Haitani Okusan

You see the light from the hallway flash on and off from underneath your bedroom door, and then hear the soft padding of footsteps across the landing. Soft, tentative, hesitant, and all it takes is the hiss of running water in the pipes for you to know just what’s going on. 

You’ve been lying awake for the last 2 hours and the bedspread of white linen is creased and dishevelled from where you’ve tossed and turned and bunched it up in your frustrated hands. From here, you can see the pallid glow of streetlights through the gap in the curtain, and there is the distant thwack of branches against the grimy window, barely masked by the whistle of the wind.

And of course tonight is a night where sleep eludes you too. You look up at the ceiling, at the latticework of cobwebs crawling out from the fixture, which is nothing more than a single filament bulb, in the middle of the room. Cracks run through the dried plaster, and you imagine the spider’s spinning their webs of delicate silk, undulating and weaving across a ceiling already littered with air bubbles and damp.

‘Fuck…’ you mutter to yourself, rising and tossing the bedcovers aside. You rub your eyes, throw on an old and worn hoodie your roommate had happened to leave in your room and crack open the door, holding a hand against the chipped wood as if it'll lessen the creak of it.

Kazutora looks over his shoulder at you as you pad into your shared kitchen. The light is too bright for the both of you and you wince when you walk in, moving to pull a mug out from the dishwasher. 

‘Didn’t wake you, did I?’ His brow furrows with both concern and anxiety and his voice is hoarse and dry, a parting gift from a sleepless night that’s only halfway to being over.

‘No, course not Tora. I’ve been awake for a while.’ 

‘You too then?’ He asks and throws a tea bag into your cup. ‘Sucks doesn’t it?’

He knows you don’t have to answer. He knows why you find it so hard to relax enough to sleep, that your thoughts are loud and incessant and their claws are long and hook into you at night.

But this is a regular occurrence in your shared apartment and it was part of the reason why the arrangement had worked so well for you. He was running from something, and so were you, and you both respected each other enough not to ask about it.

‘How long have you been here?’ You make to sit at the table and chairs that serve as a breakfast bar as Kazutora fills the two cups with water, dropping in a spoon of honey in each.

The smoke curls from the surface and the heat of it against your cold hands is a welcome respite from the chill when he hands it to you. 

‘Not long. Couldn’t sleep, s’ too quiet.’ He pulls out the chair beside you and slumps into it, hunching over his mug of honey tea as if cradling its warmth. The hoodie he’s wearing seems to engulf him entirely, and the only part of his hands you can see are the fingers, white and tensed around his cup. He takes a shaky breath and his knee bounces against the tile floor, knocking gently into yours. 

‘Wanna talk about it?’ you probe. Looking at him there, with the fluorescent artificial lights casting a shadow over half of his face, you see the dark lines and mild puffiness under his eyes, stark against his pale skin. They’re dull, dimmed even, and when he looks up, his golden eyes seem to lose their sheen in the light. 

He’s never talked about the events of his past and like old bones he prefers them to be buried. But sometimes, the memories play like reels on an old film when he turns in for the night, and in his head are just the voices of people who used to be. 

Kazutora considers it as he watches the smoke and steam waft from the surface of his mug. He takes a tentative sip and winces when he realizes the tea is still too hot and you suppress a soft smile as you watch his nose scrunch and his throat bob up and down. The tattoo on the side of his neck is partially hidden beneath the fabric of his hood and a few wisps of hair escape the cord drawn tight around him.

‘I miss him…’The deep cadence of his voice is replaced by an uncertain whisper, and he seems to shrink in on himself, his arms crossed and hair hiding his face. ‘I miss him, but I was the one who killed him.’

You stay silent and wait for him to continue. 

You know what happened, it was never a secret. The papers and locals practically gushed over it, lapping it up like it was celebrity gossip, passing the rumours back and forth, dragging his name through the dirt, dragging him through the dirt by the scruff of his neck. It was why Kazutora had been so eager to have you as a roommate, why he’d accepted the first vacant apartment he had seen, when he had to pay more than half the rent, and make do with blinking street lights and the sound of sirens at night. He was running, always running from something. So were you and maybe that’s why this arrangement worked so well. 

‘I thought that if I did my time, I’d somehow make it better-’ he swallows thickly and takes a sip of tea, his knuckles white, bottom lip trembling as he sucks it behind his teeth. ‘But I didn’t, and I’m never going to be able to pay for it.’ 

