Answer: Chapter 1

After the sun sets, Shinjuku becomes the domain of drunks and beckoning women. It whirls along in a riot of forced merriment, brittle carousel on a hollow axle.

It was the kind of day that thrummed with a restless, giddy energy, as if it had strayed just slightly out of line with all the other peaceful every-days, and set off alone on a new trajectory. That was the day the two men first met.

By the time class reunions rolled around to the second after-party, a definite pattern emerged in the number of people who stuck around, Yukio Hatano observed with a wry smile. Or rather, in the types of people, he amended. Almost everybody who was left was single, and not because the swinging lifestyle was calling their name; they had the slumped, lonely look of people who somehow had just never been chosen. ‘Bachelor life’ may have sounded like a badge of freedom in your twenties, but apparently it acquired a bit of a sting after the big three-oh.

And it seemed to be exclusively men who were still pining for a partner. Their female peers had quickly abandoned the idea of marriage altogether and seemed to be enjoying themselves just fine, but there was no trace of that lively positivity in this room. Even those with families to go home to didn’t appear all that enthusiastic at the prospect, faces just as glum and uninspired as their neighbor’s.

Well, sounds about right for a bunch of guys killing time at a class reunion on their Friday night. Besides… He surveyed the frumpy figures of the men around him as if he were not himself among them.

The reunion was for his high school class, and only for those alumni who had moved out to Tokyo, so the pool of attendees was limited to begin with. And the old practice of kenjinkai, where people who hailed from the same prefecture would band together for mutual support in a new city, was practically obsolete. When ‘home’ in their minds had still drawn a picture of their native Kyushu their common loneliness had been enough to gather them together, but there was no small number of them who had chosen to leave their past selves behind when they replaced that picture with Tokyo. It was just a fact of life that the number of RSVPs dwindled every year. There were already several in the group whose bellies had begun to bulge with middle age, and Hatano felt acutely the passage of time. He often forgot his own age because of his youthful face and slender build, but there was certainly no denying it now.

For Hatano, whose style and appearance had remained largely unchanged since his days as a student, the one difference now would be the whiteness of his skin. As a boy in his hometown he had spent every free moment absorbed in extracurriculars, and with his constant suntan he’d assumed his skin was just naturally dark. That, however, had simply been a byproduct of the blazing southern sun, and ten and some years in the capital had revealed that he was actually quite pale for a man.

Hatano had been convinced that time was standing still, but he quietly reflected now that it had been passing him slowly by all along.

Well, some good comes with that, too, he thought, a smile too mature for his childlike face playing on his lips.

The second after-party of the night was hosted in a rather rundown bar, tucked away in a corner of the red-light district of Kabukichō in Shinjuku. The other men with their beer bellies blended seamlessly into the line of regulars at the counter, but Hatano, who looked no older than his late twenties, was rather out of place.

They had reached the age when a man begins to shoulder the weight of his own personal collection of ‘issues,’ whatever those may be. In their youth they had enjoyed the privilege of having only a vague understanding of what it meant to be tired, but they were old enough now for every nook and cranny of their bodies to know all its subtle nuances. Now his former friends sat rasping in breaths that stank of alcohol, grumbling about work or some other well-worn subject. ‘I see, I see’ was all Hatano said in return, but his tepid engagement hadn’t offended anyone. The men had reached the point where they couldn’t care less if anyone was actually listening to their story or not, and they kept right on with the ‘my boss did…’ and the ‘my wife said….’ His truly close friends had called it a night somewhere in the middle of the first after-party. Hatano was not a salaryman, and could not join these men in lamenting the woes of corporate life, so he settled for grunting and nodding along.

Hatano’s current occupation was a preschool teacher, employed at a private preschool run by an acquaintance. His delicate, gentle face and large doe eyes garnered him a warm reception not only from the preschoolers, but also his female colleagues and the parents of the children. Childcare was one field where a boyish face had an unequivocal advantage over a stern, formidable one. He combed his fingers through his jet black hair, yet to be spoiled by even a single strand of gray, and thought to himself that his appearance was rather coming in handy now.

Of course, a preschool teacher was not the laid-back job it might appear to be, but there was no hierarchy of bosses to pressure him to produce results, and he got along well enough with his coworkers, and that was no small blessing. Indeed, he had a few years of experience as a salaryman under his belt to remind him just how lucky he was now.

All of this made Hatano the odd man out in the group, but there was something relaxing in letting the clamor of the room wash over him. He had never been the silent type, but he didn’t take the initiative to drive the conversation either, and the others knew this about him and were unbothered by it.

Going home to an empty room, as Hatano did; or going home to a heartless wife, as the former classmates around him did; felt lonely in very much the same way, and if they all had one thing in common, it was a longing for someone.

* * *

“Oh, sorry.”

Hatano was considerably more drunk than he believed and stumbling down the street, on his way to crowd into yet another after-party, when his shoulder knocked into a passer-by.

It was a common enough occurrence on the neon-lit streets of Kabukichō. It was a feat to traverse the milling throngs of drunkards without bumping into somebody, and neither bumper nor bumpee would spare a second glance. So Hatano offered only those two slurred words as his meager excuse for an apology, and he had turned to go on his way when the loud thump of a body toppling over onto the ground spun him back around.

“A-Are you okay?”

His slack face, dopey with intoxication, had gone stiff in shock, and he offered a clumsy hand to the fallen man.

“Yeah, uh, sorry,” the man mumbled listlessly, but he made no move either to take the outstretched hand or to stand up on his own. The gaze that flickered upwards was puffed red with alcohol, but his eyes left quite an impression. The creases of his double eyelids made deep, distinct curves, and between them sloped the sharp bridge of his nose. Even the bangs that had escaped the hold of his hair gel and fallen across his brow looked deliberate and stylish.

Wow, look at this guy, he could be a model.

