Insanity is Colored White

Day Four

Today started last night if he wanted to be precise about the events that followed one unnamable mid-October week. Naoto had become acquainted with Ishikawa Rakuto for nearly half a month when this occurred. It was enough time to known enough details about another person as to give the illusion of familiarity without actually knowing the other at all. These days when Naoto was seen without a book or Ishikawa Rakuto the caretakers knew something was wrong. There were those days when the boys preferred solitude, which affected all patients at some time, but those had grown few and far between.

To say that Naoto had learnt nothing of value about his partner was a lie. People did not spend extended lengths of time with another without coming to learn something. For example, there were certain topics and words Ishikawa lost his composure around that Naoto had to be cautious of. Another was that the cheerful façade he wore slipped under pressure or intense discussions about subjects he had apparently once held passion for. Among the most important survival lessons were that sweets, particularly ice cream, and light platonic hugs worked like a magic cure for a majority of his moods.

Ishikawa grew into particularly dismal moods the later the nights wore on, with the autumn winds battering the windowpanes and muted activity inside disquieting the boy. During these long hours after dinner, Naoto had taken a shine to reading books aloud to him in the common room or in the solitude of their beds. After the first couple readings, Naoto had figured out that Ishikawa was not interested in the story and words themselves most of the time. His eyes often acquired a glazed over sheen that stared emptily at a wall or Naoto's hands flipping the pages, contented but uninterested.

This was a vastly different person than the boy he spoke to during the day and Naoto would be lying if he said it didn't bother him. He did accept it, however eerie Ishikawa was when he fell into that limp state, a mere ragdoll Naoto ventured he could have done anything do if he wanted. During these times he was incredibly compliant, and had to be ordered to bed or dragged through the hallways if their sessions ran late enough. But despite his new friend's peculiarities, Naoto made no move to change them- after all, his words had no effect on him. It was his voice that lulled Ishikawa further into that trance.

To his amazement, he hadn't once tried to take advantage of his friend, either. If this were before in the outside world, he would have already driven the boy away with frightful, betrayed tears in his eyes. He supposed it was somewhat due to the threats looming over his shoulder here. That empty loneliness was not a feeling he wanted to encounter anytime soon. To his dismay, it had little to do with revulsion at the thought of making his friend squirm in pain. If he admitted to his guilty pleasures, he would find that far more dirtied thoughts filled his mind than pure ones.

It made him wonder if he was getting better at all. Sure, he didn't act upon those desires, but that he imagined them and took them farther than conception meant something. Normal people didn't look at their dozing friend and have their hands twitch to touch those slightly parted lips, or harbor warmth in their belly at the thought of seeing his cheeks flustered with embarrassment and shame. Naoto fought the images away, gripping the thin book between his fingers harder as he tried to imagine a grove of cherry blossoms by the shore, pink- nearly white- petals drifting in the waves.

His voice trembled as he read, "Soon a snowstorm of blossoms would scatter innumerable petals into the water, flecking the surface with points of white…" Though Ishikawa stood perhaps a centimeter or two shorter than him, he always reclined against Naoto's shoulder, which gave off the appearance of someone much smaller than him. He was still unbearably thin; Naoto could trace the fine lines of his collarbone and ribs with a fingertip if he were allowed. From this higher view, he saw the boy's eyelashes flutter and assumed that he'd heard the slight nuance in his reading.

"…which the waves carried back to the shore," Naoto continued at his normal pace, voice controlled again. A finger flipped the page and he inhaled a deep, quiet breath. Focusing on the book at hand chased away those unsightly images more often than not, but today they didn't quite work. Unlike most works, Dazai's book didn't appeal to his sense of sight. He could hardly make out any pictures from this narrative, the sparse exceptions being things like cherry blossoms on a beach. The words instead appealed to emotions, and he took a second between sentences to wonder what this horribly depressing book was doing here.

Ishikawa shifted against him, pressing his face against Naoto's bony shoulder with a soft sigh. Naoto shivered and lost interest in the book at once; a tight feeling had gripped his chest, an emotion he so rarely experienced that for a moment he didn't know how to name it. In any case, this was not safe. He kept a firm control over his body as he moved, shifting Ishikawa into a position suitable to supporting him as they walked. He was not too eager. He feigned a yawn and rubbed his aching eyes before he nudged his friend.

