One of the best things of dating Fuji, according to Tezuka, was that anything and everything was interesting. He had decided to ask the tensai out on a date, mostly to get his mind off the recent events, but partially because he knew that the other had a romantic streak that clamoured for sakura petals and dying sunsets, and other paraphernalia that Tezuka had long dismissed as absurdly over-hyped and pointless at that.

He had figured that it couldn't kill him to attempt to be…romantic for once in his life, but that hadn't stopped Fuji from bursting into gales of laughter the moment he figured out what was going on. Tezuka was just about to retract his formal invitation, feeling slightly miffed, but the smile that Fuji gave him was so sweet and shy and affectionate at the same time, that the words stuck in his throat anyway. Not that he would actually have gone ahead to say them anyway.

He had to admit that spending two hours in the largest grocery store he had ever seen, spanning 3 entire levels, just looking for avocado-flavoured crackers, was a definite first in his life. Fuji was in exceedingly good spirits, enthusiastically amassing a collection of items that Tezuka personally wouldn't have included under the 'food' section had it been left up to him. He had stayed on the safe side and opted for large strawberries filled with soft vanilla cream inside, their decadence overshadowed by the looming threat of wasabi-flavoured chocolate and fish candy packets that Fuji was waving at him.

He wondered briefly where they would find their appetite for dinner, as their feet took them in the general direction of eateries and other food stores located by the scenic river. Although Fuji ate quite a lot for someone so skinny and he never really quite understood where all the food went…

"Want one?" Tezuka offered a strawberry, noticing the intent look that Fuji was directing at him. To his bemusement, the other boy shook his head vehemently, and continued to give him an anticipatory look.

Tezuka bit down on his strawberry and wondered why this was beginning to feel like an intelligence test of sorts. He didn't want to fail… Not to mention Fuji was turning the charm on at full-force, and complete strangers were beginning to give him accusing looks, as though he was somehow mistreating the vulnerable-looking boy beside him. The absurdity of the idea nearly made him choke on his food.

He offered a second to Fuji after a few moments and the other, predictably, refused it.

Thoughtfully, he bit into his strawberry and felt the clotted cream fill his mouth. He stared down at the juicy fruit in his hand, and again at Fuji who looked at him expectantly. Offering him the half-eaten piece, Tezuka was bemused when Fuji reached out and ate it straight from his fingers, licking them clean playfully, before running ahead to see what the crowds were gawking at in the parade square.

It was amazing that it took so little to keep him happy, really.

He could almost sense the winter descending, the skies breaking apart for the first flakes that would drift and bury their world alive in white. It would be cold. So cold that you couldn't feel your hands clasped to you, so cold that you couldn't think straight. The very frigidity would sink into your bones yet make you weightless. You could lay your body to rest and let the icy peace flood your brain, and you would sleep eternally.

With neither knowledge nor emotions to hinder your dreams, you could sleep.

His books were returning damaged again. He watched the winds rushing past and swaying the trees in their endless fury, and let the teacher's recital filter through his mind, caught and snared in a small compartment to be filed away. He couldn't forget easily. He had to spend much time when he was younger, devoting himself to remember to forget, such that he did not become overwhelmed by the dizzying array of facts and numbers and scenes and words that crowded into his mind and ate into his perception day and night. Some information he could file away, and others simply repeated themselves dry and still they kept on turning.

Your classmates don't want you. Nobody does.

Creative insults were circled in the pages of his books, one word followed by another until a complete vulgar sentence was made. He had to applaud his detractors for their tenacity, if not their subtlety, and he only regretted that his neat books should be thus abused. The books hung from their covers, torn and tattered, and where his homework had been neatly printed out in clean writing, patches of ink marred and despoiled his work.

Where he was sitting, a clear border had been formed, where no one would venture closer than the nearest desk to him, which would have been shifted half a row away miraculously. The isolation was obvious, if childish, but it didn't make the hurt fade. He never had a partner for the group activities that were maliciously thrown up with increasing frequency, and he had to endure the neutral gaze of his once treasured teacher, calmly watching him bow his head and approach group after group to see which one would accept him. He didn't think she knew that he was watching her, even as she looked at the classroom scene and smiled at how cooperative her obedient students were. No one kicked up any fuss, no one skipped any lesson, and everything was perfect.

He could feel the cold setting in.

Sometimes he wondered how he could have been so lucky to have found someone like Tezuka, but he always stopped himself before he thought too much about the issue. Things broke and fell apart whenever he thought too hard about them. What seemed like a whole, would crumble into pieces and everything vanished back into the dust. He looked up at the infinite sky above him and took in a deep breath of fresh air. It wasn't everyday that they could spend time watching the stars move across the skies, on the hill that overlooked the city below.