He was dressed in a magnificent formal suit, and it was with all sincerity and some admiration that Hatano appreciated how fine it looked on a handsome man like him. The smell of alcohol was pungent on his breath, and beside him, a large paper bag lay on its side, no doubt dropped when he fell, with a package that looked like wedding favors tumbled out onto the ground.

“Oh, no!” Hatano frowned when he noticed it. “These are supposed to bring good luck.”

It was only on the ground because Hatano’s bumbling collision had put it there, and he stooped down hastily to retrieve it.

“I don’t mind,” the man mumbled, his dull, bloodshot eyes drifting up to him.

Hatano took the parcel in hand, and sure enough, the words ‘the wedding of…’ glittered on its face. He placed it in the bag and held it out to him, but the man, still planted firmly on the ground, did not even glance at it.

“It’s just… gonna be something useless, anyway.”

“Um, well, sure, wedding favors aren’t usually useful, but…”

As long as the man refused to accept it and pick himself up, Hatano couldn’t exactly leave either. This could be a bit of a problem, he thought, peering hopefully down at the stranger, but he didn’t budge one inch.

Oh, boy…

His face was a little pink but nothing seemed off about him. His speech was clear enough, if quiet and halting, but Hatano guessed that the man was much drunker than his appearance suggested. The weather had gotten warmer recently but the night winds retained their biting chill, and even the flush of intoxication would be no protection. If he left the man collapsed here, it certainly wouldn’t do him any good.

“Well, anyway, let’s get you up. Come on, you’re ruining your nice suit.”

“Sorry.”

The man’s mannerisms and the strong, youthful timbre of his voice, distinguishable even in his drunkenness, indicated that he was probably several years his junior, and Hatano very naturally shifted into his responsible adult voice. In fact he sounded like he was chiding the children at his preschool, and he chuckled at himself as he gripped the man’s arm and gave him a hard tug. The drunk tottered to his feet, rising to a surprisingly tall height, and Hatano brushed the gravel from his clothes.

The muted, elegant color of his suit complemented his strong, swarthy face. He was young, and good-looking, the kind of man that kindled a spark of jealousy in a fellow male—all the more reason why he made such a sorry sight sagging drunkenly in the street. It was almost comical.

“Hey, hey! Keep it together!”

His torso was lurching erratically; standing up straight apparently did not agree with him. Hatano gave a little snort at the absurdity even as he reached out to steady him. He had no obligation to show kindness to a complete stranger but he was also quite drunk himself, and there was something oddly heartwarming about the miserable state of this stylish young man. He’d always felt compelled to lend a helping hand whenever he saw someone getting themselves into trouble, whether that was just his personality or an occupational disease.

Working as a preschool teacher was no easy job; it required the stamina to keep up with small children as they dashed circles around you, and despite his small frame and slender build Hatano had decent confidence in his strength. This man, however, was significantly larger than he was and, in classic drunkard fashion, seemed to have completely lost the ability to support his own weight. Hatano wouldn’t be able to carry him for long.

What do I do now?

Now that he had involved himself, he could not abandon him. He cast helplessly about for a few moments before someone called to him from behind.

“Yukio! Hey, what’s going on?”

His absence had apparently been noticed, and his friends had returned to look for him. Hatano let out a sigh of relief, while the man, one arm slung about Hatano’s shoulders and his chin lolling against his own chest, went stiff as a board.

“What are you doing, man? Who’s that?”

“I knocked into him just now.”

His friends buzzed around them, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, and Hatano seized the opportunity to extricate himself from his barnacle.

“Sorry, but I’ve really got to—”

The man convulsed against him with a howl of pain, and Hatano started mid sentence.

“He-Hey! Come on, hey! Are you okay?”

“My, my head…”

He clamped one hand over his mouth, deep furrows carved into his brow. Tears had sprung to the corners of his eyes, and his face was contorted in agony. Hatano resigned himself with a sigh and turned to his companions, who were fidgeting idly as they waited.

“Sorry, you all should go ahead. I’ll join you later if I can. Don’t stop the party on my account,” he said, and the group acquiesced all too readily, continuing on their way with a cursory, “take care.”

“Damn, your friends are cold,” the man remarked, and the corner of Hatano’s mouth ticked up sharply. He had suspected the man’s little deception, but the mask had dropped with truly blatant speed. Distant flashes of neon caught his eye, and he stared off distractedly for a few seconds.

“So your name is Yukio?” an unexpectedly clear voice spoke into his ear, startling him.

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, that’s my name.… Anyway, how do you feel? Are you sick?”

“That’s the same name as someone I know,” the man continued, ignoring Hatano’s question.

“Huh?”

“It was his wedding today.”

The forelocks of his hair had swept down to veil his eyes, hiding his expression, but his words were laced with an acid cynicism despite the trifling tone. A guest at a celebration did not typically walk away wearing a scowl.

Was he in love with his friend’s bride or something?

Hatano may have been jumping to conclusions, but all signs in the man’s stormy mood pointed to romance gone south. Confirmation came almost immediately in the deep breath and whispered, “I… I was dumped,” and Hatano winced.

Oh, man. So I was right.

So that was why he had gotten all dressed up, and then drunk himself alone into oblivion. For all his rumple and muss the man’s good looks still managed to impress, and that only made Hatano feel sorrier for him.

“Oh, well, I’m really sorry about that, uh…”

“Takaaki Mashiba. Here, this is my card, um—”

Mashiba continued to speak perfectly clearly through his intoxication, but when he reached for his breast pocket and withdrew a business card, the curious trembling of his fingers had him fumbling. The name of a very familiar corporation was printed on the small rectangle of paper, and Hatano huffed a short breath. Even tall, attractive young men with excellent careers and deep, resonant voices didn’t always get life on a silver platter, apparently.

Mashiba’s handsome profile was rigid, and his full lips were pressed bloodless and quivering in a line.

“Well Mashiba, care to have another drink?”

