[multi-chaptered] Arashi; Shadows of you {1/4}
Fandom: Arashi
Title: Shadows of you
Pairings: Matsumoto Jun x Sakurai Sho, Sakurai Sho x Ninomiya Kazunari
Genre: AU, angst, romance
Rating: PG
Summary: After losing part of his memories in an accident, Sho must decide whether to move on with his new life or to try and follow some threads leading to his forgotten years.
Other chapters: 2 ~ 3 ~ 4
Notes: Okay, this is going to be long, mainly because I think this fic deserves it (if you want to skip my rambling, you can just click here). Damn, I can't even believe I'm posting it at last and I don't even remember how to use LJ properly, and so late as well. I started writing this in my last trip to the US, in June 2010, and finished it in September 2012, which means I worked on it (intermittently, I'm not gonna lie) for roughly two years and three months, which is the longest time I've been working on a single story (which I've actually finished) so far in my whole life. Whoa.
It was really a long, loooong way. Not really because the fic was too long in extension -in fact, it was originally a one-shot and I decided to divide it into short-ish chapters because I didn't want to just post it all at once-, but because of all the changes and the rewritings and the shit I went through with it. I mean, I wasn't even a Sakumoto shipper when I started! The original idea was for a Sakuraiba fic, with some Sakumiya as well (I think, because I don't really remember anymore), and it was angsty and dramatic as hell, "murder" attempt included (ouch, I know). But then somehow Aiba turned into Jun, and the angst and the background kept changing, and I didn't really know what was happening in the story until I finally took the challenge of going through with it in summer last year.
On the way, I was about to give up so many times I can't even count them... I can't honestly say I'm 100% happy with the final result you're going to read here, but hey, I am very fond of this story and it is very special for me because I struggled a lot and kind of evolved with my characters, which is something I had never experienced before. So I believe Shadows is a huge milestone in my "career" as a fic writer. I can clearly see, while it still shares common features with my earlier stuff, how it has helped in forming my style for later fics. But also, more importantly, it makes me feel really satisfied to have managed to write it to the end, to find the will and the perseverance I couldn't find to continue with other good ideas in the past. Step by step, I feel I'm getting closer to get rid of my little insecurities and anxieties as a writer, and nothing could make me happier :D Although the fics I'm currently writing tend to get so long and complicated it's been over a year since I last posted anything ): I guess everything has its downsides.
Apart from my muse, I can't forget to thank everybody who has been there to read and give me their opinions, be it about older versions or about the current one. They know who they are, and I wouldn't have been able to finish this without them ♥
Right, so now that I'm finished with all the commemorations, I'll let you read the real deal ;) I'll be posting a new chapter every week. I really hope you enjoy my big baby!
Sakurai Sho was determined not to look back, or even try to, anymore.
It was almost a year after his accident, the one which swept part of his past to a sea of darkness, where it had almost completely vanished. He had mainly forgotten his last years at college and everything that followed until he woke up a grey November morning at the hospital being a 29-year-old man. Although the doctors were quite positive when they said he might still recover his memories, he had made no significant progress in all that time.
At first, he had been deeply frustrated. Nothing, not even the most essential things for him in his previous life, managed to bring the slightest spark of a memory to his blank mind. It had been so weird feeling that empty, as if he had spent a million years hibernating and things had changed so much he didn’t recognize them anymore, and those he recognized were far in the past.
However, step by step, he had come to terms with it. He didn’t know what was missing, but knew what wasn’t. He had his job at a publishing house in Tokyo, where he lived in a spacious, bright apartment with his boyfriend, Jun, who always put Sho before himself. He focused only on these things that were sure, known to him, true, and the anxiety slowly disappeared.
So he was fine, perhaps even happy, and things were okay.
That is, before the day his past appeared right in front of his eyes.
It was September, and they were at the airport. To celebrate Jun’s birthday and his own new resolutions, Sho had organized a trip to Hawaii for both. While they were waiting for their baggage to come out, he left on his own to get some coffee and breakfast.
Things wouldn’t have changed if, on his way back, he hadn’t seen something he wouldn’t be able to forget in the following months.
It was a glimpse of a stranger's face; a face with features which were immediately etched on his mind, as clear as a photograph. Sho found himself standing among the crowd, two paper cups and a plastic bag in his hands, still as a statue, mesmerized by that vision.
