Akai Batsu to Shiroi Ai - Chapter Thirty-Five
Toshiya and Shinya looked at each other nervously as Kyo signed his release forms, unsure of what to say. Shiina took the papers from him and smiled at him warmly. “I certainly wish we could have had you for longer, you could have made a lot of good progress, but if you feel it is time to leave then that is that,” she said. “Will you be wanting to attend any out patient therapy?””
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I’m done here. Can I leave?”
She nodded. “Terachi-sensei and Hara-sensei will escort you out. Are there arrangements for you to stay somewhere?” she asked.
“Yes,” Toshiya answered for him. “I have made the arrangements for him to stay with his relatives.”
“Alright, then that is all. You’re free to go,” she said and moved to put the signed document in his file.
Toshiya placed a hand on Kyo’s shoulder and smiled at him. He was scared for the young man to be on his own, a wrenching in his gut screaming out against what he had just allowed to happen. He knew that Kyo was far from ready to leave, but there would be no persuading him to stay. He only hoped that he could help Kyo rehabilitate fully…
“I’m ready,” Kyo said quietly, pulling Toshiya from his thoughts.
They began to walk towards the door to exit the ward and Shinya looked at Toshiya, biting his lower lip and sighing. He knew Shinya felt the same way, that he might not be ready to leave. Toshiya pushed open the door and led Kyo through the halls until they reached the front of the building, staring ahead at the world that awaited Kyo.
There was so much that could go wrong, so much that could threaten his sanity and send him spiraling out of control. As wonderful as his own personal world was, the rest of that world would not be kind to Kyo. He had no idea about what it was like, how greatly things had changed in ten years. There was so much more evil and hate in the world, all disguised behind political correctness and false politeness.
Could the one he loved handle it? Or would it kill him?
Or worse…send him back into the hospital…?
“Well Kyo, this is it. I’ve had a wonderful time being your doctor and I’m really glad that we got the chance to meet, I feel like you’ve become a friend more than a patient in the last couple of weeks,” Shinya said, stopping in front of the door that lead to the parking lot. He smiled nervously. “I’ll miss you, I really will.”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Skeletor, you know where I will be living. I’m sure if you catch me in a good mood one day that you can come over for a visit, as long as you don’t try to dissect my head or anything. I’m already gonna get enough of that from this guy,” he said, motioning to Toshiya.
“I’ll see if we can arrange something,” Shinya said. He leaned down a little and hugged him. “Take care of yourself, and if you ever need help with anything then don’t hesitate to give me a call.”
“Terachi-sensei…” Kyo’s voice trailed off as the doctor turned, as though he had just changed his mind. Shinya turned back around. “Please, help Kaoru…he’s so messed up and needs you. Please, make him better.”
Shinya nodded. “I’m going to do my best, I promise you,” he said and turned slowly, walking back towards the ward.
“And Terachi-sensei,” the doctor paused but did not turn around to look at Kyo again, his arms stiff, “thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Kyo,” he said and continued walking.
Toshiya motioned with his head towards the door. Kyo smiled and a piece of him became increasingly tense. This was it. Kyo was about to leave his bubble and enter the world of disease and germs…and there would be nothing to protect him aside from his own damaged immune system. “Are you ready?” Toshiya said, placing his hand on the button to open the automatic door.
“I’ve been ready for years,” Kyo said in a strange voice, one that Toshiya had never heard come from his mouth. It sounded different, lighter…almost innocent.
He pushed the button and the door opened slowly like the curtains at a movie theater, exposing the parking lot and everything in his sight.
“I left that one time with you, and it felt nothing like this. This feels…different,” he said quietly.
“This is freedom,” Toshiya said to him, walking him from towards his car.
Kyo’s face relaxed and he shut his eyes as the sun hit his paled skin, his hand on the handle of the door. “It feels good,” he said and opened the door, seeming to snap back to his senses.
Toshiya got into the car and put the keys in the ignition, smiling at Kyo. “I think at some point, once you’re settled in, we’re going to take you to get your license,” he said. He paused, looking at the expression on Kyo’s face and realizing it had gone from completely relaxed to tense. “What is it?”
“We have to go to my mother’s house,” he said in a soft voice. “I have money and clothes there, I want to get it.”
Toshiya sighed. The last thing he need was to expose Kyo to his abusive mother, or to return him to the place where he was assaulted. “Can’t it wait for a little?” he asked.
Kyo crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I need to go. I want my things and I don’t want to put it off. Please, take me to my house,” he said.
“Kyo-“
“Don’t fight with me on this, please!” he snapped. “Just…just do it.”
