Stay Silent

It was a Friday evening when Hiro received another email at home. He quickly checked that it wasn’t important and almost fell out of his desk chair to see that it was from Takahiro, asking if he could go over to Hiro’s place.

Even under the heavy dose of his medication, it stressed Hiro out. He wanted time to consider it, but he wanted to reply to Takahiro immediately, before the boy changed his mind, before he could say “don’t worry” in that infuriatingly resigned way that he did, and disappear like vapour from Hiro’s life once again. His fingers moved across the keyboard and, before Hiro could even understand what was happening, let alone whether or not it was a good idea, he’d already given Takahiro his home address.

It was raining pretty badly. Hiro was lucky when he did to run home from work because no sooner than he’d made it through his door, the annoying drizzle had turned into a torrential downpour, which was still going. So he really shouldn’t’ve been surprised when he opened the door half an hour later to a sopping wet Takahiro, but he was. The boy’s uniform was drenched, the tips of his hair were dripping, and raindrops trickled down his pale face. And he was just… standing there, not even looking at Hiro. His head was bowed, wet hair obscuring the expression in his lowered gaze. His lips were parted a little as he took quick, shivery breaths.

The sight of him alone was enough to yank cruelly on Hiro’s heartstrings. Takahiro was like a little abandoned puppy, left out in the rain. And he smelled like one too.

“Hello,” Takahiro murmured when Hiro didn’t say anything, his voice sounding… brittle.

“Taka…”

Hiro was still reeling. He wanted to say that he was happy to hear from the boy at long last, but he wasn’t. Even though Hiro had wished and wished some more and even prayed that Takahiro was fine, this was clearly not fine. Hiro didn’t know what to say. “Wha…” He stared at the boy from head to toe. Small puddles of water had formed at his feet. “You don’t have a coat?”

“It’s at home.”

Hiro swallowed. Nothing about this situation seemed right. “Why didn’t you just go home from school?”

Takahiro gave a small shrug. “I dunno.”

“Why did you want to come here?” Hiro asked in a voice even smaller than the one he’d been using before.

“I dunno.”

Hiro’s stomach clenched. Now wasn’t the time to do this; it was freezing outside – the rain may as well have been sleet. He was feeling colder by the second, and he could only partially attribute that to his wide open front door. Hiro stepped back and waved Takahiro inside.

Takahiro’s black school shoes made small squelching noises as he walked in, tracking big drops of water. Usually Hiro didn’t bother to uphold the Japanese tradition of leaving shoes by the door, but this time he was glad to see Takahiro kneel down to unlace his shoes. He slipped them off, putting the pair neatly side by side, and even his grey socks were soaked right through. Every inch of him was soaked right through. Right to the bone.

He started pulling off his socks when Hiro murmured, “Wait here,” and went to his drying rack to fetch a just-dried towel, a pair of shorts, and an old shirt. He handed them to Takahiro, who accepted them wordlessly. “You should dry off and change, or you might catch a cold.” God, did he sound like his big brother right now. He pointed to his bathroom. “I’ve got a line over the bath – you can hang your clothes up in there. There’s a heater there too. Um, have a shower if you want.”

Takahiro gave a single nod before standing up again, rubbing the towel across his damp face. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

Hiro flashed him a nervous smile, and then he left Takahiro to it, turning back into the living room area. The air-con was already running, but he turned it up a few more degrees, blasting himself with too-warm air. Too-warm for him maybe, but Takahiro would need it once he returned. The skin on his face had looked so hard and white and cold; it had looked like it would break the second it touched hot water.

He shook the tremor from his hands and took some quick breaths and tried to distract himself. He put on the TV, he went to the pantry and rummaged around for any food snacks he could find, dumping them into bowls and placing them on the coffee table. He put the kettle on and prepared some green tea for the two of them, jerking as he remembered the last time he’d had tea in Takahiro’s presence.

The bathroom door opened. Takahiro wandered out in Hiro’s clothes, the towel still around his shoulders. The shirt was a little big on Takahiro’s thin frame, but he seemed to like it. “I think I actually remember you wearing this shirt,” he said, smiling distantly as he pulled it away from his body and looked down at it. It was just a red shirt with a faded ninja on it, but it was fairly distinctive, Hiro supposed.

