He raised his trembling eyelashes and turned to look at Masaomi.
He gazed earnestly at Masaomi as Masaomi gazed back at him, a slight bewilderment showing on his face.
It didn’t matter if it was a lie. He just wanted to be with this man once.
He opened his lips slightly.
“Shall we go to bed?”
He could barely speak: Misao’s advance was more a series of breaths than words. Masaomi’s eyes widened at it. His head moved awkwardly then, taking the hand that rested on his knee and covering his mouth with it.
The man beside him let out a deep breath.
His heart cooled and Misao gripped the robe that hugged his knees tightly around himself.
“Please don’t look at me like that and say those things,” Masaomi said, obviously at a loss, glancing sidelong at Misao and smiling ruefully. “I’m not that strong—I don’t trust in my reason to win out.”
Misao raised his eyebrows.
How was he supposed to take words as harsh as these?
It sounded like Masaomi wasn’t entirely unwilling, but he wanted to refuse politely.
“It must be hard for you being told this so often.”
Misao was confused. Masaomi took his hand away and turned to face him.
“Misao, I think I really do love you. So I don’t want to pay for sex with you.”
It took Misao several seconds to understand what Masaomi was telling him.
His lips trembled, opening and closing several times.
“You think I want—?”
Misao’s voice grew harsh and his eyes widened in anger.
Masaomi looked surprised. As soon as Misao saw that, he remembered that he had never corrected his misunderstanding the night before.
As shame colored his neck, his heart broke.
Masaomi thought that Misao was a male prostitute.
When he realized that Masaomi had been looking at him like that the entire day, Misao couldn’t bear it.
“You’re wrong.”
His eyebrows knitted together painfully and he shook his head. He looked pleadingly at Masaomi.
“I don’t sell my body,” he declared keenly.
Masaomi’s face hardened as he gazed at him, and a few moments later he apologized.
“I’m sorry. I obviously misunderstood terribly somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
Misao twisted his head in incomprehension and Masaomi answered with a harsh laugh.
“Now I’ve done it,” he sighed, and stared up at the ceiling. “But no, I’m glad.”
His eyes narrowed in a slight smile and he looked somehow relieved. But Misao could only watch him, still not understanding.
“But you...”
Masaomi started to say something, but apparently had trouble going on.
He turned back to Misao.
“I’m sure a lot of people told you that you were beneath them.”
Masaomi offered this with a complicated expression. Misao gazed at him vacantly for a long moment, then lowered his eyes.
“At first everyone acts kind.”
He spoke in a whisper devoid of emotion, his eyes fixated, unseeing, on the carpet. He blinked slowly, and cursed himself.
“But in exchange for their help they take off their kimonos and expose themselves to me. In the end they just want to lock me away somewhere. And compared to the girls who sell their bodies, my debt to the brothel must be cheap.”
“But you refused.”
“Of course I did.”
Misao was emphatic.
“Spending my entire life locked away with a man I don’t love is worse torture than being in the brothel.”
Misao spit out his words, and Masaomi watched him carefully. Then he whispered, seriously, “I’d like to think I would be different.”
“Wh—”
Masaomi’s eyes left Misao’s face and unfocused slightly, lost in thought.
“On the other hand, it would probably be humiliating.”
Masaomi spoke as if to himself, and it pained Misao to see his face, for reasons he didn’t understand.
“‘On the other hand’?”
Misao caught at Masaomi’s words, driven by his impatience at being left behind in the conversation.
“Do you mean there’s an upside to being locked away by someone I don’t love?”
He was utterly unsure of his interpretation. But the way Masaomi looked back at him in utter silence told Misao that he had it right.
Why had Masaomi’s mind gone to that all of a sudden?
Masaomi smiled faintly at Misao’s confusion.
“Shall we go to bed?” he asked crisply, as if trying to forget about everything.
“Excuse me?” Misao whispered.
There wasn’t even a trace of eroticism in his voice, and Misao knew now that his own invitation had blown away like smoke on the air.
His heart was filled with a variety of complex emotions: regret, self-pity, relief. And it was out of the question now to ask the man to explain himself.
With a soft sigh, Misao stood up. He went around to the opposite side of the bed and got under the covers.
He gazed at Masaomi’s back as he dimmed the lights.
Misao knew that he was too ambitious.
“But maybe... maybe I don’t mind after all.”
Misao’s voice echoed with a strange sadness in the darkened room.
Masaomi got into bed beside him and cocked his head.
