AN: My first free day since Christmas! Okay, so my meager free time has been focused on finishing chapter twelve. This chapter ends on a cliffhanger and I don't want you to have to wait forever for it to be resolved.

Chapter Eleven

Arima hung up the phone and looked at his friend cautiously. "Is it okay if I stay here tonight?"

"Yeah, sure," Hideaki replied cheerfully. "I'll make your favorite ramen and we'll watch people humiliate themselves on daytime reality shows."

Arima nodded absently and sat on the couch, pulling his feet up on the cushions and wrapping his arms around his knees. The expression on Arima's face brought Hideaki back to his revelations of abuse by his birth mother. Suddenly, all of Arima's cold, defensive behavior made sense, the way he pulled away from people and coiled his emotions and desires up inside himself to avoid getting hurt. Hideaki understood this painful withdrawal and felt the other boy's loneliness like a hovering dark cloud.

"Arima," he began. The doorbell rang distractingly, cutting off his words. "Um, I'll be back in a minute." Arima didn't look up.

Hideaki opened the door to Yukino's worried face. "Hi, Asaba…" Her voice trailed off and her eyes narrowed. "What happened to your face?"

"Oh." He touched the bruising on his cheek and chin absently. "Uh, there was this misunderstanding at a club… Let's just say that I don't need a girlfriend with such a strong right hook, y'know?" He grinned cheesily, but she didn't smile back. "Well, anyway, what can I do for you this lovely morning?"

"I'm looking for Arima," she said, eyes piercing through his mask. "No one seems to know where he is and I thought he might have come here." She watched Hideaki's face with a knowing gaze. "He's here, isn't he?"

Hideaki paused, frozen with indecision. Arima needed to reconcile with Yukino, but not now, not in this black mood. He rubbed the doorknob with his thumb, still blocking the entrance. "I actually just got home…" he started to say. Yukino's eyes were looking behind him.

"Those are Arima's shoes." She pointed calmly to the second pair on the floor of the genkan. Her eyes confronted him with a look of challenge and a pained betrayal. "Why are you lying to me, Asaba?

When he didn't reply immediately, she started to push past him into the apartment but Hideaki stopped her with his arm, trying to keep her back. Yukino's body was small but fierce and she squirmed against his grip like an animal bent on survival.

"Arima!" she cried. "I really need to talk to you. I swear I listen to whatever you say. Just please talk to me!" Her voice cracked with desperation and Arima appeared in the doorway to the living room, watching her with a cold, blank expression. "Arima, please!"

Hideaki released her and she took a few steps toward her lover but Arima closed the distance between the two of them rapidly. He put both hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her yielding, confused body past Hideaki, out the doorway. "I don't want to see you right now," he said coolly, and shut the door in her face.

The way Yukino looked before the door shut would linger in Hideaki's mind forever, the image of her face white and stricken with shock and devastation. It was an expression of pure terror at the sudden blatant rejection. A selfish part of Hideaki felt somewhat justified that she now had a taste of what he had to go through every day. Another part of him recognized that he loved Yukino like a sister and he knew the pain she felt as intimately as his own. Cold misery settled in his stomach like a lead weight.

He watched Arima in silence as the other boy turned and stalked back to the main room, scowling darkly. Hideaki went to the kitchen and swallowed an aspirin. He looked at the discarded ice cubes melting in the sink. "Are you hungry?" he asked Arima's brooding figure on the sofa.

"No," was the quiet reply.

Hideaki opened the fridge. "Do you want a soda?"

"Okay." Arima had to uncurl his body to drink the sweet beverage that his friend brought him. He slouched down into the sofa, holding the cold can between his fingertips with his gaze far away.

"Well, I didn't get any breakfast, so I'm making some food," Hideaki declared, returning to the kitchen. He turned on the little radio on the shelf and set himself to the task of washing rice. The brownish flakes of husks swirled on the surface of the water. The radio played an upbeat hip-hop song and he danced a little as he drained out the water and set the rice on the stove. He turned his head and saw that Arima was watching him covertly, his pale face half-turned.

"Are you sure you don't want some breakfast?"

Arima looked back at his soda can and his hair fell over his eyes. "Maybe a little."

