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It was sunny when Konatsu was born.
“She had just a little tuft of red hair,” Shin says as Bon watches the sunset. “Right here.”
The touch of a calloused forefinger just at the whorl of Bon’s hair. After a moment, the touch becomes a hand. Cupping the back of Bon’s head, warm and large and secure. Bon breathes in.
“She’s grown so much…”
Konatsu lays in the grass, just by the front gate, looking up at the darkening sky. She hums to herself, off in that childish world adults cannot access. Bon breathes out. Leans into Shin’s side. It makes Shin chuckle. He plays idly with the ends of Bon’s hair.
“How was work today?”
The scent of soba boiling. A small and attentive audience. They smiled and gasped and laughed. Konatsu sat in the back and beamed with delight.
Shin smiles. “You had fun again, didn’t you?”
His lap is warm, too. Firm but with enough give to be comfortable, far more than the lumpy pillows they own. Shin drapes his left arm around Bon’s shoulders. A breeze wafts by, and it makes Konatsu giggle and kick her feet in the grass.
“I’m glad,” Shin murmurs.
He cards his fingers through Bon’s hair. Front to back, back to front, over and over again. It makes Bon feel sleepy. The growing spring heat has settled, and it is the perfect temperature to be lazy. Above him, Shin laughs again, deep in his chest. It’s his most honest laugh. Running from his head down to his toes.
It makes Bon smile.
Time moves differently in the countryside. The air is cleaner, and it’s quiet except for insects and birds.
Bon likes to sleep in here. By the time he wakes, breakfast has already been made and eaten. He gets the cool leftovers and reheated tea. He doesn’t mind. Shin is surprised, although he doesn’t voice it until Bon makes it into a habit.
“You were always up before me,” Shin says as Bon rubs sleep out of his eyes and adjusts his yukata for decency.
“I work in the afternoon and evening,” Bon murmurs as he accepts tea from Konatsu. “I’m not young anymore.”
Shin grimaces. He scratches his ear as Konatsu hums happily as she busies herself with doling out a bowl of oyaku. Bon sets down the tea and tucks into the meal once it’s set in front of him with a murmur of thanks. They even saved him half an egg.
Work today is simple. Shin will be repairing the gates of several houses in town. Konatsu can choose if she wants to stay with him or come to listen to Bon do rakugo for the lunch crowd. It would be even easier if Shin would do rakugo, too, but he still ardently refuses. Bon doesn’t understand, but that is not unusual. He has come to realise he has a hard time understanding people in general.
“You look better,” Shin comments as they all walk to town as the sun climbs high.
Bon glances at him from beneath the brim of his hat. “What?”
Shin regards him. Bon holds his gaze. Shin is the one who breaks it. He looks up the road to where Konatsu has skipped ahead, kicking her feet up in front of herself as she walks. Bon had taken her for new clothes a couple days before. She loves her new skirt and shoes.
Bon forgets about the conversation until late that evening when he returns to the house from entertaining at the inn. He’s in a bad mood despite making good money because he stinks of sake from the dinner party. The long walk from the inn back to the house has sobered him up, but it’s too dark to draw water from the well to wash.
He is surprised to see Shin sitting out on the porch, his back against the door, which is shut behind him. He gets up and meets Bon at the gate. Unlatches it and stands back. Inviting him inside. Bon stands still. Suddenly wary.
“Shin-san?”
In the pale moonlight, Shin appears unmoored. Bon unconsciously tightens his hold on his cane.
“What’s wrong?”
Shin breathes in. Out. A raw look settles over his face. It makes Bon step forward. Left. Cane. Right. They meet each other in the gateway. Shin stinks of sweat and a hard day’s work. Bon smells like entertainment.
They both know how this goes.
The first kiss is not shared. Shin presses his lips against Bon’s neck, soft and asking, before he takes the tilt of Bon’s head as permission to move lower. Each kiss more and more insistent. He nips the blunt of his teeth on the skin over Bon’s left collarbone. Grins.
“You smell good.”
Something dead for over five years roars to life. Bon grabs Shin by the hair. The kiss is too hard and knocks their teeth together. They over-balance and hit the grassy ground with a hollow thud. Bon’s cane clatters off the gate and knocks him in the shoulder. Shin laughs, breathless and wide-eyed. Bon grips him and holds him down and sucks in air like he’s been drowning.
It’s fast and rough and more than a little dirty. Bon ends up naked by the end while Shin keeps his yukata due to the fabric tangling around his arms. When they finish, Bon ends up lying half on the grass and half on Shin. The moon, directly above them, shines.
Shin breathes in. Out. He chuckles. When he speaks, Bon can hear him smiling.
“I’m glad,” he says, “that you’re doing something for yourself.”
Konatsu, in the way that children have, knows that something has changed.
