Kquorans, can you please write a story?
07.06.2025 17:01
He doesn’t know.
They get there at night, stuck in the still-bustling streets. “I don’t want to ever go home,” Kanae breathes, looking up at the buildings towering over him, neon and inviting and all too beautiful. He was made for this. He was made for a city like this, it’s better than whatever he has in the country. Mie can hardly compare to the Shibuya streets.
Kyo stirs, half asleep, mumbles something.
Can the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) be reversed?
Kanae’s gone all right, on a train to Tokyo with Kyo fast asleep next to him, snoring like a beast and drooling on Kanae’s shoulder.
Kanae is too.
— someonecalledrilke.
What do porn stars do when they get old?
Ah, there goes Kanae. Tall, slender, with a beautiful face to match. He’s got the kind of face men and women dream about. (The kind of face Kouyou dreams about.) Everyone says it’s plastic surgery, ‘cause his family’s rich, but everyone sucks up to him anyway. He’s pretty and rich. Never too nice to anyone, and everyone likes that. The girls like the quiet, mysterious guys, like Kanae, with his long hair and almost colorless eyes and perfect lip tint. Kouyou wishes he could be like Kanae. Kouyou wishes he could be Kanae.
Kanae splashes him again. “And you don’t nearly have enough.” He chases Kyo with a little red crab all across the beach, invites the attention of a little stray dog who joins in their antics and jumps about, scraggly and wet and barking. When it shakes, it splatters water all over the two of them, seaweed in their hair and the dog’s and draped over their clothes.
Green Day is such a lovely band. Americans have the most quaint things. Kouyou slips on some socks, trying to pull them over his knees in a dainty sort of way, the way he’s seen Kanae do it when his knee socks slip down after volleyball. It doesn’t work; his fingers are too thick, too clumsy, for such delicate work. He’ll never attain that level of beauty, and he wants to accept it, he really does, but he keeps trying as if someday he’ll be that kind of girl.
How many boxes 600 x 400 x 200 go into a 20ft container?
And how right he was.
“You’ve been gone for a week or so, and they’re not coming to get you?” Kyo teases lightly. “Some brothers you’ve got.”
Kanae scoffs. “We’ve done that before, haven’t we? Hey, give me your razor. Where do you keep your good blades?” He likes Kyo because Kyo gets it. He comes here for an escape and he gets it every time. No one ever asks why he’s not in school.
He watches Kyo’s expression, looks for the little hints that signal his interest. “Osaka isn’t too far from Tokyo, we could go to both,” Kyo says eventually. “Maybe Ueno. If I had it my way, I’d take you to America. Or — “
“Ahh.”
“You haven’t been doing it this week,”
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Kanae kicks him, hard, and goes back to sleep.
Ryoto runs a shaky hand through his hair. “Just you wait till your other brothers get home,” he says abruptly. “You have to do shit you don’t want to sometimes. You never learn, Kanae.”
“Kyo-san, are you talking to yourself again?” his nurse calls, exasperated, and Kanae’s gone, a wisp out the window. He melts into the setting sun like butter.
Don’t come find me! I’ll be back.
And of course Kyo says yes, because what else is there to say? They’ve done it all together; there’s no going back. “‘Course I would,” Kyo says amicably. “Now pass me a f@g.”
He watches Oboreru Knife over and over again in the warm shell of his room, desperate to feel something. He’s gotten so numb nothing matters anymore.
What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you've witnessed?
“Road trip?” Ah, Kanae’s piqued his interest. It takes quite a lot for Kyo to actually want to do something, the lazy bitch. “To where?”
Kyo just laughs at him, amused but not surprised. “The country made you, though, didn’t it,” he says just as airily, and gets a sharp whack between his shoulder blades for the trouble. “Ow!”
“I don’t want them to look for me,” Kanae says huffily. “I’ve been here for as long as I want to be. You should go home tomorrow. I’ll come with you, okay? But you won’t see me for a while. I’m going to go back to school.”
What do you do to make yourself sleep early?
