Gift Fic For mynamelessname (4/4)
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
They keep working. Jun at the cafe, Sho at Emerald Pet Friends, Nino at improving their security. When Sho and Jun arrive home from work now, there are printouts on the table in the living room. Status updates from the monitors Nino has in his room, documenting who has come by the house that day. With photographs, still images from the cameras. Nino has scrawled a question on the printout in his minuscule handwriting.
“Are any of these Ohno? Please tell me.”
Sho looks at the printout, at the mailman obliviously dropping letters in the box, at a woman jogging past who stopped to check the time on her watch. People walking by on their way to or from the main road. A delivery van parked across the street. No Ohno, not in any of the pictures.
Nino has installed locks on the inside of his bedroom door, on his windows. They hear at least three of them unlock before the door can open these days, and only so he can use the bathroom. Jun suspects he might start pissing in bottles one of these days so he can go even longer without coming out. He’s offered to perform “expert” installations in Jun’s room, in Sho’s. They’ve declined. DVDs on carpentry arrive, new monitors with the green glow of night vision. The boxes are in the living room when Sho leaves for work and have disappeared when he returns.
When Sho goes into the attic, he always folds his blanket a certain way so he can check and see if Nino’s moved it. It hasn’t been shifted in the last week or so. He finds himself going upstairs at Jun’s insistence now, every few days, taking a few stacks of bills and depositing them in his checking account. If Nino’s tracking these deductions, he doesn’t inform Sho.
-
He and Jun sign a lease on a two-bedroom apartment three stops away from Emerald Pet Friends on a Saturday morning in the beginning of March. Spring is coming. A fresh start. They’re welcome to move in from the first of April. On Sho’s insistence, they’ll tell Nino now rather than when they start packing. They arrive home, at least four cameras pointed at them as they unlock the front door.
They enter the house and Jun punches in the seven-digit code on the new security system Nino installed as a “Valentine’s Day Present” and paid for with his own money. They hang their jackets, slip out of their shoes. “Nino!” Sho calls, making noise by shaking the plastic bag he’s got in his hand. “We brought some leftovers. That bakery you like.”
When there’s no response, Jun sighs, heading to Nino’s bedroom door. For the first time in a long time, there’s no sound coming from inside. Maybe he’s sleeping. Jun knocks anyway. “Get your ass up, there’s croissants.”
No response.
Silently, Jun points up. Sho nods, taking the step stool from its usual resting place just inside Sho and Nino’s bathroom. He gets on and reaches up, only to remember his keys are in the bowl in the genkan. But then Jun’s there, holding out his own. Sho uses it to unlock it, then steps down. Jun moves the stool aside while Sho pulls down the stairs.
“Hey Nino, you up here?” He climbs up, looks around in the shadows from the top stair. A pile of money under a blanket to the north, an exposed and smaller pile of money to the south. Sho’s blanket and money in the east. “Nino?” There’s a bunch of empty boxes up here. So many have come to the house in recent weeks that Nino’s taken to storing them up here rather than breaking them all down and putting them out to be recycled. “You playing hide and seek up here?”
No response.
Sho comes down the stairs, shrugging.
“Not here?” Jun asks, completely surprised.
“Unless he’s in a box,” Sho says. “Do you want me to check?”
There’s a rather happy look in Jun’s eyes. “No. No, I don’t want you to.”
Sho barely manages to get the stairs pushed up and locked again before Jun’s pulling him down the hall to his own room. Where’s Nino? Jun could care less right now, and as soon as Jun’s got them in his room, shutting the door, Sho finds himself not caring much either. Fresh air would do Nino a world of good.
They’ve been quiet. For weeks now they’ve been quiet, respectful of their housemate. Sho’s wanted to shout, to cry out, to give Jun a firm reminder of how good it feels when they fuck, but they’ve just been oh so quiet.
He’s on his hands and knees, fingers scrambling to hold tight to the sheets. He’s not quiet and neither is Jun when they come together, when Jun’s slowly pushing in, slipping away, nails digging in to Sho’s hips and pulling him back against his cock, making Sho’s body do the work, taking him in again and again. Unrelenting, Sho’s crying out with almost every motion, every time Jun yanks him back. Far rougher than their usual. They haven’t even taken their shirts off, more preoccupied with satisfying themselves below the waist, and Sho tries not to laugh when he can feel the tickle of Jun’s shirt brushing against his ass with each punishing stroke.
Sho hears a creaking sound. A floorboard maybe.
“Wait,” he says, and it takes him saying it a couple of times for Jun to emerge from his possessive haze, stopping with a hand to Sho’s back.
“What?” Jun asks. He’s thoughtful enough to slowly ease himself out, and Sho groans at the feeling, already missing him. “Was it too much? I’m sorry…”
Sho moves onto his back, curious. It would be comical, the sight of Jun before him clad in nothing but a t-shirt and a condom, pupils so dilated his eyes look black. But it’s not. Soon he’s leaning forward, pressing gentle kisses to Sho’s thighs in seeming apology, heading for his cock, and as good as Jun’s mouth is, Sho stills him with a little smack to the head.
“Ssh, stop,” Sho says, and this time when there’s a creak he knows that Jun hears it too.
It’s coming from upstairs. Like footsteps.
“I thought you said he wasn’t there,” Jun whispers.
“He wasn’t,” Sho whispers back. “I didn’t see him.”
“What do you want to do?” Jun asks.
Sho’s uneasy, hesitant. He has no doubt that Nino’s up in the attic, walking around. “Well…he already knows we’re here.” He moves, getting up to lean back on his elbows. “Were you trying to make it so I’ll never walk again, Matsumoto?”
“Always so honest. That’s why I like you,” Jun says, and Sho knows he’s not going to perform for an audience. The bed dips and Jun’s slipping off his condom, grabbing some tissue from the nightstand. But he does come back to Sho, this time pulling the blankets up to cover them.
It’s warm, the smell of Jun’s sweat and his own mingling under the covers. “I don’t like this,” Jun grumbles.
“Won’t be like this much longer.”
They’re quiet for a few moments, and they hear a few more steps up in the attic, nowhere near Jun’s room thankfully.
Jun reaches out, pulls Sho’s face to his and kisses him, with a gentleness that’s reassuring. Sho kisses back, finding Jun’s arm, stroking.
“I was so fucking close too,” Jun complains, and Sho knows that Nino can probably hear him laugh, so loud and obnoxious Jun eventually pushes his hand over his mouth. “It’s not that funny.”
Jun lets out a little grunt of surprise when Sho reaches between them, finds Jun’s cock. Despite the interruption, it’s not long before Sho’s got him hard again. They must look ridiculous, two men in their thirties buried under the blankets. “Sho-kun,” Jun’s muttering though, so needy that it won’t take much.
“What do you want?”
“To be alone,” he answers.
“It’s just you and me, okay? Just you and me right now.” And it’s so hot, so stuffy, and awkward as hell, but Sho fumbles around under the blankets, gets himself between Jun’s legs. He can smell, taste latex when he takes Jun’s erection in his hand, circles the slick head of his cock with his tongue, praying he doesn’t go astray and lick the fucking sheets.
Jun misses, trying to reach for Sho under the blankets. Sho gets a hard poke to his shoulder before Jun finally finds his head, pushing. “Now,” Jun begs him. “Now.” He’s barely got Jun halfway in his mouth before he’s coming, groaning as Sho diligently takes it in, swallows it down.
Sho surfaces, pushing the blankets aside. He thrills in the euphoric glow, the slight shame in Jun’s face. He pokes, tracing Jun’s brow, his dark sideburns, along his jaw. His chin, the arch of his mouth, the way his lips pucker a little to cover his overbite. When Sho was at his lowest, Jun found him. Came sauntering across that bar and where he could have taken advantage, he chose not to. Whatever happens, he refuses to let Jun go.
Except right now.
“I’m going to check on Nino.”
Jun opens his eyes, frowns. “Fuck him.”
Sho sighs. “Maybe I can get him to eat.”
“Whatever.”
Jun, sated for now, doesn’t offer any other complaints when Sho gets up, cleans himself a bit, tugs his clothes back on. He probably smells like lube and sex, but he doesn’t much care, opening Jun’s door and closing it behind him. On the living room floor, Jun’s attic key gleams in the sunlight. They dropped it there, when they thought they were alone.
He picks up the key, gets the step stool. This time when he pulls down the stairs, he doesn’t stop at the top. He sees a glow this time, near the blanket covering the north pile of money. Beneath it he finds Nino and his laptop, tossing the blanket aside. For some reason, Sho almost expects him to be watching porn, jacking off because he accidentally overheard what was happening downstairs.
Instead Nino’s laptop screen is divided up into multiple boxes. Each mirrors one of the cameras he has set up downstairs.
