[yst] [fic] At the Stars 5/?
taking a break after this. i haven't written anything long in ages and i had no idea it was going to suck up so much of my time and focus. RL wants me back yesterday.
At the Stars
Part 5
Touma introduced Ryo to the spare room in the apartment even before Shuu and Shin left. By the time they did, he was fully settled in.
At the start, Ryo feared that he wasn't as welcome in the household as he wanted to be, in light of recent occurrences - but both Touma and Seiji appeared to be only too glad to pretend nothing had happened. The small red scar on Touma's lower lip was the only reminder, and even then it was often forgotten.
The three of them spent most of their days together, with Touma teaching Ryo how to take over some tasks related to caring for the house and caring for Seiji when he wasn't around, and with Seiji telling Ryo entirely different things as soon as Touma's back was turned.
"Actually, it's not true that water is all I can drink," he whispered aside to Ryo. "Once a week I can have a little vodka."
"I HEARD THAT," Touma cried out from the hall. "RYO, DON'T LISTEN. SEIJI, STOP CONFUSING HIM."
Ryo did his best to memorize as many of the charts, emergency numbers, calendar dates and dosages as he could. It wasn't easy, but he was driven to be useful.
And eventually, Ryo even learned to clean up Touma's clutter without messing up the weird order that he had to his chaos. Touma liked to have things where he left them, though that usually meant all over the carpet and in strange formations on various shelves, cupboards included.
Ryo had to learn how to arrange things in a way that would still fall within Touma's comfort zones, which often ran along the lines of "I know I left it somewhere in the library... oh there it is, in that neat pile I don't remember being there before. See, I told you."
And sometimes Ryo treated them both to stories of his adventures as a fledgling globetrotter. Seiji had saved the postcards he'd sent to Touma's Tokyo apartment (all of the ones he'd sent Seiji were being kept safe in his family home in Miyagi) - and as it so happened, Ryo had at least one incredibly detailed story to tell for each one.
It was a way to pass the time between chores and medications.
Surprisingly, his stories seemed to be well-received. He didn't think they were that entertaining, but some of them actually propelled Touma into laughing fits (usually because of the stupid things Ryo had done, which stung) and many of them got Seiji asking questions.
Seiji wanted to know all the folk stories Ryo could remember. It must have come from him being a Classical Literature major. Touma couldn't get enough of that bit about the hyena that humped Ryo's leg and followed him around for miles. That must have come from him being a dick.
Ryo realized that Shin was right: he wasn't just there to take care of Seiji. He was there for both his friends, who were, at the moment, the two people in the world who needed his help the most, and who found some sort of respite in his company.
But on some days, Touma left for various errands: perhaps he was meeting with the helpful people that Shin and Shuu had found, or he was applying for jobs, or he was doing research in various libraries, or all of the above. He did not always let Ryo know, and Ryo did not always remember to ask.
Ryo was quick to accustom himself to the routines that governed Seiji's continued existence. Seiji was remarkably easy to take care of... until he found it hard to move or breathe - which happened more than once a day if he was under enough stress - and then he had to go under for a few hours. Before that could happen, Seiji made an effort to pick up after himself and not be in Ryo's way. He spent most of his time in the greenhouse, tending to his plants.
Ryo was surprised to find that he didn't mind the change in lifestyle at all. Traveling for work was getting tiring - and it was as if he hadn't noticed, before now. In this spacious apartment, big as his own house and not quite as lonely, he could be with two of his best friends, and find rest during the quiet moments.
And in his spare time, he read Seiji's books.
"The kid general," Ryo asked one day, "he's gay, isn't he?"
Seiji was sitting in one of the couches in the living room, close to the open door to the balcony, where he could close his eyes and feel the sunlight on his skin. Ryo was sitting near him, poring through Seiji's personal collection of published works as if he had never done it before - which he hadn't, truth be told. Seiji and Touma both regularly sent him books he simply never had the time to read before now.
Without opening his eyes, Seiji muttered a perfectly innocent "What?"
"He's gay." Ryo's brows were knitted. He spoke with perfect lack of guile. "For that strategist guy."
The first response was a sort of twitch in Seiji's upper lip and left eyebrow.
