Answer: Chapter 2

With a testy goodbye Mashiba slapped the handset of his telephone back into its cradle, ending the internal call from the planning office, and he heaved a sigh.

“Um… I brought you some tea,” came a hesitant voice that he recognized as a woman who had just started at the company that year. She slowly placed a cup beside him and hurried away, no doubt intimidated by his scowl.

He muttered a perfunctory thank-you and took a sip, but the oversteeped bitterness made him recoil in disgust. This was a cup of water that had been heated to boiling in an electric kettle and dumped over some tea leaves. It possessed neither aroma nor flavor, little more than colored hot water that nettled the tongue with tannins, and he drank it with a sullen furrow in his brow.

“What’s got you so grumpy?” The one man whose attention he desired least in the world strolled up to stand over him. “You’re scaring Ms. Eda.”

Yukio Ikawa’s voice was deep and smooth, the kind that would leave any listener marveling in admiration of its beauty. But to Mashiba now, it grated more harshly than nails on a chalkboard.

“What do you want, division chief?” he said, sneering the freshly promoted man’s new title, but Ikawa’s smile did not waver.

“I know that face. Fighting about the deadline again? They sure don’t make it easy for you.” Ikawa gave him a sympathetic chuckle, and Mashiba could only stare at him with an indignant glower.

I guess I can’t dispose of things as efficiently as you do. The words leapt into his throat, and he quickly swallowed them with a sip of the bitter tea. They were far too unsubtle; if he were going to take a dig at the man, he at least wanted the satisfaction of a clever device.

“If you don’t need anything then go away, I have a deal to renegotiate,” he huffed in a low voice, but he may as well have been mute for all the effect his words had on Ikawa.

“You’re in such a scary mood today,” the man said, daring to flash a smile.

The sight of that smile, lovely as a model’s and yet devoid of any emotion, turned the dial of Mashiba’s gray mood to black. His head was already aching at the prospect of breaking the news to his client that the delivery date the client had insisted upon had just been summarily denied by the planning and development department. He studied the number 7 speed-dial on the external-line telephone perched nearby on the desk. The company had been a client of his for many years, and his liaison there was an arrogant man. Mashiba would have to bow and scrape until he agreed.

“Hello, sir, this is Mashiba from S Commercial.… Yes, thank you so much for the other day.”

Ikawa continued to watch him, gaze unreadable, as Mashiba brightened his tone to his best salesman’s voice and launched into the usual pleasantries. The afternoon sun blazed in through the office windows but formidable air conditioning muted most of the changing of the seasons, creating a lifeless atmosphere that was truly a perfect complement to the man before him. His expensive suit draped his tall frame, artfully flattering his good looks—even with the ring adorning his left ring finger.

The same sight of him that had set Mashiba’s heart fluttering not so long ago, now registered as nothing more than a foreign object.

We’re in different departments! Go drink some fucking tea if you’re bored!

He fixed Ikawa with a dangerous look, shooing him away with his chin, and Ikawa tilted his head with an amused little shrug before finally consenting to leave.

“Yes, I’m terribly sorry but I don’t think that will be possible… Of course, I will make the arrangements immediately.”

All he had to do was ignore him, but Ikawa’s peacockish figure in his peripheral vision insisted on drawing his attention. Every time he stooped to tease one of the female employees, Mashiba had to struggle to keep any hint of his irritation from curdling his voice on the phone. He was more tired than he should have been.

Is everything a fucking joke to him?!

Negotiations complete, he bid his client a cheery farewell. The moment his finger depressed the telephone hook, a heavy, bitter sigh left his lips.

Ikawa was a man blessed from birth with both his elegant, glamorous beauty, and the shrewdness to understand exactly how that beauty could manipulate others. He was armed with political savvy and resourcefulness, and it was this social dexterity that had played an undeniably larger role than his merit in making him the star employee of S Commercial. He and Ikawa had joined the firm together, but despite his relatively short tenure Ikawa had been promoted to first division manager in the operations department at the company’s head office.

S Commercial, a general trading company large enough to be listed in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, had been a family company ever since its establishment. It had a somewhat antiquated structure, with power from the CEO down monopolized in the hands of relatives. Even a graduate of a prestigious university had no choice but to ingratiate himself into the family clan if he wanted to climb the corporate ladder. The one other option was to display a prowess that the higher-ups simply couldn’t ignore, but a man who didn’t play the game would find this path rather difficult. He had chosen to work for this company, but Mashiba resented the fact that these old customs were not reformed.