Hideaki went to the fridge and grabbed some eggs for omelets. Arima had always liked his sweet omelets, though he had never admitted it. By the time Hideaki had finished the first omelet the rice was nearly done. As he stirred it, little puffs of warm steam rose out of its moist, white depths.

When he looked back to the sofa, Arima was leaning on the armrest, halfway lying on it, tracing the pattern of the fabric with his index finger. Hideaki picked up his sketchbook from where it had fallen between the armchair and the table. He sat on the floor before Arima and opened it to a blank page. Arima scowled at the hand holding the pencil.

"What are you doing?"

Hideaki looked down at the milky blankness of his paper. "I'm drawing you, of course."

"No." Arima started to curl up defensively, covering his face with one hand. When he realized the futility of this gesture, he slid of the sofa quickly and bent to knock the pencil from where it had come to rest harmlessly on the paper. "Don't do that," he ordered.

It was only a glancing hit that didn't hurt Hideaki's hand at all, but his pencil left a dark, erratic line on the formerly pristine page.

"You never let me draw you," he complained. "Why?"

Arima knelt beside him and crossed his arms, trying to cover his vulnerability with anger. "I don't like it." He bit his lip and glared unhappily. "It's weird. Like you're looking inside me. I hate it."

Hideaki set down his pad, smiling crookedly. "I think maybe you're a little paranoid," he said. He stood up then and went to take the food off the stove.

-

That night seemed to go on forever. Arima tossed and turned on the floor of the living room, sighing brokenly in his sleep. Lying beside him, Hideaki was afraid to touch him, knowing the weakness in his own body and the surety of Arima's icy rejection.

He got up and paced about the apartment, pressing his face against the cool window pane. Opening the door, he went out on the little iron landing above the stairs. The moon hung in the sky like a lop-sided smile in the darkness. A cat cried in the distance. The air was too cold to stay out long and Hideaki's body refused any tragically romantic thoughts of freezing to death outside his own apartment. He returned to Arima's side and wrapped himself in the warm comfort of the blankets to find a few hours of dreamless sleep.

-

Hideaki yawned loudly in class and tapped his pen noisily against the top of his desk. The girl next to him looked up with a brief flash of annoyance that melted away into surprise when she saw who he was. Hideaki ignored her, along with all the other attention he received for his uncharacteristic behavior, subdued manner and the bruising on his face. He had woken once again to find Arima gone once again with no note or explanation.

Fine, he thought. Fine for you to use me as your crash pad, your little floor mat hideout whenever you want, you ungrateful little kid. He didn't really mean any of it but repeating it to himself made him feel better, less useless and pathetic somehow.

When he saw Arima after class coming down the stairs from the science room all bitter thoughts fled his mind. "Hey," he called, catching the other boy's attention. "You took off early, huh?"

Arima nodded pleasantly. He looked clean and nice, the model student once more with his gracious face firmly in place. "I had to stop by my house to get my uniform and books and stuff before classes started."

"Oh yeah," Hideaki replied, feeling stupid and silly for the initial mental images he'd formed of Arima jumping off a bridge or running into the path of a train.

Arima looked past his shoulder and his facial expression froze into a perfect smile, eyes closed and head tilted with just the right amount of polite attention.

"Arima," Yukino's voice said behind Hideaki. The orange-haired boy backed away quickly, letting her approach her boyfriend.

"Good morning," Arima said lightly, barely looking at her serious face. "I'm so sorry about yesterday. You must have been looking all over for me but I just wasn't feeling well." He turned his head away from her to glance out at the high window. "Maybe it's the weather."

Hideaki swallowed hard. Students walked past them on their way to classes and activities, talking loudly. Yukino stared at Arima for a moment without speaking and her cautious, imploring expression turned to bitterness. "You can stop it already," she said heavily. "You don't have to keep pretending."

"What are you talking about?" Arima asked, a hint of forced mirth in his voice. His eyes had narrowed to slits above his broad smile.

Yukino drew in a harsh breath, her face flushed and frightened. "I think I need to apologize to you. I must have hurt you without meaning it. I deserted you and didn't even realize it. I'm sorry."

"Deserted me?" Arima's laugh was brittle. "When?"

"After the festival two years ago." Yukino looked at her skirt. "When you told me my rank would drop if I got too busy… and I said it was okay, you could have the top spot because it didn't matter to me." She exhaled a shuddering chuckle. "And I walked away." Her voice sounded high and incredulous, as though she couldn't believe her own actions.