"Why do you say that?" Seiji asked.
Ryo flipped idly through the pages of the novelette in his hand. It was an earlier volume of his longest-running Sengoku-era epic - the one that was put on hold due to "author's illness," to the distress of readers around the world. The story centered on a young, dashing feudal lord and his four precocious friends, who bravely resisted the progress of an evil warlord's army through their lands.
Ryo rather enjoyed it.
"See, at first I thought he was gay for his lord. With all those promises of dying for him and the laying the whole world to waste at his feet... kind of thing." He sounded, for all the world, genuinely curious. As a reward, Seiji opened his eyes and gave him his full attention. "But then he got on better with that strategist guy. At the start, it was like they were just working for the same thing, right? Then before you know it, the kid general's all worried for the strategist guy's life and won't leave him alone. And then they're saying all those things to each other..." Ryo waved one free hand in the air, the other still gripping the book open at the page he was reading last. "You wrote them, you know what they are."
Seiji watched Ryo's hand flit about, amusement gleaming where sunlight met pale violet. "I... can't say it's strange behavior for the general," Seiji informed him. "The strategist himself says some... flowery words to other men, doesn't he?"
"Flowery, yeah..." Ryo echoed thoughtfully. He scratched his head. "Come to think of it, it was like he was flirting with all those other dudes. And those other dudes were flirting back."
Seiji stared at Ryo, who looked clueless as ever.
"Ryo... you've never read a classical novel before, have you."
The knee-jerk reaction was resentment. He'd read classical novels for school, of course. He just couldn't remember a single title, for the life of him...
"Men did talk like that, in the old days. Even to each other," Seiji informed him. "...Well, maybe they didn't, but all the old texts sure say so. It doesn't mean anything."
This took Ryo a few beats to process. "...So nobody's gay?"
Seiji said nothing for a long time. A number of expressions flashed across his face in sequence. He seemed to be thinking of what to say.
Then his shoulders started to shake.
Alarmed, Ryo dropped the book he was reading. He called Seiji's name once, then rushed to him in a few urgent strides.
When the shaking wouldn't stop even after Ryo had come close, he wrapped his arms around Seiji, intending to pull his friend off his seat and take him back to the bedroom he and Touma shared. He feared that his lame questioning had left Seiji overexerted. After all, Touma had warned that the muscles around Seiji's lungs had become so weak, there were times when just breathing and speaking were difficult for him.
Or was it oxygen. Did he need the oxygen tank?
Seiji's hands clawed at Ryo's sleeves. At first Ryo thought he was trying to pull himself up out of the chair, but that wasn't the case.
He was trying to pull Ryo down.
So Ryo bent down. Seiji threw his arms around Ryo's shoulders. The sheer weight of his body pulled them closer together. Ryo could feel Seiji's breath on the part of his shoulder that wasn't covered by the cloth of his shirt.
And that was when he realized that Seiji was laughing.
"Ryo," Seiji muttered against his skin. "thank you."
Eh...? "For what?" He tried pulling away, but Seiji's arms were still locked about him.
"We haven't... laughed this much in ages," Seiji said between chuckles, "Touma and I."
It might have been a compliment, if Ryo had been trying to be funny. But it wasn't a compliment, exactly; it was Seiji telling him it was worth it to be here.
"I don't like the old lady who lives down the hall."
It was almost time for the evening news. Touma had set up camp in the dining room, using the large dinner table as a place to organize his newer notes into sheafs. He looked up over his reading glasses to watch Ryo walking into the kitchen, arms filled with paper grocery bags.
"She's rude," Ryo continued to lament. "And she's a gossip. At first she was talking to me because she thought I had my own apartment in this building. Then she learned I was just staying with you and Seiji. All of a sudden she turned mean after that, you should've seen how - "
"Ryo," Touma interrupted. "You do realize that one of the reasons I got an upscale apartment in the middle of the metropolis was to minimize on nosy neighbors, right?"
Ryo blinked, still holding a can of vegetable soup halfway from its destined shelf. "...It was?"
A sage nod. "It was. So stop making friends with the neighbors."
Ryo frowned. More like pouted, but Touma wasn't exactly looking. "All right..." He went back to taking out groceries from their bags and arranging them on the refrigerator and the cupboards.