“It’s an old shirt,” he said offhand, walking around to set two mugs of tea on the coffee table. He ran his palms over the thighs of his jeans, anxious and distracted, always thinking what next. “Uh… there’s some food there,” he gestured the disorganised range of snacks, “sorry it’s not… healthy, but um, help yourself… Is it warm enough in here?” he queried, picking up the air-con remote even though Takahiro nodded. “You sure? O-K…” He set it back down again. He hadn’t felt this tense in a while. “I-Is there anything I can get you or… anything?”

Takahiro thought about it. “Can I have a blanket?”

Hiro blinked. Had he heard that right? “A blanket? Uh… OK.” He walked past him, murmuring, “Just a sec,” and dug through his linen cupboard. He yanked out a musty blanket he only brought out in winter from the very back. He shook it out and handed it over to Takahiro, apologising, “Sorry it smells like… cupboard,” but Takahiro didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped himself up in it and settled down onto Hiro’s couch.

“Anything else,” Hiro asked the boy, and it scared him how much he meant it. Guilt was cruel and relentless that way. It was turning him into a whole new kind of puppet.

“No,” Takahiro said, leaning forward to pick up his tea and sip at it. At least he looked content. He wasn’t shivering anymore. “Thanks.”

“No problem…”

Hiro took a seat beside him. He opened up a large bag of flavoured chips and slowly ate them one by one, not at all hungry, too full of nausea, as they both watched whatever was on TV in silence. Some old remastered Disney film from the previous century. It looked like Pinocchio. Hiro wasn’t absolutely sure that it was until he heard the on-screen character break into a rendition of I’ve Got No Strings, and then Hiro was inhaling sharply and changing the channel.

No, fuck that. He needed to do something else entirely.

“Wanna play something?” he asked Takahiro without looking at him, remotely turning on one of his consoles and bringing up a screen full of game icons.

What he heard next froze him in place.

“I’ve got no strings, to hold me down,” Takahiro sang, quiet and breathless, “or make me fret, or make me frown. I had strings but now I’m free. There are no strings on meee.”

“I hate that song, please don’t sing it,” Hiro said quickly before the boy could remember the next verse. He picked up a controller and he was sure that his hands were shaking, but he kept his eyes firmly on the screen and breathed and told himself that it was fine, it was OK, it was alright. Takahiro was just a kid and he didn’t know any better. He asked again, “Wanna play a game?”

“Sorry, Hiro.”

Hiro breathed. “S’OK, d’ya wanna play a game?”

“Uh… Sure.”

“Which one?”

“Ummm…”

Hiro sighed in the back of his throat, mouth closed. He needed Takahiro to just pick a game already; he didn’t care which one. The abrupt silence that had filled the room was unbearable, so Hiro tried to encourage a quicker response by flicking through the games, rattling off some of the best and the worst ones, while Takahiro just stared, nodding occasionally. The kid tried to look like he was too spoilt for choice, but it was probably just that he didn’t know what most of the titles were.

Finally Takahiro said, “You choose one.”

Hiro picked something easy and therapeutic, something that had been around since Takahiro was still a kid. The screen went black and then a jerky cut scene with no context whatsoever began to play.

“You used to play a lot of games,” Hiro said, watching awkward, pixelated people move across the screen. “When you were younger, I mean,” he added, feeling the pinch of discomfort in his stomach.

“Yeah,” Takahiro agreed. “I played a lot of those… cute monster games online. I had a lot of monster pets. They’re probably all dead now though.”

“They don’t die,” Hiro informed him. “They just starve. Eternally.”

The tense atmosphere diffused a little then as Takahiro chuckled, and Hiro couldn’t help but feel thankful. Apparently Takahiro found the eternal suffering of his childhood virtual pets funny, and for some reason it made Hiro smile too. He thought about teasingly calling him the real monster, but he just managed to bite it back. His body was already doing its best to flatten the waves of anxiety this entire situation was causing to roll through him. Why would he make it worse.

Takahiro was bad at the game Hiro had picked out, even though it was supposed to be easy. The boy played like he’d never touched a controller in all his life, and even with thorough instruction from tutorials his character was still moved strangely and with slow reflexes.

“I’m really bad at this,” Takahiro mumbled as he died for the umpteenth time in a row, setting down his controller in defeat. “Sorry.”