He hoped that the time spent in jail, spent ruminating with other criminals, some of whom had committed crimes he was too afraid to even speak of, would assuage the guilt somehow, that if he suffered in there, he might hate himself less.

‘First time I saw his mom,’ he says, ‘I couldn’t even look at her. She forgave me, can you believe that? What kind of woman forgives her son’s killer?’

Maybe one who understood that you were a broken and damaged boy, who knew that her son’s happiest days were the ones he shared with you, who wasn’t going to hold it against you because you had never known a moment’s kindness.

His teeth grind together and the muscle in his jaw flickers with the movement. He scoffs, looks up at the fixture swaying on the ceiling, the light that winks in and out of life. 

‘I still go to his grave. Every weekend, after work.’ He glances at the checkered tablecloth, at the stain in the middle that he had tried hard only yesterday to scrub out, that he’d hidden with a vase of flowers because he just couldn’t seem to lift the pink splodge. ‘Fuyu still goes too. Sometimes we go together, talk to him for a little while, and leave some Yakisoba there.’ 

The draft emanating from the gap under the door makes the hairs on your arms rise, or maybe it’s him, his words, his story, his casting off of his secrets. 

‘You know, I’m starting to forget him…’  he says, shuddering and the sensation sends a bout of nausea running through his stomach. ‘I can hardly remember what he looked like- sometimes I take the pictures out just to see if I remember or not.’

Baji’s image flashes briefly in his mind. The long black hair, the golden eyes, cat-like in the sun. But the image is blurry and the near transparent film over it obscures everything else. Even when he shakes his head, the image only peels back into darkness.

‘I don’t want to forget him y/n, but I can’t even remember what he sounds like- the way he talked- all I can see is the blood and his body-’ he sniffles here, and uses his sleeve to wipe his eyes. You stand momentarily, tear a tissue from its stand and hand it to him, your hands brushing. His fingers are cold, frozen even.

Even now when he thinks back to that moment, there are gaps, entire pieces cut out. He remembers meeting Takemichi, remembers seeing a broken, beaten chifuyu lying on the floor. Even still, these things are fading into the recesses of his memory, and though he clutches at them , they dim and lose their sheen more every night. 

‘I wish I had died…’ he says and shuts his eyes, gulping down that hard lump in his throat. That familiar panic is hooking its claws into him and he takes a shuddering breath. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees the same thing. The scene replaying like a clip on repeat and it makes him want to be sick with himself, to vomit till there’s nothing left of him to feel anything.

Your heart snaps and splinters inside your chest and on instinct, you take his hands in yours, rubbing them between your palms. They’re so cold and you squeeze his fingers, bringing them to your lips to blow your hot breath onto his skin.

‘Tora-’

‘I wish I had died and then maybe it would be okay-’ his voice trails off and his breath hitches on the final word. His heart aches. It aches so much it’s crawling up his throat and choking him.

You don’t say it’s okay, you know it isn’t and that those trivial words can’t undo the pain, or the guilt he’s carrying that weighs him down. 

‘Stand up Tora,’ you say instead and the chair grates as you stand, the noise loud in your otherwise silent kitchen. 

‘What?’ 

‘I said stand… please.’ 

Looking at you there, your head framed by the sickly yellow light of the single filament bulb that swings in the centre of the ceiling, Kazutora thinks you look like an angel. The moonlight that dances on your skin is opalescent, ghostly even, and the soft white light that leaks through the blinds dances briefly in your eyes.

He stands, and the sleeves of his hoodie fall over his wrists. He looks so small and vulnerable, so out of place and defenceless that it makes your eyes well.

‘C’mere.’ You hold your arms out, stretching them wide and Kazutora shifts on his feet. His gaze is suspicious, apprehensive and he takes a small step back, feeling the back door graze him as he does so.

It stings, the initial rejection. But you refuse to drop your arms even as they ache and the earnestness in your eyes, eyes that are welling up, tears on the lashline, is what makes him take that first step towards you. 

Then he is moving, shuffling into your arms and it is the closest he’s ever been to another person, the hardest he’s ever been held, and your arms encircling his frame are warm and gentle. Your cheek brushes against his briefly and the sensation sends a lump into the base of his throat.

The moment your palm rubs a circle against his back, he sags under your weight, breath hot but hesitant on the crook of your neck. The wisps of his hair tickle the curve of your shoulder when he lays his head against it, as if you can suck up his pain. 