“You should have said that you were home. You heard us come home.”
Nino looks up, and with only the glow from his laptop his face is blue. Like he’s dead.
“Sorry Sho-chan, I was taking a nap.”
“Up here?”
“I come up here,” Nino explains, setting the laptop down. “To think sometimes.”
“We thought you went out.”
“I’d have left you a note,” Nino says, sighing. “I’m very good about leaving notes. I should tell you though. I should tell you this.”
Sho sits down, crossing his legs. He can smell Jun, on his skin, on his clothes. And here he is, up in the attic with Nino, who might have gone off the deep end and they aren’t doing shit to help him.
“What should you tell me?”
“Ohno was here, it had to be him. Based on your description. Here, hold on.”
Nino gets to his feet, and he tugs something out from his money pile. It’s a battery-powered camp light, and when he turns it on, the whole attic is illuminated. There’s way more boxes than Sho knew about before. There’s also, he discovers in horror, an air mattress and pillow, empty soda bottles, empty bags of chips. Nino’s up here a lot more than they’ve realized.
He messes with his laptop, rewinding some footage. “Here, Sho-chan, is it this guy? He’s not so tough.”
Nino cues the playback, and there’s someone in the neighbor’s yard. They left for vacation, the neighbors, just the other day. They’re not home. Sho doesn’t want to know how many cameras Nino has pointing at the neighbors in addition to their own house. And when Nino zooms in, the person is standing on a lawn chair with binoculars so he can see over the fence, stopping to jot things down on a notepad. It’s Ohno, Sho would remember him anywhere.
“What’s he doing?” Sho asks, feeling ill.
“Casing the joint,” Nino says. “You know. Watching us. But he won’t get in. He can’t get in.”
“How long has he been there?”
“This is the third day. He’s been watching for a few hours a day, this man.”
Sho almost wants to hit him. “Three fucking days?”
Nino, oblivious, rewinds the footage. “He watches when you and Jun-kun leave for work, writes down when you get back. Nobody else can see him since he’s back there. The other neighbors, the ones on the other side, they have a tree. But I can see him. He’s followed Jun-kun to the train a few times. Quietly.”
“Nino!”
Nino ignores him, smearing his finger across his screen. “I’m telling you, he can’t get in. I’ve made it so he can’t come in. All you have to do is stay here, and you’re safe as I am.” He gestures to his money. “Look, I can show you some receipts.”
Instead Sho gets to his feet. “Is he there? Is he still there right now?”
Nino messes with his footage. “Ah. Yes. Yeah, he’s there.”
Sho heads for the exit.
“Wait, let me show you this. I installed this yesterday, and it’s working.” Before Sho can go down the stairs, Nino tugs them back up, effectively trapping them. “Look.” Sho watches, stunned, as Nino shows him a new locking mechanism. Sho hadn’t seen it when he’d come up before. Nino has installed some sort of catch that locks the stairs from the inside. He’s wearing the key for it around his neck on a thin chain. “It’s so if I want to sleep, nobody can bother me. Even if this Ohno comes in, this is a different lock. Even if he has the key for the other side, he can’t come in. He can’t take our money.”
Sho shuts his eyes, counts to five. He doesn’t know if he’s terrified or angry or both. “Can I please go downstairs, Nino?”
“Oh, of course, Sho-chan.” Nino unlocks the stairs and they slowly release down. They’re close to silent now.
Sho hurries down them, and without prompting, Nino pulls them up. He hears the lock click on the other side.
He goes back to Jun. Without an explanation, he says “Stay here and wait until I come back. We’re getting out of here. Tonight.”
-
Ohno doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him when Sho enters the neighbor’s yard, approaches him.
“Why are you here?” Sho asks.
Ohno bows his head, almost deferential. “I’ve been hired by the people who employed Shibasaki Keito-san. I’m a private investigator.” He even hands Sho a business card. Ohno Satoshi, Investigative Services.
“Do you know anything about the people who hired you?”
Ohno shrugs. “Irrelevant.”
Sho gets up close, stunned by how unflappable the guy is when Sho grabs hold of his jacket sleeve. “Leave us alone. Stop watching us.”
“Your other roommate, that’s Ninomiya. I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve been asked to provide information on all three of you.” Ohno’s little mouth becomes a sour little grin. “He has to come out sometime, right? Hikikomori type?”
“And what else?”
Ohno shrugs again. “That would be in violation of my contract for this assignment.”
Sho tugs the man closer, furious. “Shibasaki Keito-san was a bad man. And so are the people he worked for.”
“It’s not my place to have an opinion about that.”
“How much are they paying you? What can I give you to leave us alone?”
Ohno perks up a bit at that, shifting his weight and detaching himself from Sho’s grasp smoothly. “My employers said they were stolen from. It would be…I don’t know, kind of weird for you to pay me with that stolen money.”
Sho crosses his arms. “Weird but not impossible?” He’s all but confirmed it for Ohno now. Yes, Keito-san was here. Yes, Keito-san left money that he apparently had stolen here. And yes, they’re using it now.
“Turning my back on an employer and breaking a contract doesn’t bode well for my business,” Ohno says. “Especially if they’re as, ah, bad as you say they are.” Ohno’s smile pisses Sho off. “I’m just trying to get by. Aren’t we all, Sakurai-san?”
“What do you propose?”
“I’ll take twenty million for my notepad,” Ohno says. He opens it, lets Sho look through it. Dates and times that Sho leaves for work. Dates and times that Jun leaves for work. Where they’re spending money and how much. There’s weeks’ worth of stuff in here. Information about the high school where Sho used to work, about his new job. About his friends, about Aiba and his wife.
“And if I buy your notepad, what does it get us?”
“I tell my employer that I could not confirm you had the money in the house. I give them only basic details about you, try to imply you guys are a waste of time.” Ohno is firm when he speaks again. “But I’m not going to get you off the hook, if that’s what you’re expecting. They may stop sniffing around based on what I say, they may not. But anything in this notepad is yours.”
Sho hesitates, seeing the name Aiba Masaki. Aiba’s address. Fuck, the guy even has it noted down when Aiba and Sho went shopping that one day. What they bought, how much they spent. This Ohno has been watching them for ages. He points to Aiba’s name in the notepad. “You won’t say anything about my friend?”
“No. I was only attempting to determine if you had further accomplices. It was for my employer to investigate further.”
“Do you swear?” Sho asks, his voice breaking. He doesn’t care much about any of the information that’s about himself. But Aiba’s had nothing to do with this, with any of this. The thought of Aiba coming to harm for something Sho’s done, it sickens him. “Do you swear you won’t say anything?”
“Twenty million.” Ohno snatches the notepad back from Sho, turns to the last page. He scribbles down an address and rips out the page, hands it over. “Cash please. I’ll meet you here at midnight tonight. After that, I suggest you skip town. As you said, Sakurai-san, these are bad men.”
Sho’s about to lose it. Just that morning, he and Jun signed their lease. Paid their deposit and key money. And now they have to come up with twenty million.
Twenty million from what Nino’s got locked up in the attic with him.
-
Jun’s standing under the attic stairs, arms crossed. “You need to let us come up.”
“I’m sorry,” comes Nino’s voice, muffled but audible. “But Sho-chan is getting extorted. And besides, he didn’t ask us if it was okay. This Ohno-san seems to be a shady character. Twenty million and Keito-san’s friends will probably still give us trouble.”
“Well we don’t need your money,” Jun protests, shouting at the ceiling. “Between me and him, we’ll be protecting your crazy ass too!”
“You’re not a very equal partner, Matsumoto-san. After all the times Sho-chan’s paid for you, for your expenses in the upkeep of security here in this house. And now you’re going to use mostly his money again.” Nino is quiet for a moment. “Jun-kun, he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? Not a client?”
Sho pounds on the wall with his fist. “I don’t care about any of that! Stop fighting!”
Jun leans back against the wall, shuts his eyes. When he opens them again, he’s furious, staring at Sho. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?” he whispers.
“Your kind and friendly approach is obviously not working,” Sho hisses back. He gestures for Jun to go down the hall. “Let me talk to him, alright?”
Jun goes to his room and slams the door. Sho waits a minute or two before trying again. He goes and gets his key, the footstool. “Nino.”
He hears footsteps creak across the floor, almost directly overhead.
“Nino, when you installed the lock for the stairs, you gave us each a key. You’ve kept things fair, from the very beginning. You document all your expenses very clearly. So I was curious why you’re the only one with a key to the inside lock?”
He hears the floorboard creak again.
“Shouldn’t there be three keys, Nino? To be fair?”
He hears Nino’s key turn in the new lock, backs up when the staircase comes down. Nino pokes his head down, staring at Sho. “Just you.”