She doesn’t mention Miyokichi anymore. Not that she talked much about her before, but now it is as if her mother has become entirely irrelevant to her. She spends a lot more time following Bon around, watching him in a way that she must think is secretive as he practices rakugo or dances. It is a little puzzling, but it is not unpleasant. Bon distantly remembers doing to same when he was young enough to be invasive of other people’s personal space, drawn by the sound of koto and shamisen.
On a particularly hot morning, Bon sleeps until it is almost noon. Shin is already gone to work cleaning rooms at a small inn near the train station. Konatsu appears in the door as Bon muddles together tea, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes.
“Do all adults sleep late?”
Bon blinks at her. Once. Twice. She watches him with steady, wide-eyed curiosity.
“No,” he says after taking a long sip of tea to chase the taste of sleep from his mouth.
“You and Daddy do,” she says.
Bon blinks at her again. He reaches up and rubs his eyes. Recently, his vision upon waking tends to be a bit blurry.
“We had the same master,” he says, dropping his hand back to his lap.
Konatsu moves closer as Bon takes the lid off the pot next to the hearth. She watches him serve himself rice and pour the rest of his tea over it. The spoons have been washed, but the chopsticks haven’t, so he settles with just the spoon.
“Daddy doesn’t like him.”
They move to sit out on the porch. Bon adjusts his obi, which he hadn’t tied tight enough after waking. The breeze wafts in the earthy scents of spring. The ochazuke is slightly bitter for the over-brewed tea.
“No point in speaking ill of the dead,” Bon says after swallowing.
Konatsu frowns, thinking hard about his words. It’s an intense expression. Bon doesn’t have enough experience with children to know if Konatsu’s tendency to go from sunny to angrily moody is normal. Shin had always been loud and enthusiastic and very often too much for everyone around him. Bon had done everything he could to fit in even when it was impossible.
Especially when it was impossible.
The realisation is painful. It unsettles him so much that, when he opens his mouth to perform a light, silly story for the soba crowd, the first line of Shinigami comes out. His heart hammers in his ears even as he continues to perform. The peace that his rakugo brought him in Tokyo feels like a noose around his neck.
“Incredible,” the audience murmurs in awe as Bon tries not to gasp too obviously as he accepts their tips.
“You truly are a master,” the soba shop’s owner praises as he presses a package of grilled mackerel into Bon’s hands on the way out. “To think I got to see something like that: this is the least I can do.”
Shin and Konatsu are thrilled when he returns with the mackerel. Bon chews on the burnt bits of the tail while Konatsu eats the body and Shin the head. Shin looks at him, side-eyed and more than a little sly.
It’s only after they’ve made out of a while after Konatsu has fallen asleep that Shin asks.
“What story did you tell to get that kind of tip?”
Bon grits his teeth. He shifts himself on Shin’s lap. The kiss is long. Directionless. They slip against each other. Bon rests his head on Shin’s shoulder. Their arms tangle around each other’s waists.
After a moment, Shin’s right hand moves. A slow, steady, circular motion. It makes Bon shiver. Curl his fingers in the fabric over Shin’s ribs. He can feel Shin breath deep. Chest expanding. Falling. He doesn’t stop rubbing Bon’s back in that soothing, simple way.
Eventually, Bon calms down enough that he’s able to shift to lie down with his head on Shin’s thigh. Shin looks down at him. His gaze traces the shadows that never seem to leave the skin beneath Bon’s eyes. The moon is undaunted by clouds tonight. The view is very clear.
“Please,” Bon says, and his voice is as weak as he feels, “come back to Tokyo.”
Shin’s expression doesn’t change. He reaches up. Traces the pad of his thumb over Bon’s bottom lip. Cups his cheek. He doesn’t say yes.
But he doesn’t say no.
When everything goes wrong, these are the memories that Bon takes to the grave.
Or so he thought.
It’s a decade and a half past when Yakumo wakes up on frozen winter morning to find another body in his bed. Scraggly brown hair, parted, wide lips. Yotaro radiates warmth. He clings to Yakumo like an octopus.
Yakumo looks away. Up. He stares at the ceiling. Licks the roof of his mouth. It’s dry, but not enough to indicate that he was drunk enough the night before to invite someone let alone his apprentice into bed. It means that Yotaro must have come on his own and climbed in while Yakumo was sleeping.
He should be angry.
But he isn’t.
He remains trapped in bed for a long time. Yotaro breathing is even and deep. He is a warm, pleasant weight. His right leg is thrown over Yakumo’s bad knee, which would hurt if not for the shared body heat. Yakumo breathes in. Out.
He closes his eyes.
When he wakes up again, it’s because Matsuda is shaking him awake. Yotaro is gone. The bed is cold again.
“It’s almost noon,” Matsuda says, apologetic and a little sad.
“Is it,” Yakumo sighs as he rubs his eyes.