The flow of time suddenly seemed to freeze, and all he could see was that person looking at him; not wanting to, but still looking. His expression was a mixture between happiness and sadness. For a moment, Sho also felt those emotions reaching him and revolving inside his body, like a wild gush of warm wind running through him. The connection he felt was so sudden, yet so strong, his head was reeling, and soon his eyes were welling up.
However, before any thought came to his mind, the man had disappeared.
It was then when Sho’s fragile stability threatened to break apart -the moment he turned around and looked for him once again.
***
Months passed, and the year was coming to an end. He never told Jun about that encounter, not even when he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it during the following autumn. Sometimes it just happened -he saw someone in a picture, or in the street, thought he used to know them, but then he was never able to tell who they were and gave up after some time.
However, this time something was different.
How could he explain the numb feelings, the slight uneasiness and the nostalgia whenever he pictured that face in his mind? Why was that image always as clear as the first time, if not clearer every time? Why was the connection he felt so strong?
He hated it. He hated the idea of breaking the promise he had made to himself and to Jun, of being carried away by a stranger who had shed some light over those dark waters he didn't want to go into, drawing his attention to them.
He had already gone through a lot in his first months of recovery. In a span of half a year, he had to learn how to live all over again. He had to learn who he was, what he did, what he liked, what he didn’t... and also who he knew, who he could trust, and who he loved.
Jun definitely fell into those three categories at the same time. He was the only one. If it wasn’t for him, Sho would have been even more lost.
His worried face was the first thing he saw and remembered after waking up at the hospital. Jun had stayed next to his bed, only leaving the room when he was forced to go for food, during the three nights it took Sho to regain consciousness, after a severe concussion that almost made him go into a coma.
When he opened his eyes, Jun was sitting next to him, observing him tenderly. His outside appearance was as perfect as ever, but looking deep into his eyes Sho could tell he was anxious and exhausted, perhaps about to collapse. He didn't even recall who he was or what his name was at that moment; yet he knew, right away, before he knew anything else, that he loved that person who was holding his hand.
“Sho, thank goodness...” Jun’s voice trembled with emotion, as he pressed the button to call the doctors.
Sho smiled a bit, just before Jun leaned over the mattress and kissed him on the lips. Then he held him in a tight embrace and rested his head on his chest. Sho lifted his hand and gently caressed his nape with his fingertips. It felt good, safe and warm.
As soon as he was discharged, Sho went to live at Jun's apartment. He was only planning to stay for a couple of months, but he ended up moving in. There was no other place he felt comfortable at. It had become home. And Jun, his new family.
On Christmas night, they had dinner at home, just the two of them. It was the second time, at least in Sho’s memories. They were relaxing on the sofa and drinking wine while admiring the big tree they had bought the previous week. After some minutes of silence, Sho got up, left his empty glass on the table and walked towards the piano Jun had bought him when he moved in. He spent hours playing it whenever he had a day off, and he was perfectly aware that Jun liked to spy on him then.
“What about a private Christmas concert?” he asked with a playful voice, softly brushing his fingers through the keys.
Jun straightened on his seat and smiled at him. “You know I’d love that.”
Sho sat down in front of the instrument and started playing one of his favorite pieces, a song he still remembered even though he had forgotten how and when he learned it. Jun leaned his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Sho did the same, throwing his head back to let the music flow out from his heart through his fingers, and then coming back inside him through his ears.
“Fantastic,” Jun’s praised him after he was finished. “You’ve gotten amazingly better since the first time you played this for the four of us-” he suddenly stopped.
No matter how many times Sho told him it was fine, Jun was always very careful with mentioning things from the past. He said he didn’t want to force him in any way; if Sho’s memories ever came back, it should be on their own. Filling his head with outside facts and descriptions of things he was supposed to have lived by himself would be completely useless.
“Don’t worry, just tell me,” Sho said, sitting back on the sofa next to him. “I’d like to hear about that.”
Jun looked a bit serious before talking again. “No, it’s just that. You played this for the three of us some years ago. It was really touching.”
“Really? Did you cry?” Sho asked him, amused. “Well, of course you wouldn’t if Ohno and Aiba were around.”