Hideaki watched Arima's face undergo a familiar transformation from tightly controlled pleasantness to cold darkness. "I have to go," he said in a low voice, pushing past her to walk away. Yukino turned and stared after him, her face white with disbelief and fear.

"I have to go." How many times had Hideaki heard those aloof words to brush him aside so casually? But this was the first time Yukino had seen the abrupt change, the dropping of the mask and the only the second time she had experienced such a chilling rebuff. She didn't even seem to know Hideaki was there until he touched her back.

"Follow him," he said softly in her ear. "Don't give up, Yukinon."

Her features hardened and she turned to give him a resolute look. "I wasn't planning on it," she said firmly.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked briskly down the hall after her quarry and the resolve in her step, the straight line of her gaze encouraged Hideaki immensely. Yukino had a clear purpose and when she was in this mode, nothing could stop her.

He watched from a distance as she caught up to Arima's departing figure and pulled him into an empty room, shutting the door behind them. Hideaki smirked at the image. Yukino got what she wanted. He went down the hall and stood in front of the door to make sure no one disturbed the two of them.

A trio of class F girls passed by, and he gave them a wide smile in return for their waving and giggling. He managed a friendly nod for Tonami when the taller boy walked by with some other members of the basketball club. Tonami looked as though he didn't know whether to return the gesture or not, caught between guilt towards Hideaki and loyalty to Tsubaki. He managed to meet Hideaki's eyes and duck his head in acknowledgement before he moved on.

"You know that guy?" Hideaki heard one of the other boys ask. Tonami said something in return but by then he was too far away for Hideaki to hear. Harsh laughter rose in Hideaki's ears and for a moment he couldn't think where it came from, this hysterical, sobbing noise, until he realized the voice echoed through the door behind him.

"Arima?" he called without response. He knocked lightly on the door and then pounded on the hard surface, panic cresting as the laughter rose higher and louder, raking at his ears like claws. "Arima, I know you're in there. Let me in."

Yukino opened the door and he fell forward, stumbling into the room. Arima stood with his head thrown back, laughing manically, uncontrollably, blind terror in his eyes. Hideaki reacted without thinking, catching Arima's shoulders and shaking hard so that the dark head snapped backwards. Wide black eyes stared at him without recognition and the laughter stopped but Arima continued to suck in sobbing breaths, heart racing to explosion. Desperate, Hideaki hit him with an open-handed blow to the side of his face and the hysterical actions ended abruptly. Arima blinked at him twice and dropped his head, breathing slowing.

"Thank you, Asaba," he said softly.

Yukino inhaled deeply and wrapped her arms around herself. Hideaki brushed the hair from Arima's eyes with his fingertips. "You're tired," he said, feeling suddenly bone-weary himself. "I'll walk you home."

Slowly, Arima shook his head. "I'll be fine," he said firmly. "Take Miyazawa home if you want to help me."

Hideaki felt helpless. He dropped his hands. "Okay," he replied, voice calm. "Call me if you need anything."

Yukino followed him out of the room without a word. She paused once to give Arima a sad, plaintive look and she didn't say anything until they were out of the school and on the street.

"So much for being a model student," she murmured bitterly. He wasn't sure who she was referring to. "Skipping classes again. I just wanted to be with him."

Hideaki stopped walking and looked at the small, conflicted young woman watching the cement beneath her feet. "You want to go back to class?" he asked.

"No. It's too late for that." Ginko leaves fell around them. One caught in the straps of her satchel. She lifted her head and looked him over slowly, lips parted. "Who are you, Asaba?"

"Eh?" He pretended not to understand.

"I thought I knew Arima and I thought I knew you, but you've both been lying to me and everyone else all this time." Her shoulders slumped beneath the neatly pressed jacket with its pale blue tie. He was transfixed by the brilliant whiteness of her pressed collar.

"I just want to go back to that time," she admitted with dejection. "I just want to feel like there are no secrets, that we are all so close and we know each other like no one else."

He snorted softly in amusement.

"You're going to tell me people aren't that simple," she said wryly. "Aren't you, Asaba?"

He slipped his hands into his pockets and started to walk again, anticipating that she would follow beside him. She did.

