I actually have a decent title for this chapter (I know, OMFG)
Remember me
Ritsuka spent an entire weekend holed up like a mouse in his room, feeding off the candy supplies and cereal (I have cereal stored in my room…?) stored in his room. Sometimes he stared aimlessly out the window, huddled in a warm wool blanket, watching birds flap around the neighbour's hedges stupidly. Other times he watched television or played video games with the volume on as high as it could go, as if to drown out his own thoughts. Anything, really, to avoid facing off with his brother; one-on-one, face-to-face, solo. He hadn't the courage – not yet.
Thrice Seimei knocked on the door and left food in front of his bedroom door, but said nothing before going about his business as usual. Despite his wish for Seimei to remain far away from him, Ritsuka was mad each time he heard Seimei walk past and say nothing, and he soon realized that he was listening for it, so he purposefully left the food where it had been dropped and after a day Seimei stopped trying. Once the younger boy had a horrible stomach ache from eating nothing but corn flakes and sugar canes and he unconsciously waited patiently for Seimei to come give him medicine before remembering that no such thing would happen. In his fury he had thrown his trashcan out the window and hit the neighbour's poor daughter on the head. She began to cry and wail but when her mother came out to see what the fuss was about, Ritsuka had already hidden under his bed.
He realized somewhat glumly that all his misery was self-inflicted and maybe a little selfish. Seimei hadn't outright done anything to deserve his horrible outburst, but Ritsuka didn't feel ready to forgive him yet…
On Monday morning, he had no choice but to leave his room; he also learned that going out the window hurt. He limped back inside and resigned to take the risk of meeting Seimei sometime during the course of the morning. He sat on the sofa eating toast, eyes flicking towards the staircase nervously. When he went to brush his teeth (his mouth stunk horribly by then), he saw that Seimei had already left. He'd planned ahead so they wouldn't meet. Ritsuka felt a little bit like crying.
Someone at school pointed out that he was acting weird, and all he could do was shrug. Erika came and talked to him for the first time in several weeks but he couldn't find it in himself to be happy about it. His friends left the table to give them some privacy, as they so subtly put it, but it was apparent that neither party had anything but awkward conversation planned. When she finally asked how he was doing, all he could muster was a dry 'same shit, different day', to which she seemed insulted and left, mumbling something about sarcasm. Whatever.
In a last effort to fight off loneliness and social expulsion, he invited the freckle-faced boy to walk home with him. They passed a cupcake shop and the boy stopped in his tracks, smiling in a dazed manner.
"Milla loves cupcakes. I should get her some!" he piped. "She was mad at me for working on her birthday; this should make up for it. What do you think?" he asked, suddenly serious.
"I think it's brilliant," he gasped truthfully.
Both boys went into the cupcake shop and were hypnotized by the smell of batter, butter, sugar and most importantly, icing. Hundreds of coloured cupcakes lay in stashes behind a glass pane and they hurriedly ordered some and paid. The boy ordered a dozen chrysanthemum-style ones and three simple chocolate cupcakes while Ritsuka ordered two vanilla and chocolate ones; they sat and ate them in the shop, chatting. And then it hit him.
Cupcakes make everyone happy. They bring about forgiveness.
"…hey, I'm going to get some more," Ritsuka announced, standing up. The boy shrugged and continued ravishing a huge black pastry.
He looked at every kind and color or cupcake, trying to pick out the best ones. The flower kind was too feminine. The yellows and oranges and pinks were too girly as well. Some had odd things like Xbox controllers or sugar doves on top, but Ritsuka didn't see Seimei getting excited over some little sugar-carved figurine. What did Seimei like…?
Books.
None of the cupcakes had books on top – not that he had hoped much, honestly.
He likes…me.
There was even less hope of finding a cupcake with himself carved in sugar; he was about to give up when he spotted some 'ear and tail' cupcakes stashed at the very end of the display. One of them had black, triangular ears and a long, slim tail like his own and he quickly bought it as if someone else was going to steal it from him. He was sad that they only had one, but he prayed it would be enough to fix his mistake…
"Why are we leaving? Aren't you going to eat that one?"