He has to rush through paperwork instead of having lunch. It means that he’s in an exceptionally bad mood when he gets to the Association board meeting in the mid-afternoon. The conference room is just above freezing. When he moves to stand up after two hours of hashing out the finances for the next quarter, his bad knee pops audibly. He sits back down with a thud to avoid falling over.
“I’m fine,” he grits out as hands reach out to help him. “Pass me my cane, if you would.”
His knee does not want to take any of his weight, but he’s lived with this injury for the majority of his life. He balances his weight on his left leg and compensates furiously with the cane to hide but only the slightly drag of his right. Matsuda is waiting outside. He is the only one that Yakumo can’t fool, and he has enough professionalism to not mention it until they are alone in the car.
“Do you want to cancel your evening engagement?”
It’s a joint performance with geisha for several businessmen and Oyabun. Yakumo sighs. Shuts his eyes.
“No.”
Harui is gracious enough to give up her shamisen and take over the dancing that Yakumo was originally going to do. Only Oyabun notices the change, his eyes straying from Harui and Mimiko to Yakumo. His lips stay in a thin line, which a couple of the businessmen notice. One, with a heavy mustache and ruddy cheeks, nudges him in the shoulder.
“Looking elsewhere for the evening, eh?” he jests before Mimiko refills his cup and successfully distracts him.
“I didn’t know you were so skilled with the shamisen,” Oyabun says when he and Yakumo are alone in adjourning room.
“I don’t get to practice as much as I would like,” Yakumo murmurs as he refills their cups with a new sake bottle.
They end up drinking for hours together. It allows Yakumo to relax enough to admit that his knee is bothering him. Oyabun, who has his own fair share of aches and pains, nods in sympathy. It is only when both of their drivers arrive out of concern for the late hour that they make their way back out into the cold. Matsuda peers curiously at them while Oyabun’s driver, a dour character Yakumo has never seen smile, eyes them darkly.
“Did you have fun?” Matsuda asks after they’re on the road, headlights cutting through the dark streets.
“Fun,” Yakumo echoes.
It would be derisive, but it comes out as a sigh. He rests his head against the back of the car seat. Looks out the window. The world passes by. Dark space interspersed by windows of light.
It’s too late to pull a full, hot bath. He wipes himself down under the lukewarm stream. His mouth feels badly sticky from too much sake and too little food, so he brushes his teeth with his entire concentration. By the time he rolls out his futon, the house has gone completely cold. He rubs his eyes before crawling over to his closet and dragging out the electric blanket.
He remembers, dully but no less distantly, how warm Shin’s body was on nights like this back in that flat with the paint peeling from the walls. Shin stank of sour drink and cheap perfume, but there was always that underlying musk that permeated everything he touched like smoke. In the dead of winter, they held onto each other, covers up over their heads.
Shin would sigh. Wrap his arms around Bon’s shoulders and tuck his chin on the crown of his head.
“You’re freezing,” the ghost mumbles.
“Of course I am,” Yakumo mumbles. “It’s cold.”
Silence. Stillness. It makes Yakumo realise he’s made a mistake:
There isn’t a ghost in his bed.
It’s his apprentice.
In the country house, he could hear the sound of the crickets in the night. When it rained, the roof leaked in places, and they set out the well buckets to catch the overflow. It was humid, and every scent seemed to stick to his skin. Shin would kiss his cheek. Konatsu would peer at him and smile.
Bon —
Yakumo sits up. Looks down. In the dark, he cannot tell if Yotaro is looking up at him or not. He cannot, in fact, see very much at all. He can feel how still Yotaro is. How silent. He is the type of person who is almost never still or silent.
“Yota,” he says, and his voice comes out as a long thin breath; a candle going out. “Why are you here.”
An audible swallow. A gust of a breath out. He shifts, rolling to lie on his back. Yakumo can tell because the kneecap tucked against his thigh moves to face upwards. He wonders if Yotaro is looking at the ceiling.
“It’s cold.”
Yakumo breathes in. Shuts his eyes. Breathes out.
He lies back down. Pulls the covers back up over his shoulders. Next to him, Yotaro’s breathing is sharp and quick. Yakumo rolls onto his side. Tucks their knees together. Curls his hand on the fabric that covers Yotaro’s chest.
“Too drunk to deal with you,” he lies; he can feel the thunder of the heart under his fist. “Sleep.”
Yotaro breathes in. Out. He shudders. Swallows. He turns to face Yakumo. Tangles their legs together to wrap his arms around Yakumo’s shoulders. He rests his chin in Yakumo’s hair.
Beneath them, the electric blanket gives off artificial warmth. The wires give off a faint scent of electricity and metal. When Yakumo breathes in, he can smell it, the soap that they both use, and the faint underlying odor that is themselves.
“Can I stay?” Yota mouths, a tiny, trembling puff over hair.
Yakumo doesn’t say yes.
But he doesn’t say no.
He was happy, back then, doing rakugo.