The invitation that tumbled off his tongue caught both of them by surprise, but when Mashiba blinked up at him with wide, boyish eyes, Hatano found himself with no regrets.

“You need someone to listen when you’re drowning your sorrows at the bar, right?”

Everything happens for a reason, Hatano decided, grinning broadly at him.

In hindsight, he had definitely noticed Mashiba’s wooden reception of his smile, had felt the prickle of danger creeping into Mashiba’s demeanor.

But, blinded by sympathy and alcohol, he had not been alert enough to be wary of the power of Mashiba’s grip as the man pretended to stagger alongside him.

Nor could he have ever imagined the fury of the torrent that was to upend his entire life, only a scant few hours away.

* * *

Pain exploded across the back of Hatano’s head, and his vision blurred in shades of black.

The tip of his nose smarted, and it took him several long seconds to recognize that this was because he had slammed it into the floor. Everything he could see was darkness; he was barely certain his eyes were actually open. He hadn’t binge drunk like tonight in ages, and his head swam as he struggled to ascertain anything about his situation. The first order of business was to assess the bump on his head, but his attempt to reach a hand for it met immediate resistance in the form of some kind of binding around his arms.

What in the hell is going on?

His mounting frustration was cut short by a low, sharp command from overhead.

“Don’t move.”

Huh?

As clarity reasserted itself, he began to take stock of his surroundings. His vision remained a troubling touch bleary, but he recognized this wallpaper, this furniture arrangement. The lights remained off, but the dim illumination that spilled in through the open door gave a semblance of definition to the contents of the room. This was the seldom used guest bedroom of his apartment.

But there were several things that didn’t make any sense. Hatano knit his brows in concentration. Why was he collapsed in the doorway, with half of him sticking out into the hall? Why was his chest so oddly cold? Why was his shirt in tatters and knotted around his arms?

Why was there a heavy body bearing down on him, pinning him to the floor?

Who is—?

“What—what the hell?!” At last he scrambled to sit up but his knees were trapped beneath the weight of his assailant, and Hatano’s throbbing head whipped back to strike the floor a second time. “Argh! What the hell is this? Who are you?!”

He tried to rally himself to give his most fearsome bellow, but his throat was tight with dread and pain, and all that emerged was a feeble rasp.

“Takaaki Mashiba.” His panic was answered by a voice that was far too toneless and disinterested for the violence of what was occurring. “You don’t remember? I just gave you my business card, too.”

The stranger had gone to the trouble of announcing his full name, but there was no guarantee that it was real. Cursing inwardly, Hatano tried to puzzle through that word, “I just gave you…” with his aching head, but his memory was fuzzy at best.

“What are you talking about? Why the hell are you in my house?!”

“Oh, man… You don’t remember that, either? Not that it matters,” the man who called himself Mashiba added, chuckling in the back of his throat.

Maybe it was the blow to the head, but no matter how hard he tried to piece together his memories of the night, he couldn’t recall anything beyond meeting his friends for drinks at a bar in Shinjuku. He could guess that he had gone a little overboard; the aftertaste of alcohol in his mouth was something brutal, and he was sober enough now that the smell was disgusting.

What the hell is going on!

Meanwhile, his continued efforts to wrench himself free had only served to further twist the shirt, binding his arms tighter against his back. Cold sweat beaded on his skin.

He must have met this man at the bar; after all, everyone was your friend when you were drunk. He’d heard of this particular brand of scam before: someone pretends to hit it off with you, acts like your friend and maybe offers to see you home, only to rob you blind.

“Listen, it’s pointless, I don’t have any money!”

Hatano groaned in agony, and his captor flashed him a cruel smile. “That’s not what I want.”

The man’s exasperated tone, as if to say, you still don’t get it?, grated his nerves, but even more upsetting were the man’s fingers, stealing across the skin of his bare chest.

“What are you doing?”

His fingers were long and trim, and as cold as chips of ice as they caressed his body. Hatano swallowed hard, and a droplet of sweat trickled sickeningly down his spine. His thoughts were a whirlpool of stock objections—this isn’t real, it’s some kind of joke—but not a single one came out of his mouth.

The face of the man above him, previously indiscernible due to the darkness of the room and the man’s looming position, materialized in Hatano’s vision as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Much later, Hatano would look back on that moment and think that he probably would have been able to endure the whole ordeal without much terror, if only he hadn’t seen the light of savagery gleaming in those clear, bright eyes.

He tried to worm free by shimmying his lower body, but the man’s arms were much more powerful than they looked, and they contained him effortlessly. The man ground Hatano into the floor, his fine suit clashing with the harsh roughness of his actions.

“I—I’m a man!”

No matter how his childlike features belied his three decades of age, or how his coworkers would tease him and call him ‘adorable,’ his face was far from feminine. Besides, with nearly half of his clothing now stripped from his body, his gender should be glaringly apparent.

“Yes, I can see that,” Mashiba dismissed his protests as expected, and he tugged loose his own necktie.

“Then why—”

The satin cloth that had decorated the collar of his starched shirt was tightly bundled and shoved into Hatano’s mouth. His eyes shot wide open in surprise, but Mashiba had already rolled him easily over onto his belly.

The casual slacks he wore came next, Mashiba sliding them smoothly down his legs, and Hatano’s breath, already obstructed by the now saliva-soaked necktie, came even shorter with his escalating panic.

This is crazy!

At this rate, he was really going to be raped. His skin crawled with a horror unlike anything he had ever experienced in all his thirty-two years. He had experienced his share of the world but his sexual orientation had never strayed from heterosexual, and he had personally never had much to do with homosexuals.

And yet.

He was on the verge of being raped from behind by a man off the street.

“Mmph—!“

He writhed and flailed with all his might, but the man’s crushing weight was an immovable wall. This was the ugly reality of the plunderer and the plundered, and frustration and bitter helplessness roiled in the pit of his stomach.

Why?

Why had he wound up here, to be assaulted by a stranger?

