Shinji-dono…

I awoke with a start, eyes widening as I turned my head this way and that. There it was again, that voice. Soft and tender, but nonetheless still clear and audible. Yet there was something painful about it, something I didn’t like- the fact that it belonged to someone I knew but couldn’t place even after hours of deep pondering was enough to detonate my entire mind.

Before I could start to cogitate on whose voice it was, however, an annoying sound cut through the heavy silence of my room. My phone was ringing. Letting out a quiet groan, I picked up the receiver, held it to my ear, and, much to the dismay of my morals, grunted a hello.

“Nice to talk to you too, Torashi,” Was Saga’s sarcastic reply.

“Whatever,” I snorted back. “Why’re you calling at four in the morning?”

“Oh, anou…” He paused, leaving an irritatingly awkward stillness between the two of us. “Shou-kun wanted to see how you’re doing, but he’s been called away, so…”

I rolled my eyes. How very true… yeah right. The last time I checked, Shou wasn’t the type who would leave anyone to the wee hours of the early mornings. He was a caring man, one who would never let a friend down, one who would always have an extra band-aid in his wallet just in case if a dear pal ever slipped and skinned a knee. Even until now, I could still remember his gentle smile, how his laughter chimed like bells on a windy day. His fingers were slender, almost as delicate as his touch, his caresses that did not send my skin into shivers, but instead made me-

“Hello? Torashi? You still there?”

I hate you, Saga. I hate you so much. Again, I grunted into the receiver. “Oh I see,” I mocked him. “So Shou got you to call me at this time? How… un-Shou.”

Much to my chagrin, there was silence once more, only quite a lot longer. Just as I was about to fall asleep again, however, there came the overly optimistic voice of none other than Nao.

“Torashi!” He squealed, obviously totally unaware of the fact that he almost- almost, mind you- deafened me in less than five seconds. “Sorry to be bothering you at such an inconvenient time, but we’re friends, right? Anyways, we’re planning to have the celebration party two days later- well, one, actually, but we don’t want to stress you out so much- at Kai’s restaurant. Is that all right with you? It’s going to start at eleven in the morning, by the way.”

Eleven in the morning. For some reason, that thought alone caused my stomach to twist into an uncomfortably tight knot, tighter than Saga’s very own pants, which was just as awfully narrow as it was painful, and that was the most horrifying type of tight you could ever experience. Still, I couldn’t help but question my own reaction- despite my ‘dark’ appearance, as Hiroto once put it, I admittedly loved the sun and practically everything that had something to do with it, including mornings and 11 AM’s. So why did I have such a sickly feeling in my gut?

“Sure, that’d be great,” I finally answered him, having figured out that the reason for my silent riposte was probably just some random thingamajig that was related to a sudden, rather unexplainable recovery from Lung Cancer. Hopefully a change of appetite didn’t come with the package.

______________________________________________________

“He doesn’t have long.”

I sat there in silence, waiting for his cue, for his thin lips to break into a grin, then for him to laugh gaily before assuring me that he was merely joking; that Shinji was recovering and still had so much to live. But the silence continued to linger heavily between us, and, with a horror that began to eat at my heart, I realized that he did- and probably could not- make any sort of fun with these types of things. Without a single word, I stood and left, only tilting my head slightly forward in replacement of a bow.

Surprisingly to myself, I did not ask why, nor did I want to know. Somehow, I felt that I had contributed greatly to his condition then- I should have stopped his hand whenever he reached for a cigarette, but instead I only sat there, eyeing the death stick between his fingers with a sort of hatred boiling in the pit of my stomach- yet it always remained there, never once rising past my chest, as if the enmity was made of lethal toxic that could disintegrate even the hardest diamond with one single drop.

Slowly, cautiously, I stepped into his room, a private ward of soft, pastel colours, complete with a vase of roses from his mother, and a painting of Osaka Castle hanging on the wall. My gaze drifted from the roses to the painting, shielded behind glass and wood. It seemed to glow faintly in the dark, though with happier colours than the dreary gather of greens, greys, blacks, and whites. Scattered pink fragments floated around the rice paper, but everyone knew that there was never a day that the sakura petals flew from the trees there, much less dance carelessly by the majestic building.