Fuji treasured every moment that they could spend together. It seemed like an endless, brief but intense bliss at being with someone who understood him and loved him despite of everything. But perfection could never stay unbroken. He no longer had any friends that he could turn to, and he couldn't bring himself to break the iron silence in his family where everyone pretended at being happy. He was beginning to rely too much on Tezuka for emotional support, and he recognised this fact. It was inevitable that this love, this perfection would be taken from him as well. Secretly terrified, he stayed as close to Tezuka as possible, but it didn't erase the sense of finality in him.

It was going to end. Somehow or other, everything was going to end.

"…ne, Tezuka, somehow I never really thought you were the type that went stargazing."

"I disliked it when I was younger. My grandfather took me camping, and I just went back into the tent whenever it was time to rest. Somehow, thinking about the immensity of the rest of the universe, always made my problems pale in comparison. After all, I was an only child…you could say that I wasn't used to not being the centre of attention."

Fuji shut his eyes and smiled at the stars that glowed bigger and brighter inside the closed lids of his eyes. They were white, and some twinkled blue and red, and the world was infinite and so immeasurably large. There was some comfort in being a negligible speck of dust in the universe. He wanted to run and fly, and travel to the quiet poles of the universe and feel his soul expand across the centuries and space of the world. He breathed in the scent of wet grass and cement construction and felt it sink into him, layer by layer, a world that revolved and moved and grew and died without him being a part of it. His soul could leave and mingle into the eternal. He would have done that, and been contented, as long as he knew that Tezuka would be by his side. He might actually even have believed that love, nothing but a fleeting illusion of ill-placed fancy and misguided hope…perhaps, it too could be eternal.

"Isn't it lonely to walk alone?"

"Not really. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

Fuji smiled and turned away, feeling the cool sensation of grass pressed wetly against his cheek. His head hurt, and he could feel his mood darkening and he was falling, and the ground was slipping beneath him. He didn't dare to open his eyes and see the infinity that lay beyond and fear that the ground was slanting, and he was still falling.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

Tezuka bit him gently and Fuji tilted his head to allow him better access, feeling light fingers grazing across the bruised skin and down his shoulder blade. It was a good thing that even gym attire had sleeved shirts and no marks were going to be visible. He tried to relax but his fingers were giving him away, digging deeper creases into the soft bed. There wasn't anything wrong but Tezuka's gentleness with him was driving him insane. A part of him screamed that it was his penance and his fault, and he needed to be punished for everything that was going wrong.

"Don't be so gentle with me, I won't break," he choked out, just barely able to hear the words he breathed, vanishing like mist against the glass mirror of Tezuka's neck. The other boy's expression was smoothly impassive and his tone neutral, as he inclined his head to observe the one before him.

"I'm a little afraid that you would. Really." Tezuka informed him, smoothing the harshness of his words away with butterfly kisses that grazed against his forehead. There was something incredibly intense about the delicacy which Tezuka employed, treating him so reverently that he wanted to beg him to stop before he cried. He needed to be hurt and he couldn't achieve that when Tezuka insisted on being so nice to him.

When fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezed, he choked on the unexpected sensation, unable to breathe and think under the sheer violence. It brought back unexpected memories, scenes that he had forgotten and deliberately left buried under associated terms which he swore never to raise again.

"And would you like me to hurt you?"

"No…yes…I mean, yes I do, please." Fuji was begging and crying, and he didn't quite recognise his voice, as rent with sobs and gasping from the lack of air caused by Kaito's vice-grip on his neck. His fingers scrabbled madly against the ground and he could barely feel the sensation of his fingernails being torn and bloodied against the uneven cement below. The toilet was rarely used, and cleaned even lesser, and it was degrading at first, to be forced against the accumulated filth and yellow streaked tiles of the floor.

"Whatever made you think it was about what you wanted?"

His voice was malicious and it was scaring him, but there wasn't much time to feel before a hand ran through his hair teasingly, affectionately, before yanking him roughly to land on his knees and forcing him to crawl. The gravel on the ground was entering the grazed cuts on his legs and it hurt to move.

