Insanity is Colored White
Day Three
The storm had become a light drizzle with thin bars of sunshine edging away from the dismal clouds. The common room's wide-arched windows had their heavy curtains drawn aside and the overhead lights were turned off in wake of the relatively sunny afternoon. Most patients were edgy with the change in weather, their tempers and tolerance much shorter than when the thunder and lightning had shattered the sky during the past two days. They drifted about neither here nor there in search of something constructive to occupy their time. At least, they tried to find something that even skimmed the definition of constructive, as most activities here were time-occupying but pointless.
He gave in to Hitomi's suggestion that he stay away from his room during the waking hours, but the change in location did not affect his mood or reading comprehension. It was an easy task to block out distracting noises and concentrate solely on Murakami's words, which Naoto had grown some fondness of as he flipped through the pages of another novel. It baffled him as to why a hospital for the mentally ill contained such morally depressing books, filled to the margins with borderline suicidal thoughts and a variety of sins.
He supposed that not even this institution could avoid the influx of interest the young people of today had in these genres. He couldn't relate with many of the situations described in the books, at least not outright, but he did suppose that he shared that emptiness found in an unfulfilling life. If these novels were meant to instill inspiration, Naoto hadn't found it yet. He tried to convince himself that he would never find it no matter how hard he scoured the sentences, and flipped the pages for the pure enjoyment of reading about someone else's miserable life.
There was a pause in the chapter; his fingers hovered to turn the page and fell down a moment later. A few single notes broke the murmuring din in the common room, sweet but unconnected and meaningless. Naoto's head swiveled to the space behind the couch he was currently curled upon and found someone at the old battered piano he had thought was a broken decoration. It was a patient- a man maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. The wood, though dulled by disuse, had been swept of the dust layered on it.
A musical trill expanded into the air as the man's fingers danced across the ivory keys, slow at first, and increasingly faster as his muscles became adjusted to the motions once more. He stayed away from the haunting melodies that sounded so beautiful on the piano, and most of the classics he must have in his repertoire. It was understandable, as no one enjoyed being reminded of their misery, but Naoto had a pained feeling that seized his chest anyways. He had never been too musically inclined. As a child he did not have the breath for wind instruments, and in later years his attention had turned towards different areas.
Music belonged to his little brother, after all. Whenever Naoto had asked his parents to listen, they were impressed and praised their youngest son, and teased him about how he had never succeeded in any instrument himself. It made him fluster in embarrassment, but that had been a good sort of embarrassment he didn't mind. For five minutes he could recline against the couch or a chair and close his eyes and not have to worry about setting expectations. And when he opened his eyes that overjoyed smile entered his vision, happy for the warm words their parents had said or the small pat on the shoulder or head.
Somehow, he could live without the sports that had made the blood in his veins alive. He could live with the knowledge that his friends weren't quite "friends" after all and that he had no future ahead of him. What he didn't think he could live without were the simple memories behind the melodic notes in the room around him. Five, ten years along the road he would still be here and if they ever released him there was absolutely no chance that his brother would want to see him. No one in their right mind would agree to his request, however simple "I want to see you one more time" sounded.
Not that he had another choice in the matter, as everything in his life seemed to have shaped up to be. Naoto did not relish in the thought of dying so young, ignorant and unaccomplished as he was today reclining against the worn couch in the common room. Murakami's book had fallen open to a random page in the angle formed by his curled legs and stomach. There existed no other sounds besides his light breaths whistling in his lungs and the music floating across the room on air conditioned breezes. It was a world he had not realized he'd missed until the first notes hit his ears.
The gentle melodies relaxed his tense muscles so much that he drifted asleep without remembering any sort of transition in between. When he next opened his eyes the watery light filtered through the arched windows had turned into a fiery golden ocean and the occupants had changed. The music was gone but the notes lingered in his head, embedded somewhere in his subconscious. As his blinked away the blurred reality of sleep, the music faded and he was left with the present. His legs had fallen and someone kindly set aside the book that had been displaced from his person.