11pm and the locals peeek out at the noise, but Kanae’s good at running, he’s learned to run a long time ago. He takes Kyo’s hand and runs away, away, laughing and wheezing and waving at the little dog still barking and wagging on the beach.
You, who is painted orange in the evening light.
Kyo blows out smoke and coughs up a wad of phlegm. Kanae scowls. “You’re disgusting!”
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Kanae hums, taking the little pack of Kent and lighting one. Kanae shouldn’t be smoking, his brothers will smell it on him soon enough, and Kyo’s much worse, he’s only just gotten over his terrible pneumonia. It doesn’t stop either of them from passing a joint back and forth, blowing smoke into each other’s faces.
Kyo, biking, birds, dawn. Among other things.
“It’s a very orange day,” Kyo murmurs. “I’d like to go outside today.”
Why does a college girl cover her face with a scarf in Bangalore?
“Nii-san,” Kanae tries, wheedling and sweet. “I wasn’t even gone for that long. I was busy, I went to see my friend, he’s sick-”
“How brave of you,” Kyo says, not unkindly. Kanae can’t decipher whether it’s sarcasm or not, but with Kyo, it’s most likely the poorly worded truth. Sweet Kyo, who’s stuck with him all through his illegally funded tour of Japan’s cities, who hasn’t stopped cutting himself although Kanae’s quit the activity days ago — for good, yeah, he swears he won’t go back. Kyo still drinks, and on some occasions Kanae joins him, to have a smoke and a shot and Miki Matsubara in the background like they both did before.
They sit next to each other at lunch, sometimes, just so Kouyou can get a little closer to the gorgeous enigma that is Kanae. Menhera-but-not. It’s a sick fascination that warps his insides. Kanae’s so pretty, Kouyou just wants to look like him. Rib removal surgery is a thing for girls, but Kouyou wants to reduce his chest to look a little more like Kanae’s. Volleyball; years of playing middle blocker has built his thighs to be strong and trunklike. Ahh, he’s not fat, but he should really lose some weight, right … if only he could look a little more like a girl without stopping being a boy.
Adrenaline. I’ll have whatever he’s having.
“You’re so pretty,” Kouyou tells him earnestly. “Like, seriously. You could get so many girls. Why don’t you ask anyone out?”
After all, the country with Kyo doesn’t sound half as bad as the country on his own. Or worse, with his brothers. He’ll do anything if it’s with Kyo.
Self-freedom. Self-liberation. He’ll be free.
Few things matter.
“Pass me a-” Kyo says something in English, something Kanae doesn’t know. “Cigarette,” he clarifies. “In english it’s called a f@g.”
やがて暗闇に染まる溶ける
Kyo doesn’t say anything to that. He stands with Kouyou in the lovely grass fields of Mie, watching the clouds blow by in the blue sky, orange no longer.
Like the bridge of a song, he steps into senior year with self-cultivated scars and a resigned heart. He’ll be stuck here for now, so why not go out loudly? Yes, the roof is high enough that he can jump and die. Easy, quick, who will mourn his broken body? Certainly not his dearest friend whom he’s never even met. I don’t even know what you look like, he writes, and does not get a reply for three days.
But he doesn’t want to be a girl. Does he?
And Kanae stays. He stays, because this town is eating him up from the inside out, he needs to get out but he’s stuck. There’s no way for him to get out of a town like this. Kuyamu to kaiite mirai indeed — his future drawn in some simple calligraphy strokes he sits practicing all night.
Kyo and Kanae take their respective trains back to Mie and Nagoya. Kanae meets with Kouyou, tells him he can be anything he likes.
The parallels go back and forth with Kanae’s torn-up wrists. Free bird, fly away, go bluebird go, this town isn’t right for you. You’re built for the city, why do you stay in this small town where they have nothing to offer you? There’s nothing here for you; why don’t you swap places with some other pretty boy who wants to go home? Your home’s nothing like his, but it’ll do, he just wants to be out of here.
Kanae wakes with a killer headache, tangled in sheets. He turns to his left. Kyo, naked, sits scrolling through sites with a nonchalant frown.
