Drowning in the Dark

by reminiscent-afterthought

[AU] Kouji only learnt about the lives of his mother and brother when they were dead, when buried things couldn't pass through the earth to the grave and had to come back up again. But just as neglecting the living leads to a death beyond sight, delving too deep into the lives of the dead can cause the soul to flake away inside.

10. Brake

A/N: Warnings for this chapter: nothing again. Though there's a brief allusion to Liar Game there. The psychology part. :)

Enjoy. :D

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Drowning in the Dark
10. Brake

Kousei wondered if his current actions counted as sneaking around. He hadn't told Satomi his plans, and, at this stage, there was no way he could tell Kouji. Keeping Satomi in the dark though…maybe that was a bit of insecurity on his part. There was no reason she shouldn't know, especially now that other secrets were unavoidably out.

And yet he was in his car, on a late lunch break, without a word to anyone else where he'd planned to go. Not even the person he was going to meet – which he realised, once he pulled up at the apartment in question and knocked on the door without answer, was a mistake on his part.

Luckily, a neighbour saw him knocking and suggested a place to look. Which brought Kousei to a creek down a road he couldn't reach by car, so he parked it to the side. And if he'd known the road was like that, it would have been easier to just leave it in the apartment's parking –

But the truth was, he didn't know that area at all, aside from the apartment his ex-wife had once resided in with his other son. He hadn't known there would be such a wild place in an urban landscape, but here he was, scratching the soft skin at the back of his hands and on his face and digging into the fragile soles of his shoes.

He hadn't done that since he was young and newly married, chasing a pair of twins with a knack of adventure and trouble. And now, ironically, he was chasing one of them again. Ironic – and how cruel that he even had to, in a situation where he should have been able to take both his children under wing again.

He knew he was favouriting Kouji with his solution – or not solution, because it wasn't one of those at all. But it was a smaller loss than the alternative – or, rather, no loss at all. Because one couldn't lose a closeness with something that was far away to begin with. The sort of defence mechanism that adults practised more than children, simply because it was an idea that escaped them. Children were the sorts that had a ring of stuffed animals on their bed and refused to share even one of them. And if they found a toy they lost in the bushes, they'd snatch it back, not realising they might have to surrender it soon again, or pay an even greater cost.

And this wasn't even a situation that included lies and deceits. It was just a warping of the truth. Because even twins could see the same thing in two different ways. That was obvious just by looking at the glass orb. Kouji had covered all the black paint up.