"Just who is this Koji Nanjo anyway?" Hisaya asked Katsumi a few days later.
The night before they had gone back to the bar together, Hisaya to see what it was like, Katsumi to look for Koji. Hisaya hadn't liked the place much. It unnerved him, and he knew that Eri, the strident blonde girl he loved and whom Katsumi disliked intensely, wouldn't have liked it much either. The fact that Katsumi had finally seen Koji after about an hour had only added to his feelings of unease, as his friend had been too absorbed in talking to (flirting with? Probably. He'd heard Katsumi giggle a lot more than usual, but it could also have been because by that point he was more than a little drunk. If Katsumi sober had little sense of propriety, it was embarrassing to even admit you knew Katsumi when he was drunk) the beautiful young man to have much time for him. Koji unnerved Hisaya too. There was something vaguely vampiric about Koji, and Katsumi appeared to be totally in thrall to him. It didn't seem healthy to Hisaya.
"He's a singer." Katsumi replied, idly flipping through a spiral-bound notebook containing his lecture notes and, more frequently, doodles, vague scribbles about half-remembered dreams and a couple of unfinished letters to Miyako, a girl he had gone out with in high school who had dropped him shortly after graduation for a salaryman eight years their senior. She had refused to speak to him since, so he'd decided to try to write her a letter explaining everything, but somehow it never came out quite right and his attempts to redraft it were getting less and less frequent. He'd been on the verge of calling their relationship off himself - by the time he had graduated it had felt almost as if he was going out with her because he couldn't quite bring himself to tell her it was over. It was probably just a wounded ego due to the fact that she broke up with him before he could do it to her which had made him even start those damn letters, he realised now.
"A singer? That's all you know?" Hisaya asked.
Katsumi knew he was lying. Koji had made another attempt at flirtation and Katsumi had been drunk enough not to bother with the pretence that he wasn't interested. He had put up no more than a token resistance when Koji had tried to get a bit more physical with him. On cold reflection, Katsumi felt slightly ashamed by it all, but couldn't quite put his finger on why, although he knew that if he had been a bit more sober he wouldn't have let Koji do anything.
For all that Katsumi had managed to keep his voice offhand, Hisaya was not convinced. "Oh yeah, sure. That's why you let him spend fifteen minutes kissing you, right?"
***
Izumi knew Koji had been out with someone last night, but he couldn't prove it. For a start, there was none of the usual clues - no smell of cheap perfume clung to his discarded clothing, nor was there any trace of cosmetic. The kind of women Koji tended to go out with in the evenings normally wore heavy make-up and their perfume was often overpoweringly strong. He had no idea what Koji saw in women who looked and acted like prostitutes, but maybe it was that they didn't mind the idea of being a one-night stand in the way that others who looked and acted less like they charged for their services might.
Yet Koji had come back frustrated and Izumi had immediately suspected that he had been flirting with someone else. Koji normally got like this when he had spent all evening talking to someone only to have them refuse to let him go home with them.
For some reason Izumi had found himself thinking about the flirtatious bottle-blonde kid he had seen Koji with a week ago. The more he thought about it the more likely it seemed that Koji was with him. The kid wasn't the type to just put out for anyone if what Koji had said to him earlier was true, and there was no reason to suspect it wasn't despite his disparaging comments in that direction. Izumi suspected that what had happened was that Koji had gone out looking for casual sex and had just happened to meet up with the boy, had tried it on with him again and been rebuffed. It was no more than he deserved if you asked Izumi.
Koji didn't normally go for men besides him. Izumi couldn't help but feel jealous. Koji told him, again and again, that the one-night stands meant nothing to him. It was just casual sex. But it didn't feel like that as he lay awake in bed and waited for Koji to come back, wanting him, wanting him dead. He never slept well when Koji wasn't there.
Izumi felt stirrings of resentment toward this boy, the little blonde who he barely knew.
***
A few weeks later, early evening. Katsumi sang two or three bars of a pop song as he stood in front of his mirror and fiddled with his hair. He didn't know why but he felt like singing. Koji was a singer too. He hadn't made it big, but from what he'd heard, the man had deserved to. He had a fantastic voice. Katsumi thought it matched his body. That was fantastic too. Seemed to Katsumi that most things about Koji were fantastic.
They'd met deliberately several more times since their first, accidental one about a month earlier. Koji had lately been getting a bit more urgent, but Katsumi didn't care. It didn't matter if Koji wanted to sleep with him or not. Seemed that it was becoming inevitable anyway. What he wasn't sure about was how soon he wanted to let Koji do it.
A few nights ago he'd realised he'd fallen in love with the man, or if not love then in very strong infatuation. What was worse?
Months later, nineteen years old and far wiser, on cold reflection, he wondered why he had seen what he had seen in Koji… and why he hadn't spotted what seemed to be the most obvious thing about the man to most of those he asked about him later. Twenty/twenty hindsight. It was all very well people talking ad nauseam about how they'd always seen the signs. They were lying anyway, there were no signs then. It wasn't just that Katsumi was too blinded by infatuation to spot them - no one else had spotted them either.