Despite his fear, he climbs the steps and lets Nino close it again, lock it after him. He heads to the east, pulls up his blanket.
Nino’s typing on his laptop. “You still have over sixteen million. That’s a lot of money, Sho-chan, especially if you’re going to be moving soon.”
He turns, seeing that Nino clearly knows. He can see the hurt in Nino’s eyes, a deep and cutting pain that makes Sho feel horrible. “We were going to tell you. Today.”
“You should clear your browser history,” Nino says with a heartbreaking smile. “Seems like a nice neighborhood.”
“It is,” Sho mumbles. Not that it matters, once Keito-san’s employers have his name and Jun’s.
“I knew he was right to trust you,” Nino continues, and Sho wishes he’d stop smiling, even with the tears in his eyes. “I knew Jun-kun was right to trust you. You take care of him. He and I, we…well, we’re very similar. We needed someone to rescue us, for so long. Although I guess I had to rescue myself.” He sets his laptop down, uncovers his money pile. “Here, let me give you some from mine.”
“Nino, no, I’ll take care of it…”
But he’s already counting money out, putting it in a plastic convenience store bag. “I still think you’re pretty dumb to trust that Ohno-san. How do you know he doesn’t have eighty notepads full of information about us? You’re really safest here, but you’re both stubborn, the two of you.”
“Then why help us?”
Nino takes the handles of the bag, ties them in a knot. He tosses it Sho’s way. Throughout all of this, even with how insane his words sound, his voice has been so calm, so relaxed. “Because you’re a good person. Call the police, you kept saying. We can’t do this, you kept saying. Maybe you were right.”
He wants to tell Nino that he’s not. That he’s not good, that he’s gone along with everything. That he’s taken and spent the money as easily as they have. As Jun told him once, you do it because it’s easy.
Nino unlocks the stairs, allows Sho to count and carry his money downstairs where Jun’s got duffel bags ready - they’ll have one or two for the money for Ohno and the rest will be everything they can manage to take with them. In the morning, they’ll cancel the apartment contract in Yokohama, get their money back. Sho will resign from Emerald, Jun will quit the cafe. He’s not quite sure how he’ll explain things to Aiba, not yet, but if he’s at Emerald, it means Aiba and his wife are still connected to him. They’re still vulnerable.
He’s not sure where they’ll end up, or how long they’ll have to run. But they can’t stay here.
Once he has the money gathered, he and Jun start to pack. It’s after 6:00 PM when Nino pulls up the attic stairs, locks it up tight. The only cash still up there belongs to him.
-
It’s just after 10 PM when the power goes out. He and Jun are just about to pack up the car, and this is just one more thing to deal with. Sho moves to the living room window, peeks through the blinds. All the other houses on the block have at least one light on. The street lights are on too.
“Damn it,” Sho says.
“Bet it’s all those stupid fucking cameras and everything else he’s got sucking up the electricity.” Sho hears Jun trip over something, stumbling across the floor. His voice is further away, in the hall when he next speaks up. Nino hasn’t even come downstairs since Sho took the money. “Hey! What the hell are you doing up there?”
“What do we do?” Sho asks, fumbling his way through the living room, finding the couch.
“Circuit breaker,” Jun replies, sighing when Nino offers no reply. “Flip the switches.”
“Will I electrocute myself?”
Jun laughs. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. It’s in the kitchen. Just…just stay there before you fall and crack your head open.”
Sho ignores the command, feels along the wall until he’s in the hallway. He calls up at the ceiling. “You okay up there? You didn’t zap yourself did you? Nino?”
At the very least, he remembers Nino has that camp light. He can still see a hell of a lot better up there than Sho can see down here. He stares up into black, annoyed.
Something falls to the floor in the kitchen, a metal clang as though Jun’s journey to the circuit breaker has not been a smooth one. “Hey, you alright?” He hears another pot hit the floor, and he laughs. “And I’m the one who’ll fall and crack his head open?”
He feels his way along the wall, and it’s not as dark this way. Not from electric lights, and he can feel breeze. Jun must have unlocked the kitchen door to help him see, the three locks Nino’s insisted on from the start.
“Jun, what’s going on?” he asks.
In an instant the kitchen door is closed and there’s a slight pop as the lights come back. Sho’s about to scream, but the man who shut the door has his hand over Sho’s mouth before he can. Jun’s on the kitchen floor, on his knees, and a second man has a gun with a silencer to his head.
Jun’s eyes go wide in panic as the man who’s grabbed Sho hauls him away, into the living room. Sho tries to struggle, tries to bite the hand clamped over his mouth. What’s happening? What’s happening? Did Ohno-san…did he tip off Keito-san’s people? No…no, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making that deal if he was just going to turn around and do this anyhow. Maybe Keito-san’s people were tired of waiting.
The other man drags Jun into the living room, mostly by his hair. That he doesn’t scream, just winces in pain, seems to imply that the guy’s said he’ll get his head blown off for making a fuss. The two men, dressed in black, have ski masks on. Straight out of a movie. Two thugs, please, from central casting.
They force Sho to his knees, toss Jun next to him like a rag doll. Sho’s so scared he can’t gather the energy to be embarrassed by the fact that he’s already pissed himself. He puts up his hands, shaking as he looks from Taller Thug who grabbed him to Bulky Thug who grabbed Jun.
“Where’s the money?” Taller asks. They’ve both got guns, Sho can see this now, and he wants to lean closer to Jun. “Where’s the money?”
Jun holds up one hand, uses the other to gesture to their duffel bags. They broke his glasses, a crack going straight across the lens. Punched him too, there’s blood dripping from his nose. Broken, maybe. There’s blood dripping down onto his lip, onto those moles Sho likes so much.
Taller keeps his gun trained on them while Bulky heads over to check the bags they’ve prepared for Ohno. He unzips it, chuckles. “This can’t be all of it.”
“Spent the rest,” Sho says.
Bulky leaves the bag, grabs Sho and lifts him mostly by his t-shirt. It stretches, tears a little at the collar. He gets socked right in the stomach for his comment, hitting the floor knees first and hard as he doubles over. All he knows is he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, it hurts so much.
“Where’s the rest?” Taller asks.
“In the bags,” Jun says. “I swear. Don’t hurt him.”
Sho, tears in his eyes and wondering if they’ll shoot first or break bones first or maybe stab them, is almost glad when Bulky leans back, kicking him in the ribs. It hurts like hell, it burns to breathe, but they haven’t kicked Jun. At least they haven’t kicked Jun.
Shut up Jun, Sho thinks. No matter what he says, it won’t matter. These are professionals, and they’ll get what they came for.
“You’re lying,” Taller says, not even that annoyed. This is probably an average night for him, the worst night of Sho’s and Jun’s lives. Bulky kicks Sho again, and Sho groans, tears rolling down his cheeks, and this time Jun can’t lie. It’s a good thing they’re not secret agents, because they wouldn’t withstand a real interrogation.
Jun’s a mess, sobbing. “Upstairs!”
“Upstairs? Where upstairs?”
When Sho looks up, gasping for air, Bulky and Taller are looking at the living room ceiling for answers. They don’t think to check the hallway behind them. At least not fast enough, because Sho sees that the stairs are down.
“Where upstairs?” Taller demands, and he’s got his gun pointed right at Jun’s face.
Sho can barely move, but they’re not going to shoot Jun. They’ll have to shoot him first. He’s just about to move when Bulky cries out, turning with the knife sticking out of his back, his kidney maybe.
Before Taller can get a shot off, Nino’s got a different knife buried in his gut, quickly pulls it out, puts it in his neck. In less than fifteen seconds, it’s over and there’s Nino, swimming in his sweatshirt, blood splattered across his face. He picks up their guns, moves them out of their grasp. The men might not be dead, but they will be soon if nothing is done to help them. Bulky’s body is quivering, his fingers trying and failing to reach for the knife sticking from his back.
Sho lies there, burning, burning, his jeans reeking from piss. It hurts. God, it hurts. Jun’s shaking. “Nino…Nino…” he’s babbling.
Nino crouches down at Sho’s side, stroking his bloody fingers through his hair. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Then he gets up and Sho watches Nino lift his foot, using it to push the knife further into Bulky’s back.
-
He had the nurse pull the curtain all the way, blocking everything out save for the window. It’s not the prettiest side of the hospital. He’s looking out onto a part of the roof, all white gravel and humming metal equipment. They have to keep him mostly upright in the hospital bed, and it still hurts. He’s short of breath even now, two days later.
The doctors say he’s pretty lucky. Two broken ribs, but his lungs weren’t punctured, minimal internal bleeding. It hurts to move his arms, to bend, to breathe. They’ll be releasing him tomorrow, and they’ve mostly kept him in this room alone because the investigation’s ongoing.