This wasn’t to say that no one had ever successfully battled his way up the ranks by virtue of merit. A prime example was Kamata, vice president of sales which included Mashiba’s own fourth division. Kamata was not an alumnus of a national or public university, and he staunchly refused to align himself with any of the company factions, and still the man had risen near to the top. Mashiba respected his achievements and his mellow personality and considered him a role model, though that likely also had some roots in the time he had spent receiving his new employee training under Kamata. Following in Kamata’s footsteps, Mashiba had quietly climbed his way up to his senior position by hard work alone, and this seemed to have earned him Kamata’s favor.

Kamata, who had been poached from planning and development into the sales department, was not much of a smooth talker. Like Mashiba he was the type of man who showed little of his emotions, and while the two could not be called close personal friends, they understood one another well. Mashiba was certain it was not wishful thinking that Kamata had had a hand in Mashiba’s assignment to Kamata’s own department after his training period had ended.

Ikawa, however, who had been Mashiba’s companion both through college and through Kamata’s lectures in new employee training, had disliked the accurate but harsh manner of his coaching, and refused to work under him. And then Ikawa had been assigned to the head office, just as he had hoped, and he had taken the easy way out without a backwards glance. That spring he had made his wedding vows to a female employee and relative of an executive director, and the match had all but bulldozed the quickest route to corporate success clear for him. As long as he avoided any truly spectacular blunders, his future was secure.

Even at the cost of betraying both his own true nature, and his lover of seven years who had been beside him since college, Ikawa must have coveted that title at a famous corporation on his business card.

A trick I never could have pulled, he brooded, not quite in self-derision.

Unlike Mashiba, who had never been attracted to women, Ikawa did not restrict himself to one gender. The man was simply a hedonist. During their relationship he had cheated constantly, but even that bohemian abandon of his had been charming to Mashiba. But what he had learned from the wedding invitation that Ikawa had seen fit to send him in place of a proper break-up, was the wretched truth that the man who had been his lover for many years was much more shallow and egotistical than he had believed. The cherry on top had been the speech he had been asked to deliver as Ikawa’s best man. He’d pulled off the role to masochistic perfection, cracking jokes with a broad smile on his face and black spite seething like vipers in his belly.

More than the betrayal itself, perhaps it had been the realization that there was a fundamental difference in their values and outlooks on life, a gap that could never be bridged, that had come as the greatest shock.

“Here’s the sales report, sir. Please circulate it,” came a woman’s voice, and when a hand with brightly colored nails offered him a clipboard, he took it with a mechanical, “Right, will do.”

Despite his curt demeanor Mashiba was surprisingly popular with his female coworkers, who were sick and tired of verbal sexual harassment from their bosses. The ladies no doubt appreciated his lack of unnecessary posturing towards them. He harbored no hatred towards women, after all; he simply felt no physical attraction to the opposite sex.

“Why are these numbers so down?”

He leafed through the financials with mounting concern, gaze flicking down the columns of year-over-year losses, more casualties of the deepening recession. Next on the agenda was the daunting stack of documents that had filled his inbox. His job frequently sent him out of the office on customer calls, which left the paperwork to accumulate in his absence. Wishing he could be anywhere else, he began snatching sheets of paper from the top of the tower to stamp as ‘reviewed.’ He barely lasted a minute before he had pulled out a cigarette to curb his rising irritation, unable to kick what he knew was a bad habit.

“Mr. Mashiba?”

Just as he was about to light the end, a timid voice at his shoulder arrested him. The same woman who had served him the awful tea earlier was pointing to a sign on the wall: ‘This is a nonsmoking department.’

“Oh, excuse me.”

With a deep breath he hauled himself out of his chair and began walking to the designated smoking area in the corner of the same floor.

The anti-smoking sentiment on the rise in Europe and America had sparked a boom at home, and last month smoking had been banned wholesale anywhere in the building. This had proved to be a serious challenge for a heavy smoker like Mashiba, and the annoyance of constant trips to the smoking area had convinced him to try to give up smoking entirely, but the endeavor hadn’t even lasted three days.

The smoking area was a nook at the end of a hallway where the summer sun blazed harshly through a fixed glass window. An ashtray had been provided in the small corner beside a vending machine. He sank into the ancient vinyl sofa, shaking his head at the dreary furnishings as he finally held his lighter to his favorite poison. The face of the man who had similarly been unable to quit and forced this vice onto him sprang unbidden to mind, and it wasn’t the smoke emanating from his Peace Light cigarette that made Mashiba chew his bitter lips.

