Stay Silent

Hiro had completely forgotten that there was another seminar the following morning. He was at work, being quiet and distractible over a desk strewn with schematics, when he got a text from Lucy asking if he wanted to get some brunch before they set up. He briefly considered just not going to the seminar, but of course he had to go. He made some excuse to his higher-ups about where he was taking his early extended lunch break, and then he left.

The seminars got a little easier each time Hiro did another one. He still couldn’t quite relax into his role yet, not like everyone else, but he no longer thought he was going to be sick every time the speaker just before him went up. Today was his fifth seminar. It was the last one – no, the second to last one. Plans for future related events were already set in motion, or so Hiro had been told. The organisers involved him and talked to him about it like his presence was guaranteed, his support ongoing.

When he took the front of the lecture hall this time, he felt as unnerved as he had way back in the second – even the first seminar. He felt uncertain. The overwhelming majority of people were backing him, were vouching for his pain, but… He could see them now. The others. Those boys who soundlessly sniggered to each other, those girls who pursed their lips and scowled. They stuck out like great big flashing signs for Hiro to just shut up and sit back down and stop taking up so much time and space.

He deviated from his practiced speech a little. He slipped in a few harsh words about his brother, about feeling like even those who supported you were still against you, still not convinced, still not completely on your side. He could see his fellow volunteers’ surprise in his peripheral vision, and especially Lucy’s. He wished as soon as the words had left his mouth that he just… hadn’t. All it had done was make him feel petty, and made him mess up the rest of his speech, which was already running over time.

He sat back down again and people patted him, too afraid to tell him what he already knew: that it wasn’t his best. They were more sympathetic than they were encouraging.

But that didn’t matter, he told himself. It was done, it was over, it was good enough. His favourite part of the seminar was after it had finished, anyway. All of the satisfied and disinterested students shuffled out of their seats to leave, while a couple or more came forward to speak with him one-to-one. They asked to hear a bit more about his own experiences, or they asked what they should do about their friend who was in a similar situation, or they asked how they could help people like him. Not very many boys approached him; they tended to contact him by email, late at night.

But today one boy did.

As soon as Hiro’s eye was caught, he smiled the boy over. The kid was at least half-Japanese, standing tall and lean and not very broad-shouldered in a loose-fitting school uniform. He had a stilted feel about him, but that wasn’t unusual; sometimes the kids were even more afraid of talking to Hiro than Hiro was to talk to them.

“Hey,” Hiro said, setting down his drink. He walked himself and the boy a little away from a group of chatty teachers and seminar organisers – just to give them a little more privacy because that boy sure as hell looked like he needed it. Hiro put on his most trusting, most attentive face. “How can I help?”

The boy didn’t speak. He just… stared. Like he had no idea what to say.

Hiro noticed the boy’s Adam’s apple bob as he gulped. “It’s OK,” he assured, gentle but casual. He tried to play up just how casual he was – without coming off as totally flippant, of course – hoping that that would put the boy at ease. “I’m not like a teacher, or a proper health educator professional or anything. Did you have a question, or…?” He asked tentatively, “Something else?”

This interaction, or complete lack thereof, was just getting… awkward. But Hiro didn’t want to just walk away from his kid. He had this gritty look in his eyes, like there was something he wanted to say, but, for whatever reason, he just couldn’t. He just couldn’t quite get there.

“…Hey, y’know, you can always email me,” Hiro offered. He pointed up at the projection screen, just out of habit, when he remembered that the slideshow had already ended. He slowly reached into his backpack for a pen and paper, eyes never leaving the boy’s. “Do you need me to write it down?”

“No…”

Finally the boy managed to find his voice. A small one. He was so quiet that Hiro strained to hear him over the noise everyone else was making.

A little smile curled at the boy’s lips. “I remember… we emailed a lot.”

Hiro didn’t quite understand him. “You’ve… emailed me before?” he asked, puzzled. “I’m sorry, I get a lot of email – what did you say your name was?”

The boy’s eyes grew wide and strangely doleful. “You don’t recognise me?”

“Uh…” Hiro didn’t. He felt flustered. “Should I?”

“Aren’t you Hiro Hamada?”

Hiro tensed. It made him uncomfortable that this kid knew his family name. He’d been socautious about not releasing it during those seminars – had he just slipped up today?

“Y-Yeah? Who are you…?"

“It’s me,” the boy insisted quietly, and Hiro was forced to take a good hard look at him. Hiro didn’t know any high school students; from the front of the room, they all just blended together in a sea of dark hair and monochromatic uniforms. He couldn’t tell one face from its neighbour.

And then the realisation hit Hiro like a brick to the face, and he wondered how he ever couldn’t’ve recognised him.

