Chapter 23
It wasn’t a month after the court case that Hiro overheard some of his colleagues complaining that the Lucky Cat café had closed down. He stopped by it that very afternoon to see if the rumours were true, and apparently they were. The café – the entire house was undergoing drastic renovation. There was a little garage sale on the underside, and Hiro made a beeline for it, his heart racing at the prospect of accruing all of the technology he and his brother had been forced to abandon when they’d left her place. He peered in, sorting through boxes and shelves and tables of things, but most of it was just… junk. It was broken parts, it was dead tools, it was old books and clothes and items too worthless to be kept. A box of Hiro’s assorted figurines and robots sat in one corner and he pawed through them sadly, remembering the good parts of his childhood. Before all that mess.
He asked one of the people running the sale if they knew what’d happened to the lady who used to own the place, and he was told that she’d left the city. Taken her business elsewhere. Left a lot of junk behind, hence the clear-out sale. “Why,” they asked, “did you know her?”
Hiro told them no. Said that he was looking forward to the new sashimi restaurant that was replacing the Lucky Cat café. He’d never really liked the cakes there anyway.
As Hiro walked away, carrying a box of his old toys, he felt a wave of calm wash over him. He felt… at peace. Like there was no reason to feel afraid anymore. Like he couldn’t be hurt anymore. Liberated. Empowered. In control.
Later that day, he resolved to call Morgan and ask for the opportunity to apologise to him. To explain why he’d been dumped so suddenly and without any real explanation. To see if they could at the very least be friends again.
He was starting to pull himself back together. He was getting his life back. He was moving on.
-------
One morning at work, he received an email from an address he hadn’t seen in over six months. An address he’d never expected to see in his inbox ever again. An email that… still appeared at the top of his inbox, even though he’d received two others more recently.
He didn’t want to draw the anguish out unnecessarily. Like ripping off a plaster, he opened it without hesitation. He took the time he needed to compose himself and then he was reading.
Not even a greeting. He got straight to the point.
It’s Takahiro
Meet me outside the university you used to do your seminars in at 3pm
Don’t be late
Hiro felt his stomach muscles clench. He couldn’t parse from that whether Takahiro was mad, or… just direct? He didn’t know how to feel about it. He couldn’t anticipate how he should be approaching Takahiro – with his head hung low in shame, or…
It was coming back again. That guilt that ate into him and every part of him until there was nothing left. The unease, the uncertainty… It was all coming back. It was poisoning him, making him sick… But he had to know.
I’ll be there, Hiro wrote back.
-------
He wasn’t late. In fact, he was early. He took the afternoon off from work and was outside the old arts university by a quarter to three. He was seated on an old bench that was covered with more graffiti than paint, and he was bouncing one of his legs up and down, and then the other when the first got sore. He peered over his shoulder each time a new flock of students came out. They weren’t too different to the students at SFIT. They were lively and more colourful, better dressed, and put more of an effort into their appearance, but they weren’t all that dissimilar to the nerds he’d studied with at the Institute.
Hiro didn’t know what to expect. A part of him wished that Takahiro would never show up. That the email had just been a stupid prank just to mess with him. But Takahiro wasn’t like that. What was more likely was that Takahiro would appear and… connect his fist to Hiro’s jaw before he even said hello. Yell at him and humiliate him in front of the afternoon arts students. Tell him that he’d talked to a qualified therapist and recovered his memories and was going to put him away for life. Hiro didn’t know.
He didn’t want to know.
He checked the time on his phone and rocked with anxiety. He still had nine minutes for Takahiro to show. It wasn’t too late to just… leave. Was it? Could he even do that without first knowing what Takahiro wanted with him? Was he still that big of a coward?
He forced himself to stay. It wasn’t easy. The urge to just get up and go home pulsed through him several times in so many minutes, but he clung to the bench and tried to pretend that he was nailed to it, chained up to it. Like he couldn’t leave, even if he’d wanted to. And he really wanted to.
He checked the time again. Two minutes.
He checked it again. Still two minutes.
Again. One minute.
Again. One minute.
Again. One minute.