"I'm going to tell you that Arima isn't that simple," he said, feeling as though he was lifting something heavy from his shoulders and giving it—at least part of it—to her. "I'm going to tell you that when Arima was a kid his birth mother neglected and abused him. She would hurt him and leave him alone for days without caring at all. It's a miracle that he didn't die, that he found a good home eventually with his aunt and uncle. But he still carries a lot of bad stuff from that time, a lot of scars, a lot of memories that he pushed way and blocked out of his mind." Yukino's mouth dropped open. "Then his mom saw him on TV that day when he was on the show. Since then she's been hounding him, bringing back all the bad stuff, and he's had a tough time dealing with it."

Yukino stared at the rough trunks of the ginko trees growing by the sidewalk, her eyes wide with emotion. Her short hair swung against her face with each step. "Why… why does he tell you all this and not me?"

Hideaki bit the inside of his cheek painfully. A noisy bus rumbled past them, leaving an acrid smell in the air. He didn't know what to tell her. Because I'm expendable. He can risk spilling his guts and losing me, but he wouldn't have dared to destroy his precious ties with you.

Yukino's shoes scuffed against the pavement as she stopped. "Asaba?" A hint of tears choked her voice.

Facing her, Hideaki paused, considering the best words to speak. "Well, I like to think of it like this: some people are like the moon and are great at reflecting and understanding others' emotions but they can't make any light of their own. Me and Arima are like that." He gestured to her. "You, on the other hand, are a sun person. You don't need someone else to be happy or to give you happiness; you make it yourself. I can understand and empathize with Arima but I can't heal him. Only you can do that."

Yukino looked out at the moving traffic her head still bowed. "I don't know what to say to him," she admitted. "I don't know how to make him listen."

"You know," he told her. "He just wants to be loved, but he's so scared of it, he doesn't really understand how it works." He couldn't believe how straight and calm his face was as he spoke to her. "He loved his mom so much and look what she did to him. Arima is terrified that you'll hate him, that he'll hurt you. He'll try to push you away but you can't let him. You can't leave him alone."

Yukino turned to him with a distant look in her eyes. Her fingers curled tightly around the edges of her long sleeves. She looked solemn, set in understanding. "I did that once and I'm never making that mistake again. From now on, I'll support him as much as I can."

Face set with the old fire of determination she walked past him, down the sidewalk on her own and he watched her go. Ginko leaves fluttered behind her like tiny fans in the wind.

-

Spread across the smooth surface of his bed, Hideaki lay on his back in his boxer shorts, arms stretched out above his head. He breathed deeply and lifted each hand to trace the inside of his arms, following a line from his sternum to the hollows of his elbows, the heavy veins of his wrists, and the points of his fingers. He ran his fingertips down an invisible path from the underside of his chin, over the lump of his Adam's apple, the bridge of his ribcage, and the soft skin of his stomach, to his groin. On the windowsill, the radio played soft classical music.

He felt lost, invisible, and uncertain of his own existence. He was afraid of waking up and being nothing more than a cloud of consciousness hovering over his friends, voiceless and bodiless, always aching with regrets and unspoken words. If he disappeared or became a ghost, would anyone know? Would anyone cry? Maybe his mother. Maybe Yukino and Rika and some of the other girls. Everyone else would go on. Arima would go on, a little more alone, but would he notice?

Without the burden of Arima's secrets on his shoulders, on his soul, he felt insubstantial and disposable. Yukino carried that weight now and he had no place or purpose in her boyfriend's life. Once he had thought there was no one worth this kind of sacrifice. He had vowed never to give up on his own happiness to please someone else.

He smelled the skin of his palms, smelled sweat and traces of food, salty rice crackers and miso soup. He wondered if he kissed someone, would they taste the miso in his mouth?

"As if you would know," Arima had said.

A blues piano song started playing on the radio. It started off soft and jazzy before getting faster and more discordant, writhing with a raw energy. Hideaki shivered, feeling the notes were speaking to the core of his own anguish, urging him to hurt more. It frightened him and he turned off the radio quickly, returning the room to silence.

-

Somehow, Hideaki made it through another day of mind-numbing classes with instructors desperate to shove everything he might possibly need for a college entrance exam into his brain. At home again, he kicked off his shoes in the genkan and went to slump on the sofa, intent on crowding the oppressive sea of knowledge out of his head with a long dose of mindless television. He fell asleep during the second game show and woke much later to the sound of the phone ringing a jarring tune. Darkness covered the room and he tripped over the low table on his way to the phone, banging a knee on its hard surface. Rubbing the injured area, he picked up the receiver and uttered a breathless greeting.