It was the early days of spring, the temperatures still too low to be comfortable without heating. His bare knees chafed against the chilly flooring, but the pain barely registered. His desperate thrashing only tired him faster, and he began to droop, the energy leeching out of his resistance. The alcohol had also begun to whirl nauseously inside him, and a pounding headache coupled with a rising urge to vomit assailed him in turns. All the while, the hard palm of the man’s hand groped the private parts of his body.

“Just stay down.”

Those cold fingers gripped him between his legs, and his terror spiraled to a peak. There was no strength left in his muscles, and his knees shook wildly, ready to buckle out from under him.

“If you struggle, you’re the one who’s going to be hurting,” a gentle whisper delivered the threat, and Hatano felt something slippery being smeared inside him. Something spilled from his open, staring eyes, defiling his cheek. He had never imagined a day would come when he would weep because of this.

This is it…

Bracing himself for the violation that was only seconds away, Hatano did the only thing left for him to do: he slowly shut his eyes.

* * *

When Hatano awoke the next morning, he was in his bed.

Every last one of his joints ached, and the grating pain had jarred him awake. Soreness in a place that should not have been sore reminded him of what had put his body through the wringer, and he hissed out a heavy sigh, wishing he could have just stayed asleep.

He shifted the slightest amount, and was rewarded with a spike of pain that sent him crumpling back into the mattress, a strangled croak punched out of him. Judging by the clotted stiffness of the sheets beneath him, he had shed quite a lot of blood. He gave thanks that he had taken the day off work. Saturday was not a standard off-day at Hatano’s preschool; all employees were off Sunday, and chose their second required weekly holiday in rotation. Now more than ever, he was grateful for having anticipated a hangover after last night’s reunion and asking to be excused today.

Never would have thought I’d be using the time to recuperate from being raped, though.

He gave a snorting little laugh as he tentatively eased himself up to sit. His wrecked condition was proof enough that last night’s events had been no dream, but as he rolled back the comforter and got a good look at himself, he was left speechless.

Fuck…!

He started shaking, feeling chilled to the bone, but whether out of anger or fear was beyond him. It may have been both.

He would have preferred nudity to this. His legs were bare, and the shreds of his shirt still dangled from his arms, doing nothing to hide the raw abrasions littering his skin. Where the hem rested against his upper thighs, the fabric was blotched dark brown with what could only be blood. He pulled the garment onto his shoulders with trembling fingers, and a sour odor wafted to his nose. Judging by the distinctive revolting smell, he had vomited at some point. His throbbing headache was not just the result of a bad hangover; he seemed to have struck his head when he had been shoved to the floor the previous night. He hesitantly touched his hand to the back of his skull and discovered a strange bump had swollen there.

“You’re awake?”

Hatano went perfectly rigid, his face the color of ash. The voice sprang upon him like a tripped mousetrap, and he was petrified.

“Why…” he whispered, stunned, and his hoarse, rasping voice sounded like a stranger’s. He hadn’t even considered that Mashiba might still be there the next day. He gaped at him, frozen stupid in shock, and the man smiled faintly as he approached the bed. An instinctive rush of fear seized Hatano and he made to spring away, but the motion shot a stab of pain through his gut. He collapsed facedown onto the covers with a groan, and a hand touched his naked shoulder, raising goosebumps along his skin.

Hatano didn’t remember the details of what had happened afterwards, only fragments: agony, crippling, blinding agony; and something hard gouging out his insides, raising bile in his throat. Of course, Hatano’s manhood had remained recoiled and unresponsive. He remembered his own absurd commentary: a man, at thirty-two years old, experiencing the pain of deflowering? The violation of rape did not cut him as intimately as it might a woman, but the intense repulsion and excruciating pain had been enough to knock him unconscious. Now, even the sensation of that warm palm against his chilled shoulder plunged him into terror.

It was an unadulterated fear of pain and violence. He was frozen, too paralyzed even to shake him off.

“What—why are you here?!” he barked angrily, or meant to, but all the bravado he could muster did nothing to tamp the feeble quaver in his voice.

“Come on,” Mashiba replied, tone tinged with amusement, “you’re the one who said it was okay.”

“Okay—?!”

Shock outpaced his rage at the man’s outrageous statement, and when Hatano lifted his head to stare at him, Mashiba chortled low in his throat.

“You said it was okay to come have a drink at your place,” he said, deliberately disavowing the obvious innuendo in his words, and Hatano realized that Mashiba had baited him.

Bastard, he cursed. Rallying himself as best he could, he shrugged off Mashiba’s hand still resting on his shoulder and glared at him squarely.

“Just get out.”

“Why?”

“‘Why?’ Do you even understand what you’ve done?!”

The man was the definition of a shameless criminal. Hatano’s mind blazed red with anger, and the pit of his stomach burned. He was truly furious, in a way that he had not been for a long, long time. For a few seconds he was mute with rage, ragged breaths all that escaped his slender throat.

“What the hell is wrong with you, why did you do this?!”

Mashiba did not reply to the tortured scream. He remained silent, offering neither apology nor excuse, and Hatano did not notice how his face, stern-looking to begin with, had drawn even tighter. His shouting had reverberated in his aching head, and he moaned in distress. He could usually hold his liquor well enough, but things had gotten a little out of hand this time. It probably hadn’t been a good idea to go with the flow of the reunion and chug all that sake, either, a liquor that always seemed to hit him hard.

It would have been better if he could have just forgotten the whole affair; the fact that he remembered parts here and there of everything he didn’t want to remember made it all the worse. He had a decent memory of their meeting on the street, but he drew a complete blank at whatever had followed. Hatano himself had invited the man over according to Mashiba, but he had no idea what they had spoken about. But his terror, when the man had mounted him; the pain he didn’t want to remember; the chill of the floor scraping against his cheek; all of these flashed to mind, as vivid and raw as the night before, and his shoulders began to shake again.