Again. Just gone three o’clock.
He peered up from his phone, tentatively slipping it back into his pocket. He glanced around. There were a lot of students roaming the campus lawns now. A lot of them were of Asian descent, gangly and dispassionate. A lot of them looked like Takahiro. But only one of them came to stand before him.
Hiro stared up at him and swallowed. He looked… well. He wasn’t in his uniform anymore. He was in light jeans and a grey jumper with a white collar popping through. He was holding what looked like a binder by his side. In his other hand, he was absently clicking a biro. Click-click-click. He looked like he’d just come from a lecture.
His stare was intense. And yet as deadpan as ever. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Hiro responded slowly.
Takahiro took a seat, on the other end of the bench. He set his binder between them. He didn’t look at Hiro, so Hiro didn’t look at him. They just stared ahead of themselves, not talking, looking more like total strangers than… whatever it was they were. Hiro could already feel the uncertain panic begin to subside, only to be replaced by a whole new kind of panic.
“You made it,” Takahiro said redundantly after a while, and Hiro nodded. “I didn’t pull you out of something important or anything…”
“I left work early.” Hiro shrugged. He could always make up the hours some other time. “I figured… whatever you wanted to see me about was more important.”
Another short silence. More and more students passed through and dispersed. And then the silence became loud and stifling.
“I heard you took your aunt to court.”
Hiro nodded. “I did.”
“And you lost.”
Hiro smiled pained. He nodded. “I did.”
“I’m sorry,” Takahiro said, and Hiro felt a little wave of emotion crash over him. Takahiro was… sorry? “That must’ve been rough.”
“It’s OK. I… tried, and that’s the main thing.”
“…I went to see her,” Takahiro said, and it stunned Hiro enough that he actually looked over at him. The boy was just staring at his badly-laced shoes. “It was months ago now, before I even started classes here but… I don’t know. I was just in town and I walked into her café one day and I saw her and… nothing jogged. And I thought maybe… I mean, wouldn’t it be funny if neither of you abused me?” He turned a small smile onto Hiro before looking away again. “Like… you both spent so much time accusing each other of being abusive that you just made me think something bad happened, when really nothing did?”
Hiro couldn’t see anything funny about that. “It’s possible,” he murmured.
Takahiro faced him then. He turned so that one of his legs was on the bench. But his head was down and his voice was quiet as he said, “You’re the only one who apologised, who really talked about it… Cass denied everything. She said nothing could’ve happened but… I don’t know, maybe she’s right and she’s telling the truth. But it still felt… kinda weird. Like, even if she had just admitted that the thought crossed her mind, or that it had been a real possibility, and she was really regretful, like… that could’ve been OK?”
Hiro met his gaze. “She lied in court. She denied ever abusing me.” The implication was there. Maybe she lied about abusing you too. “I’m guessing you calling in on her is the reason why she decided to leave a few months ago.”
“She’s gone?” Takahiro exclaimed and Hiro gave a grim nod. “That… sure makes it seem like she’s guilty of something.”
Hiro flashed him a humourless smile. They’d never know now.
“I…” Takahiro was so quiet. But by now, so was everyone else. “I appreciate that you… tried to set things right. You could’ve real easily just kept lying to me or walked away but… you didn’t.”
Hiro shrugged. “I’ve been a victim before. I know what it’s like to…” Hiro took a deep breath and sighed it out. He just wasn’t going to finish that sentence. “I still saw so much of my younger self in you, I guess. I wasn’t going to let the same things happen to you. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you that your suffering wasn’t real.”
Another short silence.
“…I went to a therapist, like Tadashi said to,” Takahiro finally said. “The lady was real nice. She tried to help me like, recover any memories I might’ve repressed? But it’s hard, right, because young kids don’t exactly have the best brains yet for retaining memories. And my therapist couldn’t uh… like, lead me, or there’s a risk she implants false memories or something. But after a while we couldn’t really get anything reliable, so… It’s still really hard to say whether anything might’ve happened or not.”
Hiro gave a faint nod. Almost half a year later and still nothing, huh.