Together they made their way from the common room to the hallway and down the walls lined with unlocked doors. No one stopped them or waved as they passed. He walked by Ishikawa's room without a second thought; his roommate was sometimes there and while he didn't mind the man's presence while he read, Naoto did not want an audience now. Not that he would do anything, he promised himself. Ishikawa was a genuinely nice guy as far as he could tell, and his only true friend here. He didn't deserve to be messed up or tainted and all Naoto wanted to do was feel these natural things in privacy.

Naoto flicked the switch on the wall and light flooded the room. He tossed the book on the desk and carefully laid his friend on his bed. When he had deposited his nearly sleeping burden, Naoto stood awkwardly in the center of the room. He had no desire to read more tonight and Ishikawa never had any interest in the material from the start. He was also looking at Naoto through half-lidded eyes blurred by sleepiness and a miasma he could not begin to understand. He looked appealing in a strange, cute way. No matter how many times he reminded himself, Naoto kept forgetting that Ishikawa was older.

With a depleted sigh he collapsed into the desk chair, watching as his friend shifted and curled up, hair obscuring his face. It would be easy to do one of two things now. Naoto knew he should not act upon either of those choices, especially not the one he had given in to with his brother. A heavy stone nestled in his throat and a light flush tinted his cheeks at the vulnerable sight. His hands gripped the chair's wooden underside until his fingers burned in pain. With desperation he had not been aware of before, he tried to ignore the heat in his stomach.

A thin hand grasped at the sheets, folds crinkling between his fingers. The boy mumbled something incoherent. Naoto remained in that stiff position for a long time, until he was quite sure that Ishikawa had fallen asleep. It was completely unprofessional to waltz over there and decide to share the space, though this was not exactly the workplace and that was Naoto's bed. But he wouldn't, and couldn't, move from that spot, not when these impure thoughts rattled his brain every which way but the right direction. For his little brother's sake, if nothing else, Naoto would restrain himself.

It was incredibly hard to ignore certain feelings, though, no matter how much he protested. Ishikawa might never be the wiser, even if he woke. The boy had that uncanny ability to be present in body and follow every movement with his eyes, but be completely empty in mind. If Naoto dared touch him a bit- just to stroke his hair or run a light finger over his lips- he doubted his partner would remember it come morning. He could get off right here and he was confident that the outcome would be the same.

To his incredible relief the moment it happened, some commotion outside hurtled his brain into curiosity and those desires faded into the dark corners where they belonged. The sounds of a struggle were muted no doubt, but in a place where nothing deviated from the normal schedule they sounded as loud as a siren. Naoto stepped outside and closed the door behind him; Ishikawa was in an unmovable state, unlikely to have woken up for such a noise. His urge for something different, something that deviated from every monotonous norm, made him follow the small crowd that trickled towards the staircases.

There was a girl there, he realized with a start. It was the first girl patient he had seen since entering this building. Sure, he knew that the women lived in the floor above, but had never seen any outside of the doctors and caretakers. It also happened to be the first truly violent person Naoto had encountered so far. Most patients were resigned to life here, and the violent cases were located somewhere else in the hospital. He had been living among relatively normal people, perhaps with some problems but none that were expressed in such an outward way.

"I won't go!" she shrieked as she flailed against two doctors' slackening grips, limbs flying this way and that, striking wherever they landed with the mercy of a cornered animal. He glanced over the scene, spotting Hitomi in the stairwell with a couple, another two doctors he had never seen before descending from the fourth floor, and a crowd of spectators. Some caretakers arrived and pushed them away, shooing patients back to their rooms, trying to restore order to a flaw in their perfect little system.

From the stairwell he heard a woman's voice cry, "Please Mayumi, calm down. Why don't you want to come home? We all miss you; please don't be like this!"

"Go back to your room." A caretaker appeared in his line of vision, pushing his shoulder away as she snapped at the others around him. Naoto backed off but like the rest, lingered at a further distance. A few guys were shaking their heads in confusion and he couldn't lie and say he understood the situation either. Who would willingly want to stay here, if given that precious choice to return home? True, Naoto would most likely decide to stay if given that option, for his brother's safety more than his persona preference. But he doubted that was the same case with this girl.

Within a few minutes the small girl had been dragged away kicking and hollering loud enough to wake the dead. He had to wonder whether or not Ishikawa had slept through that as he wandered back the way he'd come. It was a pity he missed the event, even if its significance was barely worth one yen. Naoto had been successfully distracted, if nothing else; touching his sleeping roommate hardly crossed his mind as appealing while he twisted the doorknob to his unlocked room. The printed numbers at eye level read 314.