"It's for dessert," he explained as he dragged his friend out of the sweet-smelling shop.
"Watch it! I'm going to drop my forgiveness present…" he whined.
When they separated, Ritsuka sped up to a jog, clutching the cupcake box to his chest like a lifeline. When he got home, he arranged his shoes and coat cleanly, so Seimei would see that he making an effort to be orderly and nice.
He went to the kitchen to put the cupcake in the refrigerator when he saw Seimei standing – or, to be exact, bending – in front of a sitting Soubi, their faces inches apart. Ritsuka recognized the man thanks to his trademark long hair and round glasses. Seimei had both hands clutching Soubi's shirt, eyes fixed on the other man's face but too angled for Ritsuka to be able to see the emotion in them. There was a fiery emotion in Soubi's eyes, so unlike Seimei's cold ones, but nothing about Soubi's body language screamed fear or even some negative emotion. They were….fooling around?
The cupcake box in Ritsuka's hand was promptly squashed and the subsequent noise caused Seimei's attention to change focus. His cold, dark eyes were now on Ritsuka who stood there, motionless and angry. But instead of lashing out like he wanted to be, he dropped the damaged box on the kitchen counter and fled upstairs to his room.
"What's wrong with him?" Soubi breathed, a little stunned. Seimei simply shrugged.
"Go home. I'll deal with you later," he snapped, backing off quickly. The slim boy was eyeing the mangled box curiously so Soubi took this distraction as a blessing and made his way out of the Aoyagi household.
Meanwhile, Seimei picked up the simple white box and opened it slowly, instinctively being cautious; but it was only a small cupcake, now properly squished and nearly split in half. Seimei briefly wondered if Ritsuka was running out of food up there and had stopped to buy some more after school. For the first time since Friday they had been in the same room, so maybe Ritsuka would allow him to feed him that night. As much as it pained him to admit it, he was considerably worried that Ritsuka was starving alone in his room. He could always force his way inside…
He should come around on his own. And if he doesn't, there's nothing I can do about it.
Being helpless, he found out over the past three days, didn't suit him very well. It made him nervous, anxious and irregularly snappy. And the thought of erasing Ritsuka's memories was getting increasingly appealing as the days went by – it seemed that Ritsuka was hurt and upset now more than ever and only a fool would wonder why. Maybe it would be for the best to start over on a blank canvas. A canvas he maybe wouldn't paint on anymore.
He tried for a while to revive the dead cupcake, but failed utterly and instead moulded the useable chunks into a cake look-alike. It was an insult to art, but perfectly edible. He decided not to give it to Ritsuka unless he decided to eat supper, or some of it. Seimei scoured the cabinets and found the necessary ingredients to make lasagna, something even in his anger Ritsuka would never be able to resist. He threw in more cheese than any reasonable cook would consider, because it was Ritsuka's favourite part of the recipe and always begged for more cheese. He was secretly glad when he saw Ritsuka poke his head into the kitchen, lured in by the smell while on his way to the bathroom.
"Lasagna?" he mumbled softly, still standing near the door as if ready to bolt.
"Yes – extra cheese," he added with a smile, gracefully placing a strand of hair behind his ear.
Ritsuka was now eyeing the cupcake remake sitting next to the fridge, ears veering sideways in thought.
"You can't eat it until after supper," he warned before turning back to the food. He was having some serious issues with the oven and was fighting to keep his patience with it. When he glanced back at the small silhouette huddled in the doorway, he was honestly a bit disappointed to see that his little brother looked deflated at the sight of the cupcake.
Isn't it good enough?
"I did my best, but you damaged it quite a bit when you held it so tight. Think of it as a cake." He flashed his brother a smile. Instead of smiling back, Ritsuka surprised him with a question.
"Do you like it?" he whispered, sitting down hesitantly on a stool near the kitchen counter. His small body was wrapped in a thick blanket despite it being rather warm inside the house.
"I suppose, originally it looked very good." Was all he could think of. The stupid oven!
