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Lately he’s been getting the feeling that he’s being watched.
Not just out on the street, where he could explain it away as coincidence, but everywhere. At the hole-in-the-wall restaurant downtown where he’s usually the only customer. At home, standing at the ironing board, with the sound of Mari and Keitarou’s chatter drifting in from the other room. In his bedroom at three in the morning, with the blinds drawn and the door shut tight.
Sometimes he could swear he sees something out of the corner of his eye. A hint of movement, but when he turns to look there’s nothing there. Sometimes he could swear he feels someone touch him – a hand on the small of his back, or the brush of an arm against his own – but in the end it’s merely his imagination.
This is getting annoying, he says to himself the fourth time it happens, trying to ignore the pounding of his heartbeat, the tight, wary feeling that’s wrapped itself around his throat.
Clearly he needs to start getting more sleep.
.
.
Hanging things out to dry on the clothesline is gradually becoming a cathartic activity for him.
He knows, deep down, that laundry simply isn’t his calling. He wishes it were – wishes he could truly be a part of Keitarou’s dream, wishes he could feel that same enthusiasm for making the whole world clean and bright. But for him there will always be that voice in the back of his mind, asking what the point of it all is. Focusing on the dirt and the stains rather than the potential underneath. Sometimes he sits at the front desk, listening to the gossip of housewives and the distant sounds of children playing, and wonders just what it is he’s doing here.
But that’s the good thing about clothesline duty, he’s found. Outside, under blue skies, wrestling with blankets and cursing under your breath when a sudden gust of wind picks up… You tend to forget what weighs on your mind, if only for a little while.
He’s in the middle of hanging up Keitarou’s favorite tablecloth, clothespin held precariously between his teeth, when he is once again struck by that familiar feeling of being observed. As if someone’s eyes were fixated on the back of his neck, watching and anticipating his every move. Waiting for him to turn around.
He swallows hard. Despite the warm weather, spring fading early into summer, there are goosebumps patterning his arms as he lowers them.
He turns slowly.
There’s a silhouette outlined against one of the white sheets. An unmoving shadow in the shape of a person, as if someone were standing directly behind it. He stares at it for a time, pulse quickening, and the longer and deeper he looks the more he can feel it staring back. A shiver travels down the length of his spine.
“Mari?” he says softly. Too tall to be Mari, says the logical part of his mind, and Keitarou is out on deliveries right now (but let’s try not to think about that).
“Who’s there?” he asks, but still the shadow does not move.
He takes a cautious step closer. He should be able to hear them breathing, whoever they may be. His senses have grown even sharper as of late. But there is nothing. Just silence. Even the typical sounds of the neighborhood – music and car doors slamming and distant laughter – seem to have suddenly, simply… stopped.
He lifts a hesitant hand, and reaches out, and –
“Takumi, what are you doing?”
He starts, and turns sharp on his heel towards the house, where Mari is leaning in the doorway, staring at him incredulously.
“You spacing out or something? I did make lunch, y’know. Like I said I would? It’s there if you want it.”
He blinks at her. “Ah, right,” he says. “Yeah, I…”
He turns back and the shadow is gone.
He glances around warily, and yanks the sheet aside, but there is no one to be seen. Just him and the laundry, alone in the empty yard.
Probably just a trick of the light, he tells himself, but doesn’t quite believe it.
.
.
His soup is far too hot. He glares down at it, wondering why something he made himself (or… heated up himself) would betray him like this. He makes an aggravated noise and leans over to blow on it, and it is then that he realizes:
Someone is sitting at the table with him.
Keitarou is at the front desk, talking at length with one of their regulars. Mari is in her room, singing along to the radio, which is tuned to some terrible one hit wonder from the nineties. He had been alone in the kitchen just a moment ago, but now someone else is there, sitting opposite him, making no noise whatsoever. A strange, unsettling kind of silence. Their hands are folded on the table, and he thinks that there is something familiar about them.
Slowly, he lifts his gaze.
“Something the matter, Inui-kun?” Kiba asks.
Takumi’s spoon slips through his fingers and lands on the table with a clatter.
He closes his eyes, counting to five before opening them again, but Kiba is still there. He reaches over to pinch himself, but the pain feels all too real and the dream around him doesn’t so much as waver.
“What,” Kiba says, “you think you’re dreaming?” His mouth curves into an amused smile, but his eyes are like chips of flint. “Don’t be naïve.”
He’s wearing that long coat and that immaculate suit, his hair slicked back just like Takumi remembers it. He leans back in his seat, fingers drumming on the tabletop, studying Takumi thoughtfully.
“I suppose it is a bit flattering, though, that you’d even think it,” he muses aloud. “Do you have dreams about me often, Inui-kun?”
