Forgotten
Chapter Five: A Reason Why

"Nothing is working." Tohma whispered; his mouth hiding behind a gloved hand.

"Shuichi's strong. We'll find something, a cure, a treatment, and he'll get through it." Hiro replied evenly, watching his best friends sleeping form from behind the thick plated glass. He ran a hand through his hair, the long pieces matted and tangling beneath his fingers.

Tohma sighed for the thousandth time that day. "Eiri is becoming… uncontrollable. I won't be able to keep him away for long."

Hiro's look hardened. "I don't trust him."

"You still think he had a hand in this." Tohma remarked, not asking, but telling. "Shuichi's ailment is purely genetic, and so far no tests have hinted to a darker reason behind his memory loss. I agree that Eiri has some more ruthless tendencies when it comes to the care and wellbeing of those around him, but I don't see him behind the illness."

"I still don't like it. If you just could have seen Shuichi when I picked him up outside the apartment…" Hiro shuddered and grew quiet.

"That is one sight I'm glad I didn't have the chance to see."

There was a moment of silence between the two men. The world around them moved on, but for this moment, for these last few days, for the next few weeks even, it felt like there would be nothing for them but worry and questions that would most likely never be answered.

"Why?" Hiro asked suddenly.

"Why what?" Tohma asked, eyes never diverting from Shuichi.

"Why are you so concerned for him?" Hiro jerked his chin at the sleeping pop-star. "I understand your business interests in his wellbeing, but your worry seems to stem deeper than a financial connection."

"As far as I am concerned, Shuichi has become family. I make it a point to protect my family with every resource available to me." Tohma spared a glance into Hiro's startled eyes. "If you knew Eiri the way I have come to know him, you would perhaps understand that Shuichi is something more than a live-in toy. He is more than Eiri will ever let on. Shuichi is something special in the eyes of my brother-in-law."

"A lover." Hiro said simply.

Tohma shook his head. "More than that, I think. Though Eiri can often be cruel and ruthless, he loves Shuichi with every fiber of his being. The two of them together, it's as though Eiri's entire world orbits around Shuichi. Yes, he acts so nonchalant, so very uncaring, but when Shuichi is about to bound mindlessly into something stupid Eiri is always watching, and always ready to pick up the pieces. Though whether he decides to help, or to keep up appearances, is a different matter entirely."

Hiro was quiet for a moment. "You miss nothing, do you?"

"It's my job to notice everything, to calculate, to plan. If I didn't, I wouldn't be the President of a company such as NG."

Hiro laughed, though it wasn't truly funny. It felt good to laugh, to feel the rise and fall of his chest as he chuckled. It was like breathing deeply for the first time in his life. "He missed a big opportunity to help this time." He said darkly.

"Indeed he did. Perhaps he will learn from it." Tohma replied, a touch of protectiveness reaching his voice.

"Excuse me, gentlemen, visiting hours are almost over," a rake thin and balding doctor told them politely.

"Thank you." Tohma replied absently.

"It must be hard." Hiro said as soon as the doctor had left, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Eiri is also family. Keeping him so out of the loop must be difficult for you."

"I try to think of what I'm doing as protecting Eiri too."

"By keeping him away?"

"By not letting him see an empty shell of the one person he has learned to love."

Hiro nodded. "Good night Mr. Seguchi."

"Good night Mr. Nakano." Tohma said quietly.

"How is Eiri?" Mika asked as she lay in bed beside her husband.

"Upset. Angry. Worried." Tohma replied, clicking documents open on his laptop. "I'm almost certain he will hate me for a long time after this, if he doesn't already."

Mike bit her lip. "And Shuichi?"

"There's been no change." Replied her husband shortly.

Silence filled the bedroom. Tohma continued his clicking, typing at random moments as he filed accounting claims and saved documents.

"What could have caused this?" Mika wondered aloud, snuggling deep within her blankets.

"No one knows." Tohma's heavy sigh was full of exhaustion. "The disease is apparently genetic. I'm contemplating contacting his family, asking about their medical history, but the panic it might stir with his parents could leak to the media and I'm desperately trying to keep this under wraps for now."

"If it will help Shuichi…"

"Then it would be worth it. For now, though, I don't want to focus on that. I'm going to finish these documents and sleep."

"Good night then, Tohma."

Tohma looked at his wife, her eyes full of questions. He smiled. "Sleep well, love."

Hiro couldn't sleep. It was perhaps the fourth night, no, fifth night of insomnia. His head and body ached for sleep, but the butterflies in his stomach, the questions left unanswered, the hopes and dreams that were slowly crumbling beneath his feet left his brain full of nightmares. Every time he closed his eyes he could only see Shuichi lying helpless and frail in a hospital bed, alone right at this moment, perhaps even awake and frightened.

