fic for jadeswallow (1/2)

[nino-mod.livejournal.com]

For: jadeswallow
From: domoarigatoyo

Title: in the stillness of a grey canvas / we’re never alone
Pairing(s): Nino/Matsuoka
Character(s): Nino, Matsuoka, Kokubun, Aiba, and a tiny bit of Ohno
Rating: PG-13 with some physical intimacy
Genre(s): AU, sci-fi, romance, angst
Warning(s): angst, potentially confusing plot/storyline
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except for the plot. Pure work of fiction.
Summary: In which Nino forgets, Matsuoka gets irredeemably confused, and parallel paths manage to meet.

Notes: For jadeswallow! :) Firstly, thank you so much for your wonderful request, and to the mod for your excellent pairing skills! And my lovely beta!<3 It was a glorious, glorious moment of dizzying happiness when I read your prompt for pairings. Nino/Matsuoka? Nino/Matsuoka? NINO/MATSUOKA?? …I gawked at it for five minutes just to make sure my mind wasn’t making things up, really I did. I’m ashamed to say that despite being a huge fangirl of both, it never occurred to me to write them as a romantic pairing. So THANK YOU really!:D

I’m not going to lie – this was just about the hardest fic I have ever written or attempted. I was tempted to just give up and write an Arashi pairing, but I’m too stubborn and fangirly for my own good so I stuck with it.

So here it is. An insanely long monster (with an incredibly uninformative summary. I know, I know) that I really hope you will enjoy. I’m not going to comment on it, because it’s a gift fic and I don’t want to depress you with stories of inadequacies (lol), but just. Thank you in advance for amazing patience. :)


9. 2013

“Checking – please wait patiently.”

Ninomiya Kazunari looks around him and grins despite the familiar annoyance that always creeps up at those mechanical words. Finally, he thinks, the very last one.

He walks along the deserted road and kicks a stray pebble in his path. It’s an agonizingly hot day and this particular place is practically lifeless; there’s just a long stretch of road, an abundance of brownish-green grass on both sides and nothing much else. The summer heat is getting to him, rapidly wearing down his initial good mood upon arrival and, really, where is that guy?

“Welcome,” the mechanical voice on his wrist device drones, and Nino stops in his tracks in giddy anticipation.

“To reality nine.”

Nine?! “Hey, you’ve gotten it wrong. This is the tenth, isn’t it? The final one! I just exited from nine!”

“This is reality nine,” the device intones blandly.

“Ten,” Nino insists, and starts shaking his left hand violently in a bid to make it correct itself. It has to be ten, really. This must be a mistake of some sort.

“This is reality nine,” the device repeats. Nino is starting to really hate that dumb, lifeless voice. “Hey, Kokubun? Kokubun! Are you there?” He presses the top right-hand button on the device desperately and prays that it hasn’t completely malfunctioned yet. “Kokubun, hey!”

To his immense relief, a voice comes through loud and clear. “Hello there, Nino! Taichi-kun is currently off-duty. It’s 2a.m. here so-”

“Aiba. Is that Aiba? Hey, Aiba, help me out here. My device is going nuts. I’m in reality ten, but it insists that it’s nine. Just reassure me that it’s ten, okay? And see what you can do about this stupid thing.”

“Alright, I’m right on it! I’ll send you clarification through your screen – ah.”

Nino furrows his eyebrows at the device. “…Ah?”” he repeats with a sinking feeling. Aiba basically never uses such a tone on anything that hasn’t gone horribly wrong.

“Nino…I’m not sure what has gone wrong, but it appears that you’re still in reality nine.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NINE.” Nino steps out further into the road and waves his arm around desperately, praying that everything is simply due to some sort of reception issue; perhaps the device is simply unable to detect the new reality?

“Nino? Nino!”

“Okay, sorry,” Nino breathes, having finally calmed down sufficiently to halt his futile attempts at changing his reality. “Why is this happening?”

“I can’t exactly tell you why. I need some time to figure it out. Also, reality ten seems to have disappeared from the map.”

“Disappeared,” Nino echoes. How the hell does one entire reality just poof out of existence? “Did it get sucked into the Destructor already?” He doesn’t ask, am I too late?

“There appears to be zero activity at the Destructor. It doesn’t make sense, huh.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Nino says impatiently, “maybe you guys should check it out. The full team should be there tomorrow morning, right? Just inform them then.”

“Right,” Aiba says distractedly, “and, uh, Nino?”

“What is it?”

“You may be in reality nine, but the time zone is the same as ten’s. Which means that –”

“-It’s currently year 2013? Not 2002?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. And I don’t see the guy I always meet, but I suppose nothing is supposed to make sense anymore.”

Aiba chuckles into the mouthpiece. “If he sees you, and this is indeed reality nine, it’s going to be somewhat of a shocker isn’t it?”

Nino squats down to examine a particular unevenness in the road and laughs alongside Aiba; he doesn’t hear the slight rumble from behind him. “I know, right? He’s going to be like, “Hey! You’re that guy from eleven years ago!””

“Yeah,” Aiba says enthusiastically, “but perhaps you could fool him into believing that your features just don’t age. Actually, Nino, do you look the same as how you were eleven years ago?”

“…Aiba. I may be pretty much ageless, but you’re talking about when I was thirteen.”

“Oh. Right. Well-”

But Nino doesn’t manage to hear the rest of the sentence; he stands up and partially turns around when he finally hears the sound, rapidly approaching and unrelenting in its motion.

The driver slams every kind of brake his instincts allow him to, but he doesn’t stop in time, and Nino doesn’t manage to successfully dodge the moving car; the impact sends him hurtling through the air, snapping his left wrist in the process and dislodging his right shoulder.

The driver exits his vehicle in time to see the victim rolling to a stop; he doesn’t hear the sickening thud he had landed with.

“Oh, my god,” he mutters, pale and perspiring profusely. He manages to get his phone out from the back pocket of his jeans as he breaks into a run towards the unconscious man.

“Hello?” he speaks into his phone, “An accident just happened. Yes, here are the details…”



Five minutes into trying to find an ID on the victim and trying to staunch the bleeding from his head, the driver halts in his rescue attempt and takes a closer look at the latter. He stares, puzzled; there’s something missing, something he’s not quite getting about the situation, but it teases and eludes him, like a little note carried away playfully by the wind.

His concentration is broken and the half-formed thought permanently lost when sirens alert him to the arrival of medical rescue; the driver makes to stand up, newly nervous in the aftermath of the incident, but he feels a grip, ever so slight, tugging at his hand.

The previously elusive memory surges through his brain with the force of a tidal wave, knocking down every other thought and intention. He stares at the face in astonishment and renewed recognition, a thousand questions on his lips but he swallows them all; now is not the time. “Please stay with me,” he says, voice soft but laced with an undertone of urgency, “Don’t close your eyes again. Please.”