He doesn’t want it to.
“You were Kanae’s friend?” The boy’s name is Kouyou. He has the look of someone who’s recently lost a lot of weight, but it’s clear his slim figure holds a considerable amount of strength. He claims he’s a boy but he dresses like a girl, silky, choppy orange hair wavy and messy around his face. He wears soft sweaters and genuinely cries when Kyo tells him Kanae’s died.
“Of course not,” Kanae says, shirking. He’s seen those girls doing it in groups in the movies, what if people see? His brothers will lose their minds over it. He can’t admit the idea sounds terribly appealing. Maybe some other time. “Not yet,” he says dismissively. “Just show me your good blades. I’ll show you how to cut pretty.”
‘Jirai kei’, landmine girl. Kouyou likes these jirai kei girls. Menhera. They’re better than his classmates make them out to be. He talks with some from the city sometimes.
Tokyo is like an adrenaline high. The big, bustling city, scatttered and dotted with people like Kanae’s tenth grade biology textbook, humans like ants flooding the streets. Shibuya crossing leaves no room for cowards, and yet standing there, in the middle of the chaos, Kanae feels he can finally breathe.
“Did we fuck?” Kanae says, yanking the blankets up to his neck. He’s naked. And his thighs hurt. “Hey, you bit me.” There’s a little bloody mark on his shoulder, a ring of Kyo’s sharp teeth.
—— EGOIST.
“Hey,” Kanae says loudly, and smacks the window. Kyo wakes with a jolt. Kanae waits for him to open the window. It takes time. Kyo stretches, lazy like a cat, licking his lips and yawning.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“I’d rather die,” Kanae says, blunt as always, and Kyo laughs. “We’ll see. Maybe we’ll go somewhere quieter.”
“Y’know, drinking. Smoking. All that.”
“Kanae?” Kouyou asks, small and nervous. “You’re not coming home, are you?”
He’s being dramatic. No one likes a dramatic boy.
Kouyou ends the call, hands shaking. Fuck.
“Oh?” Kyo’s lips curve, just the corner, and he gives Kanae’s scarred wrist a little squeeze. “Go ahead.” He returns with a little box, stainless steel and tied with a small pink ribbon. “I like to make things cute,” he says, and Kanae laughs.
“You don’t either, Ryo-nii,” Kanae says sweetly, and two days later, he’s gone again, only this time he’s left a note.
“You’d stick with me, right?” Kanae says suddenly, looking to Kyo, intertwining their fingers. They’re still in that ‘just-friends’ land, because neither of them want a real real thing, they want to be friends with the kisssing and the drinking and the sex. Friends with all the good stuff and none of the bad “You’d stay with me as long as we like, right?”
奥にしまった君の笑顔は
“It’s a blue night,” Kyo observes. The moon hangs crescent-curved and pretty in the dark, hazy navy sky, and Kanae agrees that the night is indeed very blue.
Silly, selfish thing.
“The school called and told me you were absent for four days!” Ryoto shakes Kanae by the shoulders, glasses askew, normally brushed hair tousled and windswept. “You fucking brat. Can’t you stay in school for once? Would it kill you to be there for one day? And what’s this?” He snatches Kanae’s wrist, tight, scowls in disgust. “What’s your friend teaching you, huh?”
“I miss you,” Kyo says weakly. “I really miss you. Please don’t go.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀——⠀⠀人算不如天算
“You’re bleeding,” he says to himself. “Oh, you’re bleeding, are you okay?” He pauses, sniffs. “No, it hurts. Oh, I’m sorry. Let me help you. Okay. How did you get so hurt? I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s okay. Let’s go home. Okay. I’ll go home. I’ll go home now. Everyone’s out working anyway.”
Kouyou calls Kanae, dialing numbers with slow, calloused fingers, cringing at the first ring. It sits and rings for a while. Kouyou calls again, sits and waits until he realizes he’s missed warmup. Coach might be angry, but he’s a star player. Everyone knows Kouyou, and everyone who knows him likes him. He can miss a few practices, even if it’s a spot on his perfect attendance record.
