Once Tsuzuki was well enough to explore his prison, he discovered that the place Muraki had described as a "sanctuary" consisted of about a dozen rooms connected by a U-shaped hallway, including a bathroom and kitchen, and all appointed in a style that harkened back to the Taisho: a quaint, almost clinical mix of traditional Japanese and European country. He couldn't be sure if that was simply an era that spoke to Muraki, or if it was done intentionally, for Tsuzuki's sake, but it reminded him at every turn of a time in his life that he would rather have been allowed to forget.
There were windows, but they didn't work the way windows should. When he looked through them, Tsuzuki could see nothing but bright sunlight or starless black, and that was his only indication of the time of day. Nor could any sound from outside that might give him a sense of where he was penetrate that glass.
They didn't open. Tsuzuki knew that because he tried everything including breaking their panes as soon as his strength began to return. Ended up breaking a chair instead. Neither did Tsuzuki know what might have happened had he succeeded. The apartment could be on another planet for all he knew, or another universe altogether, those windows all that stood between him and a toxic atmosphere, or no atmosphere at all.
He couldn't teleport out of the place, either, though God knew he tried. But Muraki was well-versed enough in spells and wards that it would have been simple work for him to ring the apartment in them, make it into some sort of spiritual safe only he could move in and out of.
And then there were the dolls in every room. Porcelain-faced, blank expressions, and more often than not Victorian-dressed, sometimes so innocuously placed that Tsuzuki could fool himself into forgetting they were there. For a time.
They made his skin crawl. They always had, ever since Muraki had shared his little hobby—obsession?—with him in Nagasaki. Tsuzuki tried not to be a judgmental person, but he had never been able to shake the feeling that there was something wrong with a grown man being so enamored with dolls. Or maybe it was just that said grown man was Muraki.
And it was just one more thing that made Tsuzuki feel like he was in some elaborate joke, some satire of his own existence. Each day Muraki tried to engage him with tea and a small meal—usually something baked and sweet—always served on fine china (though Muraki had switched out the hundred-year-old antiques with more recent facsimiles, Tsuzuki noticed). As though Tsuzuki were his imaginary friend at a little girl's tea party, who had to be bribed to eat and drink with sweets and a smile.
When in fact it was simply hunger that did the trick. His strength was returning with each day, his cells craving fuel as they doggedly repaired themselves. Tsuzuki's stomach wore down his will, even though it was not essential to his existence to eat, and though he hated himself for giving in to every bite.
He didn't worry whether the food was laced with drugs. Muraki had stuck by his word when he said Tsuzuki didn't need them anymore. Besides, if he were going to do something to Tsuzuki, who would stop him from doing it? The fact he hadn't made the slightest attempt to tie Tsuzuki up or down or anything in between showed a curious amount of trust in him. Trust enough to leave him the run of the place for long stretches of time. He must know I'd search every inch of this place for a way out the moment he turned his back, Tsuzuki thought, which can only mean there isn't one to find.
Not that there's anything for me to go back to.
And that was what it all boiled down to, wasn't it? Muraki could afford to leave him alone here because he knew full well there were no exits. No hope for escape. But more than that: not even a reason to try.
Blood as dark as wine poured out onto the floor as though from a tipped glass. It became a lake whose rising waters rushed to drown him in their darkness. Was there ever a more beautiful sight?
He'd done it right this time, opening the veins deep down the length of his forearm. A piece of broken glass did the trick—jagged but sharp as a razor on one end, and one end was all he needed. He hardly felt the pain anymore. Very soon. Very soon he would be gone from this place, this horrid clinic with its horrid airs and horrid memories. The sounds of it were already starting to fade from his ears. Soon he would be joining those butterflies outside his window.
The dream had been a brutally vivid one. He was back at the Summons office in Meifu, surrounded by his friends and colleagues. Even Ruka had been there—or was it Ukyou?; their faces shifted from one to the other in his mind—and partners from decades past whom he'd thought he had forgotten.
He'd slaughtered them all. But in the terrible logic of dreams, of course, they refused to stay dead. He tried to get away, but no matter where he ran, he couldn't seem to get out of the building. They always managed to find him, their mutilated bodies, blood-stained faces—they cornered him, berated him, blamed him, and he knew they were right, every word. He could only love them and hate himself more for it. Hisoka caught him. His accusations beat on Tsuzuki's heart like a cleaver, until he woke up wanting to die.
Only to find himself trapped once again in that clinic. Another nightmare he couldn't get out of.
No, that wasn't right. There were no butterflies outside the window here. There was nothing. The only butterflies were in his mind. Or in a song carved in a record. . . .
That's right. His right hand clutched—not glass—a jagged slice of black vinyl, sticky with blood. The silence was because of this. He had killed the record. When he couldn't stand those butterflies a second longer.
He wasn't dying, either. While he watched, the torn vessels reconnected themselves, the deep valley of flesh slowly mending like geologic forces in rewind. The blood stopped flowing, like turning off a tap.