"What did she say about Seiji and me?" Touma asked after a very long pause.
"Nothing," Ryo lied. "She was nasty to me. She said I was old enough to get my own place so I should stop mooching off my friends."
The truth was, the nasty old lady who lived down the hall had said some pretty horrible things about Touma and Seiji. She had this crazy idea, for example, that the two were living together as lovers. For the record, she thought it was disgusting. And anyone who lived in with them must be disgusting as well.
It did not occur to Ryo at the time to hit the old lady across the face just to get her to shut up. But in retrospect, it might have at least made him feel better about there being such people in the world. All he did, all he could do, was take his civil leave while she yammered on.
But if Touma had an idea that Ryo was trying to hide something, he didn't show it. "Listen, I know you're a friendly guy," he told Ryo, "but nobody can know about our business. People like that old lady, they talk, and they spread the wrong ideas around. All right?"
"I said 'all right' already!" Ryo was social and at the same time clueless about social rules. He got it.
There was no venom in Ryo's retort, and Touma processed none. He let the matter drop and returned to his notes as if they had just talked about the weather.
But something had been bothering Ryo since that conversation with the nosy neighbor. He dwelt on it as he put the groceries in order, and when he was done he was free to get it off his chest.
"Touma, I want to understand."
Sensing a very long discussion in the offing, Touma sighed and removed his spectacles. "Understand what?" he asked, facing Ryo.
"I get why you'd want to hide Seiji's condition from the rest of the world... he's famous and having people talk would be bad for him." Having people talk within the building they lived in would be bad for him, too, Ryo knew, though it was harder to avoid that. Maybe there was no way to avoid it at all. "But why did you have to keep it a secret from us, too? What was it you didn't want us to know about?"
Touma fell still, and there was a heavy silence. There was a great deal of that when he and Touma were talking, Ryo realized. But it was still better than letting certain issues hang over their heads.
"I didn't want to keep it a secret," Touma said eventually - in a low voice, presumably so that anyone who would be in another room could not overhear. "Seiji did."
"He wanted it?" Ryo was incredulous. Seiji was the one who didn't want to tell them?
No. Ryo couldn't believe that. It wasn't like him. Seiji knew how Ryo would worry. He would say something.
But then, Ryo remembered how Seiji had looked when Touma brought Ryo in to see him: hurt, panicked, and more than a little betrayed. Perhaps it was possible...
"Ryo," Touma said, and there was a hard edge in his voice. "Don't ask if you don't want to know."
Again with the sudden coldness. Ryo wasn't used to any of his friends having so many walls around them in his presence. He supposed Touma knew this, and risked offending him, just because he couldn't help himself.
"I want to know," Ryo said, hoping to sound harmless and at the same time like he wouldn't back down.
Touma looked away. Ryo seized the chance to sit at the table, near enough to Touma so neither of them would have to speak too loudly. After a moment Touma took a deep breath, a little of which he let out in a brief sigh. The rest, he used to start talking.
"It was by accident that I found out. Five years ago, during the last time we saw each other. We were doing karaoke, remember that? While Shuu was singing Sailormoon songs, Seiji said he wanted to step out for some fresh air."
Sailormoon songs. It was just like Touma to remember such details vividly. Useless information seemed to stick in his head the longest.
Ryo had even forgotten that Seiji had stepped out for a bit. And that Touma had gone after him. It just didn't register at the time.
"I followed him because I felt something was wrong. I found him standing in the shadows, staring at his hand. He didn't hear me approaching. I grabbed his hand and it couldn't grab me back. It was so weak..."
Ryo distinctly remembered that Seiji's grip was strong the last time they shook hands, at the end of that reunion. But he also remembered that one of the things Touma had said about Seiji's illness was that the muscle weakness had not always been permanent; in fact, during the initial stages, Seiji would be unable to move his limbs only for a minute or two, then it would be like nothing happened. It was only recently that the lack of control became a constant problem.
Touma and Seiji had always been close. Not as Shin and Shuu were close, those two had been (and still were) like brothers separated at the cradle... but Touma and Seiji were like two people who shared a grim secret that nobody else could understand.