“Neither have I,” Kanae says, breathless and giddy, and he throws his arms around Kyo.
He drinks strawberry milk with Kyo at the base of Mt. Fuji, jokes about climbing it and laughs when Kyo says he might really do it someday, if he ever gets better.
Kyo stretches, yawns, does whatever he always does when he has to getup. “Let’s do it on the porch,” he says, a little daringly, bright teeth and catty, devilish eyes. “Want to?”
“I’m not into girls,” Kanae says flatly, and everyone around them falls silent. “I don’t see why it’s any of your business.”
“Kanae hasn’t been here for days,” Kouyou says with a little frown. Stuck at practice again. He’s itching to go home and try some of the new clothes he’s ordered, but he’s here practicing with the libero for the next hour. Thinking about Kanae sounds like a nice distraction. “I wonder where he’s at.” Kocho Kouyou, thick-tongued speaking to Kanae, sleek and charismatic with just about anyone else.
It’s Kyo’s turn to grin. He leans in to kiss the wound. “Don’t be a baby. You were the one on top.”
“Very,” Kyo says brightly, and they go back to their regularly scheduled program. Nighs spent cutting and drinking and having wild, pleasurable sex on the floor until it gets too boring to bear. Hey, we should go on a road trip, it’s Kyo’s turn to say his time, and Kanae agrees — maybe to America, for real this time — only days later, Kyo comes home to find Kanae hanging from the ceiling fan one warm summer day.
Hang up your neck with your amp; someone sitting in a dingy Los Angeles apartment throws his bass across the room, tears at the strings until his hands are raw and bleeding. Tears pour down his cheeks as he rips out the strings with his teeth. Blood runs down his chin, only it’s his own, it’s always his own, he’s always the one making sacrifices. It’s always his blood. Someone else finds him like that, hunched over his bass. Shredded, torn. Like him.
He takes out his best sake, puts on a Miku Matsubara vinyl, gets out his little box of razors, and does what he does best until he’s satisfied.
He’d like to be pretty like one of them. He’s not a girl, though. 6’2, muscular, he’s done sports all his life. Not much facial hair, he’s thankful for that, but he’s a man, he’ll only ever be a man, and no one will ever see him as anything but one. He is a man, though, and he’s got more important things to focus on than jirai kei girls and their soft fashion.
Kyo shoos his nurse out the door with a feeble twitch of the hand, rolling slowly onto his side with great difficulty. His breaths are forced in and out of him, no room to gasp and cough and laugh like he did on that one night with Kanae. “It’s all so sudden,” he’d told Kouyou. “Or- it was. I didn’t mean to come tell you so late.”
おやすみおやすみ
I don’t believe in lighthearted people; I don’t believe in the men that cast their pretty smiles all over the world and dance around like nothing’s happened. I don’t believe in this self-identified chaos; I only want to settle down and live calmly for once. I hate moving around, what’s the problem with being stagnant? Why do we choose to run around like headless fools when we know it’s safer to stay still? Why do people run and breathe and partake in activities that [INK SMEAR] useless. Everyone’s useless. I’ve had enough. I can’t live like this. ( オレンジ色に染まる君は )
Kouyou had laughed in a way that reminded Kyo terribly of Kanae, and he’d said it was okay, and that Kanae was probably better off away from this world.
He goes to visit Kyo in Nagoya. Flinches upon seeing him. Kanae can’t stand things that aren’t easy on the eyes, especially not people. It’s a half hour drive from Mie to Nagoya, and it’s always worth it, but nothing in or out the hospital is ever easy on the eyes. Kanae tends to avoid them and the people in them. Kyo’s only just been discharged.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀羊が一匹闇の中全部切り裂いていけ
Kanae eats so delicately. Kouyou tries to copy his quick, light movements.
Kanae smiles, not his usual catty, cold one, but the sharp grin he threw Kyo’s way, back in the city. He reaches out, cold hand squeezing Kyo’s. No words are said, but he’s there, that’s all that matters.