And the arms that came to him, that willfully picked him up off the floor, were not Yukitaka's. That man was long dead. The cool fingers that brushed his hair back from his face, that started undoing the buttons of his shirt—he knew them. Was repulsed by them. And, despite himself, welcomed the contact. The kindness in that touch, even if he knew better than to trust it.
"This has to end, Tsuzuki," Muraki told him, his voice as soothing and seductive as his fingers were methodical. "You must know these repeated attempts to end your life won't do you any good. You will not kill what's already dead."
"If it won't do me any good, then why don't you just leave me to it?"
Tsuzuki didn't resist as the half-unbuttoned shirt was lifted over his head. His skin stung where the blood stains that had stuck to it as they dried were ripped away, but he relished the irritation. He wished the damp cloth, pressing warm against his face and neck as Muraki started to wipe away his blood, didn't feel as good as it did. Wished he didn't want to lean into it as much as he did.
"Don't misunderstand me," Muraki murmured in time with brushes of the cloth. "It's not that I want to relieve you of your pain. You've always been most beautiful to me when you were hurting."
"So you're a sadist," Tsuzuki croaked. "Tell me something I don't already know."
Muraki breathed a long, yet patient, sigh. "I don't expect you to share the sentiment. After all, this, here, is the Tsuzuki I fell in love with. From the moment I first saw your face I was moved by your suffering in a way that nothing else since has had the power to move me. I suppose it's the closest I've ever come to true religion. This exquisite body, by holding such pain inside it, transcends its own material beauty and commands veneration. Even after all you've done, for all I should despise you, I can't help but fall to my knees at your altar."
It seemed to Tsuzuki, however, that what Muraki described was the furthest from what any sane person would call religion. For all his protestations that he was a mere worshipper, Muraki would never be content to possess him like a lepidopterist possesses a specimen, locked away under glass, preserved, immaculate. He had confessed as much not long after their first meeting, how merely seeing Tsuzuki would not be enough. Touching him would not be enough. He was an addiction to the doctor, and Muraki seeking an ever greater high.
His thumb traced over the lines on the inside of Tsuzuki's wrist as he turned it toward himself, and the softness of the damp cloth nevertheless felt like sandpaper on Tsuzuki's self-inflicted wound, still in the process of stitching itself back up. Tsuzuki winced. And when Muraki raised Tsuzuki's wrist to his lips, he looked poised to take a bite. Surely he must have felt Tsuzuki's pulse race beneath his thumb, the tantalizing beating of blood as strong as in life just beneath the surface.
But no bite came. Just the heavy warmth of Muraki's exhalation across his old scars, and the softest caress of his lips.
"I want this pain, Tsuzuki," he said, as though speaking to those scars themselves. "I need it. You need it, whether you understand that or not. But not like this."
"Why not? Tired of me racking up your dry-cleaning bill?" But Tsuzuki was in no mood for jokes, and neither was his host.
"As much as I enjoy picking you up and dusting you off after every little breakdown, this obsession you have with self-mutilation is nothing but a grand and ultimately useless gesture. I think that, deep down, you know that. It served its purpose once, but you've outgrown it. You only continue to cling to it because it's easier than facing the truth."
Tsuzuki tried to force a laugh, to show Muraki how ridiculous he found that accusation, but a grimace slipped into its place unbidden. Tears flooded his eyes before he was aware they were coming, and with them came a sudden shame that he could do nothing to keep Muraki from seeing him this way. Sobbing like a spoiled child. Only instead of a toy having been taken away, his suicide. The one thing Tsuzuki had thought still belonged to him and himself alone. When, in truth, he'd lost it long ago.
Muraki shushed him even as he reached out to gather those tears in his palm. He seemed to understand better than he had any right to when he murmured: "I promise you, I will see you covered in blood before this is over. It just won't be yours."
The same lips that had so tenderly kissed his wrist curved into a sad and cruel smile, and Tsuzuki jerked away from Muraki's hand. This kindness was an act. He couldn't trust it. Muraki understood nothing. He never had. "I won't kill for you," Tsuzuki managed past the lump in his throat. "No matter what you do to me. I've already lost everything you could possibly take."
Just saying those words aloud were enough to make him feel as though he were on the bottom of an ocean of guilt, crushed by the sheer weight of his sins so that even the simplest movements took enormous effort. He would have been content to simply lie there, drowning for an eternity, and resented Muraki all the more for rousing him from his solitude, dragging him back to the surface and making him breathe. Beyond that, he would not force Tsuzuki to cooperate. "You have no more power over me."
Those silver eyes, staring back at him as cold and silent as the moon, seemed to believe otherwise.
But to Tsuzuki's surprise, Muraki let the matter drop there.
"You're a mess," he said as he got back to his feet, draping Tsuzuki's soiled shirt over his arm. His tone, jarringly matter-of-fact, as though the previous conversation had never taken place. "I'll draw you a bath, if you think you can refrain from opening a vein long enough to clean yourself up."