And he remembered one more thing: a voice.

“Why?! Yukio—!”

Hatano had been the one being assaulted, and yet Mashiba’s voice had been bitter with misery as he called out that name, over and over. Hatano’s memory drifted backwards, back to the vague image of the two of them, standing in the street, and Mashiba telling him something like, that’s the same name as my friend—

Hatano’s head snapped up in surprise.

“Was it because my name is Yukio?” He pinned the sharp-looking man before him with a piercing gaze. “The one who dumped you wasn’t the bride; it was ‘Yukio,’ wasn’t it?”

Mashiba did not answer, but his eyes, which twitched minutely and then lowered to the floor, spoke loudly enough.

“Give me a break,” he spat under his breath. It would have been one thing if he had been somehow personally involved, but to be told that it was simply a coincidence of name? “So, you were angry and wanted to take it out on someone. Don’t you think this is a bit much?”

“Yes, I suppose,” said Mashiba, not a shred of remorse in his impassive tone.

“You suppose?! You—!” A flash of ire overtook him for a second, but Hatano’s shoulders quickly sagged again, and he abandoned his outburst mid sentence.

“You’re not going to scream at me? Call me a rapist?”

“What would be the point?” His mind and body were exhausted, and he felt as if he had aged a decade in a night. “I don’t know if you can call it ‘rape’ with men, but I see you’re aware of what you’ve done.”

This was nastier than some thug off the street, who would have at least left him to his own devices after the deed was done.

“I would have preferred a burglar,” Hatano muttered on a sigh. He slumped with fatigue, and his anger, trapped without an outlet, pricked like thorns in his gut. Even now Mashiba showed no sign of departing, that thin smile still pasted on his face, and Hatano observed him like a curious object. The man had derailed every attempt at conversation anyway, though that was likely intentional, and it wasn’t every day you found yourself face to face with the kind of man who could so baldly hurt another person and think absolutely nothing of it.

Hatano may not be very familiar with homosexuality, but he would venture that the pain of being betrayed and discarded by a lover was blind to gender. He was not entirely unsympathetic to the desperation Mashiba must have felt.

But to take it out on a stranger by raping them just because they have the same name?

That wasn’t something a human being should do. He wondered absently if Mashiba was one of those ‘psychopaths’ he had been hearing about recently, psychological aberrations who had been born without a conscience.

But he didn’t look that crazy, Hatano thought to himself as he studied Mashiba’s handsome face. At least, the voice that had called out his lover’s name, the name that Hatano shared, had been thick with a heartrending grief. Hatano had even heard a kind of earnest sincerity in that grief; in that desolate voice…

Wait, why am I sympathizing with him?

The worst of his turmoil had come and gone, and in its wake he felt a calmness he never would have expected to feel in the aftermath of a rape. Even his fearfulness had mostly abated, replaced by the pain he felt more and more keenly the longer he was awake. He came to the conclusion that Mashiba had performed an action that his own common sense could not comprehend. It was futile to engage in conversation with a person he could not comprehend, and Hatano set out to move this deadlock along.

“I don’t really get it, but either way it was careless of me to let a stranger into my house. I never thought something like this would happen.”

Mashiba’s eyes widened at the sound of his flat, weary tone. “You’re not angry anymore?”

“It doesn’t matter what I say, you don’t care. So what’s the point? I don’t like to waste my energy.”

A shiver rippled down his back. It’s so cold in here…

Even indoors and snugly wrapped in bedding, a single tattered shirt without the heater running in early spring was woefully insufficient. Still, the abnormal chills that crept along his spine felt less like a response to temperature or mood, and more like the onset of a fever.

He was itching to change out of his clothes, but could not bring himself to do so in front of Mashiba. The mere idea of baring his skin to this man repulsed him. He rubbed weakly at the goosebumps that had risen along his arms and repeated, “Look, just go home. I’ll forget all about this.”

Perhaps it was impossible to forget, but all memories, no matter how fierce, how heartrending they were, must go soft and dull with time. He was living proof of that.

Of course his fury at the assault remained, and to be honest, though Mashiba seemed perfectly calm for now, he had no idea when the man might crack again. Just the possibility that he might be forced to go through that hell a second time left him petrified. His torn lower parts felt numbly heavy, and even compared to the previous night when he had been stone drunk, his power to resist was meager at best.

In the end Hatano was not a woman, however, and there was no fear of the secondary disaster of a sex crime, pregnancy. As someone who had had no inclination towards homosexuality to begin with, he did not feel any particular emotional damage, either. He was at heart a positive thinker; as a man neither strong, nor weak enough to die when loneliness all but crushed him, it was how he had kept himself walking. All the lamentation in the world wouldn’t bring back what was lost, or faded into the past. There was no choice but to look to the future, and live on.

“I feel sick. I just want to sleep. If you have any shred of conscience in you, then go away.”

He could file it all away under a random act of violence. There had been plenty of young toughs with rowdy dispositions back home. He’d even been punched in the stomach until he vomited once. This was just like one of those times.

Repeating this to himself, he drew the comforter over his head.

“Hatano.”

“You’ve done enough, haven’t you? You’re satisfied now? I want to sleep. Just get out— please, get out!”

The volume of his voice had risen steadily until he was yelling, but Mashiba didn’t bat an eyelash. The springs beneath Hatano’s feet sagged with a creak. It seemed Mashiba had sat down on the side of the bed.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Hatano peeked his face out and glared nastily at him, but Mashiba paid him no mind, long legs crossed as he coolly lit a cigarette.

“So you’re a preschool teacher,” he began abruptly, as if Hatano weren’t apoplectic beside him.

“How do you know that?” Hatano asked, startled, and Mashiba laughed again.

“You told me yourself. You said, ‘I know it’s lonely being alone,’ and when I told you about my breakup, you said you’d comfort me.”