Beyond the door he emerged to find that Ishikawa had indeed been stirred from his sleep by the commotion. The boy with clothes clinging loosely to his thin frame sat at the edge of his now mussed up bed. His knees were drawn tight against his chest, the fine curves of his spine protruding from his back in a gradual arch. Naoto smiled as Ishikawa's head tilted towards his direction. His urges were always quieter when the boy was awake and aware. Something was different, though. As he neared, Naoto noted with discerning clarity that his partner's eyes had a new gloss painted over them.

"Did you hear that? A girl was out there, yelling about how she doesn't want to go home. Odd, isn't it- don't you think everyone here would kill to leave?" Naoto's voice left room for good-natured humor and amusement as he shook his head. A playful smile graced his lips as he fell into place beside Ishikawa, immensely relieved that he hadn't done anything strange after all. Talking would be difficult had he gotten off on his friend's vulnerability, while said friend was sleeping right in front of him. God forbid if he had taken it a step further- perhaps sitting where he was seated now.

A small nod jerked Ishikawa's head but afterwards he was still. Naoto's smile faded into a frown as he leaned forward and peered past his hair. Maybe his friend wasn't as sober as he had believed. It was well past nine after all; he should have expected no less. There were the occasional nights when Ishikawa remained "sober" as Naoto had taken to naming his moods, but those were few and far between. Their day had to have been excellent for him to retain his pleasant demeanor in the dark hours. Oh well, Naoto shrugged.

"Do you want me to read some more? Or maybe we should just lay here. Think they'll let us sleep together?" Naoto mused to himself. He quite enjoyed those hours when the books were stacked in neat piles on his desk, the activity outside muted and the caretakers busy elsewhere. Some nights Ishikawa had the state of mind to converse with him in quiet undertones, and other nights they would just lay flat against the mattress, two nearly full-grown bodies pressed together on the tiny space. Hitomi always came to help Ishikawa to his room, even if the boy had been deep asleep.

She should, he mused as he kicked off his shoes, with me thinking about him like that. Still, for one night a break would be nice. He admitted that he missed the comfort of a warm body against his without shame. At first he had taken the absence solemnly, as a punishment of sorts. Now he had relinquished some of those thought processes and simply strove for comfort on his behalf.

"Don't have…" Ishikawa mumbled before the pillow obscured his words. He had fallen and curled up again, Naoto's signal to take up his position on the opposite side. The seventeen year old arranged his limbs and ended up facing Ishikawa's hunched back. They were almost the same height upright, so Naoto could not see past his bony shoulder. The impersonal wall between them didn't allow him to relax until he'd gently pushed that shoulder towards him, urging his friend to lie on his back. He complied.

"…What's your family like, Naoto?" Ishikawa asked the ceiling. The lights were still on, but soon enough the staff would shut the main lines down for the night.

The question caught him off guard. Not that they never talked about their families, and in fact Naoto always mentioned his little brother, but he had never heard the question asked in such a solemn tone. He corrected his train of thought after a moment. Ishikawa had not used a solemn voice or outstanding curiosity. It was a simple question. Primary school often asked those types of questions: What is your family like? Where do you live? What do you like? What confused Naoto was hearing his own name there.

As far as he remembered, they hadn't crossed that line from casual acquaintances to friends able to call each other by their first names. A few sparse hours ago Ishikawa had asked him, "Hayama-kun, what book do you want to read?" The only reason he used an informal honorific was because Naoto was technically a year his junior. Ishikawa Rakuto was always "Ishikawa-san".

He indulged in his friend's hanging question, however new the direction. "You know a lot about my little brother already. He's shy, but he's a good kid. I think you two would like each other. My mother stays at home and I've always been closer to her. My father is different; he believes in studying hard facts and less about sports. My mother's outgoing at home, and my father's not. In the workplace my father's really out there, but my mother isn't. But they've always been worried over my health, so I guess it's what brings them together at times."

"But they haven't come to visit," Ishikawa pointed out. The statement stung Naoto in the heart more than he wanted to admit, but he could tell from the boy's voice that he had not intended his words as injurious. If not for that absence of malice or the frail weakness beneath his skin and the utter helplessness of in thin form, Naoto wouldn't have let it slide. He clenched his fists and swallowed his irritation just as the lights flickered off, plunging the room into deep darkness. After a moment Ishikawa shifted, toes bumping into Naoto's legs and warm human breath enticingly close to his face.