“But, I went to another therapist who basically told me that it didn’t really matter what may or may not have happened, and that I should really just be focusing on the present and the future. I got a bit um… depressed, I think they said. So they gave me stuff to do. Stuff to think about. Just… stuff that made me feel a lot better about myself. They said that was important. And, I got a lot better.”
Hiro smiled. “I’m happy for you, Taka-kun,” he murmured. I’m happy that you’re doing OK now.
“Um…” Takahiro shifted a little in his seat. He rubbed at the back of his head. “I... still wanna be friends.”
That really stumped Hiro. Not twenty minutes ago he’d been anticipating this kid practically trying to beat the shit out of him for what he did, and here the boy was, trying to express an interest in being friends again.
Takahiro cocked his head and smiled a little. “D… Did you hear me?”
“Friends?” Hiro repeated, feeling light-headed. “Really?”
Takahiro laughed. “Yeah. I… really liked hanging out with you. And, I um, forgive you – for all that stuff that you did. That silencing stuff. It took you a while to own up to it but… you did in the end, right? Tadashi told me about it… about how you were really upset with yourself. And how you were scared at first, but then you started to put my needs before yours. How you wanted to be a good person, even though you kind of already are, at least compared to Cass. And…” Takahiro shrugged. “You kinda went through a lot yourself. Like, a lot a lot.”
Hiro laughed. A lot a lot was right. He inhaled but it sounded a lot more like a sob than it did an intake of breath. “Thanks, Taka-kun,” he said. God, his voice was all wobbly too. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes and– yep. Unwelcome moisture. “Thanks a lot.”
“You can call me Taka,” the boy offered. “You don’t have to call me Taka-kun. I’m not gonna call you Hiro-san.”
Hiro couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying now; they seemed to unnaturally blend together. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d cried out of relief and happiness; it felt so strange. “Sure,” he said, and it came out as nothing more than a squeak.
They fell into what would’ve been a nice and companionate silence… if it weren’t for Hiro’s hideous noises.
He could just hear the distress in Takahiro’s voice, could feel his hand hovering nervously by his trembling shoulder. “Arrre you OK?”
“Sorry,” Hiro gasped, running a hand over his disgusting face, trying to straighten himself out. He breathed in and out slowly to calm down. “Don’t freak out, OK, I-I’m fine, I’m… just… really happy,” he laughed, “because I… I never got this with Cass. I never had any closure, you know. She never apologised to me, she never owned up to what she did, and… I never forgave her. And now she’s gone and it’s great, but… now I’ll never be able to…” He shook his head. His was rendered wordless for a few seconds before he drew a deep breath. “But I’m so relieved that we got this, Taka. I’m so happy you were able to forgive me… I appreciate it. It means a lot to me.”
It means the world to me.
“No, I get it. It’s OK.” Takahiro touched his hand to Hiro’s shoulder. He patted it rhythmically, like he had no idea what he was doing, but it was still sweet nonetheless. “I’m sorry your aunt turned out to be such a bitch.”
“Haahh,” Hiro laughed. “Y-Yeah…” He sniffed. He turned a smile onto Takahiro and the boy returned it warmly. “Me too.”
They stayed like that for a while. Hiro emitted soft whimpers and sobs and sniffs, while Takahiro patted him awkwardly until Hiro had managed to settle back down into a warm, rosy and contented haze. He closed his eyes and just breathed and raised his head to the sun. He felt good. Cleansed. Like… everything was going to be OK from now on.
No sooner than Hiro had quietened down, Takahiro picked up his binder and shuffled over to Hiro’s side. “OK so,” the boy murmured, pulling out a sheet that Hiro opened his eyes to see was filled with equations and formulae. “I need some help with this stats assignment…”
Hiro stilled for a moment. And then he began to laugh, hard and obscene.
“What?” Takahiro frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“Is this the real reason you wanted to be friends again,” Hiro cried, pointing to the boy’s assignment, and Takahiro gave him a small shove. “So that I can help you with your statistics homework?”
“It’s hard at university level, OK? And friends help each other out, right?”
In that moment, Hiro didn’t even care. He was finally at peace.