His cheeks were burning and his eyes stung with the pain and indignity of the rough treatment, but Kaito's eyes were alight and Fuji couldn't help but feel relieved that at least he hadn't forced him into something that he did not enjoy. He hated being humiliated, but it was his punishment, and it was his fault and everything was wrong. Wrong because he was born, because he lived, because he was Fuji Syuusuke and he could never scrub that away from his skin, no matter how hard he tried, until his skin had rubbed raw and patches had split into superficial bloody wounds. He had looked at the bathwater turning pink and he didn't know whether to laugh or cry that he was bathing in blood that he could never wash away until his life had ended. He hated himself and he hurt and Kaito was hitting him now, the pipe had broken away from an unused, rusty sink. The sharp edges of the bolts still attached to the broken piece was catching on his skin, and he vaguely recognised the rushing in his ears as his own feeble screaming as he writhed and prayed for the torment to end.

It had been addictive to see the blood and feel the pain unleashed physically and keeping him sane for a little while longer, until the torment rose to crescendos inside that he couldn't hold back and he hurt himself again. He wanted to be punished and accept his penance for being too worthless and too ugly and he hated himself for everything he was.

He needed to see the crimson rivulets leeking out of the wounds, he needed superficial cuts that caused sharp bolts of pain to lace through him but not fatal enough to cleave him from the world too early. Yuuta would be sad, and Fuji didn't wish to place further disgrace upon his family, more than the disrepute that they had garnered to their name anyway. The pain was stopping him from thinking, from feeling, and a racking cough bubbled up in his lungs and left him breathless from the exertion. The wounds split open from his back again, bleeding profusely after coagulating a few moments ago.

Fuji felt the warm, sticky wetness rupture from his wounds down his back, and he closed his eyes and waited for the blows to rain again.

He breathed and came back into himself, where Tezuka looked at him in concern, worry and guilt written so clearly in his face that Fuji hated himself for having asked for something like that to begin with. He shook his head in response to Tezuka's silent query and reached out to hold him closer, and reassure himself that everything was truly over.

Fuji couldn't stop crying but it was only a slight release from the agony that bubbled in him constantly with no relief in sight. His body could not handle the pain at this point in time, but it was easy to let his photographic memory recapture every blood clotted image in the past. There was a strange closeness that he felt towards Tezuka, who could make him cry and still sooth his tears away afterward.

But it hadn't hurt physically, and he hadn't been punished enough for the same sins that he wrought, and it could never be enough to take the pain away.

The morning sun was beginning to rise above the horizon, illuminating the skies in dusty yellow. The faint warmth smudged everything in its path, leaving behind a quiet, pleasant chill in the air. Tezuka had returned home earlier that night, and Fuji left his house early to watch the sunrise, alone on the hill that overlooked the city, on his way to school. At times like these, he let his mind meander along well-worn tracks in the hopes of discovering an interesting nugget of information left unturned. Nearly always, his thoughts returned to the person who remained the most unknown to him.

He hated the way he couldn't even remember the last time that he had seen his mother. Wasn't he supposed to remember something as significant as that? Wasn't that what everybody else did? Weren't they supposed to remember their last meeting with the deceased, treasuring even the bitter resentment that the other had died even before one got the chance to say anything? Why couldn't he even remember something as significant as that?

After he had begged his sister to tell him what had happened in the past, she told him of how they had found him unconscious near the bed, and how he simply hadn't woken up for a year. Their mother had passed away in the year that he had remained unaware, and selective amnesia caused him to forget the most recent events leading up to the time when he had become comatose.

He knew it was far too late, he still regretted not being able to see her one last time. But time had passed, and there was little enough that he remembered these days. It could be something as simple as a familiar whiff of perfume, a particular shade of colour, a mannerism or a simple word that made him feel that he had experienced it somewhere before. Sometimes, it felt like a familiar hide-and-seek game, when he was a little kid and was crying when he thought that he had lost her for good. It was though she was just waiting patiently for him to find her. And it would be like all those other games where she would smile at him, take his hand and bring him home again.

As long as he knew that she loved him, nothing else would matter.

Abruptly, he felt a pair of eyes upon him, their cool intensity marking him out against the others that thronged the same path he took each day to school. Yet when he turned around, all he caught was a glimpse of the stranger, before he disappeared amidst the crowds.

He had to be dreaming, really.

He thought he caught a flash of blue in his eyes.

Blue as the sky that extended beyond their reach.

END CHAPTER

A.N: Longest chapter yet! I'm so excited about ending this story soon! Right from the beginning, I was most thrilled about the concluding portions. I know it's a little confusing right now but I promise it will make more sense at the end; that is if you will pardon all the inevitable dramatics that I will throw into it. And because I'm in a good mood, I shall let you know that Chapters 9 and 10 have hints about the ending. And Chapter 9 has a line that EXPLICITLY gives away the ending. Happy searching.

Oh and I'm coining a new genre. I present to you Aesthetic Angst.