Chapter Text
Mafuyu takes his medication every day.
He still doesn’t remember the name of it, but he takes the blue capsules in threes with his breakfast, and it, in turn, takes things away from him.
His psychiatrist tells him it takes away the depression, the social anxiety, the crushing weight in his chest that squeezes when he speaks. But it takes more than that. It takes away his emotions, most days. Other days, it takes his motivation, his energy, even his appetite.
Some days, it makes him think about the drop from a ten-story building. Or the warm asphalt beneath rubber tires. Or the scratchy rope of a noose around his throat.
He’s not sure if the capsules are the ones responsible for taking his sleep, but he hardly gets any of it—unless he’s bathed in the heat of sunshine on the school steps, where he’d first met Uenoyama.
Things have been harder for Mafuyu, lately, especially around Uenoyama. He’s learned to express himself a little through the singing and the songwriting, but not enough. He doesn’t know when is supposed to be enough, or how much. He just knows he’s not there yet, and the antidepressants only make it harder.
Besides, he hasn’t told Uenoyama everything about everything—not about the medication or the therapy, or his childhood, or his dad.
Mafuyu blanks out his mind before that thought can bring the familiar images. He grabs a handful of his hair and leans a little harder against his desk, where he’d propped his elbow and is scribbling on a sheet of paper.
That doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to tell Uenoyama about that. Uenoyama said he doesn’t have to.
But what if that’s why Uenoyama has felt cold, lately? Mafuyu isn’t very good at knowing what others are thinking or feeling, but that would make sense, right? Or is Mafuyu being too spacey? Is he staring too much? Talking too much? Being too loud? Saying enough? Not saying enough?
The test is difficult. The class is very quiet, but Mafuyu can hear his shoe tapping the ground under his desk, can feel his knee jittering against the bottom of it, and can’t stop even when one of the boys glares at him. He drops his eyes back to his paper and tries to focus. But the words are just letters mashed together on a white background, crowded and senseless; the multiple-choice bubbles are spaces to color in with his pencil.
When the bell rings, it nearly startles him out of his seat. He hates the sound of the bell. He hates that it rings every day.
Maybe he’s taken too much medicine. He doesn’t feel right, but he’s not sure what’s wrong. Uenoyama is here, but that doesn’t make him feel any better. He hasn’t looked in his boyfriend’s direction the entire day.
Boyfriend. Right?
He’s anxious when he thinks about it—should he or shouldn’t he look? Will Uenoyama think something is wrong or will he be angry? And if he is, which one will cause it—looking or not looking?
He just has a vague thought, more than a feeling, a thought that Uenoyama will look strangely at him if he sees his eyes, today.
The teacher takes his test paper after Mafuyu gets to the front of the line of students, and the way the man looks at it makes him fidget. His eyes narrow slightly—he adjusts his glasses, his eyes skitter across the page, and then he looks back up at Mafuyu with a frown.
“What’s this supposed to be? A joke?”
Mafuyu’s stomach tightens at his tone of voice. He didn’t mean to do anything wrong.
“Satou,” the teacher demands, and Mafuyu grasps the hem of his cardigan, blinking.
“Yes,” he blurts.
“What do you mean yes? Yes, this is a joke?”
What does that mean? Mafuyu hears snorting laughter behind him. The teacher doesn’t make it stop. Mafuyu pulls at his cardigan, and his fingers feel very cold. But he can’t make a face, he’s not sure how to make the face—what someone does with their brows when they don’t understand. He just keeps staring, and staring, looking at the anger in the teacher’s eyes, the way it darkens his expression like a cloud full of rain.
“N-no, sir,” he stammers, and the laughing gets louder behind him. “What’s…what’s wrong with it?”
The teacher makes an unpleasant, scoffing sound and thrusts the paper towards Mafuyu so violently that it takes effort not to cower. But once it’s in his face, he sees that he’s filled in all of the multiple-choice bubbles, and his cheeks begin to burn so badly that it hurts, and he presses his cold hands against them to try and hide it when the laughter turns into hooting.
“Sorry,” he tells the teacher, unable to speak up over the noise, “I’m sorry, sir.”
“If you’re sorry, you can re-do it in detention.”
Mafuyu’s throat tightens. It makes it harder to breathe, but he takes the paper in both hands, clasping it to his chest and bowing quickly. He can’t find his voice again to say anything more, and walks swiftly from the classroom. He thinks he feels someone’s hand brush his arm on the way out, but he doesn’t stop to see whose.
Mafuyu doesn’t eat lunch with anyone, but especially not Uenoyama, not after humiliating himself.
Uenoyama doesn’t come to find him. It makes Mafuyu less hungry. Uenoyama usually comes to find him.
Mafuyu skips lunch altogether and spends the time staring at his ruined test paper.
When it’s time for classes again, Mafuyu looks out the windows instead of listening, watching the breeze play with emerald-leafed trees. He feels twice like Uenoyama is looking at him, but he can’t make himself look back.
It’s not like they’re having any trouble with one another. It’s not like Uenoyama has said anything strange. It’s just Mafuyu, really, Mafuyu thinking up problems that aren’t really there, and making more and more of them along the way by avoiding Uenoyama because of it.
