Say Something

Hiro stared at his bedroom door. It was wide open. Aunt Cass wasn’t back yet.

He wondered if it wasn’t too late to just up and leave. He could’ve gone anywhere else that wasn’t alone in a room, with her. He could’ve gone downstairs and had a proper sit-down breakfast, amongst the smiling faces of hungry late morning customers. He could’ve gone out to watch a real movie, in the cinema, like an old person did. He could’ve visited his brother at SFIT for lunch. He could’ve retreated into the basement and locked the door. He could’ve done literally anything but just sit there on his bed, haplessly, waiting to just let everything that was about to happen to him happen.

He trembled as he finally found the strength just to stand. It was hard to walk. It was hard to do anything, but still he forced himself to approach the door. Maybe if he just closed it, maybe things would be different. Maybe that would say all that he needed to. He put out a hand and held the edge of the door, drawing it back slowly for a good swing…

But it was already too late. Aunt Cass was already back at the door, smiling innocuously, holding up what looked like an old DVD with a red and white cover. She was caught off guard, seeing him so close to the door, and she asked him concernedly, “what are you doing up? You didn’t have to get up.”

Hiro felt himself deflate with resignation. He didn’t know what he was doing up. “Just…” He turned to his desk and picked up something from his prized piles of junk. “Getting a thing…”

She nodded, her gaze never leaving his as she closed the door behind her. She looked so glowingly happy. “Just you and me,” she said and Hiro flashed a small smile without thinking too carefully about those words. She tapped the DVD she was holding. “This,” she said, passing it over to Hiro, who held it and stared at it but didn’t comprehend it, “this was one of my favourite films back when I was… well, younger.” She laughed. “Should we watch it on your laptop? Then you could just stay in bed.”

Hiro turned to look at his bed. The sheets were askew, he couldn’t remember the last time anything had been washed, and it was a small bed – even for a single. “Sure,” he said, not sounding sure.

“Great.” Aunt Cass moved them both back to the bed, holding up the covers for Hiro to crawl under. He had to bunch right up to the edge just to let her slide in beside him.

She talked a little about the film but Hiro wasn’t listening. Everything about this situation felt strange. It was as if time was slowing down and passing too quickly at the same time, and he was just time’s hopeless, passive passenger. She seemed to be doing everything for him; she popped out a game disc he’d had in his laptop for a few weeks now and put the mysterious DVD in. She must’ve opened up the right video player and everything because the next thing he knew her arm was wrapped around his waist and he was watching opening credits fade in and out on the screen.

He tried to watch it. Honestly, he did. If the last movie was anything to go by, then he knew he’d be there for a long time. He tried to understand the characters, to appreciate the foreign environments and the long scenic shots. It played like any other artsy and dramatic film he’d ever seen. Different faces, same problems.

“Hiro,” Aunt Cass murmured, and when Hiro turned his head towards her, she was right there. She held up the plate she’d brought in. “The cookies will be getting cold.”

The corners of his mouth turned up in what must’ve been a smile. He picked a cookie, raised it slowly to his mouth, and took a tiny hesitant bite out of it. Before he’d even chewed and swallowed it she had asked him if it was good. “Yeah,” he said. “These are great.”

It was something to do. He ate cookies as he watched this weird film with its attractive cast and their too-much-information dialogue. It was clearly a film for adults, so he knew he shouldn’t have been so surprised when a sex scene occurred. But this one was different to all the others he’d seen. For one thing, it didn’t tastefully fade to black and then to the next morning, no.

This one played out every carnal, gratuitous little detail.

And it went on for about as long as a real unsimulated sex scene did, too. And it definitely wasn’t simulated.

Hiro had never felt so awkward in his entire life. It was the sounds they made – the moans and whimpers, and the breathlessness. He’d stopped looking at the screen a long time ago, with its close-ups and slow pans, but he couldn’t stop listening to it.

“Hiro,” Aunt Cass whispered, and she sounded a little breathless herself. “You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

It was only his stubborn refusal to let anyone think that he was a little kid who didn’t know anything that made him answer. “Of course.”

“Do you like it?”

Hiro peeked at the screen. The man had his face buried in what looked like the women’s groin, her legs spread, and his tongue working in a way that made that lady whine. He didn’t know what was going on, only that it must’ve felt so good. He didn’t want to, he really didn’t want to, but he found himself getting more and more aroused the longer the footage dragged on.

Aunt Cass started to thumb at his neck and it only made everything feel a lot worse. “Hiro,” she breathed, in his ear, and he felt a strange tingle go down his spine, spiking him right down his centre and nailing him to the bed. He couldn’t move. It felt like sorcery, what she was doing to him. “Have you ever touched a woman before?”

Hiro didn’t remembered giving her any kind of interested response, but next thing he knew his hand was in her underwear, her pants dropped to the floor. The sex scene had finished, but Aunt Cass wasn’t.

Hiro tried to keep watching the film. He tried, but nothing was getting through beyond what was happening to him right now. It was all just moving splodges of colour and gibberish. But what else could he do? He just sat there, letting her move his hand – his dead, lifeless hand – in the warm and slippery-wet place in between her legs. Just staring at the screen, trying not to cry. Only little kids cried.

And when she’d finished, she told him that it was his turn.