* * * * *
Kyo stared at his old house, his heart pounding his chest as they pulled into the driveway. It looked exactly the same as he last remembered it. A disaster… Even the garbage was full of empty bottles of alcohol as it had been a decade ago.
The car ride had grown awkwardly silent, Toshiya seeming as tense as he did. He felt a pang of guilt the entire way, not wishing to drag Toshiya into his family affairs, but this was the final chapter of his life and it needed closing. As soon as he got his things together, that would be it. No more hospital, no more worries, and his valuables would be in his possession. He had to do it, there was no turning back.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Toshiya asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“It doesn’t really matter if I’m ready or not, this shit has got to get done,” Kyo said, trying to force away the pounding in his chest and the fear building in his heart. Why was he scared? Jaaku was gone and all his mother was was a lonely drunk. She couldn’t hurt him, he was a grown man…
He opened the car door and stepped out, looking around his old neighborhood and realizing that everything else had changed. It looked…dirtier, like a slum more than the middle class area he had remembered it to be. Before, his house was looked down on by the neighbors. Now, it was just the same as the other ones. Perhaps his mother’s influence reached farther than he had thought.
He heard Toshiya following at a comfortable distance behind him, but he was hardly focused on his love. He just stared at the door as he brought himself closer and closer to it. It was right there, the door. All he had to do was knock on it. He put his hand up and felt suddenly as though he were watching himself do the knocking, like it wasn’t him.
Focus, dammit, focus, don’t let her get to you, he told himself. He heard staggered footsteps stop in front of the door and it whipped open, a short woman in her mid-forties leaning against the doorframe with a can of beer in her hand. She squinted at him, his eyes looking tired and dazed. Her hair was messy and greasy, her skin shiny as though she had been sweating all day.
This was his mother.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Tooru,” he responded, pushing her aside and walking into the house, looking around. It was a disaster. Garbage was everywhere, the wooden coffee table he remembered having been broken into two pieces. There was a man and a woman passed out on the couch, half dressed and limbs entangled as though they had been mid-coitus when they both passed out.
“Tooru? I don’t know a Tooru-“ she paused and her eyes widened. “Kyo? My baby? Kyo?”
Kyo turned around and glared at her, barely noticing Toshiya walk in the open door behind her. “I am not your baby, I never was,” he growled. “Is my room still there with everything in it?”
“Uh, yeah, I didn’t even let anyone go in it while you were away,” she said with a smile, setting down her beer. “Oh Kyo, it is so good to finally have you back.”
“I’m not back, I’m just here to grab and few things and go,” he said quickly, walking up the stairs to his room. He was trying his hardest not to snap, not to scream and yell at her about all the things that she had done wrong to him; the Hell that she had brought into his life with that man could never be repaired.
He pushed that thought aside and opened the door to his room, moving straight over to the bed and kneeling down. “Mom, get out,” he said sharply.
“But-“
“Get out!” he snapped, looking back to make sure she left after Toshiya awkwardly walked in. He looked at the man for second, feeling a stronger pang of guilt that before. There Toshiya was with all the money in the world from his job, his degrees and fine upbringing; he was judging him, silently and stoically, but Kyo knew that look.
“Are you alright?” Toshiya asked, looking around at the blood stains on the carpet.
His chest tightened, following Toshiya’s eyes to each one of the blotches. Only one of those stains was from when he had cut himself, the rest was… “Yes, I’m fine,” Kyo said, flipping the mattress up and leaning it against the wall. In the center of the box spring was a large hole cut out. He reached in and pulled out a shoebox, setting it on the ground behind him and moving it the mattress back. “If you can, grab the money out of there and count it for me?” he asked Toshiya.
“Uh, yeah, no problem,” Toshiya said, grabbing the box and sitting on the bed.
Kyo glanced at him as he moved over to the closet, noticing how awkward he seemed. Toshiya had been taken out of his many safe environments and been thrown into the chaos that was his upbringing. He felt bad, but at the same time oddly satisfied, like he wanted to show Toshiya up close and personal what it had been like for him.
He stripped off his hospital clothes and put on a t-shirt from when he had been in high school, surprised to find it a bit loose around him. Kyo glanced again at Toshiya as he went through all the coins and bits of paper money. He grabbed a pair of pants from his dresser and looked at the inside tag for the size, but paused.
A blood stain on the inside of them…
Kyo’s hands tightened around the jeans, his eyes shut as he flashed back to that moment, that feeling. He felt the fear and hatred begin to bubble in him, rising up and ready to spill forward. His eyes and throat burned, his entire body growing tense. He threw the pants down and rushed at the door, the door knob going straight through the dry wall as he whipped it open.