The silence was thick as Seimei went about physically abusing the oven to get it to work and periodically adding cheese when it wasn't thick enough to Ritsuka's standards. Their mother was at the hospital getting her weekly mental checkup so all was quiet until Ritsuka turned on the television, if only to end the silence. He put it on as low as it could go.
"Are we still brothers?"
Seimei stopped watching the news in his peripheral vision and turned to Ritsuka, the lasagna in his gloved hands. He quickly dropped it on the kitchen counter and discarded the awful duck-print oven mittens.
"Of course. Why wouldn't we be?"
He wouldn't even tell himself, as he cut the lasagne into hefty portions, that the question got him nervous again. How could Ritsuka do this to him so easily? Silently, he slid a plate in front of Ritsuka and then served himself.
"Because we don't get along anymore…and I get mad at Seimei often," he mumbled as he picked around his food with a fork.
Hearing Ritsuka refer to him in a 3rd person view was either good or bad; he was hoping for good and leaning towards bad. Did it mean that Ritsuka couldn't even talk to him about what was bothering him without pretending he wasn't really there? Suddenly no longer hungry, he got up and put his plate in the refrigerator for later. Ritsuka was looking at him hopefully, as though waiting for him to say something that would make everything better, just like when they were kids. There had to be a way to make things well again.
"I'll make it better soon, I promise."
He had promised. There was no worming out of things anymore. But Ritsuka seemed satisfied and went about eating his lasagna with newfound gusto, unaware of what was about to happen to him now that he'd sealed his own fate.
He may have noticed something odd when Seimei made a big fuss of walking him through his usual bedtime routine and asking him weird, unusual questions like: 'Do you have a bank account?' or 'What's your favourite color? Food? Animal? Celebrity? Show?'.
And when Ritsuka was tucked in bed and too drowsy to be very aware, he asked his older sibling what all the questions were for. Seimei knew most of his favorites!
"So I don't make a mistake when I help you remember them."
And then he smiled, that usual warm, charming smile that Ritsuka couldn't help retaliate. He then fell asleep and slept well for the first time in days.
xXxXxXx
"Ritsuka." A voice insisted. It was so sharp.
"Ri-tsu-ka," he repeated, eyes out the window and far from the hospital room.
"That's your name." Another voice, a little softer. He didn't recognize that one, however.
"Okay," he agreed, still lost somewhere where the doctors couldn't find him.
"Your mother's name is Misaki," it continued. He wondered briefly if the name had a face – wait, of course it did. He scolded himself for being that 'out in the clouds'.
"Mi-sa-ki."
"And your brother's name was-"
"Sei-mei."
The doctors were proud of him for remembering that, so they gave him a brownie and a drawing pad, which he ate and drew on respectively. One was always there, just to watch. It was a young woman today; she wore her hair up in a ponytail and some heels that he felt were inappropriate for a hospital. Once he was done drawing, she took his pad away and gave it to a nurse. He knew they were going to look at it and make conclusions that even he didn't understand. And then try to fix his mind. He had drawn someone's face this time, someone he thought he knew. He remembered purple eyes like his own watching him, and so he drew them along with the face he believed went along with them. And it was such a handsome face.
"Was that your brother?" the woman asked him after she'd given the pad away. She looked sad too. When he shrugged, she sighed and cast her eyes downwards. "I'm so sorry…"
"Why?" he wondered, curious. Did she not like him? Oh, but he was so nice…wasn't he?
"I'm sure you must miss him very much. It's so unfortunate that you had to see your brother di-" she was cut off when an older male doctor made mad, panicked arm movements near the door. She made a horrified face. "Oh dear, was I not supposed to say that…?" The doctor shook his head. The woman left, looking distressed. When the older doctor made to leave, Ritsuka called him and he went to stand next to his patient, albeit hesitantly.
"Seimei died?" his voice cracked midsentence. His chest hurt, something he couldn't remember ever feeling, and he wanted it to go away.
"I'm afraid so. You witnessed what happened and your mind simply collapsed, putting you where you are now. I really am sorry." But his eyes told another story. He couldn't care less even if he tried. Ritsuka lay down and pretended to fall asleep until the man left with his annoyingly clean shoes and his snobby visage.