“M-Matsu-”

“Please move out of the way, sir! We will be taking him to the ambulance now.”

The driver desperately wants to hear the rest of the word, to confirm that the man on his mind is the one he has just met, no matter the unfortunate circumstances, but he steps aside obligingly and lets them handle the situation professionally.

“Your name, sir?”

“Matsuoka Masahiro.”

“Do you by any chance know that man, or did you find an ID on him?”

“I passed his wallet to your colleagues without getting to check for his ID, I know his name.”

“So you know him.”

“…I’m not really sure about that. We’re talking about more than ten years ago. In any case, if I’m not wrong, he is called Ninomiya. Ninomiya Kazunari.”

The medic looks up while recording the details. “You have a pretty good memory, Matsuoka-san.”

“Well,” he says with a smile, “some things are hard to forget.”

*****

5. 1992

The kid stares at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and the man chuckles because he’s already seen the same expression more than once. He does a quick mental calculation – is he nine already? – and reaches out to pat the kid on the head. “Hey,” he says affectionately while crouching down, “we meet again.”

The kid repeats, “Again?”, the same dumbstruck expression still on his face. “Did you just…”

“Yes. I just appeared out of nowhere. But don’t tell anyone, k? It’s our little secret.”

The kid breaks into a huge, toothy grin, all amazement and ill-concealed excitement, bright and sunny and full of the happiness of youth. It’s the face of someone who doesn’t know how cruel reality can be. But the man is here to change it so that he never needs to know, anyway.

“Secret! That’s waaayy cool!”

“Shh!” The man says, and drops his voice to a whisper. “We must use soft voices when talking about secrets, okay?”

“Okay!” the kid whispers back, suddenly serious and determined. The man tries not to giggle at him.

“What’s your name?” the kid asks, still whispering.

“Just call me Nino,” the man replies. “And I know your name already.”

The kid stares at him, astonished and openly impressed. “You do?!”

“Matsuoka-kun, right? Matsuoka Masahiro.”

“How do you know?!” the kid demands, and claps a hand over his mouth when he realizes that he had just voiced the question to the whole neighborhood.

The man pats the ground next to him and both of them sit down on the gravelly surface. “I come from a place where we know almost everything,” he says, “but most of all, I know that you are a good boy, Matsuoka-kun.”

Matsuoka flushes a bright red and nods hesitantly; is he a good boy? He’s not very sure, really. But if Nino-san says so, then it must be.

“That place where you are from, can I visit it as well?”

Nino shakes his head sadly. “Not really, but eventually this world where you are in right now, will become just as amazing as mine.”

Matsuoka claps a hand over his mouth again, this time to control his unbridled excitement at Nino-san’s words. To think that the world he is living in will become something so superior! It’s almost like a superhero dream come true.

“Now I need you to do me a favor, Matsuoka-kun. Can you do that?”

Matsuoka-kun nods furiously, and this will mark the first time Nino senses the loneliness that pervades his being. “Okay,” Nino says, “Turn around and count to fifty. You may start now.”

To his credit, the boy knows not to rush the counting and instead keeps time like a trustworthy clock (while still whispering). Nino stands up and dusts himself, aware that he’ll disappear any time now. At any rate, definitely before Matsuoka hits fifty.

He vanishes at thirty-five. Nine year-old Matsuoka senses that something has changed, has happened, but he dutifully counts to fifty, never hastening the process, before turning around.

He’s gone. It’s expected.

That day, Matsuoka walks back home with a little skip in his step; true to his promise, he never tells anyone about the incident, instead sketching a kiddy little picture of it which he will keep for years to come. He keeps waiting for the day the world will become as “amazing” as Nino-san had said it would, despite knowing that it will never come; every once in awhile, he takes out the drawing and stares at it for awhile before remembering the disappearing man’s words: You are a good boy, Matsuoka-kun.”

He fights in World War III and dies a hero, dies smiling as he thinks that he has finally managed to be a good person, and that maybe, just maybe, he will now go to the amazing place Nino-san had come from so many years ago.

*****

9. 2013

The first thing Nino sees when he regains consciousness is a tall man standing by the window, effectively shielding him from the strong sunlight; he feels instantly grateful despite being generally confused.

He tries to clear his throat but ends up coughing, and then yelling in pain when he realizes that moving his arms is clearly unwise.

Matsuoka jerks from his place by the window when he hears the violent coughing and turns around, surprise written all over his face. “You’re awake! I-I’ll call for the doctor, okay? But, um, let me get you some water first…” Matsuoka hastily pours a cup of water, thankful that he doesn’t spill any of its contents in the process, plonks in a straw and guides Nino to drink it.

The bedridden man doesn’t speak, but stares at Matsuoka the entire time while drinking; the latter looks away and fumbles for the switch to call the nurse over.

“You know,” Matsuoka begins awkwardly, “it’s been a week since you were in the accident. It was a really scary week.”

“Accident,” Nino repeats, voice still slightly raspy from disuse, “Accident?”

Matsuoka stares at him and feels a new horror creep into his chest. “What’s your name?”

This earns him a frown and some confusion from the patient, who scrunches up his face in concentration. “Nino…miya? Ninomiya Kazunari…?”

“Y-yeah,” Matsuoka affirms, “Do you remember what happened, Nino?”

Nino shakes his head. “My head kinda hurts, and I don’t remember anything. Who are you?”

Matsuoka wants to throw the question back at him, because who is he, really? Is this going to be some sort of new disappearing act?

He pushes his questions back once again (and thinks that he may never have the answers) and provides Nino with an answer instead. “Matsuoka Masahiro.” He waits for the obvious question. Nino doesn’t disappoint, unfortunately.

“How are you related to me?”

“I’m not,” he replies simply. He sort of doesn’t want to freak Nino out by informing him that, aside from the one responsible for his coma and apparent memory loss, not a single soul has come to visit him or verify his identity. Matsuoka wouldn’t be surprised if that shocks the man right back into a coma.

To his surprise, Nino doesn’t question him further. Instead, he practices saying Matsuoka’s name, rolling it around like it’s some new, exotic thing that he doesn’t quite comprehend. Matsuoka, he says, and it makes its owner shudder a little. It takes Matsuoka several long seconds to realize that Nino is probably just trying to jolt his own memory.

“ID?” Nino questions, and Matsuoka fumbles around the drawers to retrieve the requested item.

“It’s been verified,” Matsuoka informs him, “that you are a resident of Tokyo. But they couldn’t find out any other information. Your wallet has nothing much except for an ID, a driver’s license, and an ATM card. Do you by any chance remember where you live?”

