"What are you going to do?" Keisuke asked.
Sat in the passenger seat of Katsumi's car, he watched his friend anxiously. Katsumi had been in a state of angry tension ever since they'd seen Koji at that coffee shop, and with good reason. They both knew Takafumi well enough to know what he would and wouldn't do, and voluntarily going anywhere with a man like Koji Nanjo was not one of the things that he would have done. Takafumi wasn't like that. He didn't do that kind of thing. It was dangerous.
"What am I going to do?" Katsumi echoed, never once taking his eyes off the road. "What do you think I'm going to do? Go home?"
Despite appearances to the contrary, Katsumi had a good memory - both a blessing and a curse to him. He hated being able to remember exactly what Koji and his lover had done to him. Yet one of the other things he'd found he could remember was the way to Koji's flat, even if in order to get there he'd had to drive to that ridiculous bar he hated so much and make his way to it that way. Whatever. He knew it was a roundabout way to get there, but he couldn't think of any other way to do it.
"They could kill him, Keisuke," he said obliquely. "It's what they do. Rape and murder."
Keisuke didn't reply. He had a pretty good idea of what had happened to Katsumi though he'd never told either him or Takafumi. Some things just went without saying. He'd been upset for Katsumi, but… but it had all seemed so distant. Of course it had happened, you only had to look at Katsumi to know that, but it had seemed almost unbelievable. To think of the same thing happening to Takafumi made him feel sick, but if he hadn't been with Katsumi he didn't know what he'd have done. Called the police and hoped for the best, he imagined, but would it have done any good? Katsumi didn't seem to think so.
"Keisuke, do me a favour will you? When we get to Koji's flat, wait in the lobby. I'll go up alone. If I'm not back down in five minutes, call the police. Tell them you heard screams from the flat or something, I don't care what." He turned to face Keisuke, anxious.
He turned his attention back to the road again. He didn't want Keisuke to see how frightened he was. He was glad Keisuke hadn't noticed how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel.
***
Koji didn't know who he had expected to be at the door and he didn't even know why he had answered it. He'd been busy.
It was funny. Yet again, different but the same. Just like it was when they walked through the doors and didn't ever fight him off. Katsumi had screamed, once, and tried to force himself to keep calm, holding back the tears. Kimie hadn't been so restrained, crying openly and begging Koji to stop. This one, Takafumi (Koji remembered why the name sounded familiar; Katsumi had a friend called Takafumi. He wondered if this was the same one. Strange that he called them all by their first names. Well not really if you thought about it, you could hardly say he hadn't been intimate with them), had struggled, to the extent that he'd given Koji several bruises, scratch marks on his cheek and shoulders. Well, of course he had, he wasn't too confused and frightened to think straight - at least he hadn't been at first - or too drunk to resist. But in the end he'd wept too, in pain and perhaps humiliation. Koji thought he liked men better when they were crying and afraid and hated him and there was nothing they could do.
There'd been this song in English; Koji had heard it quite by chance. A few lines went something like 'I didn't mean to hurt you but you're pretty when you cry'. Every so often he found himself being reminded of it.
"Where's Takafumi?"
Koji hadn't expected Katsumi Shibuya, that was for sure. Every time Koji saw him he had changed in some way. He was a chameleon. The delicate, pensive boy Koji remembered seeing the night he'd killed Hisaya seemed to have gone the same way as the vivacious teenager he'd first met. He hadn't killed him as well, had he? Koji couldn't remember ever having touched him, but murdering Hisaya had destroyed another part of Katsumi - he'd noticed the bandages Katsumi still wore round his wrists almost as soon as he'd opened the door to him. So it had been self murder this time. He didn't look cheerful or scared or wistful now. The only emotions Koji could see in the boy's eyes were anger and hostility - the look was one he'd often seen in Izumi's eyes, but had never expected to find in Katsumi.
"What makes you think he's here at all?" Koji enquired, smiling a little. It was Katsumi's friend Takafumi, then.