“It’s OK, we can play something different.” Hiro switched to something even a preschool kid would have trouble fucking up. Takahiro seemed infinitely better at it, and his enthusiasm picked up a little. But it didn’t do much for Hiro. “So you don’t play games anymore?”

Takahiro shook his head. “Not really. Not since I was a little kid.”

“Your dad doesn’t let you play games?”

“No – dad’s big on games. Mostly boring educational ones. But he still let me play anything I wanted. I just didn’t want to anymore.”

“Why?” Hiro was actually doing worse than Takahiro on this game now. Making something so easy to win also made it so easy to lose against; he kept getting distracted, missing cues. “You loved games.”

“I lost interest, I guess. I lost interest in a lot of things.” Hiro felt him shrug nonchalantly. “Dad says my personality changed a lot around that age.”

Hiro didn’t want to know. “What age was that?”

“I dunno. Before I was ten?”

Hiro didn’t want to think about it. “Your tea’s getting cold,” he reminded Takahiro gently as he reached for his own. “Do you want to do something else?”

“Play another game?”

“No, I mean– well, we can play another if you want, but I meant we could do something other than play games if you don’t like them anymore.” Hiro had no idea exactly what would replace video games, other than PC games, but he’d think of something if he had to.

“No, this is OK. I like this game.”

“OK.” Hiro glanced down at the coffee table full of food. He couldn’t eat anymore; he felt like his anxiety had walled off his stomach entirely. “There’s food, if you want it.”

“I know.”

“OK.”

It felt tense. Hiro didn’t know if Takahiro was feeling it too, but it definitelyfelt tense on his own end. Neither of them were speaking anymore. Hiro considered trash-talking his opponent, proclaiming his victory in his usual obnoxious way that he did, but he wasn’t feeling it right now – of course he wasn’t feeling it. Hiro didn’t even want to play this game. But he was just going to keep playing it until Takahiro left because what else could he do?

Eventually it became clear that Takahiro didn’t want to play either. He’d been terrific to start with, but now he was just terrible. He had the reflexes of roadkill. He wasn’t trying anymore; he hit buttons at random, and he hit them sparsely.

A few minutes later, Takahiro had stopped pushing buttons altogether. The controller lowered in his hands. It would’ve been rude to wipe the floor with an unmoving character, so Hiro was forced to stop pushing buttons too.

Hiro kept his gaze glued to the screen unwaveringly. He thought he knew what was coming, and he was scared stiff.

“Hiro,” the boy said, and his voice sounded so teary and timid that it sent a stake right through Hiro’s chest. The more Takahiro spoke, the more it shoved right in. “Can I say something?”

Hiro opened his mouth to say ‘sure’ but no sound came out. His character was running round and round in circles, jumping occasionally, doing nothing to keep his intense interest for as long as it did. Takahiro wasn’t even looking at the screen anymore; Hiro could feel the boys’ eyes on him now. He didn’t know what kind of expression Takahiro was making, but… if his voice was anything to go by, Hiro didn’t want to see it.

“I think… something really did happen to me.”

Hiro bit down and pulled his bottom lip into his mouth to hide its trembling. He was too much of a coward to look at him. He barely even managed a nod to acknowledge he’d spoken.

“Do you think I should…? I dunno. Tell someone?”

The fear was potent. It took hold of him fast, disarming his guilt and regret and morality– he remembered himself. Or perhaps he forgot himself. He wasn’t sure which yet.

“No,” he choked out, trying to pass off his emotions for a coughing fit. He shakily had the dregs of his lukewarm tea. “No, um… Tell me, I mean. You can tell me.”

“You sure?”

Hiro nodded, but it felt like the wrong gesture. “Yep. Tell me, and… Tell me what– what exactly do you think happened?”

“I dunno,” Takahiro said gloomily. The blanket fell from his shoulders as he leaned far forward, over the controller sitting useless in his lap. He was holding his head, or perhaps holding his face. “I just feel… really shitty. All of the time. Ever since your seminar and meeting Tadashi and what you said at the library and… I remember some things about back then, but like… I can never remember enough. Like, something in my head is just blocking me whenever I get too close.”

Hiro knew exactly what he was talking about. He felt the exact same way.

Takahiro suddenly resurfaced and Hiro actually jumped. “I asked my dad about Cass last night, but… he just sent me to my room. He doesn’t like to talk about her. Or you. I think he’d kill me if he found out I was over here.”

