Before that, there were other things to consider.
It was funny how little time it took for life to go into turnaround. How seemingly insignificant details could change things. Going out in the evening instead of staying at home. Buying this book rather than that one. Most of the time people didn't think much of the consequences of changing their minds as to what film they were going to see when they actually got to the cinema; the consequences could have been immense but it wasn't the kind of thing people dwelt on. Life is complicated enough without worrying how different it would have been if you'd decided to take the train to work rather than the bus.
Some decisions are bigger than others. A little thing becomes a big thing. The one day you take the train to work, the train gets held up, cancelled, crashes. The night you decided to go out you meet your soul mate. This book could change your life - and sometimes it's true. Or, in the case of Kimie Mori, going to a different bar, a place you've only ever been in when you were with a friend, by yourself. It should have been a little thing but it became a life-changing experience for all the wrong reasons. Funny how seemingly insignificant details could change things, how talking to the stranger who offered to buy you a drink rather than pretending you couldn't hear, playing it safe, could change your life for the worse.
It wasn't just Kimie's life, of course not. And it wouldn't just be his friends and family. Koji Nanjo didn't know it yet, but picking up Kimie Mori had been a mistake.
They'd left Kimie in a side street at twenty past one in the morning. He was only partly dressed; there was no way he would have passed for drunk. According to the doctors ten minutes more on the street would have killed him. That, of course, had been what Izumi had expected would happen. The salaryman who'd found him shouldn't have been up at all but the man, who lived in a flat nearby, had been out with friends; the night had gone on far too long and he had only managed to extricate himself from the group half an hour previously. Maybe if the boy had been fully clothed he would have taken him for drunk, maybe if he'd been less obviously injured, if the man who found him hadn't paused to take out his door keys…
Neither of those things had happened and Kimie had lived.
***
Kai Kurosaki hadn't heard about what happened to Kimie for three days and he had, in the official way that information of this nature is spread, no real right to know. He hadn't been told about it because nobody thought to tell him. No one had broken it to him gently, told him to sit down. He wouldn't have sat down anyway, he wasn't the type, and he wouldn't have claimed to want to have any bad news broken to him like that. It would have been rather kinder than the way he did find out, though, and he might have appreciated it even if he didn't go so far as to say so.
Kai was twenty-one. He had oddly-styled blonde hair and a way with make-up only slightly less remarkable than Koji's was; he looked like a young rock star unsuccessfully attempting incognito. He was striking rather than conventionally attractive which didn't bother him in the slightest. Despite being openly bisexual, he had a justified reputation as a womaniser. The last girl he'd gone steady with thought he was a jerk and so did a lot of people who didn't 'get' Kai Kurosaki, as did some of those who knew him well. He hadn't wanted to go to college, it hadn't struck him as all that important when he graduated from high school, and he didn't regret the decision. Kai didn't regret all that much. He liked to look forward, to what he'd do tomorrow, next week, next year. He had no time for regrets. If he didn't make it here, he'd move elsewhere and start over, do that for as long as he had to until he made it work.
But he'd wanted to do all that with Kimie. His current Mr. Right-Now.
Kimie had fascinated him from the start. Seventeen years old and innocent, or at least far more so than Kai had been at that age. That had been part of the interest for him, at least at first. The challenge. Trying to seduce a virgin who didn't even know he was being seduced. It had been singularly unsuccessful; Kimie had refused to let Kai so much as kiss him. Kai had persisted, at the outset just to prove he could but after a couple of weeks it had become, somehow, more serious than trying to get a boy he had assumed was rather prudish into bed, somewhere down the line he'd made the mistake of actually liking the boy. But then everything had changed again. Turnaround.
Sitting down and thinking about it for a while would have led Koji to realise that he knew Kai by sight; the man worked at another bar Koji sometimes went to alone. Kai had met Kimie that way. It was a good job, paid well, and suited him. He preferred the nights, and the general style of the place meant the management didn't mind the way he looked and dressed. It was far better to Kai's mind than having to cut his hair and wear a bow tie to work in one of the supposedly classier and, of course, expensive places uptown. The bar itself did not have a late license, which left Kai with time to go out. This was how Kimie had become acquainted with the subterranean bar Koji and Izumi frequented.
It was in bar-room gossip that Kai found out what had happened to him.
The boy had been conscious by the time Kai got to see him, four days after the incident, but he had been under heavy sedation. For the pain, they'd said. Kai had been warned that he would be, but seeing Kimie had come as a shock. It wasn't that he was unrecognisable; the damage to his face had been superficial. It was more that he'd never seen him in such a state. He'd been staring at the ceiling, his hair a tangled mess. The boy's eyes were only half-open and slightly glazed. Occasionally he would blink. His chest and arms were covered in bandages; he had knife wounds on his hands. How in hell did you get knife wounds on your hands? Kai wondered, before realising it was obvious - Kimie must have got them in a pathetic attempt to defend himself.
"What happened?" Kai had asked with barely restrained anger. He knew from the woman gossiping in the bar where he worked - maybe he'd just wanted a more reliable source. He couldn't believe how angry he felt, or how well he was managing to hide it.
What happened he knew. What he needed to know was how and who.
Katsumi Shibuya all over again.
***
Hisaya had been dead for under two weeks when Katsumi told Takafumi, at about ten past eight, that he was going to take a bath. It seemed like a good idea. He was plainly exhausted but still oddly agitated and Takafumi, who had been attempting to take his mind off things by re-reading an old novel, had thought it might help calm him down.
"Will you be long?"