They haven’t allowed Jun to see him. He’s somewhere with a broken nose, probably with an unattractive bandage on that too pretty face. Sho smiles to think of how much that must annoy him. He needs something to smile about. They’ve probably still got him in and out of the station, interviewing him for hours just like they’ve been interviewing Sho whenever the doctor says it’s fine. They don’t let him talk too long, put more pressure on his chest from talking without interruption.
He stares out the window a while longer before turning his attention to the flowers on the table. One vase from Aiba and the wife, along with a simple bouquet with a card merely signed “O.S.” If that’s the only apology he’s getting from Ohno-san, he supposes it’s enough.
Nino. When Sho thinks of Nino, it’s hard not to cry. Because when he cries, when he sobs, it hurts. It hurts so damn much. It was Nino who called the police, telling them in that calm, steady voice of his that there’d been a break-in at their house, that two intruders had been stabbed. And that, by the way, they’re in possession of stolen money, can they please send some detectives along with the ambulance?
Taller and Bulky are alive. Taller, though, is in a coma. Vegetative state. Bulky will need months of physical therapy to walk again. When either of them are released, they’ll be arrested anyhow. Sho’s been given their real names, but the nicknames are what will stick. The self-defense charge stands. The men were breaking and entering. Sho never says a word about what he saw Nino do, the satisfied look he had when he forced the knife further into that man’s back.
His parents have an incredible lawyer involved, and his father is quite certain Sho will not face jail time. Ninomiya’s locked up, and he’s telling anyone who will listen to him that he coerced Jun and Sho into everything. That he blackmailed them, threatened them about Keito-san, about the money, for months. They’re gay, he’s told the cops, blackmailing queers is a cake walk.
“He’s crazy though,” Sho’s told the lawyer, wincing enough to have the nurse scolding him. “He’s totally crazy. Something’s wrong with him, please listen to me! He needs help!”
“If he passes the psych eval,” the lawyer assures Sho, ignoring his distress, “everything he says will be taken at face value. It can only help you, Sakurai-san. And Matsumoto-san as well.”
Nino’s ensuring that he takes the fall for everything, for every little thing, and Sho doesn’t want him to. “I spent the money too. I went along with it. I never objected,” he tells the lawyer, who sighs in exasperation.
“I better be the last person you say that to,” he says. “For your own sake.”
His parents think Sho’s just been through a lot of trauma. After all this is the first they’re even hearing that Sho lost his job, over a year ago. He’s barely told them a thing, all this time. It doesn’t matter that he has a new job, a new life. They wonder if they should sue the school, have his firing overturned. He stops them, immediately. He doesn’t want their money, not if it means he gets off scot-free after all that he’s done. But he supposes he’ll accept it anyhow, if only because he knows there’s no way he’ll be able to change Nino’s mind.
Aiba comes by for the end of visiting hours that night. He sits in the chair next to Sho’s bed and doesn’t say anything, a rare feat for the chatty teacher. Sho shouldn’t talk, should rest, but he tells Aiba everything, everything from the start. From the bar to the house to the night they dropped that silver case in the lake. The cameras and the locks on the attic and the lights coming back on, Sho finding Jun with a gun to his head.
Aiba listens to all of it, the full story, the full story the lawyers and the police haven’t heard. They’ve gotten the pertinent bits, the stories and chatter that will give Sho and Jun their freedom. That will give Nino some sort of jail time. Stolen money, nobody’s too sure yet what will happen there. They’re still tracing the money, tracing Taller and Bulky, tracing Keito-san, their employers. Trying to unravel the knots. The police are falling over themselves to get a big solve like this.
Sho’s glad that Aiba doesn’t try to convince Sho that it’s not his fault, that he had no choice, that he was in over his head. He just listens, because he’s always been happy to carry these things for Sho. “Where are you going, when they let you out?” Aiba asks.
“I don’t know,” Sho says. He doesn’t even know if his apartment contract in Yokohama is still legitimate. They paid the deposit with Keito-san’s money, the key money with what Sho earned from Emerald. His job with Emerald is, astonishingly, secure. He’s on paid medical leave, and he’s even received a Get Well Soon card from his team. None of them know, of course, about any of it. Becky’s handling it, without complaint, because Sho’s worked hard for her father, even in this short amount of time. And because he’s Aiba’s friend.
“You could stay with us,” Aiba replies. “This time you could get over yourself and say yes.”
He grins at that, trying not to laugh. “I suppose I could.”
“And Jun-san?”
Sho shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a pull-out couch,” Aiba says. “I think it can fit two.”
-
Nino’s put on a little weight, and his face isn’t so pale. Being on a schedule in a place like this, with set times to sleep, to eat, have almost changed him for the better. He’s being held in minimum security. It’s amazing, the things lawyers can accomplish, the plea deals that can be struck when a defendant is all too happy to confess to things he didn’t do to save his friends.
Nino’s served almost a full year. He’ll do one more, and with good behavior he’ll be out. He isn’t too sure what he plans to do upon release, but there are job programs for people like him, placement options. “Maybe another net cafe,” he says without a note of sarcasm.
Sho apologizes every time he comes to see Nino, and Nino says there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s the same song and dance, the same back and forth each time.
“It’s really not so bad here,” Nino insists. “I get time for hobbies.”
They give Nino little gadgets, broken alarm clocks, old cellphones, busted lamps. Locks and keys. They let him take them apart, put them back together again. “I’m good at this,” he tells Sho, bragging about something he’s fixed that week. “I’m still really fucking good at this.”
Sho has no idea how Nino managed to convince every shrink he’s seen that he’s sane, that he’s never not been sane, that things simply just “got out of hand” at the house and he nearly got his friends killed. Sho’s wanted to appeal, to confess to what he’s done, but Nino won’t hear of it.
Visiting time is up, and Nino puts the phone receiver they use to chat back. He wiggles his fingers, tapping the glass, and Sho taps back. Then he just waves, vanishing back into his strangely calm life. Jun’s waiting in the car. He got to spend the first half of the visiting time with Nino, and Sho always takes the second half.
They don’t turn the car on, sitting there quietly. Jun doesn’t understand why Nino did what he did either, and the guilt has affected him as much as it has Sho. It’s only been the last few months that together they’ve come to terms with it, accepted it for what it is. They don’t have the apartment in Yokohama, not that specific one, but with their combined income, they’ve moved into a one-bedroom in Kawasaki. They take pride in it because it’s paid for with money they earn, with nobody’s help. Jun’s been promoted at the cafe, and he makes these fancy lattes with decorations in the foam. He tried to teach Sho to do it once, and Sho’s artwork was so atrocious Jun nearly hurt himself laughing.
Some days Sho still wonders just what Jun loves about him. Looking back, their relationship was built on shaky foundations. On lust and secrets, curiosity and the physical. Sho wanted Jun to need him. Sho wanted Jun to need only him. So what did Jun want?
They’ve had to work hard this year, coping with the guilt, the fear. The nightmares where Sho’s in that kitchen seeing the fear in Jun’s eyes before they pull the trigger, the nightmares Jun has where Sho’s the one hurt. Sho’s woken up, hardly able to breathe because he’s back there, reliving it, until Jun takes his hand, talks him back to today. It would be easier to just forget, to just move on. But they’ve both taken the easy road for too long. Instead they talk. They talk a lot. No secrets. It means coping with the memories, with Nino and what he’s done to give them this chance, this life together.
They can’t take it for granted.
Jun reaches a hand across the seat, brushes a strand of hair away that’s fallen across Sho’s brow. His fingertips brush against the corner of Sho’s eye. “What?” Sho asks, burning up under Jun’s always intense scrutiny.
“You getting more wrinkles here?”
Sho looks at himself in the rearview mirror, fretting suddenly. “Huh? Seriously?”
Jun’s hand wraps gently around Sho’s neck, pulls him in for a kiss that has him wishing they were home, not in the parking lot of a prison. Jun stops, grinning, leaning his forehead against Sho’s. “You get any more wrinkles, I might have to peg you for a guy in his forties.”
“I’m not,” Sho whines helplessly.
Jun presses slow, teasing kisses all over Sho’s face, his mouth. Even if Sho doubts it, even if he still doesn’t believe it sometimes, it’s there. In his voice, in his eyes. Trust. Loyalty. Love.
On some nights, Sho asks Jun if he’s the person he wants to be. Lately, instead of “no,” sometimes he’ll get a “maybe” or even an “almost.” They’re mending. They’re healing. Slowly, and never easy. But always, always worth it.
“Okay,” Jun says, thumb stroking Sho’s chin. “Thirty-nine. And a half.”