His eyes searched the room until they landed on the clock above the far doorway. No wonder why he had woken up, he thought wryly. Therapy sessions were always scheduled at the same times if the staff could help it. They wanted routine and order; it was easy to control someone conditioned to the hands on the clock rather than to give them reason to every action and change. Today would normally have been group therapy, but he remembered the switch the doctors had done last time and stretched out with a deep sigh. It was time to find Sato and her group of patients.
The descended the stairs and emerged into the second floor offices and rooms, name plates only on the doctors' examination rooms. The therapy sessions often switched around due to some malfunction or another, so those were unlabeled on the right side of the hall. He peered through the narrow windows on the doors feeling infinitely silly, straightening as soon as he caught a glimpse of someone further down. He was five minutes late by now; that internal clock must not have been fully developed yet. The uncomfortable urgency made his feet quick and his mind rushed. Being late was a great first impression.
When he did arrive around the corner, second door on the right, the embarrassment rushed to his face and fled just as quickly. A few curious heads turned at the sound of the door, but no one berated him for his tardiness. Patients were paired up with the occasional group of three, an older woman walking between groups and leaning over shoulders as she went. Someone pointed out his awkward presence by the door and she waved him over with an open face and friendly arms. She was decidedly very different from her reserved colleagues in that first glance.
"Hayama Naoto; you came from group therapy, correct?" He nodded and lifted his feet over to the center where the woman had moved. The others must have been briefed on his arrival, because no one looked too surprised. To Naoto's surprise, they seemed rather interested in him before he had spoken a word. He did suppose that they might find his story amusing, unlike in his previous session where they had been desensitized to nearly every criminal offense committed. He had to remind himself that the patients here were not all necessarily criminals.
"Would you care to tell us a little about yourself? It doesn't have to be much." Naoto glanced about the room, feeling the foreign sense of self-consciousness. Speaking had never been this difficult for him. He waved a hand towards a chair and sent Sato a questioning glance. At her approval, he pulled one over to the relative center of the group and rustled through his mind. First impressions were worth pondering over.
Finally he started with a slight nod of his head and, "I'm Hayama Naoto, it's a pleasure. I suppose all that really matters are two things: I'm a narcissist and the doctors have been saying I'm depressed, and I'm here because I hurt my little brother and the underclassmen at my high school." It was an abridged version from what he gave at the group therapy session, yet somehow the words would not come out with ease or detachment. Though he managed to regulate his tone, he had struggled with those simple words. Perhaps it was the close environment and sense of personality that had thrown him off.
Sato gave a small smile and waved the others away to whatever they were discussing before. She pulled a chair over next to him, the thick atmosphere in the air gone as the room returned to a chattering din. Naoto observed the soft features on her face and spotted the reprimand before the words came out of her mouth. She was not cruel or judgmental as she spoke. "I know they teach you to talk like that in those sessions, but I don't like it very much. It's no use talking about your problems if all you're doing is distancing yourself from them, is my belief.
"It doesn't have to be instantaneous, but I heard from Hitomi-san that you're quite a social person, so I don't think it'll be that hard to open up more. Don't afraid to feel emotional about things that make you mad or happy or sad. What your partner's here for is to listen and be a sort of unofficial therapist for you, and you in return should give him your support." Sato gave a sharp, confident nod and pushed herself from the chair, swinging around the room until she stopped at a corner. She motioned to the group of three boys. "One of them over there's your partner. Go introduce yourself again."
Naoto walked over, trying to figure out who she meant before he stopped, but the three boys seemed close enough that he couldn't distinguish between the two closer ones and the one out-of-place guy. That was part of her plan, he guessed as he paused at the corner, his back exposed to the wide room and his eyes unable to see anything except for these three people and the pale beige of the walls. They each waved him over with smiles and two broke away from their spots, getting up and disappearing from his peripheral vision.