“You bitch! You fucking bitch! How could you do this to me?” he screamed at his mother. He grabbed her biceps and shook her hard, staring at her wide and confused eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You let him destroy me! You fucking whore!”
“What are you talking about?” she screamed.
“Kyo, stop it!” Toshiya’s cried, his arms wrapping around Kyo’s torso.
“You let him rape me! You let that bastard rape me every day and you didn’t do a thing!” Kyo shouted, shaking her even hard. His throat felt raw and he could feel the tears running down his face, but it didn’t matter. “You fucking bitch! How could you? You were my mother! You let that bastard do this to me! I am this way because of you! My life, my whole fucking life was robbed from me because of you!”
“Fuck off you little brat!” she shouted back at him.
Toshiya finally pulled Kyo away from her, but Kyo pushed against him and tried to go back at her. He wanted to kill her, he was going to kill her! “Kyo, stop it! Calm down!” Toshiya yelled.
“You did this to me! You ruined me!” he spat at her.
She slapped Kyo across the face, catching him off guard. “You’re going to blame me for your whoring? You seduced my Jaaku! Don’t scream at me about your ruined innocence when it was you that stole him away. You hurt me by doing that, it hurt more than any pain you’ll ever feel, you selfish little brat,” she shook her head. “Don’t you fucking blame me for your faggot tendencies. You’re the reason I’m alone, he was mine and you stole him.”
Kyo’s eyes were wide, his chest quivering as he tried to steady his breath. There was no way, no way that she could really believe such a thing…he was speechless.
“You sick, disgusting bitch,” Toshiya said in calm yet angry voice. “You are no mother, you are everything Kyo made you out to be. Go drink yourself into the grave so I never have to worry about your sorry excuse of a person coming near my Kyo.”
“And who the fuck do you think you are talking to me like that?” she demanded.
Toshiya simply let go of Kyo and moved back into the room, putting the money back in the shoebox and moving out to the hallway. “Kyo, grab a pair of pants and put them on. Forget about your clothes, I’ll take you shopping for some tomorrow. We need to go,” he said gently.
Still in shock from what he had said, Kyo nodded and moved into his old room. He grabbed a pair of pants without a stain and put them on before grabbing a pair of old sneakers and putting those on as well. He knew walking around in his shoes would really stick in his mother’s craw. He swallowed hard as he moved back out into the hallway, his mother’s and Toshiya’s eyes locked in a heated glare; it was as though they were having a battle of wits.
“Let’s go, Kyo,” Toshiya said in a low tone.
* * * * *
“It’s strange not to have Kyo around,” Bou whined, sitting down on the couch next to Kaoru and Die. He placed his arms over his chest and puffed out his cheeks.
“Yeah, I’m definitely gonna miss the little guy,” Die said. “I’ve spent the last ten years or so with him so I feel like he is as much my brother as he is Kaoru’s. I still can’t believe that Hara-sensei let him leave, I would have thought that they would try to keep him in here longer for the safety of the public.”
Bou laughed. “I could definitely see him going berserk and hitting someone for saying ‘hello’ to him the wrong way,” he grinned and shut his eyes.
Kaoru looked at him and smirked to himself; he could tell that Bou had had a crush on Kyo and was undoubtedly saddened by his leaving. It made him feel warm inside, to see that his brother had touched someone’s life in a positive way. He looked at Die and saw him staring. “What is it?”
“Nothing, I’m just wondering how you’re doing. You and Kyo got into it a few days ago and I don’t really think there was time for you two to make up,” he said with a shrug.
Kaoru nodded. “I’m not really mad at him anymore, I mean, he said some very hurtful things about Hayashi, but it’s alright, I’ve forgiven him. I guess it’s hard to understand because he was never in my position,” Kaoru said, looking at his lap once he noticed Die shift uncomfortably. It was so frustrating that he couldn’t make anyone understand his feelings towards Hayashi, they kept bringing up the fact that he had tried to kill him again when that wasn’t the case at all. It was Hideto.
But he couldn’t tell everyone that it was Hideto the one who had tried to kill him or they would punish him, and despite his feelings towards Hayashi he couldn’t deny the fact that a part of him still loved Hideto as he had so long. He hated himself for betraying his master by even thinking of another one as a lover, but he couldn’t help himself. His newer self bonded with Hayashi more than anyone, but his memories of being a tortured teen related so well with what had become the pink haired monster.
“It’s really hard for a lot of us to understand your position,” Bou said, breaking the awkward silence brought on by mention of the madman.
“I just…I can’t help myself. It all seems to make sense in my head, but once I say it out loud and see everyone’s reactions, I realize how wrong it is,” Kaoru sighed. Maybe that is why I am still in this place, he thought to himself.