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
They keep working. Jun at the cafe, Sho at Emerald Pet Friends, Nino at improving their security. When Sho and Jun arrive home from work now, there are printouts on the table in the living room. Status updates from the monitors Nino has in his room, documenting who has come by the house that day. With photographs, still images from the cameras. Nino has scrawled a question on the printout in his minuscule handwriting.
“Are any of these Ohno? Please tell me.”
Sho looks at the printout, at the mailman obliviously dropping letters in the box, at a woman jogging past who stopped to check the time on her watch. People walking by on their way to or from the main road. A delivery van parked across the street. No Ohno, not in any of the pictures.
Nino has installed locks on the inside of his bedroom door, on his windows. They hear at least three of them unlock before the door can open these days, and only so he can use the bathroom. Jun suspects he might start pissing in bottles one of these days so he can go even longer without coming out. He’s offered to perform “expert” installations in Jun’s room, in Sho’s. They’ve declined. DVDs on carpentry arrive, new monitors with the green glow of night vision. The boxes are in the living room when Sho leaves for work and have disappeared when he returns.
When Sho goes into the attic, he always folds his blanket a certain way so he can check and see if Nino’s moved it. It hasn’t been shifted in the last week or so. He finds himself going upstairs at Jun’s insistence now, every few days, taking a few stacks of bills and depositing them in his checking account. If Nino’s tracking these deductions, he doesn’t inform Sho.
-
He and Jun sign a lease on a two-bedroom apartment three stops away from Emerald Pet Friends on a Saturday morning in the beginning of March. Spring is coming. A fresh start. They’re welcome to move in from the first of April. On Sho’s insistence, they’ll tell Nino now rather than when they start packing. They arrive home, at least four cameras pointed at them as they unlock the front door.
They enter the house and Jun punches in the seven-digit code on the new security system Nino installed as a “Valentine’s Day Present” and paid for with his own money. They hang their jackets, slip out of their shoes. “Nino!” Sho calls, making noise by shaking the plastic bag he’s got in his hand. “We brought some leftovers. That bakery you like.”
When there’s no response, Jun sighs, heading to Nino’s bedroom door. For the first time in a long time, there’s no sound coming from inside. Maybe he’s sleeping. Jun knocks anyway. “Get your ass up, there’s croissants.”
No response.
Silently, Jun points up. Sho nods, taking the step stool from its usual resting place just inside Sho and Nino’s bathroom. He gets on and reaches up, only to remember his keys are in the bowl in the genkan. But then Jun’s there, holding out his own. Sho uses it to unlock it, then steps down. Jun moves the stool aside while Sho pulls down the stairs.
“Hey Nino, you up here?” He climbs up, looks around in the shadows from the top stair. A pile of money under a blanket to the north, an exposed and smaller pile of money to the south. Sho’s blanket and money in the east. “Nino?” There’s a bunch of empty boxes up here. So many have come to the house in recent weeks that Nino’s taken to storing them up here rather than breaking them all down and putting them out to be recycled. “You playing hide and seek up here?”
No response.
Sho comes down the stairs, shrugging.
“Not here?” Jun asks, completely surprised.
“Unless he’s in a box,” Sho says. “Do you want me to check?”
There’s a rather happy look in Jun’s eyes. “No. No, I don’t want you to.”
Sho barely manages to get the stairs pushed up and locked again before Jun’s pulling him down the hall to his own room. Where’s Nino? Jun could care less right now, and as soon as Jun’s got them in his room, shutting the door, Sho finds himself not caring much either. Fresh air would do Nino a world of good.
They’ve been quiet. For weeks now they’ve been quiet, respectful of their housemate. Sho’s wanted to shout, to cry out, to give Jun a firm reminder of how good it feels when they fuck, but they’ve just been oh so quiet.
He’s on his hands and knees, fingers scrambling to hold tight to the sheets. He’s not quiet and neither is Jun when they come together, when Jun’s slowly pushing in, slipping away, nails digging in to Sho’s hips and pulling him back against his cock, making Sho’s body do the work, taking him in again and again. Unrelenting, Sho’s crying out with almost every motion, every time Jun yanks him back. Far rougher than their usual. They haven’t even taken their shirts off, more preoccupied with satisfying themselves below the waist, and Sho tries not to laugh when he can feel the tickle of Jun’s shirt brushing against his ass with each punishing stroke.
Sho hears a creaking sound. A floorboard maybe.
“Wait,” he says, and it takes him saying it a couple of times for Jun to emerge from his possessive haze, stopping with a hand to Sho’s back.
“What?” Jun asks. He’s thoughtful enough to slowly ease himself out, and Sho groans at the feeling, already missing him. “Was it too much? I’m sorry…”
Sho moves onto his back, curious. It would be comical, the sight of Jun before him clad in nothing but a t-shirt and a condom, pupils so dilated his eyes look black. But it’s not. Soon he’s leaning forward, pressing gentle kisses to Sho’s thighs in seeming apology, heading for his cock, and as good as Jun’s mouth is, Sho stills him with a little smack to the head.
“Ssh, stop,” Sho says, and this time when there’s a creak he knows that Jun hears it too.
It’s coming from upstairs. Like footsteps.
“I thought you said he wasn’t there,” Jun whispers.
“He wasn’t,” Sho whispers back. “I didn’t see him.”
“What do you want to do?” Jun asks.
Sho’s uneasy, hesitant. He has no doubt that Nino’s up in the attic, walking around. “Well…he already knows we’re here.” He moves, getting up to lean back on his elbows. “Were you trying to make it so I’ll never walk again, Matsumoto?”
“Always so honest. That’s why I like you,” Jun says, and Sho knows he’s not going to perform for an audience. The bed dips and Jun’s slipping off his condom, grabbing some tissue from the nightstand. But he does come back to Sho, this time pulling the blankets up to cover them.
It’s warm, the smell of Jun’s sweat and his own mingling under the covers. “I don’t like this,” Jun grumbles.
“Won’t be like this much longer.”
They’re quiet for a few moments, and they hear a few more steps up in the attic, nowhere near Jun’s room thankfully.
Jun reaches out, pulls Sho’s face to his and kisses him, with a gentleness that’s reassuring. Sho kisses back, finding Jun’s arm, stroking.
“I was so fucking close too,” Jun complains, and Sho knows that Nino can probably hear him laugh, so loud and obnoxious Jun eventually pushes his hand over his mouth. “It’s not that funny.”
Jun lets out a little grunt of surprise when Sho reaches between them, finds Jun’s cock. Despite the interruption, it’s not long before Sho’s got him hard again. They must look ridiculous, two men in their thirties buried under the blankets. “Sho-kun,” Jun’s muttering though, so needy that it won’t take much.
“What do you want?”
“To be alone,” he answers.
“It’s just you and me, okay? Just you and me right now.” And it’s so hot, so stuffy, and awkward as hell, but Sho fumbles around under the blankets, gets himself between Jun’s legs. He can smell, taste latex when he takes Jun’s erection in his hand, circles the slick head of his cock with his tongue, praying he doesn’t go astray and lick the fucking sheets.
Jun misses, trying to reach for Sho under the blankets. Sho gets a hard poke to his shoulder before Jun finally finds his head, pushing. “Now,” Jun begs him. “Now.” He’s barely got Jun halfway in his mouth before he’s coming, groaning as Sho diligently takes it in, swallows it down.
Sho surfaces, pushing the blankets aside. He thrills in the euphoric glow, the slight shame in Jun’s face. He pokes, tracing Jun’s brow, his dark sideburns, along his jaw. His chin, the arch of his mouth, the way his lips pucker a little to cover his overbite. When Sho was at his lowest, Jun found him. Came sauntering across that bar and where he could have taken advantage, he chose not to. Whatever happens, he refuses to let Jun go.
Except right now.
“I’m going to check on Nino.”
Jun opens his eyes, frowns. “Fuck him.”
Sho sighs. “Maybe I can get him to eat.”
“Whatever.”
Jun, sated for now, doesn’t offer any other complaints when Sho gets up, cleans himself a bit, tugs his clothes back on. He probably smells like lube and sex, but he doesn’t much care, opening Jun’s door and closing it behind him. On the living room floor, Jun’s attic key gleams in the sunlight. They dropped it there, when they thought they were alone.
He picks up the key, gets the step stool. This time when he pulls down the stairs, he doesn’t stop at the top. He sees a glow this time, near the blanket covering the north pile of money. Beneath it he finds Nino and his laptop, tossing the blanket aside. For some reason, Sho almost expects him to be watching porn, jacking off because he accidentally overheard what was happening downstairs.
Instead Nino’s laptop screen is divided up into multiple boxes. Each mirrors one of the cameras he has set up downstairs.