“What I said before—about how even if the man didn’t love me... I think maybe, just being with him would be enough.”
Misao looked up at Masaomi, who sat propped up against the pillows. He had spoken his real feelings just now.
Sensing that they had returned to the earlier topic, Masaomi smiled in agreement. His smile was stunning.
“How admirable.”
Misao’s eyes grew round at this compliment. He was so surprised his mouth fell open.
“That’s the first time anyone’s ever called me that.”
After the initial shock wore off, he saw the humor in it.
“If Kazushi heard you say that, he wouldn’t be able to stop laughing.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Misao covered his face with his hands. His shoulders were shaking.
“Kazushi? Oh, that servant? That handsome man?”
Misao burst out laughing at that. He didn’t know if Masaomi had meant it seriously or as a joke.
“When you say that, I can’t help but compare you two. Kazushi definitely gets the short end of the stick in that contest!”
He looked up at Masaomi, laughing. Misao’s eyes met Masaomi’s, which gazed down at him seriously, and he choked off his laughter. The bed was big enough for three people to sleep in it together. There ought to have been plenty of space between the two of them, but somehow they felt very close. A thrill of surprise ran down Misao’s neck.
“Mister Towa—?”
Finally, he spoke his name, and Masaomi tilted his head, still looking at Misao. “I was just thinking how carefree you looked when you were talking about him.”
It took a moment for Misao to realize that he meant Kazushi.
He nodded. “I’ve known him a long time.”
“You sound different when you talk about him,” Masaomi said quietly. A small, melancholy sigh escaped him.
“Are you going to a special effort for me? Because I’m a customer?”
Misao’s head was sunk into the pillow, but he shook it ever so slightly.
You’re wrong.
He cared for Masaomi.
And even if he had known exactly why, he wouldn’t tell him.
“Well, you sounded totally different when you were talking to your brother on the phone before.”
Masaomi looked a little embarrassed at Misao’s point. It was sort of cheating.
“He’s a relative.”
“Kazushi is like a relative to me.”
Masaomi smiled slightly at Misao’s answer. “I see.”
He lay down fully.
“Well, at least—”
He gazed up at the ceiling as he spoke, his face turned very slightly toward Misao. He had a gentle, teasing smile.
“Call me Masaomi.”
Misao’s lips parted slightly. He pulled the quilt up very slightly to hide it.
He waited for Masaomi’s eyes to turn back to the ceiling.
Then he whispered secretly, “Masaomi.”
He saw the man’s face flicker for a moment.
The silence that filled the room let them know that the rain had stopped.
Masaomi folded the arm closest to Misao behind his head and spoke in a very controlled voice. “If I try anything funny, I want you to hit me,” he joked, still looking at the ceiling.
Misao hid the tight, painful squeezing of his heart and forced a laugh.
He ran frantically, barefoot.
He ran across small bits of gravel, which cut his feet and made them bloody. But since his face and body were covered with injuries, he could no longer tell which part of him hurt.
He was afraid to look behind him, and ran on, clinging to what he saw ahead.
He passed several shop lights burning in the darkness at the edge of his vision.
He stumbled and fell many times. The scrapes on his palms and knees grew deeper each time.
His breath made a white cloud in front of him, and through it he could see the great western gate that he sought drawing closer.
There were two men in front of the gate, blocking it.
Let me through!
He ran haphazardly between the men.
They caught his shoulders on both sides and twisted his arms behind him and forced him to his knees.
His wide eyes saw the gate soaring into the sky just above him.
He stretched his mouth open to its limit.
Let me out!
The sound of his voice reverberating inside his head woke Misao up.
He put a hand to his forehead.
His heart was pounding fast.
He saw an unfamiliar ceiling. A moment later, the entire day’s events replayed in Misao’s mind and he looked hesitantly over beside him.
There he saw the man’s face, handsome in sleep, and he sighed in relief.
But still his feeling of helplessness did not go away. So Misao gently moved over to lie on top of the man’s chest.
He was warm.
Misao’s heart filled itself with his kind warmth.
He wanted to hold Masaomi, and to be held.
He pressed his lips against the cloth of Masaomi’s robe rather than let the desolate sigh he felt rising escape them. He closed his delicately trembling eyelashes. Misao felt a hand begin to slowly stroke his hair, and when he drew himself closer to the man’s body, Masaomi wrapped an arm around his frail shoulders.
Misao let his eyes roam freely and he gazed up at Masaomi, afraid that he had woke him up. But set deep within his flawless face, his eyelids remained shut.