Apart from Jun, Sho had two more close friends. He had been hanging out with them as a group for some time, but not long enough for Sho to remember them right away. The first one, Ohno Satoshi, was an office clerk, not the talkative type, rather mysterious, but extremely efficient in his own way and someone you could count on. The other one, Aiba Masaki, was a zoo keeper, too naive and innocent sometimes, but highly reliable and nice to have a chat with.
“Yes, you guessed right,” Jun answered with a little smile. “But I almost did.”
“Oh, I should be proud then,” Sho smiled, throwing an arm around Jun’s shoulders.
He was weirdly tense. But there was a very effective way to get rid of that. Slowly, Sho moved his free hand and started tickling Jun’s sides, until he burst out laughing and pushed him away. Sho stared fondly at him as he tried to regain his composure.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“I can’t help it,” was Jun’s response, as usual.
Sho leaned in and kissed him tenderly.
“I know,” he answered, tilting his head to place a soft kiss on Jun’s neck. “But you need to trust me.”
It would take a little more time for things to definitely settle down, but they would make it through. They had to, no matter what. That’s all Sho thought while he grabbed Jun’s hand and silently led him to their bedroom.
***
It wasn’t until later that something clicked inside him and broke his determination once again.
It was sudden, like a flash of lightning. Sudden, clear and strong.
He was playing that piece again, though this time his fingers didn’t move so smoothly. He lifted his eyes from the keys and looked around the room, smiling at his friends. There was Ohno, about to fall asleep on a chair, and Aiba, standing next to him and happily humming along with the music.
At the other side of the room, there was an armchair. Sho went back to the sheets before looking at Jun, who had to be the one sitting there. However, what he found after turning his head was the stranger he had seen at the airport. He stood up, walked towards Sho and, when he was finished playing, he lifted a glass of champagne and invited him to drink a toast.
“Merry Christmas, Sho-chan.”
Everything faded to black. Sho’s whole body shook. That made him realize he was in a horizontal position, lying on his bed. He grasped at the sheets in an attempt to make his head stop turning, but he was still confused and disoriented. Jun woke up, alarmed, and touched him to find he was shivering.
“Are you cold?” he asked him, reaching to pull a blanket over him.
“Jun,” Sho said in a husky voice, feeling his boyfriend’s hand in the dark. “We were five.”
“What are you saying?” Jun answered, lying back next to him.
“You said it before,” Sho added, as things fell into their place in his mind. A car passed by at the street and its lights reflected in the ceiling, illuminating the shapes of the objects in the room for a second. “You said I played for the four of you.”
“That was a mistake,” Jun said, in a barely audible voice, muffled against the pillow.
“I think I remember that person. I think I saw him,” Sho went on, unable to suppress the words coming out of his mouth.
“It must have been a dream,” Jun briefly sentenced before rolling over.
“It wasn’t. I wasn’t sleeping yet,” Sho insisted, searching deeper and trying hard to retain those images. “It was a memory.”
A memory with the stranger. The stranger, with those sharp eyes and that haunting smile, had been with him and his friends. He had listened to his piano. He had celebrated Christmas with him. He had developed enough intimacy with him to call him Sho-chan.
“Who was he?”
In and out of his mind, instead of a response, all he found was silence.
***
Exactly a month after that, Sho celebrated his 31st birthday. Although January was a busy time for all of them (proof of it was that they couldn’t even meet on New Years as they used to), his friends somehow managed to get together and throw him a surprise party.
Right when he was finished with work, he received an unexpected call from Ohno, who asked him for a favor. He urgently needed something he had left at his apartment and wanted Sho to get it and bring it to his office. Considering Ohno tended to forget things more often than not, it could have been perfectly true. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have his suspicions beforehand.
Obviously, Jun was behind it all. He hadn’t been especially talkative the previous week, and Sho imagined that it had to be something else apart from the pending conversation they had. Sho would have liked to talk about his memory in the days that followed that night, but Jun was kind of distant and elusive. And even when he suddenly went back to his usual attentive, sometimes overprotective self, Sho felt he couldn’t just start talking about it abruptly. Jun was not easy to approach when he put up that wall around himself, and Sho was always careful with him. Since he was such a hard person to know right away, ever since the accident, Sho had learnt to read his emotions through his actions rather than through his words, and he just knew it wasn’t the right time yet.