“Takahiro… Takahiro Tanaka.” He pulled a hesitant expression before quietly supplying the name he had once fervently asserted that everyone call him. “Taka-chan…?”

Hiro could see traces of that eight year old boy in the high school student before him now – in the eyes, in the cheeks, in the mouth. But the energy was all wrong. Hiro remembered Takahiro as this bouncing, excitable, uncontrollable little tyke; the teenager he was faced with now was subdued and just a little bit brooding. He was nine years older, physically, but he was acting a hell of a lot older than that.

“Takahiro?” Hiro gaped at him, feeling his eyes stretch as wide as they could. He must’ve looked terrifying in his shock, but he didn’t care. “You’re… You’re seriously Taka-chan?”

“Please don’t call me that,” Takahiro murmured. One hand rubbed his other arm, seemingly for no other reason than to make himself appear uncomfortable. “It’s too cutesy for me now.”

“R-Right… Sorry.”

Hiro couldn’t believe it. He just couldn’t believe that he was really now staring at the grown-up child who had almost become his cousin just under a decade ago. Itoko-san.

“F… Fancy seeing you here,” Hiro cried, laughing too hard in an attempt to diffuse the suddenly tense atmosphere. Whose discomfort levels had just been hiked up to impossible, dangerous heights. “Wow! You’re a lot… taller than I remember! It’s been so long!”

“Yeah, it’s been a while.” Takahiro smiled, and he seemed almost completely unfazed by everything. “Can we talk?” He gave a sidelong glance to some people who passed behind him then. “Somewhere other than here?” he added.

Hiro dropped a helpless look onto the time on his phone. “Taka-ch… Takahiro, listen, I-I-I would love to… to, um, have a talk with you, but I just… The thing is, I’ve gotta get back to work,” he said. His voice was straining with apologetic regret. “I’ve only got a few hours off, and, I-I’m sure your teachers are up there waiting for you…”

Takahiro’s shoulders slumped with disappointment, but he still gave a polite little nod. Hiro found himself screaming in his head, There is no way that you’re really Takahiro. The Takahiro he knew would never have taken his answer as absolute, not without a small fight and a series of whines. “I understand,” Takahiro agreed, and it just didn’t sit right with Hiro. That boy must’ve done a lot of growing up since Hiro had last seen him.

“But please, email me,” Hiro said, failing to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Do you need my email? I-I can…” He got out the pen and paper only to have Takahiro decline the offer – again, sopolite.

“I’ll email you,” Takahiro promised, and he flashed Hiro a small smile that just touched his eyes. “It’ll be just like old times, right?”

He gave a coy wave and then he took off, running up the stairs to follow the last of the students dawdling out of the lecture theatre. Hiro needed Lucy to find him and physically move him before he could leave his seat.

Just like old times…

-------

The rest of the day had been hell for Hiro. He went back to work, but he didn’t get anything done – he just scrunched up botched schematic drawings, and stared off into walls, and went back and forth between his desk and the bathroom, to repeatedly splash his face with cold water.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just put it all aside and lose himself in his work and wait to dwell on it all later. All he could think about was Takahiro, and everything about that time. All the memories that boy was associated with… Everything just came crashing back – not just one brick this time, but a ton of them, on his head and on his chest. Crushing him. Leaving him gasping into the stream of water, hunched over the sink in his work’s bathroom, like he was going to be sick. Public and vulnerable.

Someone eventually came by to pat him on the back and tell him to go home. He didn’t bother to argue; he just gave a shaky nod, wiped at his mouth, and walked out. He barely remembered to go back and collect his things before leaving the building.

He got home again, tossing his bag carelessly onto his bed as he claimed his desk chair, grasping it like he really needed the support. His computer couldn’t come out of hibernation fast enough, and when it did, he immediately went to check his inbox. There were countless emails there – they built up a lot during the day, and especially right after seminars. He didn’t know how to tell at a glance which one was Takahiro. None of them were titled so starkly: It’s me – the boy from your nightmares.

He read through all the emails quickly, only to find that Takahiro hadn’t sent him one yet. He checked the time. School hadn’t even been let out yet. It could’ve been hours before Takahiro got an email to him.

I need a distraction, Hiro thought. So he played his latest game. He’d already sunk a substantial amount of his free time into it already, but he was still nowhere close to actually beating it. He’d barely just left tutorial-mode. He played it for hours, killing and looting everything in sight, keeping his agitated hands busy and his mind focused on something placating, non-demanding. He played it until he suddenly found himself sitting in a dark room.

He got up to close his curtains and turn on a light, grabbing some snacks that his unsettled stomach didn’t want, but probably needed. He dared to check his email again. Still nothing. He answered a few easy queries and forced himself to attend to emails that seemed to require an immediate response.