Katsumi pulled away from him, darting across and out of the room before Koji could react and once in the hall he yanked roughly at the nearest door handle, flinging it open and disappearing inside the room, shouting his friend's name. Koji ran after him, arriving in his bedroom bare seconds after Katsumi had slammed the door shut. He knew he should have killed this Takafumi himself instead of waiting for Izumi to come home… but Izumi had told him to wait…
"Bastard." Katsumi said furiously. He had looked up when Koji opened the door. Sat on the floor, he had his arms round Takafumi, his expression one of revulsion and hatred. The older man was by now wearing his shirt and trousers again, clinging desperately to Katsumi and crying quietly. He hadn't tried to get away; Koji had told him to stay where he was and he had. Something about Koji commanded - what? Not respect. It had to be fear. As he watched, Katsumi looked down at his friend, his furious expression softening to one of anxious concern, saying something he couldn't hear, probably an attempt at reassurance, before turning back to him. "I should probably kill you on general principle!"
At that moment Koji didn't doubt he could have done.
***
Keisuke had one hand on the cold black plastic of the payphone's receiver when Katsumi yelled his name.
"Keisuke, for god's sake, help!"
Katsumi stood in the doorway to the stairwell, holding one of the double doors open with one hand. He was breathless, frightened, shocked by his own audacity. How, he wondered, did I get away with this? Why am I still alive? Where exactly had he worked up the nerve to even try it? He'd been terrified all the time he'd been with Koji, all he'd wanted was to get the hell out. He didn't know how he'd managed to make it out of the flat. He'd had to resort to slapping Takafumi to snap him out of his daze (there was no way he'd have been able to carry him), then practically dragging him past Koji and out of the door, lashing out blindly at Koji in an attempt to wind him, not even caring if he'd actually hit the man or not. The blow hadn't been as hard as he'd have liked, but it had been enough to act as a distraction. He didn't know if it had been necessary but he hadn't wanted to chance it.
When Keisuke got up close, he could see that Katsumi was pale and shivering slightly - it was cold in the hallways and he'd lost his coat, though that probably wasn't all it was.
What Koji could do here - again, they were practically in public - Katsumi didn't know, but all the same. Hadn't the man done enough already? Why tempt fate?
***
Izumi was going to kill him. Absolutely kill him.
He had just let - through stupidity and incompetence and funk - someone he plain knew he could easily dominate get the upper hand. He'd just let it happen. Why? Why had he worried about the police coming? Why had he believed Katsumi's cockamamie story about having someone waiting for him downstairs? He'd just let two people, both of whom were a good foot shorter than he was, both of whom he knew from experience were weaker than he was, walk right over him; run past him and out the door. He hadn't realised until he'd looked out of the window, in time to see Katsumi practically jumping into the front of a small red car then driving away rather too fast, (he hadn't known the boy could drive. Then again, he'd never asked him if he could) how absolutely terrified Katsumi must have been. But looking back he could see - Katsumi had been afraid, terribly so, but his anger and fears for his friend had overridden it at first.
On all the other occasions he'd met Katsumi, he'd been the one making the running. This time it had been different.
And Izumi was going to kill him. There was no way he could tell Izumi about Katsumi just walking in here and... No way. It just wouldn't work. What the hell was he going to do now? He couldn't just brazen his way out, couldn't just say 'oh, he ran away'. Izumi would go mad. There was only one thing he could do: he would have to go and find another person - another man, he'd told Izumi he had a man with him. The only way to stop Izumi from losing his temper completely would be to find someone he could use as a decoy… a scapegoat. The phrase bubbled up unbidden.
He just hoped he'd be able to find someone in time.
***
Katsumi sat back and ran his hands through his hair, then stifled a yawn. Normally he hated traffic jams (this one was probably because of an accident up ahead, the road had been busy but clear a few minutes ago) but he kind of welcomed this one. He wondered if he should turn the radio on then thought no, not politic, not unless one of the others asks for it on. He wondered how Takafumi could stand the silence in here. When he started thinking too hard he normally put the TV on, listened to music or read a book or something; anything as long as it blotted out his thoughts.
He wondered what he could say. He'd heard the lot himself, the weak, pathetic phrases people trotted out at times like this. Are you okay was the stupidest of them all; of course Takafumi wouldn't be feeling okay. It had always struck him as absurd, that one. Are you okay? Of course, I wear the bandages for the fun of it, I think rape is sexy and I take all my holidays in hospital, there's nothing like it if you want to relax. What do you think? Is there anything I can do to help was just plain infuriating. Katsumi had found that it had only reinforced his own feeling of vulnerability and utter helplessness. I understand how you're feeling? No. Wrong. And completely inaccurate. He didn't understand how Takafumi felt about all this. The way he had felt could easily have been completely different from the way Takafumi was feeling now. There was no prescribed way for dealing with a rape. Or not dealing with it. Katsumi hadn't dealt with it himself - he'd just tried to forget that it happened. He knew it wasn't healthy but he had enough to worry about as it was.