The problem was that, for him, it was time.
It’s not like he broke his own promise. He had done nothing. Everything, the stranger and the memory, had come on its own. He hadn’t searched for anything, and he wouldn’t like to know if he hadn’t already seen the tip of the iceberg. But one of his great virtues -or perhaps it was one of his flaws- was his big curiosity. And, by the time of his birthday party, his desire to pull out the string and see what was at the other side had become a monster that would eat him up if he didn’t face it.
Yes, that was it. He had a plan. He would simply hear the story, and that was it. If it brought happy memories, he would be fine. If not, he would throw it back into the dark waters and let it sink forever.
He couldn’t talk to Jun, but Ohno and Aiba were there as well, so he took the opportunity to ask them when he wasn’t around. He told them about the circumstances Jun mentioned and the image that came later into his mind. They both listened in silence, and neither said anything when Sho was finished.
“Do you guys know who he is?” he asked, becoming impatient. “Was he usually with us?”
Ohno just looked blank, but Aiba’s face was strangely serious. That was the first sign that they were hiding something from him. And judging by the latter’s constant blinking, which was something he always did when he was indeed lying or hiding something, it was a huge thing. What was it that they couldn’t trust him to know?
First, Jun was upset, and now Ohno and Aiba looked sad and uncomfortable. Did that mean that, whoever that person was, he had hurt them? Had he hurt Sho too? Were they afraid that he would hurt him again, so they were protecting him?
Whichever was the case, he felt he had the right to choose whether he wanted to hear about it. If it was something from the past, it shouldn’t affect him, or any of them, anymore. He wanted to know, more than ever. He didn’t like being left out like that. He didn’t like it at all.
“Seriously, is it that hard to just talk?” he broke the silence.
Obtaining no reply just made his anger build up. What were they waiting for?
“I have lost my memories, not my head!” he exclaimed, raising his voice more than he intended to.
It looked like Aiba was going to say something before Sho heard Jun’s voice next to him.
“Nino” he said in a soft voice, and that name was instantly matched to the man’s face in Sho’s brain, “just tagged along sometimes.” He made a short pause in which Ohno and Aiba nodded. “We didn’t know him very well. He was…”
“A colleague of mine,” Ohno added, exchanging a brief look with Jun before turning to Sho. “A former colleague. He moved to another country.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Aiba smiled. “Ohno said he was cool, so we invited him to some of our gatherings.”
“What we want to say,” Jun talked again, “is that he wasn’t anyone special. You don’t need to worry.”
Sho took a deep breath and went to sit at the table.
“Thank you,” he said before motioning them to do the same.
Jun gave him a concerned look, and only sat down when Sho started to eat.
Nobody brought up the topic again that night. They just talked about the usual stuff, gave Sho his presents and got a little drunk. At around 2 am, Jun and Sho decided to go home, leaving a quite sleepy but still incredibly noisy Aiba lying on Ohno’s couch.
On their way back, since Sho drank a bit more than usual, it was Jun’s turn to drive. None of them started talking. After some minutes, Jun turned on the radio, the volume low enough to keep himself awake without filling the silence that could still turn into a conversation.
Despite getting the hint, Sho turned his head and looked at the night lights out the window. He pressed the button to roll it down a bit, just to let in a subtle but cold breeze that helped him clear his mind. Once he thought he was ready, he analyzed the information he was given earlier.
The stranger’s name was Nino. He wasn’t a part of the group, only someone from Ohno’s company he introduced to them. Nothing else.
Somehow, he was disappointed.
There was something off, something missing about that story. Those facts could be perfectly true, and he had no option but to believe them. But there were some details left. Yes, that was it, some more details were necessary. Details could be important, especially to explain what he was feeling; how Jun, Ohno and Aiba seemed to feel about it as well. Where did all that sadness and discomfort come from? What about the closeness they had in his memory?
He thought he would be able to make a decision that night, but he found out he couldn’t. Not yet. Observing Jun’s serious expression, hands firmly gripping the wheel as he carefully looked at the road, Sho wondered if he would agree to tell him more about Nino. He didn’t know about Ohno or Aiba, but he had the feeling that, in any case, he wasn’t Jun’s favorite person. But then, it was also him who gave him the answer he wanted first.
It was supposed to have ended that night, but it just kept growing.
