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In the current house, there was a basement. It was dark and cold and inside was a big open cement space with a bunch of old junk and boxes and a drum set and a little room with a toilet and sink and a curtained off corner with a futon. It was where the person Yuki loved most in the world lived. There was a door down to that basement, and that door was locked. Only Kujo-san had the key, and twice a day Tenn was (unfairly) given it, and went down the stairs with a tray of food and water.
Ban was imprisoned like that because he’d tagged along to their practices. It—wasn’t imprisonment. It was all for their own good. Yuki and Tenn hadn’t been focusing with him there, and it wasn’t safe for Ban to go outside. Yuki wasn’t good enough to look after him outside anyway. This kept him home and safe.
A vent on the first floor went down to the basement. Sound carried up it. Crying, and calling Yuki’s name.
“I have to see him,” Yuki told Kujo-san.
Kujo cupped Yuki’s face in his hand and wiped away Yuki’s tears with his thumb. “Yuki…you don’t need him. It’s that attachment that’s keeping you from achieving your true potential, do you understand?”
“He needs me,” Yuki said.
“That doesn’t matter. As an idol, your responsibility is to the whole world.”
“Ban’s more important than the world,” Yuki muttered.
“Did you come here just to complain?” Kujo sighed, sounding fed up, down on his luck, victimized by Yuki’s behavior.
Yuki turned his head, pressing it further into Kujo’s hand and obscuring his face. “Sorry.”
“Pay me back by actually trying. Forget about Banri.”
He was trying. He tried his hardest every day. Why didn’t Kujo see that…because it wasn’t enough. He spent his days sleeping, eating, and zoning out. It didn’t look like trying and it shouldn’t count as that. “Sorry,” Yuki said again.
Kujo threaded his fingers through Yuki’s hair for a moment, then let go. “Good.”
Yuki made himself finish a new song for Kujo that day, and he said it was acceptable, but it wasn’t good enough to let Ban out or get Ban medicine (because that wasn’t why they were in trouble this time). Then Kujo called Tenn and told him what new things he had to practice, what his focuses were, and so forth. He hadn’t told Yuki that in a while and so Yuki asked, “What should I do?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Please,” Yuki said. He only knew how to do what Kujo-san wanted and he had to do something more to help Ban. The awful calling from the basement had been digging into his ears and stalling out his heart.
“Don’t be a pest.”
“Kujo-san…” Tenn said.
Kujo looked at Yuki like he was tired of him again. “You could make dinner, I suppose.”
So Yuki had to try.
It was a bad day, and so he couldn’t look at the knives. Much less use them. It would be like his hands on Ban’s head again, blood everywhere and bits of skull shifting and digging in underneath. But on the good days, he’d gotten himself to buy ingredients and chop them, neat and clean, even humming to himself as he worked, the satisfaction of getting something done keeping him afloat, and the promise of not having to do it on the bad days keeping him alive.
I’ll make hotpot today. It was okay. He'd be actually capable of cooking because of that. He opened the fridge.
Where were the ingredients?
Yuki suddenly remembered that Tenn had made hotpot yesterday.
That fucking brat! It wasn’t enough for him to take Ban and Kujo, he had to take Yuki’s hard work, too? He could have cut them himself! In fact, he shouldn’t’ve made dinner! He should have let Yuki do it, because apparently that was the only thing Yuki could do around this place!
Yuki slammed the fridge door and clenched his hands into fists. His eyes darted to the knives. Blood and knives and pointed things and sharp edges. He wanted to take one and carve out Tenn’s throat. Smear crimson all over his porcelain-pink skin, his pretty face. Cut that face open, scar it like Ban’s, so Tenn couldn’t be an idol anymore. Do it worse than reconstructive surgery could ever fix.
He almost took a knife for real but didn’t. Instead, he stormed upstairs and banged on Tenn’s door.
Tenn opened it. “What is it?”
“Do you think,” Yuki said, voice dripping with rage, “before you take things from the fridge? Like, oh, somebody must have cut these, perhaps for a reason?”
Tenn looked at him judgementally. “It doesn’t take that long to cut things.”
“Then why didn’t you fucking do it? Besides, we don’t have double of everything? You want me to go to the store?”
“Sure, why not?” Tenn said, wrapping his arms around himself, taking a step back.
Yuki stepped forward. Tenn stepped back again. It was a butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of control. “You’re an inconsiderate,” Yuki started, continuing to advance, “thoughtless, piece-of-shit suckup! You know that, right?”
Tenn was pressed up against his desk. If he tried to go back any further, he’d knock into it. He glanced behind him, then looked forward again. He held himself stiff and still.
Yuki grabbed his collar and pulled him forward. “Right?”
“You’re a—a—you’re not being fair,” Tenn said. “And you’re a loser.”
“I’ll hit you,” Yuki said. “You know how often I’ve fantasized about hurting you? I’ve got way more in mind for if you keep being a brat.”