At times, watching them, Ryo felt a little jealous. But he would walk up to one of them, and the feeling would dissipate. He only felt excluded when the two of them were alone together - but when he was near either one of them, like right now, he was part of their world.
"Back then, he was still on his feet," Touma continued. "Deterioration was going at a snail's pace, and the symptoms vanished for long stretches of time. But Seiji had apparently been feeling those symptoms since Kourin disappeared. He just assumed it was some sort of... armor withdrawal or something." A bitter chuckle. "And that it would go away by itself...
"He said he didn't want the rest of us to worry if it turned out to be nothing. That was why he didn't want to let the rest of you know. I asked him - well, bullied him - to let me help. But the more I looked into the problem, the more I saw how complicated it was. And how deadly."
That must have been when he left his old job and crammed like hell, so he could get his medical license in two years. When Touma had made up his mind about the correct course of action, nothing could detract him. Ryo knew this much. "Bullied" might have been exactly the right word to use for what he did to Seiji.
"And then," Touma said, half to himself, "things happened. A lot of things. I only really had time to do stuff, not talk about them."
"You didn't even think about the rest of us," Ryo quietly accused, "did you?"
The question took Touma by surprise. "Of course I did." They were almost visible, the walls coming back up. "But I thought of Seiji first."
"That's just it! You changed careers. You even went back to college for two years. You let him move in with you. Then you risked your job, the way you lived, your reputation -"
"I had to help him." The response was automatic. Almost hostile.
"Touma... you didn't just do that. You turned your whole life around for him."
He's a friend, was the easy answer. Like you are, Ryo. You would've done the same.
But it wasn't the truth. Seiji was not like Ryo. Not to Touma. That much was painfully evident.
"I've told you what you wanted to know," Touma said with finality. He put on his glasses again and turned back to his notes with a visible slouch.
Ryo sat watching him for a minute, waiting to see if Touma was going to say or do anything more. But soon a soft alarm came on - a daily thing that Touma had set for himself, to remind him it was time for the evening news - and Touma ignored it, remaining bent over the papers in his hands. Eventually Ryo had to move to shut it off.
Fine. If he insisted on being vague, Ryo would have to figure out himself later what it was that seemed so strange.
(tbc)
At the Stars
Part 5
Touma introduced Ryo to the spare room in the apartment even before Shuu and Shin left. By the time they did, he was fully settled in.
At the start, Ryo feared that he wasn't as welcome in the household as he wanted to be, in light of recent occurrences - but both Touma and Seiji appeared to be only too glad to pretend nothing had happened. The small red scar on Touma's lower lip was the only reminder, and even then it was often forgotten.
The three of them spent most of their days together, with Touma teaching Ryo how to take over some tasks related to caring for the house and caring for Seiji when he wasn't around, and with Seiji telling Ryo entirely different things as soon as Touma's back was turned.
"Actually, it's not true that water is all I can drink," he whispered aside to Ryo. "Once a week I can have a little vodka."
"I HEARD THAT," Touma cried out from the hall. "RYO, DON'T LISTEN. SEIJI, STOP CONFUSING HIM."
Ryo did his best to memorize as many of the charts, emergency numbers, calendar dates and dosages as he could. It wasn't easy, but he was driven to be useful.
And eventually, Ryo even learned to clean up Touma's clutter without messing up the weird order that he had to his chaos. Touma liked to have things where he left them, though that usually meant all over the carpet and in strange formations on various shelves, cupboards included.
Ryo had to learn how to arrange things in a way that would still fall within Touma's comfort zones, which often ran along the lines of "I know I left it somewhere in the library... oh there it is, in that neat pile I don't remember being there before. See, I told you."
And sometimes Ryo treated them both to stories of his adventures as a fledgling globetrotter. Seiji had saved the postcards he'd sent to Touma's Tokyo apartment (all of the ones he'd sent Seiji were being kept safe in his family home in Miyagi) - and as it so happened, Ryo had at least one incredibly detailed story to tell for each one.
It was a way to pass the time between chores and medications.
Surprisingly, his stories seemed to be well-received. He didn't think they were that entertaining, but some of them actually propelled Touma into laughing fits (usually because of the stupid things Ryo had done, which stung) and many of them got Seiji asking questions.