In retaliation, Kyo presses the cigarette into Kanae’s bicep and reaches up and to the right to put on a Miki Matsubara vinyl. Bay City Romance plays quietly, Kanae presses his wrist into Kyo’s sheets to slow the bleeding. This continues until evening, until both of them have red lines scored up and down their limbs. “I could make a tattoo on your back,” Kyo whispers, dry hands massaging Kanae’s tense shoulders. “We should try that sometime.”
Kyo vomits when they reach a bench, laughs until he vomits again and tells Kanae he’s never felt better.
Kanae laughs at his indignation, pulls on some socks and shoes, and heads out the door. Kyo’s shirt is warm on his chafed skin.
One of the blades inside is crusted over with blood. Kanae shrieks; Kyo makes a face and tosses it out the window. Another one, broken and chipped, follows, as do two more until the only ones left are spotless and sharp.
The wound continues to spurt blood. He fidgets on the edge of the rooftop, leans heavily against the chain-link fence. He can’t go back to class like this. But if he goes back into the halls, someone will see him. That much is certain. Not only that, he’ll drip blood all over the floor.
“You’re coming home soon, right?” Ryoto says, voice slightly tense. “I heard you’ll be back soon.”
Kanae huffs. “It’s not like I need your approval to go anywhere. I’ll be home when I want to be home, so don’t bother me.” He ends the call, rolling his eyes, and Kyo grins from their messily made bed. It’s a new hotel they’re staying in, dingy and old, but it’s more than good enough.
Kanae takes a box cutter to his wrists one windy afternoon, hazy sunlight casting a golden light across his delicate face. He pinches at the cut, winces, pulls the skin apart to see the layer of fat and the peals of blood that bubble out slowly. A few more swipes and his arm is neatly split, red skin bunching together and pulling apart at the edges. “WAXING POETRY”, says the line written right above the cut. The ink splits with his skin. He’ll rewrite it over and over again until he can run away from home and get some tattoos.
Kanae sits curled up like a cat at Kyo’s feet, lazy and content as the two of them watch some 2000’s mecha anime that Kyo likes. The room’s full of his stupid robots. Kanae has to move some off the bed to make space. Kyo never cleans up, can’t be bothered and doesn’t have the strength.
“You’re so gorgeous,” Kanae says from behind Kyo’s bedroom window. “Hey. Look at me.”
It doesn’t.
Then he picks up the phone. “Hello?” he says. “I’d like to report a suicide.”
“What would an oaf like you want with me?” Kanae snaps, hiccuping slightly. “Go away, I’m having a drink. Talk to me another time. Go ask one of your friends, you have the whole school to talk to.” He hiccups again. “Least they don’t call you a plastic slut. You have a question for me, you can have a question for the-”
Kanae goes home.
Kouyou exhales, relieved.
“I hate you,” Kyo tells Kanae’s body, rotating slowly from the ceiling fan. What a sadist, hanging himself in Kyo’s living room. “I hate you, you terrible — terrible —” He tugs listlessly at Kanae’s leg, sits on the floor and watches his best friend spin slowly for five minutes before he starts to cry.
It’s not that Kyo’s ugly, no. OR at least, not yet. (As far as Kanae knows, it’s impossible to have a nice personality and be ugly.) But he’s… sick. Tubes and ports and bags coming in and out of him. IV drip, oxygen tank, masks. His skin looks almost corroded. He’s frail. Tan, but washed-out, almost grey. Long, tangled hair, emotionless expression, thin lips set in a line. Bandages run up and down his wrists. Kanae can’t resist a giggle. What a pain it must be for Kyo to cut himself, even like this.
It starts innocently enough. Kanae gets to see the city. Tokyo is like nothing he’s ever seen before, beauty upfront and in all these hidden places. He holds hands with Kyo, holds off on his bad habits for a day or two, longer than he’s ever gone before. He says I love you more than not, like a white bird has entered his swallow body, purified him with the breath of the city. This must be true joy, the only thing close to joy he’s ever felt in his life.
“It’s really hard to get these out,” Kyo mumbles, trying to pry the sharpener apart. It takes him a good five minutes, but he breaks it and hands it to Kanae, who doesn’t take it.