The remaining boy was around his age, unhealthily thin for his height with sharp angles protruding from every feature except for his face. It retained enough of that roundness from childhood to soften the harsh image. Naoto forgot his manners for a moment before he returned the gesture and took a seat across from him, the natural charisma in his movements apparently making the boy self-conscious about his slouched posture. His previous position had been relaxed and informal, legs folded on the chair, one arm thrown over the opposite knee. Now he gathered his limbs together and threw him a crooked grin.
"Sato-san is a lot different, huh? The therapists like to toss us around like that," he said with a disgruntled grimace. Naoto sent him a questioning look but received no answer, not that he expected one to be truthful. People were ambiguous for almost no reason at all here. At least this guy smiled. "So anyways, I'm Ishikawa, Ishikawa Rakuto. That's written with the characters for "calm" and "person". I'm eighteen, and I'm from Kyoto, but my family moved to Tokyo a few years ago. I've been here for a year or so now."
Naoto nodded, the information filtering through his brain for any hint as to what he should say. If the teacher expected nothing but small talk, he was more than capable of holding his own for hours, but he was under the impression that the whole reason behind these sessions was discuss their issues. Ishikawa seemed unconcerned about their blaringly obvious location, a silly grin still plastered on his face. He fixed him with an unblinking stare, patient, idly kicking his feet back and forth. Naoto reminded himself that this guy was eighteen, a year older, and so much more immature.
"I come from Shizuoka," he finally started with, having run through an extensive list of possibilities and falling short as he had been doing lately. He continued to offer an explanation: placing him somewhere in Shizuoka would have been a constant reminder to his parents and his brother, both a blatant shame and a heavy shadow of fear. A doctor had recommended Tachikawa and shortly after, they made the long drive one Saturday morning. "I guess I miss home," he added as an afterthought. He left unsaid what he truly missed, hoping that some day that ache would disappear.
"I miss mine, too. Well, I miss Kyoto more. Tokyo's nice and all, but it's the city and it's just…different, you know? I like running around, even though I'm not particularly good at any sports. And I always did badly in school," Ishikawa mentioned with a flippant wave. The motion unsettled Naoto, who until this point maintained his opinion that education should not stop for his condition, so long as he could still absorb something in that mind of his. Lessons filled those empty corners of his mind and kept him alert. Because he might never use that knowledge didn't mean he had to stop entirely.
"What about you? I've seen you around, reading books all the time. I don't have any patience for those; at least, I didn't used to. Nowadays I don't mind it so much; have to keep the hands busy, right?" Ishikawa rambled on and on in a similar manner for however long the session lasted. Though Naoto remained on the edge of the conversation almost the entire time, the reluctance didn't seem to bother his partner. They exchanged simple statements about their likes and dislikes, nothing too complicated. When Naoto had figured out that they were not expected to share anything important, he relaxed into the conversation with earnest.
He even managed to talk about his little brother without his thoughts straying into dangerous territory. By the end of the session he found that he hadn't learnt much about Ishikawa at all. If not for his blunder in the beginning, Naoto realized that his partner would not have known anything about him either. Sure, he now knew that Ishikawa liked cats better than dogs and sweets better than salty snacks, but that didn't tell him much about the boy as a whole. Those were random and uninteresting alone. The full-size portrait was beyond the horizon, invisible, untouchable for the moment.
Strangely, he found within himself curiosity to discover who was behind that cheerful face, all of the ghosts that lurked underneath the darkened shadows of his eyes. There was more to the character of Ishikawa Rakuto than the lazy student unable to focus on his work. He claimed mathematics was his only strong subject, and a class he might have gotten an average grade in if he paid any attention at all. Being a Japanese citizen able to admit this made for a perplexing thought. Ishikawa made it sound as if he had no ambitions in his earlier life.
But somehow Naoto could not envision this boy who, in such a dismal place was able to forget those demons for a time and smile, as a delinquent that found school impossibly dull; so impossibly dull that he had expected to scrape by his best subject. There was vivaciousness in those tired eyes that had not yet been washed away by the clock's regular schedule or the isolation living in these mountains caused. The facts did not add up.
