Touga sat very still. The tea in the cup he held had grown cold, but he neither drank the tea nor put the cup down. He stared straight ahead, refusing to look at Akio, but unable to fully look away.
The Chairman had collapsed several feet away, and remained there, on the floor. He looked up at Touga and grinned. As his senses deteriorated, fear and anger at his former student's betrayal had apparently been the first to go.
"I've got it!" he said. There was something wrong with his voice. "I know what we'll do."
Touga did not respond.
"We'll have a party, and everyone will come. You're here, of course, and you'll bring your friend. Bring him on a leash, the way you always did. Loyal as a dog, loyal as a dog, loyal as a—" he broke off.
Touga flinched, almost imperceptibly.
"But she wasn't, that bitch."
Akio tried, awkwardly, to get to his feet, starting the wrong way twice before struggling upright, slowly, still reaching unsteadily for the ground. Then his whole body spasmed, muscles going slack, and he toppled to the floor in a heap.
He was still then, and silent. He was still breathing, but even so, Touga sighed with relief. Then the Chairman rolled over and looked up at the younger man, smiling again.
"I know what we'll do. We'll have a party, and everyone will come. Your sister, of course. She loves parties. And you won't lift a finger to stop her. You never did."
Akio struggled into a sitting position, succeeding this time. He fixed Touga with an angry look, running one thumb back and forth along the inside of his calf.
"You never did. Never did anything for other people. Only yourself. I gave them everything." He started rocking back and forth. "I would have died for them, only she said stop. That bitch."
He spit the last word, snarled it, his face contorting into an ugly, lopsided shape. His body shuddered with the force of it, hands clawing. Touga remained still, made no visible move, but the cup and saucer in his hands clattered.
"She never gave it back. She left. She left and I couldn't. She left and I-"
His body spasmed again and he crumpled to the floor. His hand was in front of his face, and after several minutes of inaction, he began to flex and curl his fingers, watching intently. At last, he looked back at Touga, his expression beatific.
"I know what we'll do. We'll have a party, and everyone will come, and she'll come and everything will be fixed again, the way it always was. Always. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?"
He lapsed once more into silence and stillness, but Touga gave no sign that he thought that the ordeal was over. After a time, the Chairman focused once more on his former student.
"No, no, it's broken. Everything's broken. She left and I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't fix anything. I'm sorry, I couldn't fix it, I'm sorry."
Touga's gaze, still held straight forward, had gone out of focus, and the cup and saucer in his hands had grown quiet.
"I'm sorry!" Akio cried, with a final force of will, from the floor. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. A party. There was supposed to be a party. It was supposed to fix everything. I'm sorry, please, I never wanted to hurt you. Please, I'm sorry."
The Chairman's voice drifted off, and after that, he never really spoke. There was a word or two, "please," or "I'm sorry," or "broken," or "I couldn't." But more and more, it was groans and inarticulate cries, uttered with less and less strength. He writhed and twitched on the floor, falling into patterns of nonsensical, repetitive motion. But more and more, he was taken by a limp stillness.
Still, it took Akio over two hours to finish dying. Touga did not mark the instant it happened, did not hear the death rattle when it sounded. He only became aware, eventually, that the spirit of gross absurdity that had taken hold of the Chairman had passed, and left in its wake a prostate, slowly cooling body.