The Piano Man (Iwaoi)

Chapter 12

        Tooru couldn't play any piano for the next week. His fingers were flaring up—it was the first time he'd experienced this prolonged, forced inactivity in his fingers. He tried to compose despite this, but found it nearly impossible when he couldn't play the melodies for himself. Of course he needed to compose something that he himself could play. Without the piano at his disposal, with his fingers as cramped and rebellious and withered as they were, he couldn't compose a single measure. The frustration built up inside him and he didn't leave his house for three days. The music he always heard grew fainter. He distracted himself with books that had been collecting dust on his bookshelf (I told myself I'd read these one day), reacquainting himself with mainstream music and hating himself for it, listening to unique recordings, catching up on the Netflix shows his friends had been pestering him to watch. He ate too many potato chips and ramen, didn't drink enough water, ignored his friends too often. An occasional reply to Issei and Takahiro, a brief phone conversation with Hajime. Ignoring his mother completely.

        The one person he talked to regularly for those three days was Wakatoshi Ushijima.

        Talking to Hajime too often was painful. It made him feel Hajime's absence, and the inevitability of his absence, all too profoundly. The closer Tooru was to him, the more keenly he was aware of the distance between them. His heart yelled that there was danger, that it was walking toward a wildfire and if it took another step it would burst into scalding white flames and shrivel and die. Hajime was there in that fire with red lipstick on his skin, left there from the loving butterfly kisses of his wife-to-be. And though he beckoned with flame-protected fingers for Tooru to come into that fire with him, Tooru realized that Hajime didn't know any better. He didn't realize that if Tooru were to take his hand—talk to him on the phone, text him, go out with him, until they were back to eighteen years old—Tooru would burn. He didn't realize that Tooru was flammable. Part of it must have been because he was an idiot, because how could he not realize? When he had kissed Tooru and then pushed him away? How could he not know that he struck a match against his chest? The other part, though, was blindness.

        Tooru understood that Hajime didn't want to believe that he and Tooru could never go back to the way they'd been before.

        But Tooru needed to look out for himself. And if forcing distance, wedging coldness, between Hajime and him, would spare his heart even a little bit of pain, he had to. He couldn't afford to fall even more in love—not when he already couldn't fathom loving anybody else. Because his mind, his heart, his soul, had all grown accustomed to it. They didn't know what it was to not love Hajime Iwaizumi, which was exactly why he had to keep his distance.

        Talking to Wakatoshi Ushijima wasn't like that.

        It was easy. It was comfortable. The music he heard wasn't painful and intensely remorseful when he talked to Wakatoshi Ushijima. Tooru could send a message and know that, on the other end, Ushiwaka's fingertips were tingling in desperation to respond. On the other end was somebody who wanted to talk to him, somebody who had nothing at stake and who wasn't expecting anything. Someone whose earnestness made Tooru sick to his stomach, queasy with pleasure and confusion. Ushiwaka was investing himself in talking to, being with Tooru, and there was such a rush in the admiration. It was a feeling Tooru had known and relished since youth—but it had been so long since he'd felt it from someone other than a distant fan who admired him for his music, his charismatic smile. But Ushiwaka admired more than that. From closer. It was a rush, it really was. And when Tooru found himself following Ushiwaka, it wasn't toward fire. There was no risk of being hurt. Tooru had nothing to lose.

        He didn't really have anything to gain, either, but he tried not to think about that.

        Ushiwaka told Tooru every chance he could that he wanted to take him out properly again, once this investigation finally worked itself out. Tooru was patient, because he got phone calls. Text messages. There were no awkward silences (there never really had been) to deal with and he could laugh at Ushiwaka's bluntness, tactlessness, from the comfort of his couch and with a glass of wine in his hands.