He was staring at his inbox when it popped up. A new email. The title was just a simple Hey. All the email itself said was It’s me. Hiro didn’t need to ask who it was. That email address…

It was the exact same email address Hiro had given to Takahiro, all those years ago.

I’m here, Hiro wrote back immediately. He kept swallowing, over and over, feeling like something uncomfortably big was lodged in his throat and he just couldn’t get it unstuck. He paused for longer than he had wanted to; he couldn’t think of what to say. He supposed he should’ve started with something a little natural. A little normal. How are you?

Takahiro wrote back, seconds later, his message appearing in the email’s chatbox. It was an infinitely better program to communicate on.

TAKA: I’m good. How are you?

HIRO: I’m OK. Sorry I didn’t recognise you. I see a lot of high school students now and you all tend to look the same ha ha…

Stupid, Hiro thought as soon as he’d hit enter, smacking at his head. That was the one drawback to instant messaging, he supposed. There was less time to construct the perfect response, and more opportunities to say something he hadn’t really meant to say.

TAKA: Lol no worries. Your seminar was really interesting btw.

HIRO: Thanks…

TAKA: Were you talking about Cass?

Hiro’s heart stopped. He didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t even know if he wanted to. He was conversing with what seemed now like a very mature teenager, but Hiro couldn’t stop thinking about the little boy who talked about ‘witches’ and ‘eating’, like it was all a cute fairy-tale. They couldn’t pretend it was a fairy-tale anymore. They couldn’t escape behind euphemisms.

His answer was taking too long. Long enough for Takahiro to write: Sorry I asked.

HIRO: No, it’s OK – Yeah, I was talking about her. (I don’t like to use her name though.)

TAKA: Why not? If you did, people might go to her café and set it on fire.

Hiro stiffened. He was thinking back to when Takahiro had thrown hot tea at her. Burn witch, he had cried, and she had screamed.

TAKA: She did live in a café, right? I’m not remembering that wrong?

HIRO: Yeah, the Lucky Cat Café.

HIRO: How much do you remember?

Hiro was so, so curious. And yet a part of him really didn’t want to know. He waited, nerves tingling with apprehension, waiting for Takahiro’s response.

TAKA: I don’t remember that much. I think I was like… 7 or 8? 9? I dunno. I don’t think I stayed with her for that long. I remember a room with a lot of toys, and downstairs always smelled like coffee and baking. There was a cat maybe?

Hiro didn’t know why, but the thought of Takahiro remembering anything more than that filled Hiro with a slow, building sense of… dread. He wished that that was the extent of Takahiro’s memory. But it wasn’t.

TAKA: Actually, that’s kind why I wanted to talk to you.

HIRO: You can talk to me.

TAKA: OK cool…

TAKA: Well, it’s about what you said about Cass – about your aunt. You said she molested and raped you a lot, when you were younger. And it got me thinking… I stayed with her alone in her house for a week or two. I think maybe… some weird stuff might’ve happened.

Hiro didn’t respond. He stared at the words on his screen, reading them over and over again. Waiting to comprehend them. Waiting for them to make any goddamn sense. He was so calm and poised on the outside, but…

Something in him erupted from the beaten back depths of his mind. Something feral and resentful and regressive that screamed, I FUCKING KNEW IT!

TAKA: Hiro?

TAKA: Are you there?

TAKA: Hello?

HIRO: I’m here.

HIRO: Tell me what she did to you. I’ll listen.

TAKA: I don’t really remember anything specific but… I think she was always very close to me. She gave me a lot of cakes to make me like her, even though they were too rich and they made me sick. Sometimes she got into bed with me and it would get so hot that she’d tell me to take my pants off… At the time I didn’t really question anything, but… given her history with you, isn’t it kind of creepy? Why did my dad ever let me stay with her alone?

Hiro didn’t know what to do. He was feeling so much right now – he had no outlet short of throwing himself repeatedly at the stone wall in his living room. He couldn’t think beyond his streaming line of consciousness that he just couldn’t seem to stem: I was right, I was right about her, I was right about Takahiro, I was right about everything, why did no one believe me, of course she hadn’t changed, she never changed, she’s the same as always, she made another victim, just like me, she’s out there now making more and more and more and more and–

TAKA: You’re really quiet all of a sudden.

TAKA: I guess it’s kind of late...

TAKA: I should go.

TAKA: Bye.

Before Hiro could even get his shit together, Takahiro had already signed off. Hiro wrote to him frantically, desperately trying to pull back someone who was no longer there.

He didn’t waste any time. He grabbed his coat and keys and then he was out the door.