“No,” Nino says slowly, “and neither do I remember the pin for my card.”

“It’s alright,” Matsuoka assures him, all the while wondering what’s taking the nurse/doctor so long. “We can retrieve it or reset it at the bank. Nino, just get some rest, okay? Don’t over-tax your brain. Let’s just wait for the d-”

“Who are you?”

Matsuoka blinks and hopes that the nervousness doesn’t show on his face. “Eh?”

“Who are you?” Nino repeats.

“…Must you know now?”

“Are you helping me?”

“Yes,” Matsuoka says, and leaves it at that.

Nino seems satisfied, at least for now, at his answer; they both wait in silence, with Nino tentatively moving around to figure out the exact sites of his injuries and Matsuoka moving restlessly in his visitor’s seat.

“You can stay with me first,” Matsuoka blurts out, and then regrets it when Nino stares at him incredulously. He’s about to retract it when Nino gives a brief chuckle, eerily void of humor, and shakes his head; he examines the bandages on his left wrist – broken, just like many other things.

“What you mean is,” Nino says softly, his voice trembling just the slightest bit, “I don’t have any family members or friends. Or at least none that came to visit. That’s why you’re offering, right? We’re not exactly friends are we, Matsuoka-kun?”

He wants to reach out, wants to hug the misplaced stranger, to tell him that everything’s going to be okay, that pieces of the puzzle that is his life will fall into place and Nino will remember, but he can’t. Matsuoka doesn’t enjoy lying, least of all when it’s nothing but empty words and flippant promises.

So he settles for something that is at least pretty much true, or is on its way to being true. “We are friends,” Matsuoka says sincerely, and he doesn’t know how, but perhaps three simple words can make Nino’s situation just that little bit better.

“We probably aren’t,” Nino replies with a smile, “But thank you anyway. And I will actually take you up on that offer, you know.”

For the first time today, Matsuoka feels a huge weight lifted off his chest; it’s strange, because the immediate future has become more uncertain than ever, like an equation with too many unknown variables, but it feels right, like everything is going according to plan, whatever that plan may be. He grins and extends a hand to Nino’s uninjured side. “To new housemates.”

Nino smirks and shakes the outstretched hand. “To new housemates. And does my new housemate currently live with anyone?”

“Not that I know of.”

Nino grimaces. “Must you make your house sound so ghostly?”

That prompts Matsuoka into uproarious laughter, which is apparently infectious, because it has Nino laughing and clutching his sides as well, before Matsuoka tells him, hey! Stop laughing! You’re going to split open those wounds and then this hospital will be your home FOREVER, which only makes them both laugh harder. The doctor finally waltzes in, flamboyant-looking with a flappy white coat and fashionable hair-do, and informs Matsuoka gravely that noisiness is frowned upon, and would he kindly stop disturbing the patient? Matsuoka grins and gives a mock salute before striding out of the ward.

He has amnesia.

You knocked him down.

They can’t find any information on him, other than that he is a registered citizen of Japan and a resident of Tokyo.

He’s coming to live with you. WITH YOU.

Matsuoka shakes his head to clear it, but it doesn’t help. And everything he knows clashes with the strange feeling of tranquility he has; it shouldn’t feel this right – there’s so much that isn’t falling into place. What was it the man had said so many years ago?

Many things don’t make sense. It’s not our duty to attempt to understand everything, nor to set it all straight. There’s no meaning in a comprehensive universe.

Matsuoka hadn’t understood it eleven years ago. He certainly doesn’t now. But it’s definitely happening at the present. With the man who had said it to him, no less.

*****

7. 1998

Fifteen years old, huh, Nino thinks, and frowns at where he had just been mere minutes ago, when fourteen was already a difficult number. He steels himself and waits for the boy’s – teenager’s – arrival. He doesn’t quite like dealing with pubescent teenage boys, no matter how cute Matsuoka was when he had been young and fresh-faced.

“Hey! YOU! I JUST SAW YOU-”

“Shut up,” Nino whispers loudly with a glare, his gaze fixed on the gangly teenager running towards him at top speed. “I’m not going to be here for long,” he says casually. The dimming glow on the horizons informs Nino that he has a couple of minutes, tops.

Matsuoka, already taller than Nino at fifteen years old, approaches him cautiously with an air of suspicion and excitement; Nino tries not to roll his eyes at this scene, which isn’t dissimilar from the one he had just experienced fifteen minutes ago.

“Are you real?” The question is whispered, almost in awe.

Nino kicks lightly at a stone on the ground to demonstrate, if nothing else, materiality. “Very much so,” he replies.

“But you just appeared out of nowhere! Like a ghost!”

“Look, I’m sorry that it always has to be you to witness it, okay?” He’s getting snappish without reason, seeing as this Matsuoka doesn’t actually know him at all, but Nino’s kind of tired of reality-hopping; he just wants to finish his mission pronto. But he softens his tone because he knows that Matsuoka’s going to have to live with this memory forever, so Nino had better not taint it too much for him.

“Okay,” Nino breathes, “I’m not from around here, but I’m most definitely not a ghost.”

“COOL. So, an alien?”

Nino scowls and kicks at an unfortunately piece of gravel savagely. “No.”

“Okay,” Matsuoka says, and promptly seats himself right down on the ground. He pats the empty space next to him. Nino raises an eyebrow and chuckles at the memory, but takes up the offer anyway. It’s kind of nostalgic, even if it hasn’t been an hour since he had visited the fifth reality.

“Then maybe this is a dream and nothing’s real. But that’s alright. I can do and say anything I want in dreams, isn’t it?” Matsuoka smiles, his eyes on the dwindling rays of the setting sun but also somewhere much, much further; it’s not a place Nino can see, or feel.

Nino doesn’t say anything. He wonders how long more he has, and prays that it’s long enough. For what, he doesn’t know.

“I get kind of lonely at home, you know. There’s never anyone around.”

Nino scoots a little closer to the teenager as inconspicuously as possible. “Mm-hmm.”

“At school, too.”

“But you try to stand out, don’t you?”

Matsuoka whirls around to stare at Nino, surprise etched into every feature. “So you are a dream!” he exclaims excitedly, “Or you wouldn’t know that!”

“A dream or not,” Nino says, “it doesn’t matter, does it?”

Matsuoka smiles and returns to staring at the orange-grey sky. “I suppose not,” he admits. “But it does make it easier.”

“You’re not alone.”

“No, I’m not,” Matsuoka replies, starting to feel more confused with every word of their conversation. Although, like this guy had said, it doesn’t matter.

“Ah! What’s your name? You must have a name, right? Even if this is just a dream.”

“Ninomiya Kazunari. Just call me Nino.”