Yes, Takumi thinks.
“You’re dead,” is what he says instead, his voice shaky and barely audible.
Kiba nods. “True,” he says. “You’d know that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?”
Takumi feels, in this moment, like he’s been punched in the gut, all the breath suddenly gone from his lungs. He realizes, distantly, that his hand is gripping the edge of the table hard enough to hurt. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but no words will come, and Kiba is looking at him so coldly, just like he had before they’d fought, and –
“Hey Takkun, can you watch the desk for a minute?”
Takumi spins around his seat to find Keitarou standing next to him, his casual smile fading away quickly into worry and confusion.
“A-are you okay, Takkun? Your face is really pale… You’re not sick, are you??”
Takumi glances back at the chair opposite him to find it empty, with no trace of anyone having been there. His mouth is dry, and he licks his lips nervously, trying to take deep breaths to settle himself. The air still feels close, somehow, stifling and heavy on his skin.
“…‘M fine,” he mutters. “It’s nothing.”
.
.
Mari has declared every Saturday evening to be Movie Night. Attendance is compulsory, talking is forbidden during any and all love confession scenes, and Keitarou is banned from choosing movies after those utter disasters last month.
Takumi has actually come to look forward to it, in a way. Mari’s taste is strange and eclectic at best, and he tends to roll his eyes at the things that get the other two choked up, but… It’s nice. Sitting there for two hours every weekend, surrounded by their laughter and exclamations of rage over terrible plot twists. It’s something he’s gotten used to, and would miss if it ever went away.
Today he arrives to find someone else on the couch next to Mari.
Kiba looks up at him and smiles. A genuine smile, this time, and Takumi feels something twist in the pit of his stomach. He’s dressed normally. His hair is falling soft across his eyes. He looks just like he used to, before everything went wrong.
Takumi lowers himself down slowly on to the couch, his legs gone a bit weak beneath him.
“Why are you sitting so far away?” Mari asks, frowning at him.
“… No reason,” he murmurs, distracted, eyes focused on Kiba’s face. He can’t risk getting any closer. If he touches him, he might disappear.
Before he realizes it, the movie is almost over. Something about an aging actress still in love with the one who got away. Or maybe not. He’s only been half-watching, the other half of his attention consumed by the person next to him, who can’t possibly be there and yet. And yet.
“What’s the matter?” Kiba asks, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Not your kind of movie?”
Hearing him speak is like a knife to the heart. He’d almost forgotten what that friendliness sounded like.
“N-no,” he somehow manages to say. “I don’t – ”
“Takumi, shh,” Mari hisses. “Things are getting heartfelt.”
When the movie ends he briefly watches the credits roll – just a few seconds, nothing more – but when he glances back Kiba is gone, like he'd never been there at all, and Takumi feels that faint hope inside him flicker and fade.
He stays there the rest of the night, watching out of the corner of his eye, wishing that he might reappear.
He doesn’t.
Takumi wonders if he might be going insane.
.
.
It starts happening more and more often. Out to dinner with Mari and Keitarou, he’ll blink and suddenly the empty fourth chair will be occupied, and Kiba will be nodding along to Mari’s stories about troublesome customers at the salon. Out on delivery, he’ll check his mirrors and look back to find Kiba in the passenger seat, humming softly to himself or staring out the window with a contemplative smile.
Those are the good days.
Most of the time it’s the other one – the one whose eyes are always cold, and sometimes even cruel. There seem to be no limits to where or when he’ll appear. On street corners as Takumi passes by, causing him to nearly lose control of his bike. In his room, lounging on his bed and watching him intently, taking a vindictive kind of pleasure in his discomfort.
Maybe, Takumi thinks, if he ignores him long enough he’ll simply fade away. But with each week that passes the appearances become more and more frequent, until there’s not a day that goes by where he doesn’t see him.
“Do I seem crazy to you?” he asks one night, when it’s just him and Mari, sitting out on the front step watching the stars. There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. “Supposed” being the imperative word. They haven’t seen anything yet, surrounded as they are by the lights of suburbia.
She turns to stare at him, and even in the semi-darkness he can see her raise an eyebrow.
“Crazy in what way?”
“Like… I dunno. The ‘unstable’ kind of way, I guess?”
Mari seems taken aback for a moment before huffing out a quiet laugh. She reaches over and puts a hand on his arm, a warm and comfortingly solid weight. “Trust me on this one, Takumi,” she says. “You’re about as stable as it gets.”
(“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Kiba whispers, his voice far too close to Takumi’s ear.)
.
.