Kyo laughs until he’s coughing again, and Kanae has to hit him hard on the back. The two of them sit on the doorstep, half a sandwich each from the konbini a few blocks away. The orange sunset casts the white cream into a yellow haze. Kanae scarfs his sandwich down, ogles Kyo’s without shame, and grins like a cat when it’s handed to him almost immediately.
“You can go deep with one swipe,” Kyo informs him, undoing his bandages, wincing at the smell of infection. “Eeeww. I hate stitches. They didn’t even do this one right.”
“You’re gross,” Kanae complains when Kyo slips a shirt on over his open, festering cuts. “Why don’t you bandage yourself?”
All these delicate, simple movements to make himself feel pretty, and he’s dressed in his volleyball uniform, nothing more. He stares at himself in the mirror, tugs his shirt tight around himself not to see if he’s grown a gut, but to see if his chest resembles a girl’s enough.
“The night’s still young.” Kanae grins, sharp, and Kyo kisses the corner of his mouth.
“You used up all of them, dummy,” Kyo hisses, scratching furiously at his forearm. “I hate stitches. They never do them right. I don’t even get them out till next week, how crazy is that? I was supposed to be in the hospital for being sick, not for cutting myself.”
You, who slips away like a dream.
“Six hours was worth it,” Kyo murmurs, resting his head on Kanae’s houlder. He has to bend a little to do so, and Kanae stoops lower, laughing when Kyo stumbles, whisking him away to a store.
Kanae scoffs, softer now, phone tucked between his head and his shoulder as he does the dishes. “Hey, who told you that? I’m coming home in a week. Don’t throw a fit, I’m on my way to Osaka.”
“You’re too pretty to not be a girl, idiot,” he says, roughly yet somehow almost affectionately, and leaves, and that’s the last Kouyou ever sees of him.
Two gorgeous freaks sharing a sandwich in the street. Passersby stare at Kyo for sympathy, Kanae for his beauty, and they all murmur poor boy at both of their scars, stark red and dripping in the light. Neither of them have bothered to bandage their wrists at all, as if there’s a shortage.
“Let’s go drinking tonight,” Kanae says, watching the once-again orange sky. “And we’ll go to the fields on a purple day.”
Kanae runs two quick cuts along the inside of his wrist. Skin splits, he leans into Kyo, wood soaks up blood. “Hey, let me give you some,” he murmurs against Kyo’s thin, faintly fluttering chest, and uses the same blade to incise a straight line on Kyo’s thigh. They both wince. Kanae presses a kiss to the corner of the wound.
“Your hair’s undone,” Kyo laughs, breathless, pinning Kanae’s hair up in one swift motion. “You’ve got too much of it, anyway.”
His nurse hums as she helps him sit up. “That can be arranged, Kyo-san. I’ll be back in just a moment.”
And Kanae comes one Wednesday afternoon, long hair tied up and messy, little flyaways frantically tucked in but continuing to pop out. Fresh pink scars litter his wrists. A cigarette dangles from the corner of his lips. “It’s yours,” says Kanae, tucking it into Kyo’s mouth. “Happy to see me?”
“If you have something to say, hurry up and say it,” comes Kanae’s voice, crisp and annoyed, as always. Kouyou jumps. “Hello? Are you there? What’s going on, huh?”
They share one, passing it back and forth on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Kanae goes inside, rummages through Kyo’s cabinet until he finds a bottle of whiskey. He comes back drinking straight from the bottle, coughing through the burn and shoving it into Kyo’s hands. “You shouldn’t drink,” he accuses as his friend downs half the bottle.
Kouyou quails.
月日経っても消えない思い出
Kyo laughs, starts to cough, laughs some more as Kanae whacks him across the back.
“Little towns aren’t for me,” Kanae says lazily, sharing a box of pocky with Kyo one evening. Half the week has gone by and Kanae has never been happier. “I was made for a place like this.”
“What?”
“Gross,” Kanae says, but doesn’t push him away.