In detention, Mafuyu is alone with the teacher in charge. He has trouble focusing, even if he’s alone. The classroom feels too hot—the leaves blowing around outside are too enticing, the teacher’s tapping pencil is too loud, the ticking clock is too—
The ticking clock—
The ticking clock is too—
The clock goes tick, tick, the same way that it did when—
The clock.
Mafuyu shifts in his chair and tries to swallow it down.
It keeps ticking. The clock keeps ticking.
Mafuyu really doesn’t like the clock.
Tick, tick. Like dripping, that noise. Drip, drip.
He looks at it, at the white rim, at the long steel hand clicking away the seconds, and can’t look away.
Every clock—why does every clock have to remind him of Yuuki’s clock? Why does this one look like his, too, why did Yuuki have to have the most generic clock?
Mafuyu thinks he is going to do something strange. Mafuyu thinks about getting up and leaving. He thinks about running. He thinks about too many things at once, so that all he ends up doing is sitting there in a frozen panic, staring, staring at the clock as it goes tick, tick.
And then the door to the classroom bursts open. Mafuyu jumps.
Akihiko is standing there in the doorway. His lip piercings are glimmering in the sunlight. What is he doing in the highschool? He has his motorcycle helmet under his arm, and he’s not smiling, he’s not mad, but Mafuyu doesn’t think he’s particularly happy.
“Kaji-san,” Mafuyu greets him, softly. His eyes feel wider than they should be.
The teacher looks up, brows slanted. She puts her book down, next to the pencil she was tapping earlier. “Excuse me? Do you need something?”
Akihiko approaches Mafuyu and puts a hand on his head. It makes Mafuyu’s eyes stretch even wider. His hand is warm and strong.
Akihiko speaks to the teacher. “Sorry. His mom wants him home. She’s worried about him.”
Mafuyu doesn’t know what Akihiko is talking about. He looks blankly at the teacher, who frowns some more with her cherry red lips, and then asks, “Are you his brother?”
“Just a friend.”
The woman lets out an elongated sigh and waves her hand in the air. “I suppose, since he’s the only one here, anyway. You’ll have to finish that test at home though.”
“Okay,” Mafuyu says. He feels very lost.
Akihiko ruffles his hair and murmurs, “Come on, Satou-san.”
When they’re outside, Akihiko makes Mafuyu stand still and puts the motorcycle helmet on him. Mafuyu stares at the older boy through the visor.
“My mother is dead,” he tells Akihiko, because maybe he doesn’t know that.
Akihiko’s eyes widen a fraction, and he pauses for a moment with a grunt, then goes on tugging at the chin strap to fasten the helmet. “Sorry, kid. I know.”
That doesn’t make any sense. “Why did you tell her that?”
“It was a little escape plan. I wanted to bust you out so we could work on that new song.”
That’s right—they’ve been working on one together lately, because Mafuyu has had some trouble with the right words, and Akihiko has lots of really good ideas. He still doesn’t know why all of this is happening, but he thinks he should just go along with it.
“Oh,” he says.
Akihiko seems to think this is a funny response. His breath huffs out of his nose, and he turns and throws his leg over the parked motorcycle, his foot crunching in gravel. “Get on.”
Mafuyu does what he’s told. They go to Akihiko’s place. He doesn’t recall the ride, just watching the trees whip by in streaks of green and yellow.
In the apartment, Akihiko sits down with Mafuyu in the living room. Mafuyu puts his heavy bookbag on the table, and tries not to think about the test he’d stuffed inside.
The place smells like smoke and cologne, as usual, and he gets whiffs of gasoline from the motorcycle when Akihiko moves.
“Mind if I smoke?” Akihiko asks. He’s already pulling out a cigarette, though, and Mafuyu isn’t good at telling people what bothers him, especially when it’s something that they like to do often.
“Okay,” he says softly, crossing his ankles back and forth and watching the way his laces flop around on his boots.
Paper crackles and rustles as Akihiko spreads sheets of it out on the glass coffee table. Then there’s the flick of his lighter and a sharp hiss of flame.
The smell of smoke becomes thicker. Mafuyu doesn’t look up, playing with his stubby, ripped fingernails.
Akihiko doesn’t seem to mind that he’s not looking at the song notes. He starts talking, and Mafuyu keeps nodding and repeating “okay” to whatever he’s told, because that always works—except for those rare times when Uenoyama gets mad at him for it.
It’s strange—he normally finds it easy to listen, easy to absorb what Akihiko teaches him about music, but today he’s too removed from himself. They’ve been doing this for a while now, going to Akihiko’s house to study music and write for the band, and it usually doesn’t feel this crowded with only two of them in the room. The cigarette smoke feels like a whole other person with them.
Mafuyu hears his phone go off in his bookbag. He unzips it while Akihiko is still talking, and pulls it out, looking at the screen, which feels too bright for his eyes.
It’s from Uenoyama. You’re at Kaji-san’s place today too?
“Satou-san?”
Mafuyu doesn’t register it, staring at the phone, at the words, the words that buzz like bumblebees and shiver on the screen.