“Then why are you,” Hiro cried before he could stop himself. He forced himself to remain calm. “Why are you over here?”

Hiro couldn’t spy on him out the corner of his eye anymore. Takahiro was leaning right back, flat against the couch. “I guess,” he said, slow and thoughtful, “I just wanted to see you. You’re like, the only person I trust.”

The words physically pained Hiro to hear. His head instinctively wanted to shake side to side but he forced it to hold still. He couldn’t even see the game anymore; tears were stinging in his eyes.

God, he couldn’t even bear to say the words aloud. “You trust me?”

“Well, yeah. You were my friend.”

Friend…

“When I was young, you were there for me.”

“For like a week,” Hiro cried.

“Doesn’t matter,” Takahiro said, and Hiro wondered if he could hear a smile in his voice now. “I remember a bit more about you. You played with me when everyone else was too busy. You took me out. You gave me your old room and all of your cool stuff. You… You even gave me an email address so I could contact you if anything went wrong. You worried about me when I was staying with Cass alone, when everyone else just… let it happen. Like it wasn’t a big deal. I dunno, I just… Sounds like you really cared about me.”

It was too much – it was too fucking much. Hiro wiped a hand across his face and– fuck, he was crying. He was just a couple of breaths away from sobbing too; he could feel them swelling in the back of his throat. Play the game, he told himself, but there wasn’t even anything to play. Play the game, play the game, play the game, play the game, play the game…

“I might, um… check on my uniform. Where was the bathroom again?”

Hiro wordlessly pointed to a door down the hall. Takahiro stood up, leaving the blanket behind, and silently padded over to the bathroom. As soon as the door shut, Hiro threw aside the controller, grabbed the nearest pillow, and criedinto it. He pressed that pillow so hard into his face that he could’ve suffocated himself with it. Be fast, he told himself, You’ve got less than a minute before that kid comes out again and you can’t let him see you like this, you just CAN’T, so get it out of your system now, while you can, and then just go back to your game.

Hiro counted the seconds in his head, like he’d been taught. It was soothing enough. The immediate fear and wretchedness dissipated, but the self-hatred and guilt still lingered like a rot in his core. It was uncomfortable, but it didn’t impede his ability to calm down. Within a minute, he’d already put the pillow back where he’d found it and had dried his eyes of all tears. It would’ve been impressive, if not for the fact that everything about it was awful. He ended up eating more food that made him want to throw up the second it touched his lips. He really deserved it.

A knocking came from down the hall then and Hiro froze. He stood up hesitantly and hovered by the bathroom door, wondering if that had been Takahiro, but then the noise came again from the front door, louder and more impatient this time. Hiro had a small, unenthusiastic glimpse through the peephole, and then he was throwing the door wide open, almost slamming it into the wall. “Tadashi,” he cried, surprised more than anything. “What are you doing here?”

Tadashi chuckled and shook his head like his younger brother was just so funny. “Oh, OK – so you really weren’t getting any of my calls. And here I thought you were just ignoring me.”

“Ignoring you, what…?”

“You should check your phone more often, genius. It’s Friday.” Tadashi shot him a meaningful look that meant absolutely nothing to Hiro. He held up the date on his phone to prove it really was Friday, but Hiro pushed it aside irritably. “Remember? The other week, I said I’d come over Friday after work? We’d get dinner?”

“Oh,” was all Hiro could manage after a long silence, and Tadashi’s face fell.

“Bad time?” he asked, attempting to figure out the problem since Hiro wasn’t very forthcoming. “You already had dinner? You’re feeling sick? You got a lot of work to do?”

It didn’t even matter how many guesses Tadashi had; he could’ve stood there all night trying to understand why his younger brother was so petrified, and he still wouldn’t even scrape close to the truth. The look that entered Tadashi’s face as soon as the bathroom door opened and Takahiro stepped out clearly indicated that.

The initial surprise of his older brother’s unexpected visit had given way to pure fear now, as he heard Takahiro say, “Hi Tadashi,” from behind him. “What are you doing here?”