“Nino,” Matsuoka repeats, rolling the word on his tongue like it’s a fascinating new discovery, which it probably is. “I’m-”

“Matsuoka,” Nino finishes.

Matsuoka regards him with a serious expression. “You are definitely not real.”

Nino laughs, bright and with the nostalgia of childhood, and shakes his head. Matsuoka doesn’t ask if that means that no, he isn’t real, or that no, he is real. It doesn’t matter, surely.

“I don’t really have advice for you, Matsuoka-kun, because I haven’t known you for a long time. But you’ll grow up into a fine young man, okay? You’re a good boy, slightly rebellious and a little too desperate for attention, but it’ll never change the fact that you have a good heart.”

Matsuoka blushes a little. “I am?”

“Yes. And there are girls who will find that blush cute, you know.”

Matsuoka frowns and tries to hide his rapidly reddening face. “There are?” he squeaks out.

“There are,” Nino affirms without actually having evidence to back it up. There’s too little orange in the sky now; he won’t be here for much longer. “Listen, Matsuoka-kun,” he says urgently, “I need you to go back home right now.”

“You’re leaving,” Matsuoka states simply, and Nino wonders if a single year can really make someone that much more mature. He wonders if something had happened between fourteen and fifteen, or if Matsuoka’s experiences in this reality are just that much more different from the other.

“I am,” Nino replies honestly.

“If you’re just a dream, can’t I watch you leave?”

Nino smiles. “Dreams don’t work that way. Do this for me, alright?”

There’s a moment of hesitation, but Nino sees agreement filter into Matsuoka’s eyes, strong and kind and everything he is. There are no goodbyes exchanged, but Matsuoka walking away and into the dusk is basically a form of farewell.

Nino watches him close the distance between reverie and reality as Nino himself disappears from this world, a youthful, transient dream that never quite gets erased for years to come.

*****

9. 2013

Nino gets discharged three days later, having recovered well enough in the first week of unconsciousness. The doctor confirms that he is suffering from amnesia, but allows them hope that he may yet recover his memories, albeit over a period of time; it is not likely to be long-term, he says.

“So,” Matsuoka says when they are finally out of the hospital compounds for good, “feeling great now that you’ve been returned to the outside world? The doctor said that you still retain most of your intellectual capacities, right?”

“Yeah,” Nino replies, one arm coming up to shield his eyes from the menacing summer sun, “but I’ll need some form of trigger if I’m to remember what I used to do for a living.”

“Maybe you were a hobo,” Matsuoka jokes. Nino rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out at the offending comment.

“Or not – you were wearing this fancy-looking watch prior to the crash, I think.”

Nino tries to look up at the taller man, but gives up when the sun rays attack him from that direction. “And so? Where is it now? I feel kind of lost without a watch.”

“It, uh, got…”

“Smashed in the crash.”

Matsuoka gulps down guilt. “Yeah.” Nino had previously reacted unexpectedly well to the news that the person responsible for his current state is actually Matsuoka, but the latter still feels awkward every time the incident is referenced. “Sorry,” he adds.

Nino waves off the apology with his good arm. “Leave it,” he says, “Maybe I was rich and can own five million of such fancy watches anyway.”

“Ah!” Matsuoka says brightly, “That reminds me! Your ATM card! We need to go to your bank to retrieve your PIN.”

Nino says wryly, “Thinking of rent already, aren’t we.”

That earns him a smack on his left arm, which only has the wrist injured, but Nino yelps anyway and glares at Matsuoka with feigned hurt. “I’m injured,” he says pathetically.

“It’s been ten days; I know by now with certainty that only your wrist is injured, you little brat. And no, you obviously don’t need to pay rent, seeing as, well…”

“You knocked me down. Matsuoka, will you let up on the guilt already?” Nino walks in front of him and halts in his footsteps, determined to clear the air before they start living together in awkwardness.

Matsuoka simply points to his right. “Let’s go see how rich you are, Mr. Ninomiya.”

Nino turns and sees the bank his new friend is pointing to. “Moment of truth, huh?”

When Matsuoka doesn’t reply, Nino stares at him quizzically. “Something wrong?”

“Nino,” he says seriously, “I have something to tell you.”

The shorter man eyes him warily, a thousand possibilities springing to mind. “…What?”

“With my current finances, we can live comfortably for maybe-”

Nino smacks him on the arm fiercely and pulls him to make their way for the bank, a little smile playing at his lips. “Don’t be dumb,” he says, “It’s not like you have to provide for me. I can work.”

“But-”

“Relax, Matsuoka-san. I’ll probably regain my memories without even needing triggers. And when that time comes, you can come to my house for a free meal.”

Matsuoka stares at his back, aghast. “A free meal?!”

“Yes. I don’t feel like I was a particularly generous guy,” Nino informs him without a hint of shame.

“…You can start now.”

“No.”

“YES.”

“NO.”

“I’m going to rob you of all your bank money.”

“I’m going to blaze your house to the ground.”

“I’m not leaving you enough money to commit arson.”

“I’ll just charm it off other people.”

“…Prostitution?!”

Nino fists him in the stomach without so much as a backwards glance. “All I have to do is use my natural, non-sexual charms.” As if to prove his point, Nino turns back and flashes his brightest, sweetest smile to Matsuoka. The latter pretends to gag, but Nino doesn’t miss the way he flushes red, a color that is glorified fully in the blazing sun.

He would tease Matsuoka, but something stops him from doing so. Something, almost like a distant memory, which suggests that this isn’t the first time he’s seeing it. Well, Nino thinks, it’ll all come back soon enough.



As it turns out, Nino is fairly well off. Matsuoka tries to refuse rent, but gives in to Nino’s insistence and out of a partial fear for his own finances (“Let me pay you rent. You’re going to provide for everything else like meals and transport, you know.”).

“So,” Nino asks while they are in the elevator of Matsuoka’s apartment building, “are you attached?”

“What? Uh, no.”

“You pressed the wrong button.”

Matsuoka turns to him in confusion. “Huh?”

“What floor do you live on, again?”

“…Oh.” Matsuoka hurriedly presses the other button and pretends not to see Nino’s smirk.

“In fact, were you ever attached? You’re like some young and easily-embarrassed teenager.”

“WHAT?! Yes, I totally was! And, hey, I don’t think we’re all that different in terms of age, even if you do look annoying seventeen.”

Now it’s Nino’s turn to look confused. “Really? You’re that young? How old are you?”

“Thirty. Aren’t you in your late twenties at least?” Matsuoka had done a rough calculation earlier on; the very youngest Nino should have been eleven years ago was seventeen, so he should be, minimally, twenty-nine now.

“…Unless my ID is wrong, no. I’m twenty-four.”

“…Thirteen?”