He’s not entirely certain what brought him to the park today, much less to this particular tree-lined path. The weather is unpleasantly humid, the sky flat and grey, with thunderstorms in the immediate forecast. But with the sudden, desperate urge to get out of the house hitting him (and his bike running dangerously low on gas), it had seemed like the best option at the time.
There’s hardly anyone else around, so when someone calls out his name he has a feeling who it might be before he even turns.
Kiba grins broadly and lifts a hand in greeting, gesturing for him to take a seat next to him on the bench. Takumi can’t help but stare for a moment before complying. You’d think he’d be used to it by now – glancing up to find him there. But somehow his heart still skips a beat every time.
For a minute they sit in companionable silence, listening to the rumble of thunder in the distance, the wind rustling the canopy of leaves overhead.
“Are you real?” Takumi asks, finally voicing the question that has been on the tip of his tongue all this time.
Kiba’s lips twitch, and he ‘hmm’s thoughtfully, folding his hands in his lap. “I feel like… no matter which answer I gave, you’d still wonder if it were true. Wouldn’t you?”
“… Probably, yeah,” Takumi admits.
“Thought so. I’ll just say… that I’m sorry for all of this.” His faint, wistful smile falters for a split second before falling back into place. “I’m sorry for a lot of things. I’d like to make it up to you, you know, rather than making things worse, but… It’s a bit of a rough process, looking back on your life and realizing that everyone would’ve better off without you.”
Takumi sits up a little straighter. “That’s – that’s not true,” he insists.
Kiba laughs softly. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Takumi. But it is true.” He pauses, then, and seems to be pondering something. “Although,” he says slowly, “on the off chance that I am just a figment of your imagination, you’re the one who put those words in my mouth just now. Which is a pretty rude thing to think about someone else, no matter how spot-on it might be.”
Takumi blinks at him in surprise. They hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, Kiba’s expression starkly solemn, and –
And the moment ends as quick as it came, Kiba breaking down into laughter.
“I’m joking,” he says, and there’s such fondness and genuine amusement in his eyes that Takumi can’t help but laugh as well, a startled, awkward sound. It’s been a while since he last laughed, he realizes, as a passing jogger gives him a strange look. Months, probably. Not since before –
“Oh, look at that,” Kiba says, having managed to collect himself, staring at something in the distance. “How nostalgic.”
Takumi turns to look. There’s a fountain a little ways down the path, an old stone thing with a statue of a leaping fish in the center, and he can see two people in front of it – a man kneeling in front of a woman, whose hands are covering her mouth as if to stifle an excited shriek.
“… I used to imagine proposing to her just like that,” Kiba says, so quiet that Takumi almost doesn’t hear, but when he turns back to ask him what he meant he has already vanished, and Takumi is once again alone, the contentment of before gradually fading away as he watches the storm roll in from the east.
.
.
He finds it odd that a ghost would have a reflection. He’s always rolled his eyes at those jump scares in horror movies, some evil spirit lurking over the main character’s shoulder as they glance up from washing their face.
And yet there he is, reflected in the built-in mirror as Takumi slides the closet door shut, reclining elegantly in the chair across the room. He smiles, dangerous and eerily calm, and Takumi’s grip tightens around the door handle, that familiar, oppressive feeling settling in the hollow of his chest.
“This is a pretty charmed life you’re living, isn’t it?” Kiba says. “Spending each day in peace with your little human friends… Do you think you deserve it, Inui-kun? Do you really deserve to be happy, after letting all those people die?”
Takumi takes a shuddering breath. Ignore him, he tells himself, and repeats it over and over in his mind like a mantra. Ignore him. But the more he thinks it, it seems, the harder it becomes.
“Myself included, of course,” Kiba continues. He gets to his feet in a single, fluid motion and steadily begins to close the distance between them. “You were rather quick to take me up on my whim of a death wish, weren’t you? You didn’t even try to find another way. But I suppose I can’t fault your logic. Two birds with one stone, right? Two problems disposed of in one fell swoop – ”
“You’re not him,” Takumi says, and hates the way his voice trembles. “He – he accepted it. He understood. There was nothing else to do.” He sounds desperate and uncertain even to his own ears. “Kiba was… You’re not him.”
The imposter raises an eyebrow. “Are you so sure? You hardly knew anything about me, after all. You only saw what you wanted to see, until suddenly it was too late.”
Takumi can see his own eyes widen in the mirror. It’s true, he thinks. What does he really know about Kiba’s life? He never asked any questions, never gave any consideration to the circumstances that brought the two of them together. The sort of person I wish I could be, he’d thought when they’d first met. Respectable. Kind. Unafraid. And perhaps part of him never moved beyond those first impressions. A far better person than me, he’d thought again and again, until reality finally hit and there were no excuses left to make.