Seiji wanted to know all the folk stories Ryo could remember. It must have come from him being a Classical Literature major. Touma couldn't get enough of that bit about the hyena that humped Ryo's leg and followed him around for miles. That must have come from him being a dick.
Ryo realized that Shin was right: he wasn't just there to take care of Seiji. He was there for both his friends, who were, at the moment, the two people in the world who needed his help the most, and who found some sort of respite in his company.
But on some days, Touma left for various errands: perhaps he was meeting with the helpful people that Shin and Shuu had found, or he was applying for jobs, or he was doing research in various libraries, or all of the above. He did not always let Ryo know, and Ryo did not always remember to ask.
Ryo was quick to accustom himself to the routines that governed Seiji's continued existence. Seiji was remarkably easy to take care of... until he found it hard to move or breathe - which happened more than once a day if he was under enough stress - and then he had to go under for a few hours. Before that could happen, Seiji made an effort to pick up after himself and not be in Ryo's way. He spent most of his time in the greenhouse, tending to his plants.
Ryo was surprised to find that he didn't mind the change in lifestyle at all. Traveling for work was getting tiring - and it was as if he hadn't noticed, before now. In this spacious apartment, big as his own house and not quite as lonely, he could be with two of his best friends, and find rest during the quiet moments.
And in his spare time, he read Seiji's books.
"The kid general," Ryo asked one day, "he's gay, isn't he?"
Seiji was sitting in one of the couches in the living room, close to the open door to the balcony, where he could close his eyes and feel the sunlight on his skin. Ryo was sitting near him, poring through Seiji's personal collection of published works as if he had never done it before - which he hadn't, truth be told. Seiji and Touma both regularly sent him books he simply never had the time to read before now.
Without opening his eyes, Seiji muttered a perfectly innocent "What?"
"He's gay." Ryo's brows were knitted. He spoke with perfect lack of guile. "For that strategist guy."
The first response was a sort of twitch in Seiji's upper lip and left eyebrow.
"Why do you say that?" Seiji asked.
Ryo flipped idly through the pages of the novelette in his hand. It was an earlier volume of his longest-running Sengoku-era epic - the one that was put on hold due to "author's illness," to the distress of readers around the world. The story centered on a young, dashing feudal lord and his four precocious friends, who bravely resisted the progress of an evil warlord's army through their lands.
Ryo rather enjoyed it.
"See, at first I thought he was gay for his lord. With all those promises of dying for him and the laying the whole world to waste at his feet... kind of thing." He sounded, for all the world, genuinely curious. As a reward, Seiji opened his eyes and gave him his full attention. "But then he got on better with that strategist guy. At the start, it was like they were just working for the same thing, right? Then before you know it, the kid general's all worried for the strategist guy's life and won't leave him alone. And then they're saying all those things to each other..." Ryo waved one free hand in the air, the other still gripping the book open at the page he was reading last. "You wrote them, you know what they are."
Seiji watched Ryo's hand flit about, amusement gleaming where sunlight met pale violet. "I... can't say it's strange behavior for the general," Seiji informed him. "The strategist himself says some... flowery words to other men, doesn't he?"
"Flowery, yeah..." Ryo echoed thoughtfully. He scratched his head. "Come to think of it, it was like he was flirting with all those other dudes. And those other dudes were flirting back."
Seiji stared at Ryo, who looked clueless as ever.
"Ryo... you've never read a classical novel before, have you."
The knee-jerk reaction was resentment. He'd read classical novels for school, of course. He just couldn't remember a single title, for the life of him...
"Men did talk like that, in the old days. Even to each other," Seiji informed him. "...Well, maybe they didn't, but all the old texts sure say so. It doesn't mean anything."
This took Ryo a few beats to process. "...So nobody's gay?"
Seiji said nothing for a long time. A number of expressions flashed across his face in sequence. He seemed to be thinking of what to say.
Then his shoulders started to shake.
Alarmed, Ryo dropped the book he was reading. He called Seiji's name once, then rushed to him in a few urgent strides.