“What are you mumbling on about?”

“Uh, nothing,” Matsuoka says distractedly, “Nothing at all.”

“Hey.” Nino pulls Matsuoka back into the lift when the elevator doors open and he walks out automatically. “We’re not there yet. You pressed for the wrong floor, remember?”

Thankfully, the strangeness of the moment dissipates when they are finally in Matsuoka’s apartment (“Wow! That’s a great TV you have there! I feel like playing a game already!” “…Don’t tell me you were a gamer…I want to watch my-” “WHAT GAMES DO YOU HAVE, MATSUOKA?”) and the homeowner leaves him to self-explore and navigate while he prepares dinner (“I’m generally a good host, save for when I’m starving.”).

His new friend, Nino discovers, is quite the tidy guy. Although it may partially be borne from the fact that Matsuoka doesn’t possess too many things to mess up in the first place; he takes an immediate liking to the queen-sized bed in the master bedroom and promptly curls up beneath the covers, which are of a rich purple and extremely sleep-inducing.

It doesn’t take long for Matsuoka to discover where he is; Nino looks exactly like the kind of person who would make a beeline for the master bedroom and settle there for all eternity. He leans on the doorframe and just flat out stares at Nino for a minute or two, the conflicting memories of eleven years ago crowding his mind and confusing him.

The enigma calls out, “That’s creepy, you know.”

Matsuoka balks and clears his throat awkwardly. “Uh, dinner is ready. And that is not your bed.”

“It’s yours,” Nino says simply, like that solves anything. Matsuoka tsks impatiently and raps the wooden door loudly. “DINNER IS READY.”

“I don’t feel like eating…”

“I’M GOING TO DRAG YOUR ASS OUT OF THERE, NINOMIYA.”

The menacing threat apparently does nothing for Nino, who blatantly unfolds himself and attempts to take up even more space on Matsuoka’s bed.

Matsuoka reaches the bed in three long strides. Nino pretends not to notice. When Matsuoka huffs and tries to carry out his threat, he discovers that Nino does indeed have a back-up plan that basically involves jabbing him mercilessly at the sides; Matsuoka curses his susceptibility to tickles while giggling uncontrollably.

“YOU SOUND SO GIRLY,” Nino shrieks, and redoubles his efforts to provoke even more hilarious sounds from Matsuoka. This, naturally, erupts into a full-blown tickling war (because Nino failed to remember that he is equally susceptible to tickling attacks) with Matsuoka eventually getting the upper hand by virtue of sheer size and strength.

They finally stop after a few minutes of relentless play, both out of breath from laughing too hard and simultaneous defense/attack. Matsuoka pulls back abruptly when he realizes that he’s basically hugging Nino, on his own bed no less, now that he’s stopped trying to tickle the smaller man; restricting movement by enveloping one’s victim is acceptable during an attack but infinitely gay after it, he realizes. Matsuoka gets up hurriedly and nearly trips in his haste to get off the bed, which elicits an amused chuckle from Nino.

“You can stop trying to hide it,” Nino drawls, still very much on the bed.

Matsuoka walks towards the door slowly. “Hide what?”

“Your blush. It’s pretty cute, anyway.”

“I AM NOT BLUSHING AND IT IS NOT CUTE,” he fumes, “And it’s DINNER TIME.”

“Or? You’re going to tickle me to death and then blush like a little girl again afterwards?”

Matsuoka starts to regret taking Nino in; he suspects that he’ll be feeling this way pretty often. “I’m going to kill you, Ninomiya Kazunari.”

“You can try,” Nino says pleasantly, but at least has the decency to finally scoot off the bed.



Unfortunately, Matsuoka’s patience is tested once again when Nino refuses to eat more than half of his dinner.

“Nino,” he says exasperatedly, “Either my cooking sucks that much, which it doesn’t, or you’re trying your best to drive me crazy.”

“You’ve seen me eat. It’s normal,” Nino replies defensively.

“The hospital is different! I thought you never finished your food because it was too bland.”

“Nope. It’s because I was full.”

Matsuoka stares woefully down into the unfinished plates; he has never been insulted this way before, even if Nino doesn’t mean it. Everyone loves his cooking.

Nino crosses his arms and leans back after he tires of playing with his leftover portion. “Stop giving us that look. The food is not going to diminish unless you eat it for me.”

“Us?” Matsuoka repeats. He looks around doubtfully.

“Us,” Nino says while gesturing to himself and the unfinished dinner. “What’s the issue, though? Isn’t it great that you can spend less money on food for me?”

“I suppose so,” Matsuoka shrugs, “but I like it when people appreciate my food by eating good portions to it. And you’re too skinny. Gonna disappear one day right in front of my eyes.”

Nino furrows his eyebrows. He repeats, disappear, softly, presumably only for his own ears, but Matsuoka hears it anyway, and he remembers that exact disappearing act of eleven years ago. It certainly hadn’t been due to malnourishment.

“Uh, I was just kidding,” Matsuoka says hastily, “Okay, dinner is over! I’ll wash up. You can go check out the TV or something.”

Nino nods and smiles, but it’s entirely too cheerful for him to be real.

*****

0. 2013, ten days ago

Taichi stares at Aiba incredulously because no, that can’t have been right. “He got what?”

“Run over by a car,” Aiba says softly, looking like he’s on the verge of tears.

“He got fucking run over by a car,” Taichi repeats. “And now we can’t contact him.”

“We can’t.” Aiba keeps his sentences short because he no longer trusts his voice. It’s hard being an entire reality away from a friend who may or may not be alive.

Taichi walks away slowly, directionless, because, really, that’s basically what they all are right now; lost and clueless.

“And he was stuck in reality nine?”

“I’m sorry?” Aiba asks, because suddenly Taichi’s voice has gotten really soft, too. It’s not unexpected, really; the two had been best friends despite bickering non-stop. Are still, Aiba reminds himself, pointedly refusing to refer to Nino in the past tense.

“I said,” Taichi repeats slowly, louder this time, “was he still stuck in reality nine?”

“Yes.”

“Have we found out why?”

“No. We could-”

“Let’s work on it now,” Taichi decides swiftly, because he doesn’t want to concentrate on other more depressing matters that won’t help with the situation at hand, anyway.



Unsurprisingly, it takes them no more than an hour to figure out what the hell had gone wrong. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Taichi says, “the two realities merged.”

Aiba frowns. “Merged?”

“More like reality nine wiped out reality ten, actually. We apparently miscalculated something. Nino should have stayed only five days, instead of two weeks, in the ninth reality.”

“And?” Aiba prompts, because that doesn’t answer how the phenomenon could have happened.