"I guess they've been busy," Naoto answered shortly. If it were a normal hour, his friend wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have pursued the matter when he heard Naoto's terse voice. From the uneven brushes of breath against his cheeks, he knew Ishikawa had not taken his hint. Angered, with daggers driving into his chest, he grabbed for the nearest limb and held the other boy's hand in a crushing grip. A soft noise of discontent, bordering on a whimper, escaped his lips. "Look, I don't ask you about why your family never visits. Leave it, Ishikawa; I'm not in the mood for your shit."

He made a small sound of agreement and yanked his arm away until Naoto released it with a shove that almost sent the boy tumbling off the tiny bed. If he focused hard enough into the darkness he could make out his friend's features, but he didn't want to see his face anymore. It was pitiful no doubt; the sort of adorable face Naoto almost enjoyed more than a cheerful smile. And while he would have loved to take his aggressions a step further, perhaps make the boy squirm a little more, realistically Naoto knew to keep his hands to himself.

Somehow, like a reprimanded dog, Ishikawa came crawling back anyways. He was cautious, inching closer, coming into contact for a brief moment before pulling away and repeating until he knew Naoto would not shove him away. He came so close that their knees and shins collided, their breaths intermingled, and the flat surface of the other boy's belly was mere centimeters away. Naoto brushed his fingertips along the curve of his hip, and suddenly blood pounded in his ears. He could feel his heart leap into his throat and back into his stomach.

The boy's hands came to rest just short of Naoto's chest below the collarbone. A fear so irrational he wanted to laugh at it emerged from his subconscious. For a moment he genuinely believed that Ishikawa might sense his beating heart and call him out on it. It was such a strange concept that Naoto acted upon the sudden urge to seize the boy's hand and shove it against his chest above his pounding heart, just to prove that he could not notice the difference. The jolt beneath his grip notified him of his friend's startled reaction. His hand tensed and relaxed a moment later when the shock had passed, fingers falling against the bare skin above the shirt collar.

The sentimental message behind the action hadn't gone unnoticed, though Naoto had not intended it as such. Ishikawa breathed a loose sigh and shifted the last few centimeters between them to press his head against Naoto, at the space right underneath his chin. Fine puffs of air tickled the hollow of his throat even though they were about the same height. Ishikawa's feet would probably hang off the edge if his legs weren't bent, Naoto thought in a moment of amusement.

For a long while, Naoto's head remained empty of his previous mindset. The autumn winds whistled outside; the branches of the fir tree battered the hospital's siding. These were sounds and images he could imagine for a time.

Eventually, as they were both drifting asleep with the sheets crumpled underneath them, the door slid to a near silent open. Naoto squinted through the darkness at the flush of light beyond, knowing that the figure silhouetted in the doorway was Hitomi come to shuffle Ishikawa back to his room. He shut his eyes again and squeezed his friend's hand still up against his chest. To his utter amazement, the door closed on the gaping hole of light until a thin sliver was all that remained to cut through the darkness. He hadn't the mind the process anything except for the fact that there was someone warm next to him.

For the first time in a very, very long time- and looking back on it, he wasn't sure if it had ever happened before- Naoto dropped his pride, his inhibitions, and fell into a soft blanket of security and companionship. It was strange in a way. Normal people did not create such fantastic images of platonic friends and subsequently sleep with them in such a platonic manner. But the matter of the fact was that during that night and the many nights that followed it, Naoto felt no desire to touch his friend in the same manner he'd touched his little brother.

He fell asleep the familiar sounds outside his window, the air conditioning's low hum, and new, quiet signs of another human being.

"In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount." (Haruki Murakami)

• I'm aware that you shouldn't end every chapter with sleeping. Nor should you start every chapter with waking up. But keep in mind these were supposed to be a series of journal entries, so they are going to start at one point of the day until the very end. They continue off the other, but are separate stories in essence.

• The book Naoto is quoting from is Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human/Ningen Shikkaku. He finds it strange that this book is in the mental hospital because it is about a man who feels detached from society and the depression that plagues him for his entire life, including a suicide attempt. However, it is on the top ten best-selling books in Japan and is very popular with the youth.