“… What do you want from me?” he whispers.
“Nothing really,” Kiba says with a shrug. He takes another few steps toward the mirror, until he’s standing right behind him, close enough that Takumi should be able to feel him breathing. “I’m just here… as a reminder, you might say? This kind of simple life could easily go to your head, you know. You might look around and see everyone smiling and content, and you might start to get the wrong idea about yourself.” His hand comes up to rest on Takumi’s shoulder, then, and it feels disturbingly real – not warm like Mari’s, but still tangible in a way that a ghost’s should never be.
“You’re not a hero, Inui-kun,” Kiba says softly. “Heroes don’t allow people to die in front of them.”
Takumi spins around, pulse pounding in his ears, panic coursing hot beneath his skin, but finds the room to once again be empty. There’s no sign of anyone having been there, other than the lingering feeling of a hand on his shoulder.
That night, as he gets ready to turn in, he avoids looking in the mirror.
.
.
Keitarou spends a good ten minutes trying to reason with him before calling Mari.
“He’s a grown man,” Mari sighs, her words muffled through the closed door. “If he wants to sulk in his room for a day he should be able to. Just leave him alone.” She raises her voice a bit and says, “You hear that, Takumi? You’ve got until dinner to be a moody idiot, then you’d better come out.” As she turns to walk away, he hears her mutter: “Men.”
He listens to make sure they’re both gone, and then leans forward to put his head in his hands, a bone-deep weariness pulling at him. All he wants is to go back to sleep, really, but even if he slept for a week the tiredness would still be there. Of that he’s almost certain.
“You realize shutting yourself in here won’t keep him out, right?”
He lifts his eyes and Kiba is there next to him, close enough that the distance is tangible, looking at him with a rueful kind of sympathy.
Takumi nods slowly. “It’s just… kinda hard to be around them, when I’m always expecting him to show up. And at least in here they can’t walk in on me talking to myself.” He lapses into silence, and then asks, quietly: “Why does it have to be him? Why can’t it always be you?”
Kiba’s smile is small and sad. “You’re still preoccupied with him,” he says. “You’re hung up on ‘what-if’s. ‘What if I’d said this instead of that? What might have changed?’ There’s no point beating yourself up over things you didn’t know. Things you couldn’t have known. You have to let it go, Takumi.”
“…You’re just saying what I want to hear,” Takumi mutters, and Kiba laughs.
“Oh, come on. I’d like to think that I speak for myself. Maybe you could try being a little more optimistic, hmm? You seem dead-set on making yourself even more miserable than you already are.”
Mari said the same thing, a few months back. ‘Your special talent,’ she’d called it, and he’d glowered at her from across the table for lack of a proper rebuttal. He glares in much the same way now, but Kiba only seems more amused.
“Takumi,” he says, sobering up in an instant. He reaches out and rests a hand on the nape on Takumi’s neck, and this touch feels startlingly real, too. Maybe even more so. His thumb brushes soft against his skin, and there’s a tight feeling in Takumi’s chest as he turns to look him in the eye.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kiba says, with a kind of fierce conviction. “None of what happened was your fault. So please… stop blaming yourself.”
That hand moves up, fingers tangling gently in his hair. He leans in, and Takumi shuts his eyes hurriedly, heart in his throat, anticipating something he’s not quite sure of, something he never thought about wanting until now.
But it never comes.
The warmth of Kiba's palm against his skin vanishes, and the tension lifts, and when he opens his eyes he is alone in the room, more alone than he has been in a long while.
“…I’ll try,” he says, to no one in particular.
His eyes are starting to sting.
.
.
.
“You’re… going to come back, right?” Keitarou says, worrying the hem of his apron between his fingers. “I mean, what if you find some other people to stay with, who can cook better and who aren’t always broke – ”
“I already told you I’ll be back in a couple weeks,” Takumi sighs. “And I’m not exactly a prize, y’know. Who the hell would randomly invite me to live with them?”
“True,” Mari says. “You'll scare everyone off with that grumpy expression of yours.”
He turns to scowl at her, and she gives him a sunny smile in return.
“Case in point,” she says. “You better not stay away any longer than you said, alright? And call if something bad happens. We’ll come pick you up.” Her eyes soften, then, and she steps closer to put her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Feel better, okay?” she whispers, quiet enough that Keitarou can’t hear.
Some place without memories. That’s what he needs. A place where nothing is familiar. Just for a little while, he thinks, until he’s set some things aside. Others will stay. Not everything can be let go of so easily. But at least he can put some distance there, a little more with each mile he travels.
“Yeah,” he says, and returns the embrace. “I will.”