At last, I sat on the little stool beside the bed. There were more comfortable chairs for visitors, but the stool marked a strong difference from all the other plastic seats- I had personally sought it out just to secure a place for myself in the room; it may be a tiny, cramped space, but with a dying patient beside it, it didn’t really matter much.

I tore my eyes from the painting, bringing them down to Shinji’s body. With his eyes closed, he looked frail and weaker than he already was, yet the fact that he was fast asleep made him seem like he wasn’t fighting nearly every second for his life twenty-four hours a day. Again, I felt another piece of my heart melt away as I looked at his sleeping form, because I knew as soon as those eyes were open the next morning, they would be filled with despair and even hopelessness.

“Shinji-dono,” I whispered- softly, though; I didn’t want to wake him up, “Shinji-dono…”

That was all I could do. Shinji-dono, Shinji-dono, Shinji-dono… and what made it worse was the fact that he was never awake to hear his name break through my lips. But no matter how hard I wanted him to, I could never bring myself to say it louder than a whisper, for he had someone already, someone closer and dearer to him than I have ever been. Sometimes I wanted to just break all morals and ethics and latch myself onto him, bury my face in his chest, take in his smell that still lingered in my nose. But then I would remember that he loved another, and that he was taken in every way possible, and that I held no right to his body anymore.

“Hmm…”

My head immediately shot up at the faint, barely audible groan. Was he stirring? I leaned forward, only stopping when our noses were about to touch. No, he wasn’t. He was only dreaming. Still, my curiosity would not let go of me, and so I stayed there, my ears twitching slightly whenever an indecipherable mumble left his lips. Yet nothing could have prepared me for what he murmured next.

“Aki-kun.”

There and then, a wave of emotions washed over me- first, shock, then anger, sadness, and lastly, torment. Aki-kun. That was not my name, much less my nickname. The pain seemed to pierce through my heart as I began to think of the days when there was only me and no Aki; the days when he would call for me instead of him, the days when I would wake up and breathe in his scent, instead of reluctantly waking up to an empty space beside me that had no trace of Amano Shinji.

Two minutes passed, and the only thing I could hear from him was Aki-kun. But by that time, my mind was made up. It hurt already, as if it were a knife slicing into my chest, but for once I did not stop myself. Not bothering to check if there was an eavesdropper or spying nurse, I carefully climbed on the bed, vigilantly brushing all the wires to a side, careful not to pull the IV out of his arm. Bending my back, I cupped his face in my hands, tilting his head back, before leaning down to lick at the softest part of his neck. For a moment I stayed there, my half-eaten heart racing with worry and perhaps even fright. But he began to stir again, and I punctured my fangs into his skin.

I couldn’t fully grasp or even describe the feeling. All I know was that as soon as his blood hit my tongue, I wanted more. I wanted to sink deeper, to taste such godly ichor from bottom to top. It savoured of dark chocolate, of soymilk, of green tea- everything I liked seemed to have tingled my taste buds; for a while I could sense nothing but the dark red substance flowing in my mouth and down my throat, the stool, the painting, everything else in the ward disappearing in a soft, snowy glow…

Stop. My eyes snapped open as I forced myself out of him, drips of blood still trickling down from my lips. The pleasure was gone, now replaced by anguish, the same knife that was cutting me open again. Lord, what did I do? Blood began to seep from the tiny pair of holes, and it wasn’t until his skin was tainted an irritating brown colour when I placed a hand over the wounds, gently wiping it all off, yet pressing on it hardly to stop the flow.

“Aki-kun…”

One look at that lust-driven face and I bolted like mad.

The curtains shut almost immediately after being open. A sudden ray of hard, vivid light shot through the windows, filling every inch of my room with streaks of gold and ivory. I shielded my eyes at once, cringing at the vexatious radiance that could have blinded me severely for life. Too much light, a voice grumbled in my head, go back to sleep. I shook my head stubbornly; under normal circumstances, I would have definitely listened to it, but right now, my own skin wasn’t as important as Shinji.