“Do it then, see how Kujo-san reacts to a bruise on my face,” Tenn said.
Yuki made a noise of frustration and shoved him back against the desk. Tenn gasped, a small pained sound. He was small, compared to Yuki, and skinny. He was losing his baby fat a little with growth spurts; he’d grown so much the past few months that half his calves were showing underneath the hem of his pants. Fifteen years old, now.
Yuki let go. He suddenly wanted to apologize, to reach out and hug him. But he owed Tenn more than confusing inconsistence, and more than that, he didn’t want to take back those words that had given him power and satisfaction, even for a moment.
“Sorry,” Tenn said, looking away. “Sorry, Yuki-nii.”
“No, it was stupid,” Yuki said. “I’ll just go to the store, like you said.”
“I can go to the store—”
“No!” Yuki had to be useful somehow.
Tenn shrank back a bit again when Yuki yelled.
Yuki took a breath, feeling...relieved, from being able to be angry. Backed off, went to sit on Tenn’s bed. “Mind if I bother you a bit?”
“Kind of,” Tenn said.
“Well, if you don’t hate it, I’m here,” Yuki said. “C’mere. I won’t yell again.”
Tenn sat down next to him.
“How is Ban doing?” Yuki asked.
“He’s okay, but—well. Something kind of scary happened.”
“Something scary,” Yuki echoed.
Tenn glared at him. “Yeah, I said that. Let me talk.”
Yuki didn’t repeat things because he meant anything by it, it was just something he did, his brain catching onto the sounds. He missed Ban, the only person who had really understood that. Don’t get mad. “Okay, talk then. Tell me how you got scared.”
“Shut up,” Tenn said. “I wasn’t. But there was this weird thing—I think he had a seizure.”
What—right. Okay. Another thing Yuki was incapable of handling in-person without panicking. Tenn wasn’t in tears and calling 119—or whatever the number was in this country—so Ban wasn’t dead. And it wasn’t like seizures were deadly anyway. It was good Yuki wasn’t allowed to see Ban, maybe, because he would have panicked and been broken up about it for the rest of the day. Except…
“Alone?” Yuki asked.
“No, I was there.”
“That’s not what I…”
Tenn turned away, fiddled with his shirtsleeves, looked down. Yuki realized belatedly that he’d kind of dismissed Tenn’s entire existence. “It’s good you were there,” he amended.
“Thanks.” Tenn’s voice was flatter than a parking lot.
Yuki tried to remember what Ban's doctor had told him years ago and asked, “What was it like?”
“Kind of staring into space and twitching. It stopped about a minute after I came in, but I don’t know how long it was going on already. He said he didn’t remember. He didn’t remember having any others. He seemed okay.” That line was forced in there, it felt like, just to reassure Yuki. “Does he…have medicine for it?”
Theoretically yes. “Not right now.”
“…Right.”
“They—they don’t happen that frequently," Yuki said, scratching at his arm. "They said at the hospital that he would be at higher risk for them, for, for forever, but that if he lived healthily he probably wouldn’t have any even without medicine.”
“He’s not.” Tenn’s voice shook as he said that. “Yuki-nii, can’t you help him?”
“How am I supposed to help him? You’re the only one who’s allowed to see him,” Yuki snapped.
“I’m sorry. I know that it was my fault too—I didn’t stop him from coming along with us.”
Yuki pet Tenn’s head, making his hair stand up like a little bird. “It’s not your responsibility. And,” he decided, “it’s still stupid that he wasn’t allowed to come. He did well outside.”
“But Kujo-san said it was bad for him.”
Yuki poked Tenn’s cheek. “Kujo-san is stupid sometimes too, you know.”
Tenn batted him away. “He wouldn’t do this over something that didn’t matter.”
That was what Yuki wanted to think, too. He sighed. “Well…little suckup, want to come with me to the grocery store?” That was the most he could do to help right now, play housemaid. Make a good meal. Wasn’t eating well one of the things that warded off seizures?
“I have to work, and to study for the high school proficiency test too.”
That was a pretty sad life for a kid. “I went to high school. I’ll quiz you as we go. Then if you do well I’ll buy you strawberries at the grocery store. And—I think we can sneak a chocolate bar for Ban, if I say you ate it when Kujo checks the reciepts.”
Tenn smiled a little. Yuki felt like apologizing again but didn’t. He was too tense, and the words felt wrong. Tenn still invoked Kujo every time he was mad at Yuki, which—
Which Yuki didn’t like, because Tenn was a brat, no other reason.
If he considered Tenn a good kid, and was kind to him all the time, something in him would unravel. His spine would go floppy, like a piece of yarn pulled out of a scarf. Or maybe he was already broken, and that’s why he was cruel. He didn’t know. When he was capable of it he kept trying to be good. It was just that his trying wasn’t nearly enough.