“I hope I am not interrupting anything.”
The three of them turned and saw Shinya standing in the doorway. “Hi,” Die said with a soft smile.
Kaoru again felt that warm feeling. He could understand how a doctor and patient got together as a couple, the relationship was so intimate it was hard to see how they couldn’t. And with such strange doctors as Toshiya and Shinya it wasn’t hard to make the stretch. He felt…envious.
“So, can you be my doctor, Shinya? Like, my doctor is okay and everything but I hear such wonderful things about you I just wanna test it out,” Bou said, turned his hips so he leaning off the arm of the couch.
Die whacked Bou in the arm. “Watch yourself, that’s mine,” he laughed.
“I’ll see what I can do for your case,” Shinya said with a chuckle.
“Sweet,” the teenager grinned.
“Well, I’m in here today because I’m leading group today. It’s just a generalized group and nothing special like trauma or CBT, so we can be very open and free,” he said a bit louder, making sure to get the attention of everyone in the room.
Kaoru watched him take a seat at one of the empty recliners in the room, sitting down with the patients instead of in front of them like Shiina had. He suspected it was because he wanted them to feel more comfortable around him-or maybe because he felt like one of them.
“Who wants to start first? How about Bou?” Shinya smiled at him.
“Yeah, yeah, pick on the youngest one here,” he rolled his eyes. “What exactly am I supposed to talk about?”
Shinya shrugged. “Anything. Frustrations, something you’re proud of, how you feel you’re doing in your therapy?”
“Cool, all the stuff I don’t feel like talking about,” he sighed. “Well, I’m ready to go. Especially after having Kyo in here for a few days and then flying by the night to get out of here. It’s a little frustrating that every time I get a cool roommate they leave too soon. I felt like we were becoming friends and then he left.”
“Do you feel abandoned by him?” Shinya asked,
“A little bit, yeah, he was the only one who could really understand how I felt,” Bou shrugged.
“Well, I’ll be sure to mention you to him when I meet up with him for his follow up, I’m sure he’d like to stay in touch with you,” Shinya said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah, I don’t really feel like talking today,” Bou said, staring down at his lap.
“Die?” Shinya asked.
“I’m feeling really optimistic lately, I mean I’m getting released within ten days, and I’m really excited. But I’m nervous too, I’m really worried that the world has changed too much and I haven’t adapted to it,” Die shrugged.
“Have you spoken with the others here about the differences in the world you knew and what they know?” Shinya asked.
“No, but that’s a good idea,” Die said. “Thanks. That’s it for me.”
“Is everyone going to be willing to help Die out with discovering his ‘new world’?” Shinya asked the room.
Everyone nodded.
Kaoru stared down at his hands, still bandaged and bruises from the damage he inflicted. He did not want to talk in group, the awkward stares were more than enough to make him feel outcasted even from people with the same problem he had.
“Kaoru?” Shinya asked.
“I dunno,” he said quickly.
“I’m sure you have something to share,” Shinya said.
Kaoru noticed a stronger sense of urgency to get an answer from him than he had noticed with Bou or Die. “I miss him,” he said quietly.
“Your brother?” Shinya asked.
“Yeah, obviously my brother. But I miss Master Hayashi, I haven’t seen him in a very long time,” Kaoru continued to stare down at his hands. He knew everyone was exchanging glances and whispering to each other about how ‘sick’ he was. He didn’t understand why everyone thought so little of him.
“Kaoru, Hayashi-san was transferred to a new hospital,” Shinya said with a confused look on his face. “I thought you knew.”
He snapped up, staring in horror at Shinya. Hayashi was gone? No! This couldn’t be? Why would they do such a thing to him? He felt his heart pounding in his chest and a wave of dizziness washed over him. “Oh,” he said, tightening his throat as not to scream out in objection. “I think I’m done sharing…”
“Are you sure?” the doctor asked in a concerned tone.
“Yes,” he said softly. He looked back down at his hands blankly, his mind racing as his heart slowly broke. Hayashi…was gone.
He tuned out the rest of group, ignoring what everyone else had to say as his mind wandered with what he could do. He stood up as group ended and silently moved towards the nurse’s station. He waved Shiina over to him and looked at her with a straight face. “I would like to sign a fifteen day waver for my release,” he said.
“Oh, are you sure?” Shiina asked, the surprised look on her face twisting to confusion.
“Yes, I would like to sign one as soon as possible,” he said. He watched her move about to grab the forms and smiled faintly to himself. He was going to fake it, just as his brother had, to get out. He was going to get out and go visit his master if it was the last thing he did..