“Ah … thanks.”
The tide comes in and out, dark water frothy at their ankles. Kanae cups some, splashes Kyo. The salt burns. Kyo’s used to burning.
Green Day. They have such good music. Kouyou has one of their songs on loop, hums along to it as he ties his hair like the girls do — high, neat, a little messy. His hair isn’t long enough that he can put it in a bun like Kanae does sometimes, but it’s long enough for the tiniest ponytail. He’ll have to cut it soon, anyway.
He shakes his head. “I want the eyebrow razor,” he says, and Kyo indulges him. “Ah, nice blade. You should give me some tricks.”
Kyo goes home, stays there, thinks about his dead relatives and how he wants to die but he’s too scared to. I hope you’re well, he writes in a letter to Kanae. Come see me soon.
TW: descriptive s/h, su*c*de, underage smoking + drinking, unhealthy coping mechanisms, illness, very brief mention of v*mit and death.
“We should go on a road trip,” he says, and Kyo perks up a little, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “Gross, use a tissue.” Kanae produces a handkerchief, scrubs at Kyo’s cheek.
Everything’s gray. Kanae, stop changing your last name, you can’t run from your problems forever, you’re tied to this singing city no matter what you do. Blood is thicker than water, ignore the covenant. Kuyamu to kaiite mirai, your life is yours to compose. Get out of here, Kanae, run and don’t come back. This place isn’t right for you. It’s hurting you.
不気味な夜を君と共に
Off to the fields above the beach. Grass tickling the backs of their knees, sand between their toes. The rocks tear up Kyo’s delicte skin and leave him bleeding across the beach, but he only laughs, chasing Kanae up and over mossy stones and knee-deep into the water, two sets of pants rolled and cuffed and damp at the hems.
“I knew something was up,” he says miserably. “Kanae wouldn’t go away for two years. No one really liked him, but everyone wanted him, y’know, ‘cause he was pretty.”
Kanae knows Kyo better than either of them know themselves.
“K-Kanae,” Kouyou stutters, biting the tip of his tongue, bright red. “I … I had a question …”
“Anywhere,” says Kanae, tossing the handkerchief onto the gravel. “Not Mie. Maybe Osaka. Tokyo.” He wants to go to the city so fucking bad. Anywhere’s good, anywhere as long as he can get out of his terrible countryside town. His brothers won’t come looking for him, they don’t care that he disappears for days at a time.
“Aren’t you worried about tetanus?” Kanae says, chewing on the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Mm, this one won’t go out for a while. Here.” He sticks it in Kyo’s mouth, watches him sort the blades. Mostly razors, but there’s a little box of lancets and two pencil sharpeners, unbroken.
God, what is he doing? He’s never been this disobedient before. What would his father say?
“This is kinda like indirect kissing, ya know,” Kyo says lazily. The anime in the background rolls out its closing credits, music fading softly in the breeze. The window’s still open; Kanae’s smoke trails out. “Like sharing drinks.”
Kanae hisses at that, wrenching his wrist away and kicking Ryoto in the shin to make him let go. “My friend didn’t do shit,” he says scathingly, spitting at Ryoto’s feet. “It’s your fault, making me do things I don’t want to.”
Not enough to keep him around, but it’s something. Enough somethings for someday where and when he inevitably moves to the city to continue his self-destruction. BAM BAM BAM, start with ‘call girl’ and end with ‘wh0re’, used and deposited on the streets with a needle in his elbow. It’s over and it hasn’t even started.
“Fields on blue,” Kyo corrects. “But I thought you were done with all that stuff.”
“You’re early,” he accuses, unlatching the window so Kanae can pull himself over the sill.
“You’re late today,” Kyo rasps, scowling at Kanae, perched on the edge of the bed. “I thought you’d come in- in the morning.”
おやすみただいま
It’s nowhere near as depresssing as the soulless country, which Kyo seems to seek and Kanae wants to run from.
He never gets to go out. By the time she returns, he’s quiet and still, watching the sunset from his bedroom window, face cast in an orange glow.
(Only one way out, huh?)