Anyway, Takafumi would talk if he wanted to. If he wanted to be quiet or fall asleep or just sit with his head on Keisuke's shoulder and stare out of the window and see absolutely nothing, it was his affair.
How do I feel now? Katsumi wondered, idly flicking the dangling key rings attached to his car keys. As well as the usual leather promotional thing from the garage ('thank you for spending a small fortune on a Toyota as opposed to any other practically identical make of cute little car', or words to that effect), he had somehow acquired a plastic Sailor Mars and it was this that he was fiddling with whilst waiting for the traffic to start moving again. He really wasn't sure how he felt. He was still angry, of course, and still rather scared, but he'd been angry and scared for months. He was even almost getting used to feeling generally depressed and not being able to satisfactorily explain why he was unhappy. What he wasn't accustomed to was confusion. Why Takafumi?
By the same token, why Hisaya and Eri, why Kimie Mori, why me?
Why did Koji have to rape or kill anybody?
***
If Kai had owned a cat he'd have kicked it. As he didn't and certainly wasn't going to get one just so he could use it as a football when he got angry, he settled for cursing loudly and fluently to the four walls of his apartment before leaning out of the window and hurling an empty beer can at his neighbours' cat, a large, evil-minded tom - called something almost entirely inappropriate like Cuddles or Fluffy - which had probably fathered most of the stray cats in the area. He'd hated that bastard animal ever since one of his exes, in a fit of pique, had said he had more in common with it than he'd like to think. He couldn't remember which one it was now. She'd been called something like Aya or Miya or something, he didn't care as long as Cuddles or whatever got off his bloody balcony. And Miya could go jump too. She'd been a weird girl, had Miya. She'd had a brother of about his age who she never mentioned except to say the family was better off without him. Too bad Kai knew her brother, though they'd never been more than friendly. Best not to mention it to Miya.
He was angry. Where did that get him? Nowhere, really, but he didn't care about that either.
Kai blamed the whole thing firmly on Kimie Mori. It hadn't been easy to talk to the kid before, but now it was even harder. Now he'd finally gotten out of hospital he didn't go out much, certainly didn't go in bars, and if he hadn't realised he was being flirted with before he certainly hadn't minded it. Now he refused to countenance any kind of flirtation; he had slapped Kai when he'd touched his shoulder and practically screamed 'get off me!' at him. Kai wasn't easily embarrassed but he'd found himself thinking - for the first time in a long while - everyone's staring at me, and wishing it wasn't the case.
Bloody kid.
Or that was what he'd thought at the time. Looking out of the window again at the depressing view of a side street that his flat commanded, on yet another wet, miserable afternoon (the weather at this time of year was the pits), he didn't really know if that was what he thought any more.
He supposed it wasn't really Kimie's fault. Of course not. It had been stupid of him to choose to go home with whoever it was he'd gone home with (if he'd even chosen to - Kai hadn't thought of that before) but Kai had a horrible feeling if he'd been in the same position he'd have done exactly the same thing. He was widely considered to be the type of man who threw caution to the wind incredibly quickly and it was a fair summation of his character. If an attractive stranger had invited him back to their flat he'd probably have taken them up on it and he probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. But he could look after himself. If anyone had tried to kill him he'd have broken their jaw for starters, knife or no knife.
There had to be some way to find out who'd done this. There just had to be. Whatever asshole had done this would have to pay for it. You didn't go around raping and stabbing people for 'fun'. You just didn't do it. You certainly couldn't expect to do it and get away with it. And whoever had done this wouldn't. He'd make sure of that much. And he could only think of one way to do it. So he'd promised himself he wouldn't have anything to do with all this, with this way of behaving, with this life any more - but who else would be able to carry out something like this? How else would he get away with something like this, this thing he wanted to do?
After picking the phone up off the table, Kai collapsed unceremoniously onto the couch, dropping the phone on one of the cushions nearby before opening the address book another of his girlfriends had brought him so that he couldn't use the 'I lost your number' excuse on her any more (he'd torn the page with her name and address on it out when he dumped her. Occasionally he'd wish he hadn't), flicking through it. He found the business card - now rather dog-eared, the once-white card discoloured - about halfway through the book. It looked innocuous enough, but appearances…
He hesitated only momentarily before he dialled the number on it.
Part 11