Two days after that fateful night, I received a call from the doctor. His voice was heavy, as if it was being weighed down by shock and confusion. Of course, I was just the opposite, but I replied with the same bewilderment, not forgetting to choke while gasping deeply- in other words, I was false crying into the receiver.

I looked at the mirror in the hospital lift. Everything- from the button-down shirt to the two-inched shoes- was white, save for the thin red belt around my waist. Hopefully it was the right thing to wear- it took me a whole hour to prepare for the visit, just to be sure I didn’t accidentally wear anything too dark or depressing, which was quite a difficult task, considering the fact that most of my wardrobe consisted of dark attires.

“Shou-kun,” Saga smiled at me when I stepped into the ward. The atmosphere was somewhat happier, even with all those people surrounding the bed; there was barely any room for me to squeeze in. Still, I couldn’t help but feel… strange. As if something was wrong in such a jovial event.

That’s when Shinji said it. “Where’s Aki-kun?” He asked, turning his head in all sorts of directions possible for the human head to turn to.

All at once, murmurs filled the room. Finally, Nao raised his head, his fingers balled into tight, guilty fists. “H-he called and said he can’t make it.” He blurted out after a moment of silence.

“Oh,” Shinji whispered half-heartedly, his back slowly falling backwards to land on the pillows, and I felt my temper swirling dangerously. How could he have more priorities than Shinji himself?

“Torashi?” It was Hiroto. “Do you want to wait for him?”

He shook his head. I expected a frown or pout on his face, but when I looked back at him, I only saw a brilliant grin. “It’s alright, Pon,” He sighed, but the grin grew wider. “I’d like to surprise him, perhaps give him a huge hug right there…”

It was my turn to ball my fingers. Hearing him talk so happily about Aki and what he intended to do with him as soon as he was back home was like having water drip slowly onto my forehead with my ankles and hands bound together by a pair of dead Hydrophis Belcheri- or maybe it wasn’t as bad; perhaps I have already lost my mind, driven mad with jealousy…

“Shou-kun?”

I blinked, turning around to meet Saga’s eyes. “Yes?”

“We’re leaving now.” He nodded at the others by the door. “The celebration party at Torashi’s, remember?”

Oh yes. I remembered. I remembered everything that had to do with Shinji. I remembered how he used to call me Kazamasa instead of Shou. I remembered how he would play with my hair when he thought I was asleep, how he would watch the stars so high in sky with me every Tuesday night, how he would cry out my name, lap at the sweat glistening on my nape, dig his nails into my skin whenever we crossed the boundaries of privacy and entered the heated world of ecstasy.

When we opened the door to his apartment, however, all hell broke loose.

Well, not exactly, actually. It was more like ‘our eyes bulged out as we stared at the scene in front of us, our feet glued to the floor.’ But it wasn’t long before Hiroto opened his mouth to yell what I knew was spinning in Shinji’s head: “What the fucking shit?”

The pair stopped straightaway, having caught red-handed. They were both shirtless, but that was the least of our worries- what made us speechless for nearly two minutes was the fact that the man in Yuuya's lap was none other than Aki, his face flushed, though not with the exhaustion from his make-out session with the other male, but now with remorse and even astonishment. For a while we just remained there, staring at one another, silently asking if we were still asleep.

Then, he reacted. “You!” Shinji screamed, and if it weren’t for Saga and Hiroto restraining his arms, he would be clawing at Yuuya’s face by then. “You traitor! Betrayer! Double-crosser!” At last, he broke free from their grips, storming to the pair, landing a violent punch to Aki’s real lover, hurling them out the door and thus his life forever. “Out, out!” He snarled at us, and, without hesitating, we left as well, our hearts pounding so hard that we could hear each other’s beating.

But as I was about to turn around the corner and into the lift, I stopped. I stopped because I heard… breathing. Deep breathing. And soft, heartbreaking whimpers. Then the whimpering descended into sobs. Shinji was crying. He was crying, and that was something I thought he would never do. Cry, cry with the door open, because that was something only cowards with problems like I did, and Shinji was not cowardly, nor did he have any problems… or did he?