His arms around you are timid, cautious at first, too gentle, and you squeeze him lightly, pressing him into you. Maybe that's what it is, maybe you are trying to absorb his pain, wishing that he could mould himself into you and maybe one simple gesture is not enough, but it is the start. 

He hiccups, sniffles, and the shudder that runs along his body reverberates in yours too. There is no other sound, no words, just the sensation of his skin against yours, the scent of his shower gel still clinging to him like a winter’s chill in spring. He hopes you can’t hear the dangerously loud thrum of his heart, the way it descends into the pit of his stomach, a stone dropped into water.

There is no telling how long you both stay there, frozen in time with your arms around each other. Only that at some point he pulls back, his hands still holding your shoulders firmly in place and for the first time tonight, for the first time in a long stretch of difficult weeks, he gives you an uncertain smile.

You brush a tear from his cheek and your eyes are so kind and gentle that Kazutora can’t help but stare at the reflection of the streetlight which looks more like burnished gold than orange in them. 

‘I think…’ he says and shuffles awkwardly on his feet. ‘I’ll try and sleep now.’ The vice slowly loosening around his throat and the weight lifting itself off his chest almost makes Kazutora dizzy.

‘Me too. You know I’m only one door away if you need me, yeah?’ 

The tea is cold by this time, and the light peeking out from behind the frosted glass of your back door tells you dawn is soon approaching. The sky bleeds with pink and orange hues and both the small dilapidated kitchen and Kazutora’s tired eyes are suddenly a little brighter. 

You lean forward to kiss his cheek and he catches the scent of perfume still sticking to your warm skin, your hair brushing his earlobe. Instead of sending his heart racing, he calms, and the wild and anxious jitteriness under his skin settles into a mild thrumming which is more pleasant than nauseating.

He smiles at you, less hesitant and tentative this time and the sight takes your breath away, before he leaves and the soft pad of his feet against the carpet and creak of the door’s hinges tells you he’s in his room, shuffling into bed. It doesn’t take long for him to sleep this time and he focuses on the twittering of the birds just beyond his window, the distant  thwack of a branch against the side of the apartment and sleep comes so suddenly he almost doesn’t notice it.

It does not fix anything, it does not magically erase the secrets he keeps locked away, it does not assuage the guilt that threatens to tip him over the edge almost every day. But it is a start, you think, watching the sun climb proudly over the apartment blocks. And maybe for now, that is enough. 

A/N: Finally getting down to giving this to you guys, it's a little left field from what I'm usually used to but I hope you guys like it anyway, it's been sitting in my docs for over a year believe it or not. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

‘Y/n,’ he replies in tandem, and looks at your pinched brow, the corners of your mouth turned down and the visceral urge to kiss your lips, your forehead, is so great that he looks away. He chooses to focus his attention on the cigarette he’s pulling out from a silver tin, engraved with a neat italicised ‘RH’ in the corner. An anniversary present from you many years ago, now worn and lined with scratches and dents and he’s so sentimental that he can’t bring himself to replace it. 

Maybe he just loves you too much.

You take his hands in your own. They’re rough, callused, just as worn as his cigarette tin. The same hands that he touches you with, cooks with, kills with. Every line holds a memory of the two of you. You’re fidgeting just like he is, biting your lip anxiously, tapping your foot on the broken slab.

At first you don’t speak, neither of you do. You just stare at each other, at the faces you’ve woken up next to for the last four years and your hearts are both breaking at the same time. If you were to put your head to his chest, you would hear the crack as his heart splinters, the erratic beating of it as it descends into the pit of his stomach.

‘It’s okay…’ he smiles, a watery and thin smile and traces his thumb along your knuckles. His touch is soft as a feather.

‘S’not okay,’ you say and all it takes is the sensation of his hand on your back, comforting as it always is, for your resolve to slip and the tears to gather in the corners of your eyes. 

‘It is Princess.’ He presses a kiss to the back of your hand. ‘No matter what, I’m always going to love you.’ 

Perhaps it is a testament to his grace and the love he has always given so freely to you that allows him to say it, and to smile knowing what you’re about to say, knowing that this is the end of the line. 

‘I’m sorry Ran, I’m so sorry.’ The first tear slips from your eye and falls onto your pallid cheek and on instinct, he brushes it away with his thumb. 

‘Don’t be Pretty baby, it’s my fault. I should have done better.’ 

‘No, no, it wasn’t you, it was me- I should have tried to understand you more-’

Truly you could go on all day like that, taking the blame, both of you caught up in the whirlwind of your love, of trying to save the other from more heartbreak. Was that what love was? 