He spoke evenly enough, but there was something icy in his tone. The conversation was going nowhere, and Hatano put his head in his hands. Of one thing he was sure: the man was not lingering in the room to apologize.

Is he really crazy?

He could not decipher Mashiba’s true motives, and this made him all the more uneasy. Judging by his albeit fragmented memories and the ruin of his body, he knew that whatever had been forced upon him had been brutal.

If he had to take it again, he really might die.

“I… I’ve comforted you enough, don’t you think?” he whimpered, unable even to bluff, and Mashiba gave a short chuckle.

Alarm bells began to ring in the back of Hatano’s mind.

“Don’t be mean. Of course it’s not enough.”

“‘Of course?’ You—!”

Hatano’s body went rigid, and the shameless man peered down at him, speaking gently, “Maybe because you’re not used to it, you were so tight. It wasn’t quite… satisfying.” A sultry smirk curled his lips, but Hatano saw only the smile of a devil. “It was nothing but pain for you, right?”

“O-Obviously! I’ve never had anything in there before!”

That smile inched closer and closer. He scooted backwards across the bed to keep away, but in such a confined space there was nowhere to go but up against the wall. One of the man’s large hands found a gap in his comforter cocoon and wormed inside.

“Of course, poor thing.”

“Stop! Hey, wait, ah—come on, not again!”

At last Mashiba’s palm brushed against his bare leg. Hatano’s skin erupted in goosebumps the instant he made contact, but Mashiba pointedly caressed right over them. Horror rooted Hatano in place, powerless to refuse him. Even courage could not have broken him free; between his fever and his injuries, any movement at all was torture.

Undeterred by the squeeze of Hatano gluing his legs shut, Mashiba wedged his hand in against Hatano’s inner thigh, and Hatano felt it squirming forward with a clear destination. Sure enough those fingers wrapped around him, severing his last hope of escape, and Hatano could do nothing but implore him.

“Why, why are you doing this?”

Any man will become erect if stimulated, even against his will. It was also the morning, and as his penis slowly stirred to life, Hatano had no choice but to feel the pleasure of it. At his age sleeping alone was no hardship anymore, but to be given such a stark reminder that he was a man, at a time like this, sank his spirits to a new low.

“Uh, ugh…”

But he did not feel pleasure in the true sense of the word. He felt a surge of physiological lust, but the hotter it burned, the more his heart felt like a lump of ice in his chest. He could have wept at his own wretchedness. He was on the cusp of middle age, on the morning after his rape by another man, and he had to suffer that very rapist lending a hand to his morning wood?

“Oh…”

He fought back the urge to come and his breath quickened, eyes screwing shut. It revolted him to think he might appear to be enjoying Mashiba’s ministrations.

The man masturbating him leaned in close to his ear. “Go out with me,” came his horrifying proposal.

“Wha—ah!”

His hips chose that instant to jerk upwards, and a thick, tacky fluid spilled out over them. For all he had tried to deny it, his body felt immediately lighter, and a soothing numbness diffused over his groin. For a moment, he forgot about the discomfort of his pain and his fever.

“…ugh.” His shoulders heaved, exhaling a long breath, and Mashiba spoke again.

“It just hurt last night, but if you get used to it I can make it good for you.”

“Why the hell would I get used to it?! Cut the bullshit!”

Lacking the energy to sit himself up, he lay there cursing at the man. Mashiba’s sticky fingers continued to crawl along Hatano’s limp thigh as he replied, “It must be hard, working with children.”

The words were painted in a dozen shades of implication, and Hatano felt the blood drain from his face.

“Maybe not as bad as when they’re older, but you still have a lot of responsibilities. And I bet they’re very strict about your behavior, aren’t they.”

“You—!”

Was Mashiba actually threatening him? His eyes shot wide open in alarm, and the man returned the scrutiny with a twisted smile. His expression was frightening—but there was something there that made Hatano’s heart ache.

Mashiba’s dripping fingers crept on to his wounded privates, and Hatano choked in pain.

“I can take care of this. You shouldn’t leave it.”

He detected a scrap of concern in the man’s tone, but Hatano scoffed at it. He would never have ended up like this in the first place if not for him.

“Don’t touch me! I’ll do it myself!” he growled.

“You can’t,” Mashiba answered in a strangely placid voice. “You probably can’t tell since you’re lying down, but I don’t think you could even stand up right now.”

Hatano’s intuition sensed the stifled pain and regret cloaked behind that even voice. And again he remembered the sound of him calling out one name, miserably, over and over.

Poor bastard.

His resentment at having been made the victim of Mashiba’s misdirected tantrum was not allayed, but there was something wrenching in the emptiness he had discovered looking closely into his eyes. Hatano was not unfamiliar with such emotions himself, and he could not stop himself from sympathizing.

“Spread yourself open, wash the blood off, disinfect it and apply the medicine… can you do all that?”

There was no way. Imagining his internal wounds nauseated him to the point of anemia, and he shut his eyes in resignation. Mashiba’s fingers seemed to touch with the genuine purpose of assessing his injuries, and they caused him no more pain than necessary. He was not, it appeared, a sadist at heart, and Hatano was buoyed by this small relief.

I better not end up like this every time, he thought, and realized that he had already half-accepted the situation. He couldn’t deny that he was a little desperate, as well. As long as that soft-spoken threat of blackmail remained, he had no power to refuse.

“Do what you want,” he said quietly, and let his body go limp.

The comforter was rolled aside, and as the man’s hands began to cleanse and treat him, Hatano steeled himself to feel nothing, imagining that the hands belonged to a doctor. He had no idea what Mashiba hoped to achieve by proposing a relationship; it was likely just rock-bottom of his self-destructive spiral. It wouldn’t be long before Mashiba got himself together again, or grew bored with him, and then the farce would end. He privately came to this conclusion, and decided to concede for now.