“You should have said that you were home. You heard us come home.”
Nino looks up, and with only the glow from his laptop his face is blue. Like he’s dead.
“Sorry Sho-chan, I was taking a nap.”
“Up here?”
“I come up here,” Nino explains, setting the laptop down. “To think sometimes.”
“We thought you went out.”
“I’d have left you a note,” Nino says, sighing. “I’m very good about leaving notes. I should tell you though. I should tell you this.”
Sho sits down, crossing his legs. He can smell Jun, on his skin, on his clothes. And here he is, up in the attic with Nino, who might have gone off the deep end and they aren’t doing shit to help him.
“What should you tell me?”
“Ohno was here, it had to be him. Based on your description. Here, hold on.”
Nino gets to his feet, and he tugs something out from his money pile. It’s a battery-powered camp light, and when he turns it on, the whole attic is illuminated. There’s way more boxes than Sho knew about before. There’s also, he discovers in horror, an air mattress and pillow, empty soda bottles, empty bags of chips. Nino’s up here a lot more than they’ve realized.
He messes with his laptop, rewinding some footage. “Here, Sho-chan, is it this guy? He’s not so tough.”
Nino cues the playback, and there’s someone in the neighbor’s yard. They left for vacation, the neighbors, just the other day. They’re not home. Sho doesn’t want to know how many cameras Nino has pointing at the neighbors in addition to their own house. And when Nino zooms in, the person is standing on a lawn chair with binoculars so he can see over the fence, stopping to jot things down on a notepad. It’s Ohno, Sho would remember him anywhere.
“What’s he doing?” Sho asks, feeling ill.
“Casing the joint,” Nino says. “You know. Watching us. But he won’t get in. He can’t get in.”
“How long has he been there?”
“This is the third day. He’s been watching for a few hours a day, this man.”
Sho almost wants to hit him. “Three fucking days?”
Nino, oblivious, rewinds the footage. “He watches when you and Jun-kun leave for work, writes down when you get back. Nobody else can see him since he’s back there. The other neighbors, the ones on the other side, they have a tree. But I can see him. He’s followed Jun-kun to the train a few times. Quietly.”
“Nino!”
Nino ignores him, smearing his finger across his screen. “I’m telling you, he can’t get in. I’ve made it so he can’t come in. All you have to do is stay here, and you’re safe as I am.” He gestures to his money. “Look, I can show you some receipts.”
Instead Sho gets to his feet. “Is he there? Is he still there right now?”
Nino messes with his footage. “Ah. Yes. Yeah, he’s there.”
Sho heads for the exit.
“Wait, let me show you this. I installed this yesterday, and it’s working.” Before Sho can go down the stairs, Nino tugs them back up, effectively trapping them. “Look.” Sho watches, stunned, as Nino shows him a new locking mechanism. Sho hadn’t seen it when he’d come up before. Nino has installed some sort of catch that locks the stairs from the inside. He’s wearing the key for it around his neck on a thin chain. “It’s so if I want to sleep, nobody can bother me. Even if this Ohno comes in, this is a different lock. Even if he has the key for the other side, he can’t come in. He can’t take our money.”
Sho shuts his eyes, counts to five. He doesn’t know if he’s terrified or angry or both. “Can I please go downstairs, Nino?”
“Oh, of course, Sho-chan.” Nino unlocks the stairs and they slowly release down. They’re close to silent now.
Sho hurries down them, and without prompting, Nino pulls them up. He hears the lock click on the other side.
He goes back to Jun. Without an explanation, he says “Stay here and wait until I come back. We’re getting out of here. Tonight.”
-
Ohno doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him when Sho enters the neighbor’s yard, approaches him.
“Why are you here?” Sho asks.
Ohno bows his head, almost deferential. “I’ve been hired by the people who employed Shibasaki Keito-san. I’m a private investigator.” He even hands Sho a business card. Ohno Satoshi, Investigative Services.
“Do you know anything about the people who hired you?”
Ohno shrugs. “Irrelevant.”
Sho gets up close, stunned by how unflappable the guy is when Sho grabs hold of his jacket sleeve. “Leave us alone. Stop watching us.”
“Your other roommate, that’s Ninomiya. I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve been asked to provide information on all three of you.” Ohno’s little mouth becomes a sour little grin. “He has to come out sometime, right? Hikikomori type?”
“And what else?”
Ohno shrugs again. “That would be in violation of my contract for this assignment.”
Sho tugs the man closer, furious. “Shibasaki Keito-san was a bad man. And so are the people he worked for.”
“It’s not my place to have an opinion about that.”
“How much are they paying you? What can I give you to leave us alone?”
Ohno perks up a bit at that, shifting his weight and detaching himself from Sho’s grasp smoothly. “My employers said they were stolen from. It would be…I don’t know, kind of weird for you to pay me with that stolen money.”
Sho crosses his arms. “Weird but not impossible?” He’s all but confirmed it for Ohno now. Yes, Keito-san was here. Yes, Keito-san left money that he apparently had stolen here. And yes, they’re using it now.
“Turning my back on an employer and breaking a contract doesn’t bode well for my business,” Ohno says. “Especially if they’re as, ah, bad as you say they are.” Ohno’s smile pisses Sho off. “I’m just trying to get by. Aren’t we all, Sakurai-san?”
“What do you propose?”
“I’ll take twenty million for my notepad,” Ohno says. He opens it, lets Sho look through it. Dates and times that Sho leaves for work. Dates and times that Jun leaves for work. Where they’re spending money and how much. There’s weeks’ worth of stuff in here. Information about the high school where Sho used to work, about his new job. About his friends, about Aiba and his wife.
“And if I buy your notepad, what does it get us?”
“I tell my employer that I could not confirm you had the money in the house. I give them only basic details about you, try to imply you guys are a waste of time.” Ohno is firm when he speaks again. “But I’m not going to get you off the hook, if that’s what you’re expecting. They may stop sniffing around based on what I say, they may not. But anything in this notepad is yours.”
Sho hesitates, seeing the name Aiba Masaki. Aiba’s address. Fuck, the guy even has it noted down when Aiba and Sho went shopping that one day. What they bought, how much they spent. This Ohno has been watching them for ages. He points to Aiba’s name in the notepad. “You won’t say anything about my friend?”
“No. I was only attempting to determine if you had further accomplices. It was for my employer to investigate further.”
“Do you swear?” Sho asks, his voice breaking. He doesn’t care much about any of the information that’s about himself. But Aiba’s had nothing to do with this, with any of this. The thought of Aiba coming to harm for something Sho’s done, it sickens him. “Do you swear you won’t say anything?”
“Twenty million.” Ohno snatches the notepad back from Sho, turns to the last page. He scribbles down an address and rips out the page, hands it over. “Cash please. I’ll meet you here at midnight tonight. After that, I suggest you skip town. As you said, Sakurai-san, these are bad men.”
Sho’s about to lose it. Just that morning, he and Jun signed their lease. Paid their deposit and key money. And now they have to come up with twenty million.
Twenty million from what Nino’s got locked up in the attic with him.
-
Jun’s standing under the attic stairs, arms crossed. “You need to let us come up.”
“I’m sorry,” comes Nino’s voice, muffled but audible. “But Sho-chan is getting extorted. And besides, he didn’t ask us if it was okay. This Ohno-san seems to be a shady character. Twenty million and Keito-san’s friends will probably still give us trouble.”
“Well we don’t need your money,” Jun protests, shouting at the ceiling. “Between me and him, we’ll be protecting your crazy ass too!”
“You’re not a very equal partner, Matsumoto-san. After all the times Sho-chan’s paid for you, for your expenses in the upkeep of security here in this house. And now you’re going to use mostly his money again.” Nino is quiet for a moment. “Jun-kun, he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? Not a client?”
Sho pounds on the wall with his fist. “I don’t care about any of that! Stop fighting!”
Jun leans back against the wall, shuts his eyes. When he opens them again, he’s furious, staring at Sho. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?” he whispers.
“Your kind and friendly approach is obviously not working,” Sho hisses back. He gestures for Jun to go down the hall. “Let me talk to him, alright?”
Jun goes to his room and slams the door. Sho waits a minute or two before trying again. He goes and gets his key, the footstool. “Nino.”
He hears footsteps creak across the floor, almost directly overhead.
“Nino, when you installed the lock for the stairs, you gave us each a key. You’ve kept things fair, from the very beginning. You document all your expenses very clearly. So I was curious why you’re the only one with a key to the inside lock?”
He hears the floorboard creak again.
“Shouldn’t there be three keys, Nino? To be fair?”
He hears Nino’s key turn in the new lock, backs up when the staircase comes down. Nino pokes his head down, staring at Sho. “Just you.”