When the shaking wouldn't stop even after Ryo had come close, he wrapped his arms around Seiji, intending to pull his friend off his seat and take him back to the bedroom he and Touma shared. He feared that his lame questioning had left Seiji overexerted. After all, Touma had warned that the muscles around Seiji's lungs had become so weak, there were times when just breathing and speaking were difficult for him.
Or was it oxygen. Did he need the oxygen tank?
Seiji's hands clawed at Ryo's sleeves. At first Ryo thought he was trying to pull himself up out of the chair, but that wasn't the case.
He was trying to pull Ryo down.
So Ryo bent down. Seiji threw his arms around Ryo's shoulders. The sheer weight of his body pulled them closer together. Ryo could feel Seiji's breath on the part of his shoulder that wasn't covered by the cloth of his shirt.
And that was when he realized that Seiji was laughing.
"Ryo," Seiji muttered against his skin. "thank you."
Eh...? "For what?" He tried pulling away, but Seiji's arms were still locked about him.
"We haven't... laughed this much in ages," Seiji said between chuckles, "Touma and I."
It might have been a compliment, if Ryo had been trying to be funny. But it wasn't a compliment, exactly; it was Seiji telling him it was worth it to be here.
"I don't like the old lady who lives down the hall."
It was almost time for the evening news. Touma had set up camp in the dining room, using the large dinner table as a place to organize his newer notes into sheafs. He looked up over his reading glasses to watch Ryo walking into the kitchen, arms filled with paper grocery bags.
"She's rude," Ryo continued to lament. "And she's a gossip. At first she was talking to me because she thought I had my own apartment in this building. Then she learned I was just staying with you and Seiji. All of a sudden she turned mean after that, you should've seen how - "
"Ryo," Touma interrupted. "You do realize that one of the reasons I got an upscale apartment in the middle of the metropolis was to minimize on nosy neighbors, right?"
Ryo blinked, still holding a can of vegetable soup halfway from its destined shelf. "...It was?"
A sage nod. "It was. So stop making friends with the neighbors."
Ryo frowned. More like pouted, but Touma wasn't exactly looking. "All right..." He went back to taking out groceries from their bags and arranging them on the refrigerator and the cupboards.
"What did she say about Seiji and me?" Touma asked after a very long pause.
"Nothing," Ryo lied. "She was nasty to me. She said I was old enough to get my own place so I should stop mooching off my friends."
The truth was, the nasty old lady who lived down the hall had said some pretty horrible things about Touma and Seiji. She had this crazy idea, for example, that the two were living together as lovers. For the record, she thought it was disgusting. And anyone who lived in with them must be disgusting as well.
It did not occur to Ryo at the time to hit the old lady across the face just to get her to shut up. But in retrospect, it might have at least made him feel better about there being such people in the world. All he did, all he could do, was take his civil leave while she yammered on.
But if Touma had an idea that Ryo was trying to hide something, he didn't show it. "Listen, I know you're a friendly guy," he told Ryo, "but nobody can know about our business. People like that old lady, they talk, and they spread the wrong ideas around. All right?"
"I said 'all right' already!" Ryo was social and at the same time clueless about social rules. He got it.
There was no venom in Ryo's retort, and Touma processed none. He let the matter drop and returned to his notes as if they had just talked about the weather.
But something had been bothering Ryo since that conversation with the nosy neighbor. He dwelt on it as he put the groceries in order, and when he was done he was free to get it off his chest.
"Touma, I want to understand."
Sensing a very long discussion in the offing, Touma sighed and removed his spectacles. "Understand what?" he asked, facing Ryo.
"I get why you'd want to hide Seiji's condition from the rest of the world... he's famous and having people talk would be bad for him." Having people talk within the building they lived in would be bad for him, too, Ryo knew, though it was harder to avoid that. Maybe there was no way to avoid it at all. "But why did you have to keep it a secret from us, too? What was it you didn't want us to know about?"
Touma fell still, and there was a heavy silence. There was a great deal of that when he and Touma were talking, Ryo realized. But it was still better than letting certain issues hang over their heads.
"I didn't want to keep it a secret," Touma said eventually - in a low voice, presumably so that anyone who would be in another room could not overhear. "Seiji did."
"He wanted it?" Ryo was incredulous. Seiji was the one who didn't want to tell them?