Thanks for reading!
Title: Shadows of you
Pairings: Matsumoto Jun x Sakurai Sho, Sakurai Sho x Ninomiya Kazunari
Genre: AU, angst, romance
Rating: PG
Summary: After losing part of his memories in an accident, Sho must decide whether to move on with his new life or to try and follow some threads leading to his forgotten years.
Other chapters: 2 ~ 3 ~ 4
Notes: Okay, this is going to be long, mainly because I think this fic deserves it (if you want to skip my rambling, you can just click here). Damn, I can't even believe I'm posting it at last and I don't even remember how to use LJ properly, and so late as well. I started writing this in my last trip to the US, in June 2010, and finished it in September 2012, which means I worked on it (intermittently, I'm not gonna lie) for roughly two years and three months, which is the longest time I've been working on a single story (which I've actually finished) so far in my whole life. Whoa.
It was really a long, loooong way. Not really because the fic was too long in extension -in fact, it was originally a one-shot and I decided to divide it into short-ish chapters because I didn't want to just post it all at once-, but because of all the changes and the rewritings and the shit I went through with it. I mean, I wasn't even a Sakumoto shipper when I started! The original idea was for a Sakuraiba fic, with some Sakumiya as well (I think, because I don't really remember anymore), and it was angsty and dramatic as hell, "murder" attempt included (ouch, I know). But then somehow Aiba turned into Jun, and the angst and the background kept changing, and I didn't really know what was happening in the story until I finally took the challenge of going through with it in summer last year.
On the way, I was about to give up so many times I can't even count them... I can't honestly say I'm 100% happy with the final result you're going to read here, but hey, I am very fond of this story and it is very special for me because I struggled a lot and kind of evolved with my characters, which is something I had never experienced before. So I believe Shadows is a huge milestone in my "career" as a fic writer. I can clearly see, while it still shares common features with my earlier stuff, how it has helped in forming my style for later fics. But also, more importantly, it makes me feel really satisfied to have managed to write it to the end, to find the will and the perseverance I couldn't find to continue with other good ideas in the past. Step by step, I feel I'm getting closer to get rid of my little insecurities and anxieties as a writer, and nothing could make me happier :D Although the fics I'm currently writing tend to get so long and complicated it's been over a year since I last posted anything ): I guess everything has its downsides.
Apart from my muse, I can't forget to thank everybody who has been there to read and give me their opinions, be it about older versions or about the current one. They know who they are, and I wouldn't have been able to finish this without them ♥
Right, so now that I'm finished with all the commemorations, I'll let you read the real deal ;) I'll be posting a new chapter every week. I really hope you enjoy my big baby!
Sakurai Sho was determined not to look back, or even try to, anymore.
It was almost a year after his accident, the one which swept part of his past to a sea of darkness, where it had almost completely vanished. He had mainly forgotten his last years at college and everything that followed until he woke up a grey November morning at the hospital being a 29-year-old man. Although the doctors were quite positive when they said he might still recover his memories, he had made no significant progress in all that time.
At first, he had been deeply frustrated. Nothing, not even the most essential things for him in his previous life, managed to bring the slightest spark of a memory to his blank mind. It had been so weird feeling that empty, as if he had spent a million years hibernating and things had changed so much he didn’t recognize them anymore, and those he recognized were far in the past.
However, step by step, he had come to terms with it. He didn’t know what was missing, but knew what wasn’t. He had his job at a publishing house in Tokyo, where he lived in a spacious, bright apartment with his boyfriend, Jun, who always put Sho before himself. He focused only on these things that were sure, known to him, true, and the anxiety slowly disappeared.
So he was fine, perhaps even happy, and things were okay.
That is, before the day his past appeared right in front of his eyes.
It was September, and they were at the airport. To celebrate Jun’s birthday and his own new resolutions, Sho had organized a trip to Hawaii for both. While they were waiting for their baggage to come out, he left on his own to get some coffee and breakfast.
Things wouldn’t have changed if, on his way back, he hadn’t seen something he wouldn’t be able to forget in the following months.
It was a glimpse of a stranger's face; a face with features which were immediately etched on his mind, as clear as a photograph. Sho found himself standing among the crowd, two paper cups and a plastic bag in his hands, still as a statue, mesmerized by that vision.