Despite his fear, he climbs the steps and lets Nino close it again, lock it after him. He heads to the east, pulls up his blanket.
Nino’s typing on his laptop. “You still have over sixteen million. That’s a lot of money, Sho-chan, especially if you’re going to be moving soon.”
He turns, seeing that Nino clearly knows. He can see the hurt in Nino’s eyes, a deep and cutting pain that makes Sho feel horrible. “We were going to tell you. Today.”
“You should clear your browser history,” Nino says with a heartbreaking smile. “Seems like a nice neighborhood.”
“It is,” Sho mumbles. Not that it matters, once Keito-san’s employers have his name and Jun’s.
“I knew he was right to trust you,” Nino continues, and Sho wishes he’d stop smiling, even with the tears in his eyes. “I knew Jun-kun was right to trust you. You take care of him. He and I, we…well, we’re very similar. We needed someone to rescue us, for so long. Although I guess I had to rescue myself.” He sets his laptop down, uncovers his money pile. “Here, let me give you some from mine.”
“Nino, no, I’ll take care of it…”
But he’s already counting money out, putting it in a plastic convenience store bag. “I still think you’re pretty dumb to trust that Ohno-san. How do you know he doesn’t have eighty notepads full of information about us? You’re really safest here, but you’re both stubborn, the two of you.”
“Then why help us?”
Nino takes the handles of the bag, ties them in a knot. He tosses it Sho’s way. Throughout all of this, even with how insane his words sound, his voice has been so calm, so relaxed. “Because you’re a good person. Call the police, you kept saying. We can’t do this, you kept saying. Maybe you were right.”
He wants to tell Nino that he’s not. That he’s not good, that he’s gone along with everything. That he’s taken and spent the money as easily as they have. As Jun told him once, you do it because it’s easy.
Nino unlocks the stairs, allows Sho to count and carry his money downstairs where Jun’s got duffel bags ready - they’ll have one or two for the money for Ohno and the rest will be everything they can manage to take with them. In the morning, they’ll cancel the apartment contract in Yokohama, get their money back. Sho will resign from Emerald, Jun will quit the cafe. He’s not quite sure how he’ll explain things to Aiba, not yet, but if he’s at Emerald, it means Aiba and his wife are still connected to him. They’re still vulnerable.
He’s not sure where they’ll end up, or how long they’ll have to run. But they can’t stay here.
Once he has the money gathered, he and Jun start to pack. It’s after 6:00 PM when Nino pulls up the attic stairs, locks it up tight. The only cash still up there belongs to him.
-
It’s just after 10 PM when the power goes out. He and Jun are just about to pack up the car, and this is just one more thing to deal with. Sho moves to the living room window, peeks through the blinds. All the other houses on the block have at least one light on. The street lights are on too.
“Damn it,” Sho says.
“Bet it’s all those stupid fucking cameras and everything else he’s got sucking up the electricity.” Sho hears Jun trip over something, stumbling across the floor. His voice is further away, in the hall when he next speaks up. Nino hasn’t even come downstairs since Sho took the money. “Hey! What the hell are you doing up there?”
“What do we do?” Sho asks, fumbling his way through the living room, finding the couch.
“Circuit breaker,” Jun replies, sighing when Nino offers no reply. “Flip the switches.”
“Will I electrocute myself?”
Jun laughs. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. It’s in the kitchen. Just…just stay there before you fall and crack your head open.”
Sho ignores the command, feels along the wall until he’s in the hallway. He calls up at the ceiling. “You okay up there? You didn’t zap yourself did you? Nino?”
At the very least, he remembers Nino has that camp light. He can still see a hell of a lot better up there than Sho can see down here. He stares up into black, annoyed.
Something falls to the floor in the kitchen, a metal clang as though Jun’s journey to the circuit breaker has not been a smooth one. “Hey, you alright?” He hears another pot hit the floor, and he laughs. “And I’m the one who’ll fall and crack his head open?”
He feels his way along the wall, and it’s not as dark this way. Not from electric lights, and he can feel breeze. Jun must have unlocked the kitchen door to help him see, the three locks Nino’s insisted on from the start.
“Jun, what’s going on?” he asks.
In an instant the kitchen door is closed and there’s a slight pop as the lights come back. Sho’s about to scream, but the man who shut the door has his hand over Sho’s mouth before he can. Jun’s on the kitchen floor, on his knees, and a second man has a gun with a silencer to his head.
Jun’s eyes go wide in panic as the man who’s grabbed Sho hauls him away, into the living room. Sho tries to struggle, tries to bite the hand clamped over his mouth. What’s happening? What’s happening? Did Ohno-san…did he tip off Keito-san’s people? No…no, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making that deal if he was just going to turn around and do this anyhow. Maybe Keito-san’s people were tired of waiting.
The other man drags Jun into the living room, mostly by his hair. That he doesn’t scream, just winces in pain, seems to imply that the guy’s said he’ll get his head blown off for making a fuss. The two men, dressed in black, have ski masks on. Straight out of a movie. Two thugs, please, from central casting.
They force Sho to his knees, toss Jun next to him like a rag doll. Sho’s so scared he can’t gather the energy to be embarrassed by the fact that he’s already pissed himself. He puts up his hands, shaking as he looks from Taller Thug who grabbed him to Bulky Thug who grabbed Jun.
“Where’s the money?” Taller asks. They’ve both got guns, Sho can see this now, and he wants to lean closer to Jun. “Where’s the money?”
Jun holds up one hand, uses the other to gesture to their duffel bags. They broke his glasses, a crack going straight across the lens. Punched him too, there’s blood dripping from his nose. Broken, maybe. There’s blood dripping down onto his lip, onto those moles Sho likes so much.
Taller keeps his gun trained on them while Bulky heads over to check the bags they’ve prepared for Ohno. He unzips it, chuckles. “This can’t be all of it.”
“Spent the rest,” Sho says.
Bulky leaves the bag, grabs Sho and lifts him mostly by his t-shirt. It stretches, tears a little at the collar. He gets socked right in the stomach for his comment, hitting the floor knees first and hard as he doubles over. All he knows is he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, it hurts so much.
“Where’s the rest?” Taller asks.
“In the bags,” Jun says. “I swear. Don’t hurt him.”
Sho, tears in his eyes and wondering if they’ll shoot first or break bones first or maybe stab them, is almost glad when Bulky leans back, kicking him in the ribs. It hurts like hell, it burns to breathe, but they haven’t kicked Jun. At least they haven’t kicked Jun.
Shut up Jun, Sho thinks. No matter what he says, it won’t matter. These are professionals, and they’ll get what they came for.
“You’re lying,” Taller says, not even that annoyed. This is probably an average night for him, the worst night of Sho’s and Jun’s lives. Bulky kicks Sho again, and Sho groans, tears rolling down his cheeks, and this time Jun can’t lie. It’s a good thing they’re not secret agents, because they wouldn’t withstand a real interrogation.
Jun’s a mess, sobbing. “Upstairs!”
“Upstairs? Where upstairs?”
When Sho looks up, gasping for air, Bulky and Taller are looking at the living room ceiling for answers. They don’t think to check the hallway behind them. At least not fast enough, because Sho sees that the stairs are down.
“Where upstairs?” Taller demands, and he’s got his gun pointed right at Jun’s face.
Sho can barely move, but they’re not going to shoot Jun. They’ll have to shoot him first. He’s just about to move when Bulky cries out, turning with the knife sticking out of his back, his kidney maybe.
Before Taller can get a shot off, Nino’s got a different knife buried in his gut, quickly pulls it out, puts it in his neck. In less than fifteen seconds, it’s over and there’s Nino, swimming in his sweatshirt, blood splattered across his face. He picks up their guns, moves them out of their grasp. The men might not be dead, but they will be soon if nothing is done to help them. Bulky’s body is quivering, his fingers trying and failing to reach for the knife sticking from his back.
Sho lies there, burning, burning, his jeans reeking from piss. It hurts. God, it hurts. Jun’s shaking. “Nino…Nino…” he’s babbling.
Nino crouches down at Sho’s side, stroking his bloody fingers through his hair. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Then he gets up and Sho watches Nino lift his foot, using it to push the knife further into Bulky’s back.
-
He had the nurse pull the curtain all the way, blocking everything out save for the window. It’s not the prettiest side of the hospital. He’s looking out onto a part of the roof, all white gravel and humming metal equipment. They have to keep him mostly upright in the hospital bed, and it still hurts. He’s short of breath even now, two days later.
The doctors say he’s pretty lucky. Two broken ribs, but his lungs weren’t punctured, minimal internal bleeding. It hurts to move his arms, to bend, to breathe. They’ll be releasing him tomorrow, and they’ve mostly kept him in this room alone because the investigation’s ongoing.