Back then, he hadn't known what he'd known and it frightened him to think of himself as so naïve. For all the feeble protests he had mounted about not really trusting Koji, it was clear that from the start he'd trusted him totally.
The night on which he stood in front of his mirror and sung softly a few nonsense lines from a tune that his little sister liked didn't seem like it had anything to do with him now. At the time, he'd smiled at his reflection and giggled a bit, over what he could no longer remember. He sometimes wondered what he'd been thinking back then. It had been pretty simplistic thoughts about what he wanted to do that evening, about whether he should get Koji's phone number, or could he count what he was doing as dating or not. Koji had asked him to meet him later that night, was that a date or wasn't it?
Was Koji the kind who expected you to go all the way or not? Katsumi was still a virgin, having never got very far with Miyako, they'd neither of them seemed overly keen on that idea. But what about Koji? Katsumi wasn't so naïve as not to notice that Koji wanted to sleep with him. What he didn't know was if it would lead to anything more.
Katsumi wished his memories of the rest of the night were as vague as those relating to the few minutes he had spent in his bedroom prior to going out, but for all his attempts to try to forget them, they remained as sharp and as painful as broken glass. He couldn't forget. Eventually, he'd given up the attempt.
***
Izumi didn't like it. Koji's one-night stands he could tolerate if they were just that. One night stands. He didn't like what that Shibuya was becoming to Koji, they'd seen one another far too often now for Izumi's comfort. There was too much danger of Koji becoming involved mentally as well as physically. He could just have told Koji flat out that he didn't want to see Shibuya anymore, but how could he be sure, when the boy haunted the same places as they did when they were together, and the same places that Koji went alone? How could he be sure that Koji wouldn't find him again?
Izumi clenched his fists tightly and glowered angrily at nothing. He was jealous, hated to admit it, but he was jealous. Jealous of some stupid kid Koji had decided was flavour of the month at the moment. Logic told him it couldn't last, it would fizzle out if he left it, but he didn't feel he could leave it. Logic had taken a short break on Izumi. For all he said he loved him, Koji seemed to have a very shaky view of commitment.
To Izumi it seemed a far more permanent solution to the problem he perceived Shibuya as being was called for. Just telling him to leave wouldn't work. He'd seen Koji with him on a couple of occasions and it was plain that the stupid boy was infatuated with him, totally, utterly in love. It was probably being in the kitchen mutilating a potato which made him hit on the 'solution' that he did.
A test. That's what he'd say. If Koji truly loved him like he claimed to, if Shibuya really was nothing more than a passing fancy, then Koji would do it, because he loved him. If he really wanted to screw Katsumi, then he could do it before he got rid of him. Koji wasn't to carry on like this. Koji was his, and he wasn't to keep messing around with some strange boy. The more he thought of the idea, the better it seemed. If he had stopped to imagine what could have happened next, it may not have seemed like such a good idea, but at the time the idea had a potent charm. He hadn't stopped to think.
Maybe if Izumi had slept on it, he'd have come to his senses, but he hadn't. Instead, he'd called the bar they were regulars at and had asked to talk to Koji Nanjo. Waiting for an opportunity to arise naturally would take too long, the longer he left it the greater the danger that Katsumi would come to mean something more to Koji than a casual screw became. After a few minutes, the barman passed the phone to a suspiciously breathless Koji (but at least he was there, which was a relief to Izumi), who expressed mild surprise at Izumi's call. Izumi didn't care for the pleasantry and brushed off Koji's confused attempts to flirt. He had far more important things to discuss.
"Is that Shibuya kid with you?" Izumi asked brusquely.
***
Arriving back at the flat with Katsumi, Koji had felt incredibly guilty. What was there to do? He loved Izumi, he'd do anything for him… anything? Up to and including killing someone he cared for? But what did he feel for Katsumi? Part of him wanted to scream at the boy, tell him to run, tell him to leave and never speak to him again if he valued his life, but what was it that had stopped him? He may not have loved Katsumi in the way Katsumi loved him, but he certainly didn't hate him enough to wish him any real harm.
But surely if Koji didn't wish the boy any harm, he'd have told him to leave and never talk to him again?
The pair met Izumi in the living room. He held a kitchen knife in one hand, his arm hanging loosely down by his side. Katsumi looked confused and mildly startled - Koji realised that he hadn't known of Izumi's existence before now, and was probably trying to work out who he was, what he wanted and what the kitchen knife was for. Probably trying to look for an innocent explanation for the situation. Koji gripped his upper arm a little too tightly, and he winced.
"Cut that out, Koji."
Koji looked down at the boy with an expression of mild distress, then released his grip on his upper arm only to pull his wrists roughly behind his back.
"Now, Koji," he said, with a small - but to Katsumi decidedly chilling - smile, "it's up to you."
Part 3