The flow of time suddenly seemed to freeze, and all he could see was that person looking at him; not wanting to, but still looking. His expression was a mixture between happiness and sadness. For a moment, Sho also felt those emotions reaching him and revolving inside his body, like a wild gush of warm wind running through him. The connection he felt was so sudden, yet so strong, his head was reeling, and soon his eyes were welling up.
However, before any thought came to his mind, the man had disappeared.
It was then when Sho’s fragile stability threatened to break apart -the moment he turned around and looked for him once again.
***
Months passed, and the year was coming to an end. He never told Jun about that encounter, not even when he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it during the following autumn. Sometimes it just happened -he saw someone in a picture, or in the street, thought he used to know them, but then he was never able to tell who they were and gave up after some time.
However, this time something was different.
How could he explain the numb feelings, the slight uneasiness and the nostalgia whenever he pictured that face in his mind? Why was that image always as clear as the first time, if not clearer every time? Why was the connection he felt so strong?
He hated it. He hated the idea of breaking the promise he had made to himself and to Jun, of being carried away by a stranger who had shed some light over those dark waters he didn't want to go into, drawing his attention to them.
He had already gone through a lot in his first months of recovery. In a span of half a year, he had to learn how to live all over again. He had to learn who he was, what he did, what he liked, what he didn’t... and also who he knew, who he could trust, and who he loved.
Jun definitely fell into those three categories at the same time. He was the only one. If it wasn’t for him, Sho would have been even more lost.
His worried face was the first thing he saw and remembered after waking up at the hospital. Jun had stayed next to his bed, only leaving the room when he was forced to go for food, during the three nights it took Sho to regain consciousness, after a severe concussion that almost made him go into a coma.
When he opened his eyes, Jun was sitting next to him, observing him tenderly. His outside appearance was as perfect as ever, but looking deep into his eyes Sho could tell he was anxious and exhausted, perhaps about to collapse. He didn't even recall who he was or what his name was at that moment; yet he knew, right away, before he knew anything else, that he loved that person who was holding his hand.
“Sho, thank goodness...” Jun’s voice trembled with emotion, as he pressed the button to call the doctors.
Sho smiled a bit, just before Jun leaned over the mattress and kissed him on the lips. Then he held him in a tight embrace and rested his head on his chest. Sho lifted his hand and gently caressed his nape with his fingertips. It felt good, safe and warm.
As soon as he was discharged, Sho went to live at Jun's apartment. He was only planning to stay for a couple of months, but he ended up moving in. There was no other place he felt comfortable at. It had become home. And Jun, his new family.
On Christmas night, they had dinner at home, just the two of them. It was the second time, at least in Sho’s memories. They were relaxing on the sofa and drinking wine while admiring the big tree they had bought the previous week. After some minutes of silence, Sho got up, left his empty glass on the table and walked towards the piano Jun had bought him when he moved in. He spent hours playing it whenever he had a day off, and he was perfectly aware that Jun liked to spy on him then.
“What about a private Christmas concert?” he asked with a playful voice, softly brushing his fingers through the keys.
Jun straightened on his seat and smiled at him. “You know I’d love that.”
Sho sat down in front of the instrument and started playing one of his favorite pieces, a song he still remembered even though he had forgotten how and when he learned it. Jun leaned his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Sho did the same, throwing his head back to let the music flow out from his heart through his fingers, and then coming back inside him through his ears.
“Fantastic,” Jun’s praised him after he was finished. “You’ve gotten amazingly better since the first time you played this for the four of us-” he suddenly stopped.
No matter how many times Sho told him it was fine, Jun was always very careful with mentioning things from the past. He said he didn’t want to force him in any way; if Sho’s memories ever came back, it should be on their own. Filling his head with outside facts and descriptions of things he was supposed to have lived by himself would be completely useless.
“Don’t worry, just tell me,” Sho said, sitting back on the sofa next to him. “I’d like to hear about that.”
Jun looked a bit serious before talking again. “No, it’s just that. You played this for the three of us some years ago. It was really touching.”
“Really? Did you cry?” Sho asked him, amused. “Well, of course you wouldn’t if Ohno and Aiba were around.”