But Seimei, the only person he could remember, was dead and now he was alone in the world. No amount of furrowing in the blankets would make the pain go away so he pulled out his iPod – which they had returned to him as soon as he'd awoken. The music eventually lulled him to sleep and he was freed from whatever pain overcame him until he deigned to wake up the following morning.
xXxXxXx
Seimei sat in Soubi's kitchen, eyeing the dirt patch on the tabletop with disgust; he was still in the tuxedo he'd worn for a funeral that day. Soubi was two minutes from being late and Seimei had no faith that he would be on time. In the meantime, he pulled out his cell phone and lazily flipped through his decidedly massive inventory of pictures, all featuring none other than his little brother. Here he was playing basketball and failing at it, and then struggling with the upper part of his pyjama on another shot. He'd uploaded them from his computer so he could carry them around, now that he no longer had easy access to the computer in his old room.
Soubi came in, clutching the desired envelope and wincing at the cold that seeped in through the open doorway. Winter was certainly coming along fast. He wasn't even late.
"The reports from the hospital," Soubi explained, although Seimei already knew. The Sacrifice pulled out several papers and scanned them while Soubi went to get some food from one of the higher cabinets.
Seimei was amused that the doctors were so worried that the only thing Ritsuka seemed to remember was him – his name, his face and other little insignificant details such as his favourite drink. It was only natural but there was no way to inform the doctor of it. Apparently his brother was 'introvert, quiet and depressed'. The depressed part drew his attention and he looked into the psychologists' report to find something similar. It was thanks to the death of his brother, she said. He was lost, abandoned.
It's for the best. Don't worry – I'm still there.
Seimei stretched languidly, his muscles popping subtly. Soubi offered him a slice of buttered bread and he took it. He had a place of his own, but was taking the break from family life to learn a bit about his Fighter. If anything, he found it amusing that his Fighter had a life of his own. It was an artsy life filled with smoking and eating and kidding around with a blonde-haired, pierced man. He would compare it, should he be compelled to, watching one's pet play at, say, a dog park. But he wouldn't deny that he somewhat enjoyed hanging around Soubi's clean but still 'lived-in' apartment that smelled like smoke and fancy shampoo.
"He seemed well enough," Soubi put in after hanging up on Kyo. "He was drawing. He likes to draw, it would seem. He does it often."
Soubi had been striped of his fighting duties for the time being to take his place as Ritsuka's indirect bodyguard. Seimei wanted his brother looked after, but he needed to be pulling the strings – hence Soubi's presence at all hours of the day. He was only allowed to leave once Ritsuka was asleep, and then he had six hours to do whatever he pleased and sleep. As for Nisei, once he'd recovered from the head trauma Seimei had inflicted on him some weeks ago, he was out doing Seimei's dirty work – alone. Seimei couldn't care less if Nisei got hurt but was also aware that his lack of interference with the situation was beginning to affect the quality of his work. But no matter what happened, Ritsuka would come first.
"He never did. He always said art was a waste of time and space," Seimei mused aloud. Undoubtedly Soubi would lose respect for Ritsuka in that matter, or would have if it had still been the case. Now Ritsuk was…what? Artsy and depressed. So much like Soubi, in fact. The problem was that it wasn't supposed to have turned out that way.
"I'm glad he turned around on that," Soubi admonished honestly. Seimei hiked one eyebrow but didn't comment.
The situation surrounding his death was ironic, he thought. He had told the police himself that he had seen 'Seimei' being burned in front of his brother's eyes. They hadn't paid enough attention to notice him at all. It hadn't even been hard to switch the dental records they found for his own so that he would be declared dead and Ritsuka, who was only sleeping as the drug took its effect on him, would be considered amnesic from mental shock. Whose body had been a doppelganger of him was irrelevant – and honestly he hadn't bothered to check. Everything that needed to be disposed of had disappeared.
Everything was perfectly executed – perfect.