Taichi sighs; it’s a sound laden with something suspiciously akin to regret. “The goddamn Butterfly Effect shifted it way of course – it collided with the time path of the tenth reality and then it just took over the whole path, in the process wiping the tenth out. I never knew something like that was possible.”

“Well, we are the pioneers for reality-travelling amongst all the realities,” Aiba remarks. “So we’re kind of like still stuck in the experimental stage.”

“Yup. We’re not exactly screwed yet since the magic number to prevent total wipeout of Earth across all realities is ten; add us into the equation and there’s exactly ten.”

Both of them, as well as the entire room of astrologists and scientists understand what has not been spoken; not screwed, so long as Nino stays there for the stipulated nine months, so long as he is still alive.

“He can’t come back, you know,” Aiba mumbles, “Not without the device.”

Taichi whirls his chair around to face his colleague. “Is there any suitable person to send there? Anyone else who doesn’t have a reflective existence in reality nine?”

“Not within this organization.”

Taichi frowns and wills his brain to come up with a solution. “How about reality nine’s technological advancement? Is Nino able to do something to communicate with us?”

Aiba winces; he hates having to be the bearer of bad news. “Not too good. They definitely don’t have the means. But for now, can we perhaps try to locate Nino in reality nine?”

“We’re only able to get the details of people who are registered with official systems. Nino has an ID, but it needs to be scanned for his registration details to self-hack into the system.”

“It’s just a guess, but if he’s injured, they will most likely bring him to the hospital and check his ID, right? So that way he will be in the system?”

Taichi looks up at Aiba like Aiba is his God; “Bingo! God, Aiba, you’re brilliant. Let’s do that. And, in the meantime, could some of you please go source for a suitable candidate to send over?”

The rest of the room choruses, “Yes, chief!” while Aiba beams, glad that they can finally get started on remedying the situation.

He is still alive. Still alive.

*****

9. 2013

“I WIN! YOU DIE!!!”

Matsuoka glares at the twenty-four year old kid jumping around in his living room in unrestrained glee, looking completely recovered and injury-free. It pisses Matsuoka off.

“OI!” he barks, displeased that Nino is creating a ruckus (and not because he lost to him in a game. No.), “Sit your ass right down. I’m not paying for your hospital bills if you get injured again.”

“Aww,” Nino coos, “being a sore loser, are we?”

Matsuoka seethes and mentally whips out all of the relaxation techniques he has accumulated over the years; breathe deeply. Breathe deeply. Breathe dee-

“You suck at this. To think that I won despite having an injured wrist.”

“OH MY GOD WILL YOU SHUT UP ALREADY” In his rage, Matsuoka stands up and accidentally hurls his console downwards onto the table; the sound of it breaking into two startles both of them and Nino rushes forward, completely horrified, and proceeds to start a little drama over how his heart is being torn into pieces and what’s with you, Matsuoka, initiating such violence towards innocent beings?

Matsuoka stalks off before he starts breaking other things. It’s time for dinner. He can still hear Nino mourning the loss of a perfectly good friend. Matsuoka bangs all the kitchen cabinet doors as he gathers ingredients.



At the dinner table, a pot of freshly made and mouth-watering stew sits in between Matsuoka and Nino. At the head of the table is Matsuoka’s broken console, glorified in its demise with a little note dedicated to it and dried leaves and petals strewn all around it in a little circle of love.

The homeowner nearly bursts a blood vessel when he enters his room later to see less than half of his potpourri left.

*****

Matsuoka stares at the person (or not) before him with his mouth agape. “Y-you…”

“I’m not a ghost,” the person says casually. He’s even dusting his clothes nonchalantly, as if he didn’t just appear randomly in the middle of winter, right in front of Matsuoka’s house.

Matsuoka looks around to see if there are any other witnesses; nope. He’s out of luck.

“Don’t bother,” the person says, “you’re basically the only person to ever see me appear and disappear.”

“You’re…going to disappear?”

“You’re nineteen this year, right?”

Matsuoka doesn’t answer. There’s something not right with this situation. He’s probably dreaming. But his cheeks hurt from being pinched.

The person frowns and looks around. “Are you? This should be the year 2002, right?”

Matsuoka scratches his head and nods before replying, “Yeah. Where are you from? Are you an alien?”

The person rolls his eyes. “You only ever think that I’m a ghost or an alien, Matsuoka. I’m Ninomiya Kazunari.”

Matsuoka stares at this Ninomiya, thoroughly confused. What on earth does he mean? And why does he know his name? Matsuoka could have sworn that he has never seen him before. “Is that a species or something?”

Ninomiya’s laughter is still ringing in his ears when Matsuoka wakes up from his overly realistic dream from eleven years ago; he’s perspiring and almost confused, but when he looks around him he recalls that this is the year 2013, and Nino is very much real, alive and asleep in the room next to him. No disappearing instance as of yet. Maybe he can’t disappear when he can’t remember anything. Maybe.

It’s almost like the weirdest two weeks of his life are back to haunt him, except it’s not. But this means he hadn’t just dreamed up that two weeks randomly in the past. All that snooping around online to the point of obsession, everything just to prove that the mysterious stranger existed, had ended up futile. And now he’s right here in the house. Life is a cruel mockery, it seems.

Matsuoka makes his way out of bed and tiptoes slowly, practically feeling like a stranger in his own house. He doesn’t know why but he has a sudden urge to see Nino, to verify that this isn’t just another confusing and possibly unreal incident, that he isn’t insane and obsessed. Or you could be insane, and none of this is happening at all. Matsuoka pushes away that thought.

There he is, soundly asleep and looking very much there. Matsuoka stares, transfixed, and imagines features and color in place of the black of the darkness. But a thought occurs to him, and he pads out and into the living room to pacify his unsettled heart.

The console is still there, illuminated by moonshine. The earlier incident, alongside his discovery of Nino’s freakish gaming tendencies, coaxes Matsuoka into a broad smile, and he chuckles softly while making his way back to his room. It all seems so silly now.

That’s when he hears it. A scream of sheer terror, piercing and raw; Matsuoka makes a dash for the guest room, blood pounding in his ears and jumbled prayers in his brain.

“Nino!” Matsuoka shakes his friend roughly by the shoulders in a desperate bid to wake him up. “Nino! Wake up, Nino!” He ceases his actions when he hears a gasp of wakefulness and Nino jerks away violently from him, presumably still shocked and confused in the aftermath of his nightmare.

Matsuoka fumbles for the lamp switch while trying to reach out to Nino with his other hand. “Relax, it’s me. Matsuoka, remember? I’m here. It’ll be fine.” The room is instantly bathed in a warm, surreal glow, and Matsuoka sees his friend sitting by the edge of the bed, shaking and muttering something incoherent. He feels a strange tugging at his heart, but dismisses it and crawls across the bed slowly towards the other man.