They haven’t allowed Jun to see him. He’s somewhere with a broken nose, probably with an unattractive bandage on that too pretty face. Sho smiles to think of how much that must annoy him. He needs something to smile about. They’ve probably still got him in and out of the station, interviewing him for hours just like they’ve been interviewing Sho whenever the doctor says it’s fine. They don’t let him talk too long, put more pressure on his chest from talking without interruption.
He stares out the window a while longer before turning his attention to the flowers on the table. One vase from Aiba and the wife, along with a simple bouquet with a card merely signed “O.S.” If that’s the only apology he’s getting from Ohno-san, he supposes it’s enough.
Nino. When Sho thinks of Nino, it’s hard not to cry. Because when he cries, when he sobs, it hurts. It hurts so damn much. It was Nino who called the police, telling them in that calm, steady voice of his that there’d been a break-in at their house, that two intruders had been stabbed. And that, by the way, they’re in possession of stolen money, can they please send some detectives along with the ambulance?
Taller and Bulky are alive. Taller, though, is in a coma. Vegetative state. Bulky will need months of physical therapy to walk again. When either of them are released, they’ll be arrested anyhow. Sho’s been given their real names, but the nicknames are what will stick. The self-defense charge stands. The men were breaking and entering. Sho never says a word about what he saw Nino do, the satisfied look he had when he forced the knife further into that man’s back.
His parents have an incredible lawyer involved, and his father is quite certain Sho will not face jail time. Ninomiya’s locked up, and he’s telling anyone who will listen to him that he coerced Jun and Sho into everything. That he blackmailed them, threatened them about Keito-san, about the money, for months. They’re gay, he’s told the cops, blackmailing queers is a cake walk.
“He’s crazy though,” Sho’s told the lawyer, wincing enough to have the nurse scolding him. “He’s totally crazy. Something’s wrong with him, please listen to me! He needs help!”
“If he passes the psych eval,” the lawyer assures Sho, ignoring his distress, “everything he says will be taken at face value. It can only help you, Sakurai-san. And Matsumoto-san as well.”
Nino’s ensuring that he takes the fall for everything, for every little thing, and Sho doesn’t want him to. “I spent the money too. I went along with it. I never objected,” he tells the lawyer, who sighs in exasperation.
“I better be the last person you say that to,” he says. “For your own sake.”
His parents think Sho’s just been through a lot of trauma. After all this is the first they’re even hearing that Sho lost his job, over a year ago. He’s barely told them a thing, all this time. It doesn’t matter that he has a new job, a new life. They wonder if they should sue the school, have his firing overturned. He stops them, immediately. He doesn’t want their money, not if it means he gets off scot-free after all that he’s done. But he supposes he’ll accept it anyhow, if only because he knows there’s no way he’ll be able to change Nino’s mind.
Aiba comes by for the end of visiting hours that night. He sits in the chair next to Sho’s bed and doesn’t say anything, a rare feat for the chatty teacher. Sho shouldn’t talk, should rest, but he tells Aiba everything, everything from the start. From the bar to the house to the night they dropped that silver case in the lake. The cameras and the locks on the attic and the lights coming back on, Sho finding Jun with a gun to his head.
Aiba listens to all of it, the full story, the full story the lawyers and the police haven’t heard. They’ve gotten the pertinent bits, the stories and chatter that will give Sho and Jun their freedom. That will give Nino some sort of jail time. Stolen money, nobody’s too sure yet what will happen there. They’re still tracing the money, tracing Taller and Bulky, tracing Keito-san, their employers. Trying to unravel the knots. The police are falling over themselves to get a big solve like this.
Sho’s glad that Aiba doesn’t try to convince Sho that it’s not his fault, that he had no choice, that he was in over his head. He just listens, because he’s always been happy to carry these things for Sho. “Where are you going, when they let you out?” Aiba asks.
“I don’t know,” Sho says. He doesn’t even know if his apartment contract in Yokohama is still legitimate. They paid the deposit with Keito-san’s money, the key money with what Sho earned from Emerald. His job with Emerald is, astonishingly, secure. He’s on paid medical leave, and he’s even received a Get Well Soon card from his team. None of them know, of course, about any of it. Becky’s handling it, without complaint, because Sho’s worked hard for her father, even in this short amount of time. And because he’s Aiba’s friend.
“You could stay with us,” Aiba replies. “This time you could get over yourself and say yes.”
He grins at that, trying not to laugh. “I suppose I could.”
“And Jun-san?”
Sho shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a pull-out couch,” Aiba says. “I think it can fit two.”
-
Nino’s put on a little weight, and his face isn’t so pale. Being on a schedule in a place like this, with set times to sleep, to eat, have almost changed him for the better. He’s being held in minimum security. It’s amazing, the things lawyers can accomplish, the plea deals that can be struck when a defendant is all too happy to confess to things he didn’t do to save his friends.
Nino’s served almost a full year. He’ll do one more, and with good behavior he’ll be out. He isn’t too sure what he plans to do upon release, but there are job programs for people like him, placement options. “Maybe another net cafe,” he says without a note of sarcasm.
Sho apologizes every time he comes to see Nino, and Nino says there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s the same song and dance, the same back and forth each time.
“It’s really not so bad here,” Nino insists. “I get time for hobbies.”
They give Nino little gadgets, broken alarm clocks, old cellphones, busted lamps. Locks and keys. They let him take them apart, put them back together again. “I’m good at this,” he tells Sho, bragging about something he’s fixed that week. “I’m still really fucking good at this.”
Sho has no idea how Nino managed to convince every shrink he’s seen that he’s sane, that he’s never not been sane, that things simply just “got out of hand” at the house and he nearly got his friends killed. Sho’s wanted to appeal, to confess to what he’s done, but Nino won’t hear of it.
Visiting time is up, and Nino puts the phone receiver they use to chat back. He wiggles his fingers, tapping the glass, and Sho taps back. Then he just waves, vanishing back into his strangely calm life. Jun’s waiting in the car. He got to spend the first half of the visiting time with Nino, and Sho always takes the second half.
They don’t turn the car on, sitting there quietly. Jun doesn’t understand why Nino did what he did either, and the guilt has affected him as much as it has Sho. It’s only been the last few months that together they’ve come to terms with it, accepted it for what it is. They don’t have the apartment in Yokohama, not that specific one, but with their combined income, they’ve moved into a one-bedroom in Kawasaki. They take pride in it because it’s paid for with money they earn, with nobody’s help. Jun’s been promoted at the cafe, and he makes these fancy lattes with decorations in the foam. He tried to teach Sho to do it once, and Sho’s artwork was so atrocious Jun nearly hurt himself laughing.
Some days Sho still wonders just what Jun loves about him. Looking back, their relationship was built on shaky foundations. On lust and secrets, curiosity and the physical. Sho wanted Jun to need him. Sho wanted Jun to need only him. So what did Jun want?
They’ve had to work hard this year, coping with the guilt, the fear. The nightmares where Sho’s in that kitchen seeing the fear in Jun’s eyes before they pull the trigger, the nightmares Jun has where Sho’s the one hurt. Sho’s woken up, hardly able to breathe because he’s back there, reliving it, until Jun takes his hand, talks him back to today. It would be easier to just forget, to just move on. But they’ve both taken the easy road for too long. Instead they talk. They talk a lot. No secrets. It means coping with the memories, with Nino and what he’s done to give them this chance, this life together.
They can’t take it for granted.
Jun reaches a hand across the seat, brushes a strand of hair away that’s fallen across Sho’s brow. His fingertips brush against the corner of Sho’s eye. “What?” Sho asks, burning up under Jun’s always intense scrutiny.
“You getting more wrinkles here?”
Sho looks at himself in the rearview mirror, fretting suddenly. “Huh? Seriously?”
Jun’s hand wraps gently around Sho’s neck, pulls him in for a kiss that has him wishing they were home, not in the parking lot of a prison. Jun stops, grinning, leaning his forehead against Sho’s. “You get any more wrinkles, I might have to peg you for a guy in his forties.”
“I’m not,” Sho whines helplessly.
Jun presses slow, teasing kisses all over Sho’s face, his mouth. Even if Sho doubts it, even if he still doesn’t believe it sometimes, it’s there. In his voice, in his eyes. Trust. Loyalty. Love.
On some nights, Sho asks Jun if he’s the person he wants to be. Lately, instead of “no,” sometimes he’ll get a “maybe” or even an “almost.” They’re mending. They’re healing. Slowly, and never easy. But always, always worth it.
“Okay,” Jun says, thumb stroking Sho’s chin. “Thirty-nine. And a half.”
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4