‘So this is it huh?’ His eyes are so soft and kind, and the lazy sunlight hits them at just the right angle. Luminescent purple and lilac, framed by dark long lashes. He’s always been beautiful, always been elegant, always been something so ethereal that it’s almost hard to believe he’s real. Especially on the warm Sunday mornings, when the splices of sunlight drift through the slat in the curtain over his shoulder and his lips are just about parted, as if waiting for you to brush yours against them. 

You nod your assent and he sighs and it is so broken and tired but he tries for a smile again. You can see his eyes filling with tears and his hands trembling as he puts the cigarette to his lips and inhales a lungful. 

Your shoulders shake as you cry and you look so small and vulnerable sitting there in your skirt and flats, with a flower in your hair that he had put there that very morning.

‘I’m sorry- I’m sorry- I’m sorry,’ you say and it’s all you can think as he pulls you to him, holding you close with an arm around your shoulder.

‘You don’t need to keep saying it Pretty.’

‘I do- I should have loved you harder-’ The words are thick and heavy in your throat but all he does is shake his head adamantly.

‘What would that have done huh?’ He rubs your bare arm and feels the goosebumps on your skin. ‘I just want you to be safe and happy, and if that means it isn’t with me, then s’alright.’

And oh how it hurts to say those words when he wants nothing more than to hold you forever, to make love to you every night, wake up to you every morning. 

‘Its my fault.’ He kisses the crown of your head and your hair tickles his nose as he does so. ‘Should have been here more often, should have cared for you more.’

‘No-’ You shake your head and the sob sitting at the base of your throat trickles out as you wipe your nose. 

‘It is. I’m an idiot-’

‘Ran-’

‘S’alright Y/n, let me finish.’ 

This is by far the hardest thing he’s ever done, the scariest and for the first time in his life he feels the visceral fear, the terrifying sensation of being out of his depth and adrift. You’re slipping through his fingers and there is nothing he can do about it but he'd rather die than force you to stay where you’re unhappy.

‘I shouldn’t have been so absent. I did this, and you deserve better. So much better.’ There is no playfulness to his tone, no sarcasm and that’s what saddens you the most.

The tears are fast and free-flowing and you hiccup and sob against his chest, the spike of anxiety that gnaws at his stomach only growing tenfold when you clutch his shirt for support.

He had known in his heart that things would never work between you, because he had always loved you more, had loved you enough for both of you when things started to change. Sometimes you felt selfish and guilty and the knot of self-loathing in your stomach only seemed to double every time he gently caressed your back as he passed, or told you he loved you when you lay together at night, sleep pressing on your eyelids like a vice.

You don’t correct him. Maybe because he’s right, or maybe because it’s pointless. Maybe because love is so complicated and neither of you really understand.

You love him. He loves you. Once you’d thought that the simple act of loving was enough to maintain you, that love could sustain the relationship when other things could not, that the days and weeks spent away working would not add up, that you would not crave and miss him like you did. He loves you, but he doesn’t choose you. 

‘I’m an idiot,’ he says and mentally curses himself. 

Did the fact that this conversation was weeks in the making make it any easier to have? No it didn’t. Despite the fact that this was the end of the line for you, you still want him to stay. No matter what happens, you will always look for him at night and perhaps that codependency, that you once thought was love, was exactly what love wasn’t. You didn’t know. 

‘You can keep everything,’ he says, taking a shuddering breath. You need him to be strong, he thinks. You need him to be sturdy when you cannot be. So he will. ‘Whatever you want you can have. You’ll always be my Princess.’ 

‘Ran…’ You don’t mean for it to sound so desperate and full of yearning, and perhaps it’s because you’ve been crying over this for weeks, that you’ve lain awake on the nights he wasn’t here, but a choked sob rips its way from your throat. 

What was the issue here? That he didn’t love you? Or that he did and that that love wasn’t enough to make you love him in return? Yes it was true he had accepted you, every part of you. The part of you that was a dreamer, the part of you that would rather die than show it. Was that not what love was? Acceptance of a sort?

All his life he had spent climbing this insurmountable mountain. But he would jump off in a heartbeat if it meant he’d meet you at the bottom. 