Takafumi picked up his book again and started intently at the pages and couldn't concentrate. He wished Keisuke was here, but he'd gone to his parents' house for the weekend - at least he still got on with his family. He'd met Keisuke's parents on a few occasions, had even gone to stay with them for the New Year. They'd seemed pretty relaxed about having their son's boyfriend staying - both Takafumi and Keisuke had found this more than a little odd. Keisuke had expected his parents to react badly to his relationship with Takafumi, but it hadn't happened that way. They'd been shocked, but they'd got over it. Still, Takafumi wished he were here. He didn't know how to cope. Keisuke would have found it easy to deal with the situation, or rather he'd have found it easier than Takafumi did. Keisuke was good with bad times.
Bad times. Katsumi was taking it hard. Takafumi worried about him. Hisaya had been murdered and Katsumi seemed… well, it wasn't all grief. He was sad, terribly so. Barely spoke. But that wasn't the whole of it. Takafumi was pretty sure he knew what was going on. Survivor guilt; it had to be. Katsumi had lived and Hisaya had died and he hated being the one who'd been left behind, as it were. It hadn't been hard to work out that Katsumi suspected that whoever it was who had killed Hisaya was the same person who'd tried to kill him. He didn't know why it had been the way it had. Why him and not me? It didn't make any sense to Katsumi, didn't make much more to Takafumi.
He couldn't have said what impulse it was that had made him go and check on Katsumi. Twenty minutes, he'd said. It hadn't been much more than ten but Takafumi was uneasy. He'd watched the living-room clock, thought a bit too much and read far too little. He'd got up and opened the window, only to close it again three minutes later. Katsumi was worrying him… part of him hadn't even wanted to go and check on his friend for fear of what could have happened.
"Katsumi? Are you okay?"
After hesitating for a short while, he pushed the door open.
***
A few minutes earlier, Katsumi had closed the door, imperfectly, as it later turned out, behind him with a feeling of relief, almost of happiness. He felt totally calm, pleased to have made his way past Takafumi without arousing his friend's suspicions. He'd worried, but there'd been no need. It had been easy, almost criminally so.
He turned the bath taps on. Sitting on the floor of the bathroom, his back resting against the edge of the bath, he fished Keisuke's craft knife out of his trouser pocket, murmuring an apology to its owner before reaching up and placing it on the side. He was sorry, but he couldn't not do this… he'd made up his mind already. He'd left a note in the bedroom Takafumi had let him use. He couldn't remember what it was he'd written any more, even though he'd spent three hours on it, had drafted it over and over again. Thanks for everything and sorry seemed pretty likely. The way Katsumi saw it he was a liability to his friends.
It's funny what you think of in times like this. Katsumi remembered that was his nineteenth birthday in two days. He didn't want it. Wouldn't see it. Good.
Turning the taps off, Katsumi got undressed, folding his clothes - he didn't want to make any more of a mess than he had to - got into the bath and picked up the knife, hesitating only momentarily. It hurt, but he'd been in worse pain. The scars Koji had left were still prominent; he'd carry them for the rest of his life.
"Not," he said quietly, "that that's going to be long." After a few seconds he realised he was crying.
The second cut wasn't as deep. Hands slippery, he'd fumbled the knife and dropped it over the side, then looked at his blood-slicked hands, the scarlet trails running down his arms. He let them fall to his sides, watching incuriously as his blood mixed with the water. Lazy red spirals. He thought it looked almost pretty. He felt totally detached from what was happening. The pain he could cope with and it seemed more as if he was watching someone else than doing it himself. Blood is thicker than water…
Jesus. Madoka. He'd forgotten. What would she say? He doubted she'd understand why, that he'd just had to, that things couldn't just carry on as they were. He couldn't cope with the memories, the guilt. All the maybes. All he could think of when he was trying to sleep, to think of nothing, to just relax. Things he should have done, things he shouldn't have done… like a list. He'd written them out earlier that afternoon, all the things he'd done wrong. It was his fault; everything that had happened was his fault...
He'd had a lot of ifs and no answer to any of them. If I'd just thought, it all came down to that, all the others... that and if I'd never spoken to Koji in the first place. An attempt at atonement? Katsumi didn't know. All he knew was that he didn't want to make any more mistakes and considering his past record, he couldn't think of any other way to make sure…
He smiled sadly. Madoka. She'd understand some day even if she wouldn't tomorrow. Well, little sister, I wish you better luck than I've had. Whatever happened to him, Katsumi hoped she'd be happy. She deserved it.
Katsumi closed his eyes.
***
Takafumi had shouted Katsumi's name and he'd opened his eyes a fraction, closing them again almost immediately as if it were too much effort to keep them open, but it was proof of life. Cursing under his breath, Takafumi fought to get him out of the bath. Katsumi wasn't heavy, he was, if anything, far too light for someone of his age and height and hadn't been eating properly for a while and had never regained the weight he'd lost in hospital, but he was a dead weight in Takafumi's arms. After a struggle, he managed to get him out and onto the floor, wrapping a towel round him. God, what a mess. Now what?
After quickly dressing Katsumi's still bleeding wrists with a length of bandage he'd found after a frantic hunt in his medicine cabinet, he ran to the living room and dialled 110 for an ambulance, desperately fighting down his feelings of panic. Imagine you've graduated, Takafumi thought to himself. Doctors don't panic. Pretend you don't know him; he's a patient, not a friend. He wished Keisuke were here. He couldn't escape the feeling that this wouldn't have happened if Keisuke had been here, irrational though it was.
Why hadn't he noticed how depressed the boy must have been? What kind of state of mind must Katsumi have been in that the only way out had been suicide? Slitting his wrists in the bath? Not even nineteen years old yet and all he'd wanted from life was to end it…
Takafumi just hadn't seen Katsumi as the suicidal type. Wrong, wrong, completely wrong.
Part 9