It took a few seconds for Tadashi to respond to it. Fear got the better of Hiro, and he tried to force the door closed on his brother, but Tadashi’s hand shot out and kept it open. Tadashi smiled at the boy widely. “Taka-kun,” he said, sounding so pleasantly surprised, but Hiro could hear an edge to his brother’s voice that made his breath hitch. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

Hiro winced as Tadashi levelled him with a hard, unamused gaze. “Hiro. A word.”

Hiro protested with unintelligible cries, but he didn’t have the strength he needed to stop himself from being hauled back inside and thrown into his bedroom. He fell face-first onto his springy bed, hearing Tadashi excuse them both from Takahiro’s presence, and then the door closed firmly behind him. He wasn’t quick enough to face his brother; Tadashi grabbed his arms and flipped Hiro over, leaning into face incensed.

“What the fuck, Hiro,” Tadashi hissed, his words hushed. “Why am I always telling you to stay away from him? You told me yourself– you promised me you weren’t seeing this boy anymore, and now he–! What is he even doing here?”

“None of your business,” Hiro growled back, defensive as ever, but that had been the wrong answer.

Tadashi gave him a dark look. It was one of those I’m-not-playing-around looks he rarely used. “Seriously. What is he doing here.”

Tadashi’s grip on him tightened and Hiro caved. “We’re just hanging out,” he cried, practically whining. “We’re just playing games, OK? He wanted to come over. You are sooverreacting.”

“Hiro,” Tadashi moaned, pinching at the bridge of his nose in frustration. He pulled back a little, just enough to let Hiro sit up and scoot to the head of his bed. “Hiro, you can’t do this, not after… Ugh.” Tadashi brought his hand away and he looked less angry now and more… distressed. Incredulous. “He’s seventeen,” he exclaimed quietly.

Hiro stared back at his brother curiously, having absolutely no idea what that meant. And then he did, and his eyes just bugged.

“What?” he yelled, and Tadashi made frantic shooshing motions at him, but they didn’t register; Hiro was too far gone. He couldn’t believe his brother right now. “Tadashi, I’m not. I-I wouldn’t. How could you even think…?”

“Lower your voice,” Tadashi ordered. “Well then why is he wearing your clothes.”

Words to express Hiro’s incredulity alluded him for a few moments, and he could only make wild gestures at his brother. “Because it’s raining?” he cried, throwing up his arms. “Because he arrived here fucking drenched–“

“Lower.”

“–and I thought maybe– just maybe I should be a good host and not let him sit around in wet clothes and catch a cold and make my furniture damp?”

Tadashi’s confused anger seemed to subside a little. He looked away with an expression that Hiro sure as all hell hoped was shame.

Hiro scowled, “You sure fucking jumped to conclusions, didn’t you.”

“Well what was I supposed to think?” Tadashi cried, rounding on him once again. “You still lied to me – you still told me that you weren’t ever going to see him again. I shouldn’t have to remind you why it’s best that you don’t ever see him again.”

The fear kicked in all over again, twofold, tenfold – the fear was so mountainous that it terrified even Hiro. He wondered if he might’ve been having a heart attack. It was like all of the unnecessary anxiety he’d saved himself from the last week or so was coming back to hit him at full force. He couldn’t break out of it. Hiding in his own home wasn’t enough; he wanted to crawl under his bed and never come out again. The monster under the bed.

Whatever was happening to Hiro internally must’ve had no obvious bodily manifestations, because Tadashi just shook his head and waved his hands like he was through with him. “I’m taking Takahiro back home,” he muttered, opening up the door again, and then he was calling out, “Taka-kun, I’m leaving now. Would you like a ride home?”

There was no answer from the boy. Or perhaps there was and Hiro just couldn’t hear it for his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

“Taka-kun.” Tadashi’s tone was insistent this time. What had been framed as an offer before was now an order. “It’s almost seven. I think your dad will be wondering where you are. OK? Get your uniform.”

It had touched more than a few nerves, it had pressed more than a few buttons – what his older brother had said. Hiro took a breath and it felt like the first one he’d had in over a minute. He was calming down – miraculously, impossibly – and he fell back onto his pillow and stared up at the ceiling. He hated this position. It was associated with too many bad memories, but he wouldn’t move, he wouldn’t shut his eyes. It was like he was punishing himself for… He didn’t know.

For everything.

What really broke his heart was when Takahiro still stopped by his doorway, against Tadashi’s incessant pushing, to say goodbye to him.

Yeah. Hiro had sure felt that.