------

Hiro had been lying on his bed, just gazing at the ceiling when Tadashi finally came through their bedroom door later that day. He was noisy. He made loud exclamations of exhaustion as he tossed aside his bag, yanking off one Converse after another. Even when he’d spent practically every waking minute working on his final project, he still seemed so energetic and so full of life.

Hiro had barely left his bed all day and he felt like he’d been hit by a bus.

“Hey, Hiro,” Tadashi cried when he wasn’t immediately acknowledged – not as a greeting but as a prelude to ‘I’ve got something good to tell you’. Well, Hiro sincerely doubted that he had any good news for him. Lately he’d started to doubt whether there was any good left in the world. “Guess who got an A on their ridiculously long and overrated report!”

“Mary, Queen of Scots.”

Tadashi gave a baffled laugh. “What? No, you knucklehead – I did! I got an A! And this is the same stupid report I had been working on two hours before it was due –”

Hiro closed his eyes and tried hard to tune him out. But it was hard to focus. All Hiro could hear was his brother taunting him about being an excellent student in the city’s most excellent place to be, and he was again reminded of how much of a little kid he still was. He thudded his fists on his bed, pulled himself up and shouted across the room, “just shut up already!”

Tadashi did shut up. He stared at Hiro like he had no idea what had gotten into him. “What…?”

“Just stop talking about it,” Hiro cried, turning his back to his brother. He’d spent all goddamn day wanting him back home, and now that he was, Hiro just wanted him to get the hell out.

“Hiro, what’s wrong with you?” Hiro felt Tadashi’s weight on the edge of his bed. “You’ve been so moody lately… Is it just puberty or-?”

Hiro turned and smacked Tadashi faster than his brother had time to anticipate it. He staggered back more out of shock than any actual pain. When Tadashi recovered and looked at his younger brother again, there was no sympathy left in his eyes. “What the hell was that for?”

“Just go back to your stuck-up, elite institute of technology already! It’s where you’d rather be! Go – and you and all your friends can sit around congratulating each other on just how amazing you all are.”

Tadashi paused for a second before blowing up at him, and that condescending look of understanding crossed his features. Hiro felt like strangling him. “Look, I already talked to the top professors at the institute. I tried to get you in – I really did, Hiro. But they just won’t. But they said maybe next year we can-“

“Next year,” Hiro mumbled angrily. “I want to get out now.”

“Get out?” Tadashi looked so lost. “What do you mean?” Hiro tried to ignore him and open up a game on his hand-held console to aggressively battle some pixels, but it didn’t stop Tadashi from trying to figure out what he was so upset over. “…Yeah, you know, maybe you should get out more, Hiro. I mean – just look at you. You’re starting to get a bit, well… tubby.”

Hiro flashed the darkest look he could muster at his older brother. He wanted to effectively say die in a hole without actually having to say it.

“Maybe you’re feeling really pent-up, sitting in this house by yourself all day? Maybe it’s time you got out there and found yourself a girlfriend.”

Hiro threw aside his console, grabbed his pillow and started pounding Tadashi with it. He didn’t let up; he only stopped when Tadashi caught and held his hands. His older brother looked so confused and worried and frustrated. “Just tell me what’s wrong with you!”

“I want to leave,” Hiro cried, and he could feel himself nearing the brink of tears. He tried to swallow them back. “I want to actually see you every day – I want to get a place that isn’t above a fucking bakery!”

“Don’t swear,” Tadashi warned. “But, Hiro… we can’t leave. I mean, what the hell would we even do? You’re too young to get a job, so I’d have to drop out of SFIT to pay our living costs. Why would you ever want to leave? This place is amazing! It’s right in the centre of town, there’s always food, we don’t pay rent, and we live with this… this saint of a woman, who works so hard to make ends meet, to support you and me and our expensive hobbies.”

Now Hiro definitely wanted to cry. But Tadashi was right there, hand on his shoulder, telling him again and again how great everything was for them right now. “You probably don’t remember, because you were still so young, but Aunt Cass was the only one who volunteered to take us in. No one else really wanted to. And she didn’t have to either – she really didn’t have to. We are… forever in her debt. She really turned our lives around after mum and dad died. And I checked with her that she actually loves having us around. So, Hiro, we’re not going anywhere.”

We’re not going anywhere. That seemed to say it all.

“You know, you ought to be kinder to her. I don’t think you realise, or fully appreciate all the great things that she’s done for us. Maybe you should offer to help out around the bakery more. Maybe she’ll even give you a bit of money for it, too – because she’s just that nice.”

Hiro didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He picked up his hand-held and asked, “want to play a few rounds?”

Tadashi seemed confused by the sudden subject change, but then he sighed and rubbed his eyes and made other tired gestures. “Sorry, bud, but I’ve got a really early start tomorrow. I’ve gotta get all the rest that I can.”

“You never play games with me anymore,” Hiro accused softly.

“Hey. I know I’ve been so busy with this final project, but it’s only for another week or so, I swear. Then we’ll have all the time in the world to play games and go places and do, whatever it is you want to do. So just hang on for another week. Think you can do that?”

He smiled pleadingly and raised his hand for a fist bump. Hiro returned it and went through the motions half-heartedly. He didn’t really seem to have a choice.

“Thanks, knucklehead,” Tadashi said, giving him a quick noogie before disappearing into the bathroom for a shower.

Hiro had already had about four of those that day.