Apart from Jun, Sho had two more close friends. He had been hanging out with them as a group for some time, but not long enough for Sho to remember them right away. The first one, Ohno Satoshi, was an office clerk, not the talkative type, rather mysterious, but extremely efficient in his own way and someone you could count on. The other one, Aiba Masaki, was a zoo keeper, too naive and innocent sometimes, but highly reliable and nice to have a chat with.
“Yes, you guessed right,” Jun answered with a little smile. “But I almost did.”
“Oh, I should be proud then,” Sho smiled, throwing an arm around Jun’s shoulders.
He was weirdly tense. But there was a very effective way to get rid of that. Slowly, Sho moved his free hand and started tickling Jun’s sides, until he burst out laughing and pushed him away. Sho stared fondly at him as he tried to regain his composure.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“I can’t help it,” was Jun’s response, as usual.
Sho leaned in and kissed him tenderly.
“I know,” he answered, tilting his head to place a soft kiss on Jun’s neck. “But you need to trust me.”
It would take a little more time for things to definitely settle down, but they would make it through. They had to, no matter what. That’s all Sho thought while he grabbed Jun’s hand and silently led him to their bedroom.
***
It wasn’t until later that something clicked inside him and broke his determination once again.
It was sudden, like a flash of lightning. Sudden, clear and strong.
He was playing that piece again, though this time his fingers didn’t move so smoothly. He lifted his eyes from the keys and looked around the room, smiling at his friends. There was Ohno, about to fall asleep on a chair, and Aiba, standing next to him and happily humming along with the music.
At the other side of the room, there was an armchair. Sho went back to the sheets before looking at Jun, who had to be the one sitting there. However, what he found after turning his head was the stranger he had seen at the airport. He stood up, walked towards Sho and, when he was finished playing, he lifted a glass of champagne and invited him to drink a toast.
“Merry Christmas, Sho-chan.”
Everything faded to black. Sho’s whole body shook. That made him realize he was in a horizontal position, lying on his bed. He grasped at the sheets in an attempt to make his head stop turning, but he was still confused and disoriented. Jun woke up, alarmed, and touched him to find he was shivering.
“Are you cold?” he asked him, reaching to pull a blanket over him.
“Jun,” Sho said in a husky voice, feeling his boyfriend’s hand in the dark. “We were five.”
“What are you saying?” Jun answered, lying back next to him.
“You said it before,” Sho added, as things fell into their place in his mind. A car passed by at the street and its lights reflected in the ceiling, illuminating the shapes of the objects in the room for a second. “You said I played for the four of you.”
“That was a mistake,” Jun said, in a barely audible voice, muffled against the pillow.
“I think I remember that person. I think I saw him,” Sho went on, unable to suppress the words coming out of his mouth.
“It must have been a dream,” Jun briefly sentenced before rolling over.
“It wasn’t. I wasn’t sleeping yet,” Sho insisted, searching deeper and trying hard to retain those images. “It was a memory.”
A memory with the stranger. The stranger, with those sharp eyes and that haunting smile, had been with him and his friends. He had listened to his piano. He had celebrated Christmas with him. He had developed enough intimacy with him to call him Sho-chan.
“Who was he?”
In and out of his mind, instead of a response, all he found was silence.
***
Exactly a month after that, Sho celebrated his 31st birthday. Although January was a busy time for all of them (proof of it was that they couldn’t even meet on New Years as they used to), his friends somehow managed to get together and throw him a surprise party.
Right when he was finished with work, he received an unexpected call from Ohno, who asked him for a favor. He urgently needed something he had left at his apartment and wanted Sho to get it and bring it to his office. Considering Ohno tended to forget things more often than not, it could have been perfectly true. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have his suspicions beforehand.
Obviously, Jun was behind it all. He hadn’t been especially talkative the previous week, and Sho imagined that it had to be something else apart from the pending conversation they had. Sho would have liked to talk about his memory in the days that followed that night, but Jun was kind of distant and elusive. And even when he suddenly went back to his usual attentive, sometimes overprotective self, Sho felt he couldn’t just start talking about it abruptly. Jun was not easy to approach when he put up that wall around himself, and Sho was always careful with him. Since he was such a hard person to know right away, ever since the accident, Sho had learnt to read his emotions through his actions rather than through his words, and he just knew it wasn’t the right time yet.
The problem was that, for him, it was time.