"Ah…Asaba." Arima's voice trailed off in a shaky hiccup of laughter.

"Soichiro," Hideaki said, suddenly wide awake. "What's wrong?"

Silence hummed on the other end. Finally Arima spoke in a slow, uneven voice. "I remembered more stuff today. In class I freaked out because I thought I was bleeding all over my desk. It was a hallucination." He chuckled eerily. "She kicked me so much that I coughed up blood all over the floor…she stabbed me with scissors too, when I stained her dress. It really hurt. She was so beautiful."

Hideaki couldn't even comprehend what to say, what to tell him. Arima's pain was so far beyond him, so far past his ability to cure. "Soichiro," he breathed, clenching his teeth. "Soichiro…"

"But I… I hurt people even worse," Arima said, voice grating. "I hurt people without even touching them."

"It's not the same," Hideaki told him. "Don't think that."

Arima didn't seem to hear him. "I wanted to hurt Miyazawa today," he said. "When she tried to talk to me I pushed her down… almost raped her."

"No," Hideaki said, voice breaking. If you ever loved him, Yukino... he thought despairingly.

"She didn't want it," Arima continued, short sobs punctuating his words. "I held her down on the floor. I tore her shirt open. I wanted to possess her, keep her all to myself… destroy her if I had to."

"You love her," Hideaki insisted feebly, willing everything to make sense.

"That isn't love," Arima declared harshly. "If I loved her I would stay away from her, never come near her ever again."

Hideaki glared at the glow of the television in the dark room, the painted faces of the actors on the screen. He felt a sudden anger rising in his throat. "Don't give me that self-sacrificing superhero bullshit," he growled. "I got enough of that from my parents and I can tell you for a fact that it only works in the movies."

"Then what the hell do you want me to do?" Arima demanded. "I've opened this box of poison and I can't close it. I can't forget."

"And I can't close it either," Hideaki said heavily, dropping words like stones. "I can't fix this. Yukino is the only one. She's the one you should have called, not me." His voice seemed suddenly loud and cold in his own ears. It echoed in the silence. On the television, someone screamed.

"I can't go to her," Arima said at last, his voice shaking. "It's over. Everything's over."

"You still feel something for her," Hideaki declared. "Give her another chance." The phone was slippery in his sweaty hand and the mouthpiece moist from his breath. "If she runs… fine. But I'd give this girl more credit than that. It isn't— It can't be easy to give up on someone like you."

Arima laughed darkly at his words. "Only an idiot would still even be talking to me at this point."

Hideaki smiled so tightly that it hurt. "Well, that's your favorite nickname for me, so I guess it must fit." He felt a smooth curve of relief in his mind. "It's okay."

Silence filled the other end for a long moment. "You always say stuff like that," Arima muttered, a sharp edge in his words. "You let me say anything, make fun of yourself… for what?"

Nervously, Hideaki ran his tongue over his dry lips. He really needed a drink. "What do you mean?" He pushed laughter into his voice.

"I'm talking about you playing with me, pretending everything's okay, like someday I'll just calm down and get over this." The derision in his voice burned Hideaki. "Talking shit about yourself to make me feel better. I get it now. You still think you can pat my ego and distract me from anything. You still want to use me, don't you?"

On the television a woman threw her sparkling wine glass at a window and it shattered, trailing lines of red. He knew Arima's words held truth and he had nothing to say in reply, no comfort, no love. "I don't know..."

"Stop patronizing me, Asaba," Arima hissed. "You're the same as everyone else."

There was the clattering sound of a phone shaking against its cradle and the line went dead. Hideaki was frozen, watching the advertisement for stain remover that flashed on the screen in garish colors. He hung up the phone and dialed Arima's number, a sudden terror taking over. The phone rang several times without answer.

In his chest, he could feel the beating of his heart doing triple time the rhythm of the empty rings. Swearing, he slammed the phone down and ran damp fingers through his hair, pressing them into his scalp, pulling his skin tighter over his face.

"It's over. Everything's over," Arima had said.

Hideaki grabbed his jacket and keys, pulled on his shoes and ran for the door.