Matsuoka halts inches away from Nino; “Hey, you okay? Need a warm beverage?” He resists the urge to get closer.

But when Nino turns towards him, fear written all over his being, Matsuoka instinctively reaches out and pulls the former into a comforting embrace; they sit like this for a few minutes, with Nino’s back against Matsuoka’s chest, their respective breathing the only sounds echoing in the room, steady and soothing.

Surprisingly, Nino is the first to break the silence. He makes no move to untangle himself from Matsuoka’s arms. “Your eyes,” he begins, voice still somewhat tremulous and unsure, “I’ve seen them before. So many times.”

Matsuoka bites his lips to keep him from revealing the bizarreness of eleven years ago. “Ah, is that so?” He jokes, “Did you dream about me? Was I a scary monster?”

“No,” Nino says a little too sharply, “and don’t treat me like a kid. I’m fine. It’s just…I think I was seeing fragments of my memory in my dream. And it seemed like you were part of it.”

Matsuoka tenses and prays that Nino can’t feel his heartbeat speeding up. “But why were you screaming? What happened?”

Nino is slow to respond, to package his answer into something intelligible, something that isn’t the confusion of dreamscapes. “I don’t think it was because something bad happened. It’s more of information overload, too many misfits, and just general confusion and fear. It’s the fear that comes with not knowing.”

The other man strokes Nino’s arm thoughtfully; it’s somewhat cold to the touch, and Matsuoka nearly has another panic attack over the existence of the enigma that is Nino. “It will all eventually come to you,” he says kindly. There’s nothing much else he can say.

Nino shudders and grips the hand on his arm; Matsuoka can almost feel how unsure and afraid Nino is, so he ceases his movements and lets Nino hold him, allows him the luxury of verification, of surety.

“Stay here, okay?” Nino whispers, firm but also slightly uncertain, “Stay here for the night. I feel like crap.”

Matsuoka doesn’t actually, doesn’t want to stay here, doesn’t want to be here holding Nino like this because he’s afraid of obsession, of what he may feel, but he cannot turn Nino down. Not tonight. Maybe not ever, a tiny part of him suggests, but he dismisses it forcefully.

“Sure,” he replies, in the process giving away none of his inner turmoil, “Positive you don’t need milk or water or something?”

Even with his back facing him, Matsuoka can tell that Nino is making some kind of displeased or annoyed face. “I’m not a child,” Nino replies flatly, “now I just want to lie down and have a dreamless sleep.”

“I can’t promise you that, but I’ll be right next to you if you do wake up screaming.”

Matsuoka’s blushing at his own words even before Nino giggles and replies, that’s corny.

*****

Nino doesn’t see much of Matsuoka over the next few days. Or for the entire week, for that matter. He’d managed to get a 10-to-6 job working at the conbini but the nights are somewhat lonely with Matsuoka returning later and later each day. Nino had even tried dropping a hint, cleverly-disguised as a joke, when he had commented that the apartment feels more like his than Matsuoka’s, what with Nino spending more hours in it than the actual owner; the other man had merely chuckled and swatted him on the head, but nothing else. Nino feels like he’s missing something, some crucial piece of information that will shed light on the whole situation.

He corners Matsuoka on Sunday morning.

“Morning,” Nino says lightly, eyes scanning the newspaper without reading. “Going out so early?”

“Oh, morning, Nino,” Matsuoka mumbles, hands rubbing at sleepy eyes that are not yet obscured by glasses. Nino can’t figure out why a tall, grown man with tousled hair and striped pajamas pants can look as adorable at this. It makes no sense at all, so he returns his attention to the paper. Why is he on the obituary page?

“Going out?” Nino repeats his question carefully, loud enough so that Matsuoka can hear, but not accusatory. Definitely not accusatory.

“Yeah,” Matsuoka replies around a yawn, “some punks insisted on collecting their cars today at the repair workshop.”

“Punks don’t usually wake up early,” Nino points out.

“Tell that to that guy,” Matsuoka grumbles.

“Lunch together?” Nino suggests; he presumes that Matsuoka wouldn’t be opening the workshop for the entire day. It’s Sunday, after all.

“Oh, uh, can’t. I’m meeting a friend.”

Matsuoka vanishes into the bathroom before Nino can even formulate a reply. Nino tosses the paper aside and reaches for his new DS; he has too little patience to carry on with the gentle grilling. It’s bound to turn ugly sooner or later.

Matsuoka’s out of the house in fifteen minutes flat, having skipped his usual pre-breakfast meal of water and fruit. Nino doesn’t need to guess why.

The door shuts quietly behind him, and Nino, left behind in the house, suddenly feels like laughing, hollow and meaningless, into the spaced vacated by Matsuoka. Sometimes he wonders if that night had been a dream, when Matsuoka had held him following the strange dream he had, when he had felt, for the first time following the weeks of amnesia, like he isn’t lost anymore, like he belongs right here in this house with its dorky and hot-tempered owner who breaks game consoles and offers him milk.

Perhaps it had been a dream. Maybe his mind had formulated it to calm him down after the events of the previous dream. Anything’s possible, he supposes. Everything feels possible when you remember nothing, nothing and all, and you’re free to construct new realities and false events to patch up the gaping hole, the blank canvas that is one’s memory.

Even the internet agrees with that description, Nino thinks wryly; no matter how much he searched or hacked into systems (which he had found himself adept at – that’s saying pretty much about his previous occupation, isn’t it?) to find any piece of information, any at all, on himself, nothing had turned up.

Nothing.

Nino leans backwards onto the sofa, his DS forgotten and abandoned in a corner.

Nothing at all.

*****

0. 2013, current

“There he is!” Aiba says excitedly, one hand pulling along another person who is trailing after him. Taichi looks at Aiba expectantly.

Aiba beams and gestures towards the person beside him, who looks half-awake and kind of dazed. Taichi feels less than impressed already. “This is Ohno Satoshi. We’ve checked, double-checked, triple-checked, and he doesn’t exist in reality nine!” Taichi observes that, to his credit, this Ohno dude doesn’t seem particularly confused by what Aiba had just said. Either Aiba had done a great job in explaining, or Ohno isn’t really hearing what he’s saying. Taichi places his stakes on the second option.

Taichi rises from his chair and bows to the newcomer. “Nice to meet you, Ohno-san. I’m Kokubun Taichi. Just call me Taichi.” He extends a hand, to which Ohno shakes; his grip is surprisingly firm, so Taichi allows room for reevaluation in his head.

“Hello, Taichi-kun. Just call me-”

“You can just call him Oh-chan!” Aiba chirps brightly. Taichi glares at him, and the latter falls silent; Aiba is great with his job, but Taichi never quite got used to his amazingly high energy levels. He misses Nino, quick-witted and sharp-tongued but always sensitive and alert.

