina didn't move a muscle, he made his way to the fully clothed Yukina, wound his hands around his neck and suggestively ground his fully erect cock into his pelvic cavity. Yukina feared he would puke. Making himself at home while holding Yukina, Sora muttered softly that he would be giving him one of the biggest gifts he had; That of his virginity. Repulsed beyond words, Yukina had asked him incredulously if he'd never had sex before. He got a blunt yes in answer. Sora had replied that he had had handjobs and blowjobs before, but he had never put his cock into anyone, nor lent his asshole to anyone. He had thought that if at all he were to do it with someone, he wanted that someone to be only Yukina.
He should have felt aroused at having such unsubtle provocations directed at him. But Yukina couldn't summon a single flicker of desire for the man rubbing himself against his body. In fact all he could feel was the dull sensation where Sora's ribs were pressing into him and the general sense of loathing he was beginning to associate with his former friend whenever he laid his eyes on him. Seeing him naked didn't arouse the least bit of interest in him. To the contrary, he got angry at Sora for trying to sully their friendship. He told him so in no uncertain terms. If he would have been crazy enough to go along with it, all the good memories of his friend would have been tainted with that one mistake, that one night that should never have occurred. Above all he wouldn't have been able to face himself, much less Kisa.
So instead of committing the horrendous blunder, he unwound Sora's hands from around his neck and helped him pull on his clothes. Both spoke only the little minimum that was required and absolutely avoided any sort of eye-contact. In the end he had sent Sora off in a cab, with the latter's promise still standing between them; They would never see each other again.
Looking back at the events that had occurred eight days ago, Yukina cringed at the thought of the disaster he had been about to wreak. He began to listlessly check his inbox for some message from Kisa but there were none, it was somehow strangely ironic. He was browsing through some of the photos by which he'd captured different expressions on Kisa's face when one of the permanent guys caught his attention by calling him by name. It was the same man who objected the most to having Yukina in the store, even after nearly three and a half years. He gave Yukina a sulphurious look and whispered in acidic voice meant only for his ears, "Stop standing there like a statue already. We haven't hired you as a mere accessory." This was what he got after putting in so much of his time and energy into his shop. The man's pure hatred for him never failed to amuse him. He smirked and whispered just as softly, "I know that. But thanks for reminding me anyway." His rejoinder earned him a short censorious look, after which the man sniffed and took off with a stuck-up air.
A bunch of customers came into the store and Yukina got busy with smiling, flirting and telling them his recommendations for the week as normally as he could. The gaggle of customers who had been eyeing him strangely let out a collective sigh of relief and all was back to the usual. He had been stringing along a particularly flush customer when he felt someone tentatively poke his shoulder. He turned to face the person bucking for his attention, half expecting to find another twittery girl when it turned out to be the manager. As a rule, the man had a peaceful, self-contented look about him but just then his face was pinched with worry. Yukina excused himself from the giggly, talkative girls surrounding him and followed the manager to the back of the store. This was the first time he had seen the man actually wring his hands in tension.
He was having cold feet just by observing him. "What's wrong, manager? Is there some problem?" The man shook his head hopelessly at Yukina's question and answered in a strangled voice, "Yes, Yukina-kun, there's a really tricky problem. You know that in most stores like ours, we pre-order the books in advance of its release date. I've gotten in touch with a few other stores in this area and they too have the same problem…"
Antsy with the prolonged suspense, Yukina urged the man to spill the beans. "But what is the problem? I won't know if you don't explain it clearly."
Wired tightly, the man at last put the cards on the table. "I hate to break this out to you but the limited edition copies of Morimoto Kana's, Mutou Yukina's and some three other authors' stock of yet-to-be-released books have been…stolen." The manager was saying these words in such a soft voice that Yukina was having difficulty following him. He said the word 'stolen' as if it was the blasphemy of Buddha. But more than that, Yukina was shaken to hear that his favorite author, Morimoto Kana, whose work was edited by his lover, Kisa was stolen. Not knowing what to say for the first time, he gaped at the manager for him to put in something helpful. The poor man was already running scared, he wiped his forehead where beads of sweat had begun to pop up and continued.
"Don't worry, Yukina-kun, it s not like our store has been targeted or something. Like I said, a few more shops in this area have the same issue before them. As to the disappearance or what I personally believe as theft of the new volumes, there's not much much we retailers can do in the matter. As soon as I found out about this, I told the respective publishers about the issue and I've been informed that more copies will come shortly, if not on the day of the release." There he paused for effect or maybe to catch his breath since he'd said it all in a rush.
He added in the end, "The books can fortunately be replaced, but I don't want such a situation to arise again. And for that to happen, we as employees have to become more alert and vigilant. I've gone through the tapes of the last three weeks recorded by our security cameras and with some help from the police, I've been able to narrow down the list of likely suspects to five people who've been regulars of our shop. Since you're mostly at the cash counter, I want to take a look at a guy whom I find especially suspicious."
Before Yukina could reply, the manager inserted a disk into his laptop and a recording started to play on the screen. The date and time coincided with the day the bastard, Sora had made a visit in his store. Yukina wondered if he was a thief now? Highly unlikely. He saw himself on the LCD screen of the laptop, working at arranging some books. After some twenty minutes, Sora had arrived at the scene and they were chatting on the screen. Within the next ten minutes, the suspicious character the manager had been going on about appeared on the screen, along with the hissing accompaniment of, "That's him, that's him!," from the manager at his side. The camera then zoomed in on him as he swiftly made his way into the shop with a sanitary mask on his face. The diminutive man struck Yukina as someone spookily familiar. Without waiting for the manager's consent, he paused the CD and replayed it back to the time the guy was sticking the mask on his face. In that split second, he recognized his face. It was Kisa! After putting the mask on, he made his way behind a towering bookshelf and was peeping – peeping! – from the crack in the middle of the books. Judging from the location the bookshelf was in, Yukina knew for a fact that the crack led straight to the cash counter at the front. On closer inspection the hair, the bag, the sweatshirt, the body language, the slightly self-conscious air he exuded were all the same. Had he seen him with Sora?
Snapping out of his thoughts, he realized that the manager was repeatedly calling his name. He said, "The camera doesn't exactly show how he stole it but I'm positive it was that midget. I just need some clue…" As the man continued to say something, Yukina tuned him out and thought with some disbelief that it was Kisa! Something was coiling painfully at the pit of his stomach. But he would have to leave the brainwork for some other time. The task at hand was to convince his manager that the tiny man on the screen was no thief. And he did just that. "Manager, I think you're mistaken. I know that man. He's no thief but one of the editors from Marukawa. He must have come to browse some books." At the revelation, the manager looked deflated and let Yukina go with his word that he would come to oversee some more tapes.
Yukina found a private corner for himself and let out the breath he had been holding in the form of a giant sigh. If he knew Kisa as well as he did, which was really well, he knew that he would feel wary of Yukina now. And if Kisa had succumbed to his bad stalker tendencies, then God alone knew what he must have made out of what he'd seen. Maybe he had gotten off the wrong side of the bed or it was because of that awful dream he had had - of each and every link he had with the older man snapping off before he woke up. He didn't know what but he had a very bad feeling that something extremely unpleasant was about to happen. Of all things, he couldn't let a lie or a half-truth come between them at this juncture in their relationship. Even though he had kept it from the older man for the past eight days, he would tell Kisa everything that had transpired on that god-awful night as soon as he could.
-THE END-
Hope you liked it :)
4 more chapters to go…