“Satou-san? Oi, Satou. Satou! Mafuyu!”
Mafuyu’s insides drop at the volume of his voice. His ears ring. The phone slips out of his fingers and slaps the ground between his feet. He hunches his shoulders, keeps his eyes shut, his mouth shut. Waits. Forgets where he is, forgets who’s yelling at him or why. Forgets everything for a second.
“Shit,” the voice continues, amused, “shit, sorry—I said your name like three times so I didn’t…” The voice trails off. The voice goes softer. Mafuyu remembers that it’s Akihiko’s voice. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…scare you.”
Mafuyu opens his eyes and looks at his lap. He tries to loosen the curl in his shoulders. “Sorry,” he says, and his voice comes out monotone. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Got it. Are you okay?” Akihiko asks.
Mafuyu can’t look up at him. “Yes.”
“No, I’m serious, Satou-san. Are you really okay? You’ve been repeating the same answer to my questions for half an hour.”
So he noticed. “Yes.” He should say more. “I’m okay.” He’s not lying. He’s not.
Mafuyu’s phone glares up at him, flashing again with a new message from Uenoyama. Hey.
“Is someone texting you? Do you need to go?”
Mafuyu shakes his head. He’s afraid to see Uenoyama. What if he wants to tell Mafuyu he’s not interested in him anymore, that Mafuyu is too much to deal with? That Mafuyu is too clingy, or—or not clingy enough?
Akihiko sighs and his weight shifts on the couch. Mafuyu watches his foot kick the edge of the coffee table. Is he angry?
“I don’t know what else to say, then.” Akihiko’s voice is gentle. “Let’s try to write a little. Yeah?” He rubs Mafuyu’s head. It feels good.
Mafuyu feels very, very tired. But he agrees with Akihiko so he’ll move on, saying “Okay,” even though he wants to find something else to say.
They try to write, but Mafuyu isn’t able to concentrate any better than he had with the test. He leaves his phone on the ground, and it lights up with more messages that he’s too scared to read. His head makes them up, instead.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Don’t you care about me?
What would you do if I killed myself, huh? Would you cry, then? Would you have feelings, then?
I would do anything for you. Stop acting like that means nothing.
Say something, damn it!
“Mafuyu.”
Akihiko’s voice brings him back again. Mafuyu is leaning on the coffee table, chin propped, staring at the paper in front of him. The pencil in his hand is broken, one half of it rolling over the glass.
The paper says things Mafuyu doesn’t want it to say. It says the words he was thinking in his head, not the song he wants to write. It says them all in pressed, glaring letters, black like dried blood on the page.
Blood—
Stop it, Mafuyu.
Akihiko is blinking at the paper. “Is that supposed to be your song?”
Mafuyu feels his heart pounding in his lungs. He grasps the paper, crumpling it under shaking hands. He says nothing, this time because he feels nauseous, as if when he opens his mouth, only awful things will come out.
“Alright,” Akihiko says very gently, and Mafuyu looks at him with burning eyes. It’s difficult to breathe. Akihiko’s brows are furrowed, and his green eyes look forgiving. His cigarette is wearing itself away on the edge of the table, all but discarded as Akihiko reaches for Mafuyu’s shoulder. “You’re not doing too great right now. Should we stop? You look like you’re gonna cry.”
Cry? He does? Why would he cry?
Mafuyu’s phone is buzzing against his foot, over and over and over. He stands up, shoves his crumpled paper in his bag, bends over and knocks his head against the table while trying to pick up his phone with clammy fingers. He feels his eyes water as he stuffs the phone in the bag without looking to see if it’s Uenoyama calling him, because he knows it is.
“I have to go,” he tells Akihiko calmly. “I’m sorry.”
Akihiko stands up, too, lifting the bookbag because it slips out of Mafuyu’s fingers, Mafuyu hardly able to see anything but blurred shapes.
“It’s alright, Mafuyu,” Akihiko murmurs, holding out the straps of the bag until Mafuyu realizes he’s supposed to put his arms through them. “I don’t mind. Are you going to be alright? Can I take you home? Or to…Uenoyama’s place? Or something?”
“He’s at remedial class,” Mafuyu says as he fumbles the bag onto his back, his voice so dull it doesn’t even sound like it belongs to him. “I’ll walk home.” His throat is tight and his face feels wet when he blinks, but he doesn’t do anything except hold onto his bag straps, hoping Akihiko will move out of his way.
Akihiko’s eyes are blank and round. He lifts his hand, and his knuckles brush something warm across Mafuyu’s cheek.
He flinches. “What’s that?” he asks.
“Mafuyu,” Akihiko says, “you’re crying.”
Mafuyu stares at Akihiko’s hand. He doesn’t understand. “I’m not crying.” He doesn’t feel it. He would feel it if he were crying. He would be curled over and sobbing like they do in the movies, and his face would be screwed up all funny, and he would be gasping for air.
The antidepressants must be doing this to him. He shouldn’t have taken more than he was supposed to this morning.
Mafuyu wipes his face.
“I’m not letting you walk home,” Akihiko says. “Let me take you.”
And Mafuyu doesn’t see any room to protest.
“Okay,” he whispers.