He didn’t know what types gay men favored, but the standards for beauty couldn’t be all that different regardless of sexual orientation. In that case he guessed that, personality aside, the incredibly handsome Mashiba must be quite popular. Hatano had never considered himself ugly, but next to Mashiba he was a thirty-something-year-old man who left a little something to be desired. The knowledge that Mashiba wouldn’t bother with him for very long was his only consolation, pathetic as it was.

The fact was, negative feelings weren’t something you could wallow in forever, or you’d never get on with your life. Doubly so if you were coping with loss by looking for replacements to compensate, Hatano thought, reflecting on himself. Well, it was true that in his own case, doing so had ended up bringing him stability and a renewed will to live.

It was too soon to say that he cherished those bitter memories, but they had certainly begun to show the weather of time. Distracting himself from the sharp pain radiating from his pelvis by focusing on the pain of his memories, Hatano opened his mouth.

“So, Mashiba, was it?”

“Yes?”

He had held himself rigid during the application of the salve, and the moment those hard fingertips disappeared from inside him he breathed a sigh of relief.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.… I told you that last night.”

Mashiba sounded like he was baffled at the question, and Hatano himself didn’t know what had possessed him to ask. At least it explained why insolent Mashiba bothered to use polite speech when addressing him, even though by appearances alone no one would ever take Hatano to be his senior.

But the age of twenty-seven took Hatano back to a memory that yawned like a jagged hole in his chest, even now.

“I already told you I don’t remember. So, we’re five years apart.”

“You said that before, too.”

Hatano feigned a casual tone, but his thoughts were drifting away from the conversation.

Huh.

What a strange coincidence it was! He quirked his lips in a little smile.

Five years really have gone by.…

“Hatano?”

Perhaps thanks to the antipyretic he had been given, sleep had begun to carry the world around him away. His eyelids drooped heavily, and Mashiba’s voice floated to him as if in a dream. The gentle question of his name skimmed his ear like a kiss, and the last thought to cross his mind was, oh, but he sounds so soft when he talks like that…, before he sank into the dark of slumber.

* * *

Contrary to Hatano’s predictions, the relationship that thus began in early spring showed no signs of flagging even with the arrival of summer.

Mashiba’s ‘go out with me’ had, not surprisingly, meant just sex, but from the second time onward Hatano had been treated with exceptional care, and Mashiba had never again been so rough as to injure him. In the beginning, stronger even than his indignation had been his fear of the man, who had turned his common sense and peaceful everyday life cleanly upside down in just one night. Nevertheless, he had learned how it felt to be held in arms that were thick with muscle like no woman’s were, and he could not deny the pleasure, the relief, of feeling another’s skin against his own, a warmth he hadn’t felt in years.

And in this fashion, the relationship dragged on. It was routine now for Mashiba to appear nonchalantly at his door a few times a week to make love to him. It was almost ridiculous that this was now a regular part of his life, but as long as Mashiba insisted, he didn’t have the luxury of refusing. His body had been first to acclimate, which had helped to pave the way for him to accept the relationship. Mashiba had slowly eased the tension out of him and worked his body open, little by little, until he had been completely transformed into Mashiba’s ‘woman.’ Mashiba had talked a big game with his, “I can make it good for you,” but true to his word, he was a skilled lover.

Their intimacy two or three times a week was a significant burden, taking into account Hatano’s age and job. Hatano himself had never had a particularly high libido in his past relationships with women, and in the last five years he hadn’t so much as felt the warmth of another body. The lack hadn’t inconvenienced him in the slightest, and he had even felt a touch of wry amusement at the thought that he was ‘dried up’ already.

And yet Mashiba’s lovemaking roused such a fierce pleasure in him that he almost wondered if he had been a latent homosexual. Being fingered and speared open on Mashiba’s thick sex were enough to shatter any reason he had to pieces. When he was hard and wet and writhing in Mashiba’s arms he could practically feel the man in his head, ravaging the very core of him. The first time he had orgasmed from back stimulation alone had been a serious shock, but once he had discovered that all men feel pleasure from the prostate, he had decided to stop stressing over the details.

After all, all his brooding and fretting had done nothing to dissuade Mashiba from sleeping with him, nor did it change the undeniable truth that every time he did, it drove Hatano wild with pleasure.

As always, after Mashiba had made thorough sport of his body they exchanged a few brusque words, and Mashiba turned his back. Moments later Hatano heard the click of a door shutting, and his entire body deflated like a punctured balloon. He realized he had been straining with tension, intensely focused on tracking Mashiba’s presence as he left his apartment. He was exhausted in a dozen ways, and when he lit a fresh cigarette, the smoke seeping into his lungs made him feel faintly intoxicated.

“The hell am I tense for?” he whispered, combing back his sweaty, disheveled hair with his fingers. The quiet words rang unexpectedly loudly in the empty room, sounding as if they hadn’t come from his mouth at all, and he startled himself for a second.

He lay there, swallowed by a post-coital mix of euphoria and hollowness, and even the idea of dressing himself seemed a hassle. He had no experience with men besides Mashiba so his perspective was limited, but sex between two men struck him as quite taxing in many ways. The pleasure was great but so was the burden of the one receiving, to the point that he had no desire to move for two or three hours after the act.

Still flopped in a sluggish heap on the bed, he wondered if he would be spared this awful emptiness if his routine of a relationship with Mashiba were instead an expression of love.

“With the way things started, there’s no way… but there’s no point thinking about that, anyway,” he deflected his own thoughts with a bleak smile.

This sex was a business transaction that could never truly bring them together, and the more he drowned in it, the more parched his heart became. They exchanged deep, greedy kisses that left his lips stinging and yet never met each other’s eyes, and Mashiba’s pigheaded refusal to drop his self-elected role of ‘bad guy’ was exhausting. Even a strictly physical relationship will kindle some spark of affection in time. Hatano’s personality had never been inclined to hold on to anger or grudges for very long, and he preferred peace and kindness in his relations with others. The tension of keeping every last one of his nerves constantly on edge was draining and uncomfortable.