There were times of course, when you could caress the concept of happiness with gentle but tentative fingers, when you could reach out and touch, ever so lightly, that blanket of comfort that hung in the sky just out of reach. Those times when happiness was a just about perceivable thing. But it wasn’t enough. Because no matter how hard you tried, the puzzle pieces just didn’t fit,as if you were knocking together two things that shouldn’t be there, that wouldn’t fit together. 

‘It’s Rindou isn’t it?’ he asks and instead of feeling the numbing fear of being found out, you only nod against his chest, resigning yourself to whatever he might say next. 

‘I’m not mad Y/n. Maybe once I would have been but I’m not. I love you, and I love my Brother.’ Even though he’s putting on a brave face, his heart is breaking. His lips are a firm line. ‘He deserves you, and you deserve him.’ 

It would be easier if he was green with jealousy, if he was angry and thrashing and hurtful, if he just hated you because hate was so easy, would be so easy to swallow and accept and maybe you could leave him knowing he would still be whole.

‘Ran I’m sor-’

‘Don’t Y/N-’ he interjects and his grip around your arm tightens just a slight. Despite how much you loathe yourself for this, and he himself too, neither of you wants to back out, to go back to pretending. 

‘How did you know?’ Your voice is so small, muffled by the fabric of his shirt. Are you prepared for the answer? No, not at all, but you still need to hear it.

He looks down at you nestled against him and gives a weak but knowing smile. ‘I know Rindou better than he knows himself. Saw the way he looked at you, and you looked at him.’

Was there a way he could have prevented this? Maybe. Maybe if he was less neglectful and Rindou didn’t have to pick up the pieces every time the job took priority, if he wasn’t always the one in your company giving you the love you should have received from him. 

‘Why did you never say anything?’ 

‘I wanted to,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t want to have that conversation.’

‘Is that it?’

Say it Ran, you plead mentally. Tell me you didn’t love me enough to care. Say something horrible to me. Punish me for it.

‘And I didn’t want to take away someone who made you happy when I was too stupid and neglectful to do so.’ That lump in his throat is so thick with unshed tears that he feels like it’s choking him. He clears his throat, hoping the hoarseness of his voice can be mistaken for his cigarette smoking and not the fact that his ribs are crushing his heart.

The gravity of the situation and his words hit you like a sledgehammer to the chest. This is happening. You are separating after four years of marriage and the weight of the years descends on you like a stormcloud.

You whine against him and he only kisses your forehead.

‘Why do you not hate me?’ Your voice cracks and your eyes sting for the umpteenth time. 

‘Could never hate you Princess. Ever.’ 

It’s a testament to the years, to the fact that experience in love has taught him so much that’s softened him into who he is now. Still playful, still devious, but with a heart that lets in love, your love and only yours. It had taken so long to get to that point and perhaps that’s what hurts the most. The time spent trying to build something, the time you both feel you’ve wasted considering the circumstances. 

You love him, you do. But you’re not in love with him. Not any longer. 

Not since Rindou.

There was the crux of the issue.You could tell Rindou loved you too. You were old enough to know what it meant when his gaze lingered after you when you left a room, the attentiveness in his actions, the deep cadence of his voice that softened when he spoke to you, the smile he reserved for the days when he kept you company by the firelight. Too many times the light had caught the softness of his lips and you had wanted nothing more than to close the distance and kiss him outright. You never did, and Rindou loved his Brother too much to do it himself.

Shame boils in your gut. 

‘I’ll call the lawyers tomorrow,’ Ran whispers and removes his arms from around you, opting to take your hand in his instead. You’re grateful for the fact that he’s taken the initiative, realizing that maybe this is how it’s always been. Him racing ahead and you trailing behind after him, driftwood lost at shore.

‘Ran?’ Your voice quivers on his name. 

‘Yeah?’ 

‘Thank you…’ 

‘For what Princess?’ He doesn’t expect to be thanked for anything, least of all during the moment where he’s breaking your heart and you’re breaking his.

For some of the best days of my life. For being my first love. For loving me when I felt unlovable, in the moments I was unlovable.

‘Everything,’ you say and even though you want to cry, to sob, to wrench open a tear in the sky, you smile at him and the tension dissipates a little when he returns the smile, albeit hesitantly. Because even though you’re both in pain, you know that it doesn’t last. 

Maybe love between people like the two of you is eternal. Maybe there is no end. Maybe there will always be a string of fate that ties you together. 

a/n: I actually wrote this six months ago lol, how d'ya like it guys? I may write a part two (I have an idea already) depending on how you like this. I promise I do like Ran even if I'm constantly hurting him. I hope you all like it!