No. Ryo couldn't believe that. It wasn't like him. Seiji knew how Ryo would worry. He would say something.
But then, Ryo remembered how Seiji had looked when Touma brought Ryo in to see him: hurt, panicked, and more than a little betrayed. Perhaps it was possible...
"Ryo," Touma said, and there was a hard edge in his voice. "Don't ask if you don't want to know."
Again with the sudden coldness. Ryo wasn't used to any of his friends having so many walls around them in his presence. He supposed Touma knew this, and risked offending him, just because he couldn't help himself.
"I want to know," Ryo said, hoping to sound harmless and at the same time like he wouldn't back down.
Touma looked away. Ryo seized the chance to sit at the table, near enough to Touma so neither of them would have to speak too loudly. After a moment Touma took a deep breath, a little of which he let out in a brief sigh. The rest, he used to start talking.
"It was by accident that I found out. Five years ago, during the last time we saw each other. We were doing karaoke, remember that? While Shuu was singing Sailormoon songs, Seiji said he wanted to step out for some fresh air."
Sailormoon songs. It was just like Touma to remember such details vividly. Useless information seemed to stick in his head the longest.
Ryo had even forgotten that Seiji had stepped out for a bit. And that Touma had gone after him. It just didn't register at the time.
"I followed him because I felt something was wrong. I found him standing in the shadows, staring at his hand. He didn't hear me approaching. I grabbed his hand and it couldn't grab me back. It was so weak..."
Ryo distinctly remembered that Seiji's grip was strong the last time they shook hands, at the end of that reunion. But he also remembered that one of the things Touma had said about Seiji's illness was that the muscle weakness had not always been permanent; in fact, during the initial stages, Seiji would be unable to move his limbs only for a minute or two, then it would be like nothing happened. It was only recently that the lack of control became a constant problem.
Touma and Seiji had always been close. Not as Shin and Shuu were close, those two had been (and still were) like brothers separated at the cradle... but Touma and Seiji were like two people who shared a grim secret that nobody else could understand.
At times, watching them, Ryo felt a little jealous. But he would walk up to one of them, and the feeling would dissipate. He only felt excluded when the two of them were alone together - but when he was near either one of them, like right now, he was part of their world.
"Back then, he was still on his feet," Touma continued. "Deterioration was going at a snail's pace, and the symptoms vanished for long stretches of time. But Seiji had apparently been feeling those symptoms since Kourin disappeared. He just assumed it was some sort of... armor withdrawal or something." A bitter chuckle. "And that it would go away by itself...
"He said he didn't want the rest of us to worry if it turned out to be nothing. That was why he didn't want to let the rest of you know. I asked him - well, bullied him - to let me help. But the more I looked into the problem, the more I saw how complicated it was. And how deadly."
That must have been when he left his old job and crammed like hell, so he could get his medical license in two years. When Touma had made up his mind about the correct course of action, nothing could detract him. Ryo knew this much. "Bullied" might have been exactly the right word to use for what he did to Seiji.
"And then," Touma said, half to himself, "things happened. A lot of things. I only really had time to do stuff, not talk about them."
"You didn't even think about the rest of us," Ryo quietly accused, "did you?"
The question took Touma by surprise. "Of course I did." They were almost visible, the walls coming back up. "But I thought of Seiji first."
"That's just it! You changed careers. You even went back to college for two years. You let him move in with you. Then you risked your job, the way you lived, your reputation -"
"I had to help him." The response was automatic. Almost hostile.
"Touma... you didn't just do that. You turned your whole life around for him."
He's a friend, was the easy answer. Like you are, Ryo. You would've done the same.
But it wasn't the truth. Seiji was not like Ryo. Not to Touma. That much was painfully evident.
"I've told you what you wanted to know," Touma said with finality. He put on his glasses again and turned back to his notes with a visible slouch.
Ryo sat watching him for a minute, waiting to see if Touma was going to say or do anything more. But soon a soft alarm came on - a daily thing that Touma had set for himself, to remind him it was time for the evening news - and Touma ignored it, remaining bent over the papers in his hands. Eventually Ryo had to move to shut it off.
Fine. If he insisted on being vague, Ryo would have to figure out himself later what it was that seemed so strange.
(tbc)