He tossed and turned, trying to find a cool place to lay his head, a soft place to rest his bones. There was no relief.

As he watched the dawn slowly creep up on him, he thought of Seguchi Tohma and the conversation they'd had yesterday evening.

Despite his best efforts to understand, something still seemed off with Yuki Eiri and his so-called lover. The connection Shuichi had felt with Yuki, Hiro had never questioned, but the connection Eiri had with Shuichi… he had no idea if it even existed.

Shuichi is something special in the eyes of my brother-in-law, Tohma had said. And maybe that was true, but for right now Hiro could think of nothing but the last look in Shuichi's eyes before he'd lost his memories, of the last nights where he'd lain feverish and sick, screaming for salvation.

Had he been screaming for Eiri, or had he been screaming to keep him away?

The night sky was turning an electric blue outside his window, the streetlamps hazy from dew, and as Hiro stared at his ceiling, he felt anguish wash over him. What if the last thing Shuichi had ever felt when he was still normal, was pain? What if the last thing Hiro would ever see were Shuichi's eyes full of fear, sore and sick in his bed, fighting to ward off hallucinations of a man who didn't love him.

There lay the question. Did Yuki Eiri love Shuichi, or not?

Hiro rose that dawn with new determination in his eyes.

The doctors had escorted him to a room, but it wasn't Shuichi's. Yuki Eiri watched their faces intently. They were calm and collected men, used to following orders and making sure those orders were carried out to the letter. They asked him to sit, but didn't shut the door.

With practiced ease he pulled a cigarette and tiny silver lighter from his pocket. Almost about to put the flame to the end of his cigarette, he was interrupted by a quiet voice in the doorway.

"Smoking isn't allowed inside hospitals."

Eiri closed the lighter and put the cigarette down, glancing coldly at Nakano Hiroshi, the picture of ease with his arms crossed as he leaned against the door frame.

"You think I don't know that?"

"You were just about to light up."

"Your point?"

Hiro narrowed his eyes and uncrossed his arms as he took four small steps forward.

"We need to talk."

Eiri smirked. "I'm flattered, but I'm kind of with someone right now." He joked.

Hiro glared. "With who?" He growled angrily. "Because you sure as hell don't act like you're with Shuichi. The way you treated him when he was sick, before he had to come to this fucking hospital? Ruthless. Disgusting. You either have no respect for humans as a whole, or you just don't fucking care about him."

Eiri place the cigarette back in his pocket. "I don't much feel like having a discussion with you. The last one we had ended rather abruptly in a fist fight and my chin still hurts."

"I'm not throwing any punches."

"Then you better hope you don't piss me off, because I make no such promises."

Each man glared across the room at the other. Tension mounted for a split second before it broke with a single sentence.

"Do you love him."

"What?" Eiri snapped.

"It's a simple question. Do you love him?" Hiro's dark eyes were ruthlessly cold and accusing. Eiri's glare smoldered in the space between them.

"Shuichi? Sure." He replied, tapping his fingers against his thigh, desperately craving a cigarette now.

"Sure." Hiro said disbelievingly. "Sure? I ask you if you love him, and all you can say is sure?"

Eiri stared out the window for a moment, not wanting to meet Hiro's eyes. "What else do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say the words 'love' and 'Shuichi' in one goddamn sentence. I want you to admit that you love him. I want you to confess something that shouldn't be hard to confess. Shuichi is a special kid, you and I both know he deserves better than you, but it's you he wants and like it or not, you're stuck with him."

Eiri shot a cutting look at the guitarist. "I don't have to be. Shuichi is only living with me because I—"

"Because you let him?" Hiro finished sarcastically. "Face it, you couldn't get rid of him even if you wanted to. And if Shuichi left for the rest of his life and you never saw him again, or if he fell in love with someone else, there will always be a part of him that loves you more than life itself. If you called, if you needed him, he would come. No questions asked."

"That's his problem. I don't have time to deal with…" Eiri stopped himself in mid-sentence, not sure why he was trying to defend himself to some rocker punk. He gathered himself and stood, striding past Hiro with a defiant stare.

"Shuichi willlove someone else. If I don't deserve him, then maybe I shouldn't stick around. You should know, though, that I will fight to see him well again. After that, for his well-being and your piece of mind, I'm gone."

Hiro growled. "Then what's the fucking point?!" His volume had risen several notches past acceptable. Doctors and nurses and patients stared at him for a moment of pure quiet, and then turned back to their tasks, the cacophony of sounds rising to a roar.

"The point is to make sure he's okay."

"Once he's okay, you know he'll want you again."

"Like I said, I'll be gone."

"Why?"

Eiri turned his back on the long haired guitarist, all emotion now gone from his voice.

"You're right. I don't deserve him."

End-6