Of course, if the violence of the first time had continued, even mild-mannered Hatano would have changed his mind.

“Then why is he so…?”

So delicate, in the way he traced every inch of Hatano’s body?

If Mashiba really was using him purely to forget the pain of his heartbreak, Hatano would have expected rougher treatment. In that case the physical and emotional toll would have been many times greater, but he thought he might not have been so confused. He had learned to read the forced posturing in Mashiba’s body language when he spurned him so coldly, and he had been unable to hate the selfish, arrogant man ever since. Mashiba’s speech and bearing had always been sharp, and Hatano had learned the hard way how dangerous he could be when his emotions ran wild. But there was an intrinsic sweetness to him that could never belong to a true sadist, and that sweetness slowly revealed itself to Hatano not in their conversations, but in the bedroom.

Towards a partner who held his affections, Hatano imagined that Mashiba was a deeply tender and passionate lover. He had glimpsed his profoundly gentle side in the attentive care of his lovemaking, a care that was not entirely just technique. Lately Hatano looked at Mashiba’s curt behavior and stony expressions, and saw nothing more than a man who was bluffing as hard as he could, clinging obstinately to his pretenses of cruelty, to his dismissal of Hatano’s presence. Mashiba would square his broad shoulders and snub Hatano with his most cutting words and attitude, but they only seemed to turn around and hurt himself. One could call it masochism.

Their conversations were always short, but Hatano had gleaned from the occasional remark that Mashiba had incredibly fierce pride in himself. He seemed to hold a few prejudiced opinions when it came to the job titles or professions of others, but that was not unexpected in a man with the skill to spearhead operations at a prestigious corporation. Hatano conjectured that under normal circumstances, Mashiba’s nature would reprehend the very idea that he were doing something so vulgar. There was a world of difference between coolheaded and coldhearted, and Hatano was convinced that Mashiba was confusing the two. It seemed as if acting so grossly out of character was battering his nerves and driving him into a corner.

Must be exhausting…

He caught himself contemplating his own life like a detached observer, and his lips curled in a little smirk of self-mockery.

Fury or hatred were the conventional responses for a person in Hatano’s position, but those emotions had arisen only once, on that first night. Mashiba’s spiteful anger had lashed out in search of someone, anyone, to be the victim, but Hatano was a little too tranquil in nature to return the favor in kind. The mere suggestion of ‘an eye for an eye’ made him wilt in fatigue. Hatano desired peace, even a superficial one, and so he had abandoned his resentment from the start. If he had no authority to put at end to it, the only remaining choice was to accept. Their bodies were compatible, at least; they had proven that to each other time and time and time again. Mashiba had all but molded Hatano’s body into its current form in the first place. Every last detail, from the manner of his reactions to the pitch of his moans, had doubtlessly been fine-tuned to match the man’s preferences.

At this point, he was content to steel himself and consider Mashiba just another flavor of friends-with-benefits. It was Mashiba who seemed to be mulishly fixated on something, unable to shelve their relationship logically away as Hatano had. It was a hushed and tepid affair between them, but Hatano found it surprisingly comfortable. He imagined saying as much to Mashiba, and he could practically hear the proud man shouting back at him, “Are you fucking joking?”, see the scowl on his face that would only darken if he insisted that he was serious.

He wondered where else in the world there could be another idiot who would commiserate with their rapist and blackmailer.

But still.

“Being gentle has got to feel a lot better than hurting someone…”

No matter how wrong the foot they had gotten off on.

That he entertained such thoughts at all was a sign that he had begun to harbor feelings, albeit complicated ones, for Mashiba; but he already knew that.

How the hell did things turn out this way?

This time the smile that ghosted across his face was bitter. Over and over Mashiba had buried himself into his body, as if sex could relieve the relentless loneliness that hounded him. He likely had no idea that it was this very ferocity that betrayed his loneliness more loudly and more clearly than any words ever could.

The column of ash had advanced to the base of his cigarette, nearly singeing his fingers, and as he crushed it in an ashtray, the faintest whisper escaped beneath the sigh of his breath.

“I wonder if Yuuko would be mad.”

It had been a long time since the name of the woman who had been most precious to him had last passed his lips.

When he recalled the beautiful woman who had offered him a family, given him the happiest gift of his life, and then disappeared, treasure and all, from before his eyes, the old pain still grated in his chest. Thinking of her had been so devastating that he had thrown out every last vestige of their time together; still, no length of time would fade the image of her left in his heart.

He had a feeling that she would have smiled, and told him, “That’s just like you, Yuki.”

First to Yuuko, now to Mashiba, Hatano was helplessly drawn to those with lonely eyes. Both of them had longed for another, carrying the burden of their unfulfilled sadness, and Hatano couldn’t help but ache for them, and hold them dear. If he could be the one to fill the voids in their lives, he felt as if he himself had been saved.

“I mean, I really…”

There was no grand mystery behind it all; Hatano himself was lonely. By becoming a source of comfort for another, he felt as if he were needed.

Even if all he was needed for was to be an outlet.

“I really don’t want to be alone.”

And that was what was truly deplorable, he thought scathingly. He was lonely, so lonely, and the nights in his empty bed were so long and so desolate. He knew nothing about the younger man but his background, his name, and his body, but he wanted to find out just a little bit more.

He tried to imagine how captivating his lover must have been, to have driven Mashiba so crazy that even tearing a complete stranger apart had not mollified him. That same instant he felt a disconsolate pang in his chest, where a thorn named Mashiba had lodged itself and would not come loose. But Hatano could not see yet that that thorn had begun to take a shape that was no longer pity.

He slapped his hand across the sudden heat that welled behind his eyes, his face crumpling against his palm, and a sharp pain stung his fingertips. It was not unlike the feeling of clutching onto Mashiba’s back, and Hatano quietly realized that he was in much, much deeper than he had thought.