He did find a content smile on his face when Ishikawa mentioned that they would have to meet throughout the week on their own accord. It was amazing how quickly his reluctance to befriend anyone here had melted away. Not that he really expected them to become friends any time soon, and maybe they would forever be acquaintances, but the doctor's skeptical words had truth in them.
Later that night he pushed aside the spiral bound notebook, the copy of The Great Gatsby in Japanese, and folded his arms on the desk upon which he laid his head. During dinner the rain had broken, leaving behind little droplets on the windowpanes that bulged with dark distorted shapes. That was the scene that lay beyond the blinds and beyond that, the bent trees in a moaning symphony. For the first night in weeks he ignored those images, pushed them from the inside of his eyelids until he saw the watery amber lighting in the common room. Beyond the air conditionings' hum soft notes twirled around, forming both even melodies made by skilled hands and the drawn-out, alluring sirens from a young talent.
A tender pain in his arched back had grown uncomfortable. He tore his eyes open long enough to flick the desk light off and stumble the short distance to his bed where he fell among downy softness and cool sheets. The interruption had chased away most of the imagery, but the music lingered a moment longer.
Naoto wandered back towards his little brother, the memories blurred by time at first. An empty face stared back at him until he realized that those eyes were not meant for him; they stared at a space beyond his shoulder where he came to remember his parents had stood that day. He had given a short wave and "goodbye" and turned his back to enter the house, and never gave the car a second glance. Naoto screwed his eyes shut tighter than before, trying to chase that away with something more pleasant, but those memories would not come. If he tried to imagine a happy image, he received a haunting memory that filled him with a terrible desire.
Instead he opened his eyes, cleared his mind, and brought the fresh picture of Ishikawa Rakuto to the forefront. He saw the characters for clear and person, and a younger version of the boy that struggled in school, whose parents might not have been proud when he dashed away to play outside. He tried to see the current Ishikawa with that quirky grin or welcoming smile, and remembered that he hated winter, and immediately placed an apologetic mask over his face when he found out that Naoto's birthday was in December.
He had no personal relation with Ishikawa and the staff's looming presence made sure he was aware that his previous behavior was not to be tolerated. Ishikawa was pleasant to look at, but childish in a way that unsettled him. He was cute, but older than Naoto; the image didn't quite fit to him. Naoto made it fit though.
He recalled how Ishikawa's hair curled around his face, a strand plastered at the corner of his upturned mouth until he brushed it away. Throughout their discussion he had been completely at ease, but Naoto formed a different picture in his mind. In a room with uncomfortable humid air his cheeks might flush. A thin sheen of sweat would form on his forehead and in the nape of his neck. He'd instinctively swallow a dry gulp if he rambled for too long
He knew what Naoto was here for, but made no judgments and had no inhibitions about talking to him. A few times he seemed as if he wanted to come closer and touch him on the shoulder like he had done with the other boys, but it hadn't made Naoto self-conscious. It was those thoughts, those safe thoughts the hospital had never restricted him from thinking that kept him sane. If he wandered too far off the beaten path, it was alright so long as he could never act upon any of those desires.
"Chance encounters are what keep us going." (Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)
• This is the same Ishikawa Rakuto from What We Were. "Rakuto" is written 楽人. The translating site says is means "clear person" and 人(to) means person. 楽(raku) is part of "rakuen" which is paradise so I suppose it's the right translation. It's an unusual name, which is why he introduced himself and gave how to write it as well. He was kind of named after the actor Tochihara Rakuto, who if you watch some BL movies, was in Junjou with Takahashi Yuta. Takahashi played Suzuki in the second Takumi-kun movie.
• Thus starts the long, complicated relationship between these two boys that in actuality was very short. Hopefully I'll be able to move away from this flowery type of writing, but Naoto strikes me as this type of person too.
• Mild reference to Norwegian Wood. Apparently the main character's favorite book was the Great Gatsby.