It’s not like he broke his own promise. He had done nothing. Everything, the stranger and the memory, had come on its own. He hadn’t searched for anything, and he wouldn’t like to know if he hadn’t already seen the tip of the iceberg. But one of his great virtues -or perhaps it was one of his flaws- was his big curiosity. And, by the time of his birthday party, his desire to pull out the string and see what was at the other side had become a monster that would eat him up if he didn’t face it.
Yes, that was it. He had a plan. He would simply hear the story, and that was it. If it brought happy memories, he would be fine. If not, he would throw it back into the dark waters and let it sink forever.
He couldn’t talk to Jun, but Ohno and Aiba were there as well, so he took the opportunity to ask them when he wasn’t around. He told them about the circumstances Jun mentioned and the image that came later into his mind. They both listened in silence, and neither said anything when Sho was finished.
“Do you guys know who he is?” he asked, becoming impatient. “Was he usually with us?”
Ohno just looked blank, but Aiba’s face was strangely serious. That was the first sign that they were hiding something from him. And judging by the latter’s constant blinking, which was something he always did when he was indeed lying or hiding something, it was a huge thing. What was it that they couldn’t trust him to know?
First, Jun was upset, and now Ohno and Aiba looked sad and uncomfortable. Did that mean that, whoever that person was, he had hurt them? Had he hurt Sho too? Were they afraid that he would hurt him again, so they were protecting him?
Whichever was the case, he felt he had the right to choose whether he wanted to hear about it. If it was something from the past, it shouldn’t affect him, or any of them, anymore. He wanted to know, more than ever. He didn’t like being left out like that. He didn’t like it at all.
“Seriously, is it that hard to just talk?” he broke the silence.
Obtaining no reply just made his anger build up. What were they waiting for?
“I have lost my memories, not my head!” he exclaimed, raising his voice more than he intended to.
It looked like Aiba was going to say something before Sho heard Jun’s voice next to him.
“Nino” he said in a soft voice, and that name was instantly matched to the man’s face in Sho’s brain, “just tagged along sometimes.” He made a short pause in which Ohno and Aiba nodded. “We didn’t know him very well. He was…”
“A colleague of mine,” Ohno added, exchanging a brief look with Jun before turning to Sho. “A former colleague. He moved to another country.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Aiba smiled. “Ohno said he was cool, so we invited him to some of our gatherings.”
“What we want to say,” Jun talked again, “is that he wasn’t anyone special. You don’t need to worry.”
Sho took a deep breath and went to sit at the table.
“Thank you,” he said before motioning them to do the same.
Jun gave him a concerned look, and only sat down when Sho started to eat.
Nobody brought up the topic again that night. They just talked about the usual stuff, gave Sho his presents and got a little drunk. At around 2 am, Jun and Sho decided to go home, leaving a quite sleepy but still incredibly noisy Aiba lying on Ohno’s couch.
On their way back, since Sho drank a bit more than usual, it was Jun’s turn to drive. None of them started talking. After some minutes, Jun turned on the radio, the volume low enough to keep himself awake without filling the silence that could still turn into a conversation.
Despite getting the hint, Sho turned his head and looked at the night lights out the window. He pressed the button to roll it down a bit, just to let in a subtle but cold breeze that helped him clear his mind. Once he thought he was ready, he analyzed the information he was given earlier.
The stranger’s name was Nino. He wasn’t a part of the group, only someone from Ohno’s company he introduced to them. Nothing else.
Somehow, he was disappointed.
There was something off, something missing about that story. Those facts could be perfectly true, and he had no option but to believe them. But there were some details left. Yes, that was it, some more details were necessary. Details could be important, especially to explain what he was feeling; how Jun, Ohno and Aiba seemed to feel about it as well. Where did all that sadness and discomfort come from? What about the closeness they had in his memory?
He thought he would be able to make a decision that night, but he found out he couldn’t. Not yet. Observing Jun’s serious expression, hands firmly gripping the wheel as he carefully looked at the road, Sho wondered if he would agree to tell him more about Nino. He didn’t know about Ohno or Aiba, but he had the feeling that, in any case, he wasn’t Jun’s favorite person. But then, it was also him who gave him the answer he wanted first.
It was supposed to have ended that night, but it just kept growing.
Thanks for reading!