Except Ritsuka. Ritsuka wasn't doing very well. He needed someone to watch over him, to make sure he ate his vegetables, to ensure he put his dirty clothes in the wash, to scan his love interests – he shuddered – and all that. Soubi? No, Soubi had work to do for him that they would be unable to put off in a few weeks' time. Nisei was out of the question. No explanation necessary. No one could do it like he could, simply for nobody loved Ritsuka as deeply as he did. He was the one for the task…and then the simplest idea known to mankind crossed his mind.
"Soubi, what do you know about disguise…?"
xXxXxXx
The ceiling was so blah. Like the bathrooms, in fact. Everything was – in a very pretty, elaborate word- blah. He asked a doctor if he could paint it purple and vibrant green and she said no, and after that he didn't speak of colors again.
"Do you feel sad sometimes?"
He shrugged; he didn't trust his wide-eyed, flat-chested psychiatrist.
"Who would you like to talk to? Is there anyone you trust?" she asked sweetly, smiling.
"Seimei," he answered flatly, ears twitching. He had taken to brushing the soft fur in them sometimes up to seven times a day because he wanted them to look very nice when he finally gave them away. Not that he was planning to but…he felt like it would be best to be prepared.
"Seimei's gone, Ritsuka." She had stopped smiling.
"I want to be 'gone' too," he reflected stubbornly, huddling in the chair. He was in a room decorated for a child because he wasn't 16 yet, which legally made him a child. At least this room was somewhat vibrant – but he was pushing it. The entire staff seemed to fear bright colors so even the green and blue in there was dull and faded.
"You want to die?"
"I want to remember – and then maybe."
They left it at that, and as he was leaving he leaned over and saw what she wrote. Apparently, he was 'not making any progress'. Oh, what a shame, he thought.
He was led back to his room and offered his bland, tasteless dinner, which he promptly chucked out of the window. He watched the mashed potatoes roll down the hill like a rock and get stuck behind one of an ambulance truck's wheels. As for the meat, its journey ended halfway down when it hit a tree and lay on one of the branches like a dead rodent.
He went back to his bed and began to draw the little things he could remember: lasagna, a purple-eyed boy, some yellow flowers, a purple-eyed boy, a slept-in bed, a purple-eyed boy, a purple-eyed boy…he had a lot of drawings of the purple-eyed boy. His mind told him the drawings were not doing the man justice and he swore to get better and do it right. He was too absorbed in his drawings of a tall, slim silhouette walking away in a snowy street to hear the door open and close softly. He did, however, feel a set of eyes staring at him so he set down the drawing pad and was met with pair of pretty golden eyes.
The boy was very tall and slim, and so he was familiar, but he didn't recognize the golden eyes and light blonde hair. It was very un-japanese, so he supposed the man was American in lineage. He noticed that the tail and ears were also blonde, and yet their shape and movement were so…achingly attractive in some way.
"Hello," he greeted politely, extending his hand. The man took it and his hands were so warm that Ritsuka blushed. "Who are you? Do I know you?"
The blonde man smiled.
"I'm your Fighter."
xXxXxXx
First of all…lasagne? Word keeps correcting me. But isn't it lasagna in English? I'm French, so maybe I'm wrong. I mean I say lasagna verbally…anyway, if it is lasagne, my apologies, I will NEVER do such an amateur mistake ever again.
A lot of people seemed to warm up to the idea of introducing Ritsuka's Fighter, and I sortof incorporated that with my desire of not getting off track. It IS supposed to be about R & S, not them and everyone else my imagination can possibly come up with…if you HAVEN'T guessed, Seimei is posing at [currently unnamed Fighter]. I think he would be a hot blonde. Maybe, loveless author?
Gimme ideas for a name for Fake Fighter X. I don't know. I nearly named my cat Sofa. I do not have a talent when it comes to names.
REVIEW, of course, and I'll be happy and, of course, fulfill all your desires faster…
Hallelujah I know where the story is going! Worry not, people, worry not…
p.s: someone asked if I had a grudge against Soubi or anyone else. I don't. All the characters are real cool. Seimei does, however, and that's what you gotta get…kay?
OUT