Ohno looks at Taichi in puzzlement. “Why are you sighing?”

Taichi blinks at him. “Eh?”

“You’re sighing,” Ohno repeats, “Is it because of your friend? I’ll try my best to bring him back.”

Taichi smiles, heartfelt and genuine, and imagines Nino approving of this fellow, sleepy-looking but kind and surprisingly perceptive. “I’m counting on you,” Taichi says, “Please bring him back for us when the time is up.”

“There’s about a month and a half left, right?”

Taichi mentally reminds himself to praise Aiba for his spectacular explaining skills before replying, “Yes. You just have to pass him the device, and then it will automatically bring him back when the time is up. As for you, it’s configured to bring you back whenever you wish to, which would be after you find Nino and pass him the device.”

Ohno nods. “I will do my best. When do I leave?”

Aiba grins and passes him two devices. “How about now?”

*****

9. 2013

Matsuoka returns home at past midnight, drunk enough to bump into the wall and pieces of furniture as he makes his way haphazardly through his own house.

“You have work tomorrow,” Nino says sharply; he wasn’t planning on leaving his room to greet Matsuoka, but the distinct sounds of groaning and falling items forced him out of his bed and away from his game.

“Oh, hi, Nino,” Matsuoka slurs. “Nagase can take care of, uh, the workshop…if I…if. If don’t turn up.” He grins idiotically and slumps against a wall, apparently too far-gone to make it into his own room.

Nino eyes the useless mass in front of him critically; there’s no way he can move him into his room given their difference in size. He has half a mind to dunk icy-cold water onto the drunken man, but decides against it because Matsuoka can be slightly violent even when perfectly sober; his broken game console is testament to that.

“I’ll tell Nagase that you were being a useless drunk and have him beat you up,” Nino mutters. He turns on his heel, fully intending to abandon Matsuoka right where he is currently.

“Nino,” Matsuoka calls out. He tries to focus on the wall in front of him but fails; where are his glasses anyway?

“What?” He’s almost inside his room, but it’s a world and a half away now that Matsuoka has called him.

Matsuoka pats the ground next to him. “Come here,” he offers.

“You’re an idiot,” Nino announces, but takes up the offer nevertheless. He wonders if it’s true that people reveal more when they are drunk.

“But you love me anyway,” Matsuoka drawls. Yup, he’s definitely gone if he can say that without blushing. Unless his face sufficiently reddened by alcohol and, consequently, immune to the effects of embarrassment.

“Y’know,” Matsuoka continues, “I kissed a girl tonight…I’ve actually, uh, been, uh, kissing? Like one…every night? This past…past…week.”

A tiny part of Nino, the dwindling rationality, informs him that it’s unusual for Matsuoka, who hasn’t been dating (or kissing) anyone for the past few years, to engage in such frivolity and promiscuity, but it’s quelled by the irrational anger taking over his entire being. He considers leaving, but he wonders what leaving entails. Getting up to go into his room? Or leaving this house for good?

He never gets to make a decision, because Matsuoka chooses that exact moment to tower over Nino, both knees around Nino’s crossed legs and hands on the wall next to Nino’s face; the kiss is sloppy, and Matsuoka smells of a toxic mixture of several different kinds of alcohol, but Nino is too shocked to notice anything else other than the fact that they are kissing. Nino can close his eyes right now, give in to the luxury of passion and spontaneity, feel instead of think, except he can’t. He shoves half-heartedly at Matsuoka’s chest to push him away and tries his best to ignore the way his housemate’s hand has abandoned the wall, in favor of stroking his cheek with a tenderness that a drunken man shouldn’t possess.

Unexpectedly, Matsuoka stops of his own accord. He blinks rapidly and sits back on his knees, still in front of Nino. Nino peers doubtfully at him and wonders if Matsuoka is pretty much insane when drunk.

“It’s different,” Matsuoka blurts out, “It feels different, Nino.” His voice is hoarse from the alcohol and lower than usual, and Nino is suddenly afraid of the change in him. Since when have you become such a coward, Nino?

“Of course it’s different,” Nino says bitterly, his tone harsh in the silence of the night. “I’m not a girl, Matsuoka. I will never be. Now can I please return to my room?”

“No.”

“What?”

“No,” Matsuoka repeats, “It’s not the gender issue.” Nino wonders when he had sobered up to the extent of coherence.

“Then what is it?” Nino hates how small his voice sounds, but he can’t bear to sound commanding or uncaring, because it’s late and dark and Matsuoka had kissed him, and he can’t bring himself to put on a mask of nonchalance anymore.

“I tried not to like you, Nino. I’m not gay. I like girls. I tried to go after girls again. I thought maybe that night was just something…something off. I wanted to forget.”

Even in the darkness, Nino can make out Matsuoka’s hunched frame and bowed head, and he imagines that if he could visualize his soul separate from its body, he would see something much smaller, tired and unsure, beautiful but fragile.

Matsuoka continues before Nino can reach out, physically, to touch his soul. “But I can’t,” he says, voice teetering on the edge of brokenness, “and you’ve fascinated me for years, Nino. I can’t decide if having you here is a dream or a nightmare, and I know you don’t remember anything. You can’t remember anything.”

That’s when it occurs to Nino that the Matsuoka of his dreams, all the distinct eyes he sees the world through, are different. He isn’t sure how, or even what that means, but he has a feeling that he has known Matsuoka for a long, long time now. Or it could be the other way round – not that it matters, really. They are both falling apart here, but they have no reason to be.

“Matsuoka,” Nino whispers, “let’s go to bed. Let’s go to bed, okay?”

Matsuoka finally looks up and Nino pretends not to see the unshed tears, tries not to be overwhelmed by those eyes that are windows to other worlds, and the answer to his dreams. There’s no time for deciphering or even too much thinking tonight; both of them need rest, and copious amounts of it.

“Come on,” Nino says, pulling at Matsuoka’s arms to urge him to get up, “let’s head for your room.” Matsuoka has a wobbly start, nearly falling down or banging into the wall, but Nino clutches his arm tighter each time and he remembers strength and how to live in this lifetime.

That night, Nino listens to Matsuoka’s breathing, strained at first but gradually evening out into a steady rhythm as Nino waits to fall asleep, no longer fearful of his own past and memories.

It will take awhile, and only possessing pieces of the entire puzzle will always scare him because Nino likes to be in control of his own life, but he figures that it’s not a bad idea to wait it out, to figure things out while continuing with life. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he plows on with confidence, then Matsuoka will be able to keep in step with him and he’ll never have to cut out paths to blindly follow again.


Part 2