He had embroiled Hatano in this outrageous relationship for no more reason than that he shared a first name with Ikawa, and to be honest, Mashiba himself had never expected it to drag on this long. His recent epiphany that his will was far weaker than he had ever imagined stemmed from the night of Ikawa’s wedding ceremony.

There was something wrong with me that day.

Something grated in his lungs every time he retraced those memories, something that had nothing to do with the strong cigarette in his hand, and, quietly but violently, Mashiba began to cough.

* * *

By the time Ikawa’s wedding reception ended, the smile that Mashiba had plastered onto his face was beginning to crumble, and he fabricated an appropriate excuse to slip out the doors into the night. Shinjuku was a neighborhood full of familiar faces, and he rounded up as many as he could to hit the town, desperate to stay one drink ahead of the despair nipping at his heels. His friends were denizens of the night and they lent him compassionate ears, comforting him and warning him against his irresponsible pace, but his heart was frayed raw and not a single one of their voices could reach him.

He drank, and drank, and still he thirsted. Instead of bringing sweet, stupid stupor, each bottle only riled him angrier, until finally someone offered to see him home, unable to stand by and watch any longer. In the end he shook his head, telling the group he would take a walk to sober up, and he stumbled outside and started walking the first way that caught his eye. With neither direction nor destination in mind, his feet led him to the blinking neon of Kabukichō. Though it was all the same Shinjuku nightlife circuit, the ambiance here was somehow different from Ni-chōme, and under ordinary circumstances Mashiba rarely had reason to visit. The vulgar, glaring lights, and the celebration of hedonism—he despised all of it.

But what revolted him far more was the memory of Ikawa, still dressed in his snow-white tuxedo, whispering shamelessly in his ear: “I thought you would understand.”

The bored groom had been twiddling his thumbs in the waiting room while the bride changed clothes for the reception. At the sight of Mashiba he flashed him an artless smile, as if it were just another day, and the platinum band around his ring finger had gleamed as he stroked Mashiba’s hair.

“A little playing around is necessary, don’t you think? We can keep making it work if we try. Nothing’s going to change.”

He had been serious, and in that instant Mashiba had been made keenly aware that he had never understood a thing about Ikawa. He was a hedonist, skilled at sex, and often unfaithful, but Mashiba had always believed that the home Ikawa would return to was with him, and so he had forgiven him time and time again. Even if someone else were to capture Ikawa’s eye, if Ikawa had made a clean break of it, whether he apologized or simply cut their ties, it would have been painful but Mashiba would have let go.

But Ikawa had not afforded him even that barest of courtesies. Far from it, he had offered Mashiba the honor of membership in his harem of lovers. Their relationship had never been anything more than a paper-thin sham; Ikawa had batted his eyelashes and acted the part, and Mashiba had fallen hook, line, and sinker for his performance. When he thought of all the years he had spent chained to such a thing, he felt like the punch line of a joke. His memories, his pride, what he had thought was love—everything of his had been shattered, and the world spun in circles before his eyes. He tottered unsteadily on his feet, ready to burst into laughter at it all, when a thin shoulder knocked against him. He crumpled in a heap on the ground, paralyzed by his own wretchedness, wishing the cement would just open up and swallow him where he sat.

Why was he so furious? So resentful, so… forlorn? He barely knew himself anymore, and yet—

“Oh, sorry. Are you okay?”

He heard the sound of a gentle voice tinged with surprise, and pale slender fingers suddenly appeared before his eyes. He looked up to meet the gaze of a stranger, peering down at him with a troubled expression on his soft, genial face. Drab-looking guy, was Mashiba’s scoffing appraisal as the man heaved him to his feet, and the words ‘just leave me alone’ itched on the tip of his tongue. The man was even so gracious as to retrieve the fallen box of wedding favors, and bitter irritation surged inside of him at the sight of it. Why the hell had he been carting that stupid bag around with him all this time anyway?

Everything, absolutely everything conspired to aggravate him: Ikawa, who had betrayed him; this man, with his easygoing smile and pretenses of kindness; and his own sad, sorry self. Maybe if he destroyed it all, tore it down and crushed it between his fingers, he would feel as if he could breathe again. His eyes, downcast and void of expression, reflected only a world warped in shades of gray.

An alarm bell was ringing in the back of his mind. Don’t do anything stupid, it warned, but the sound of a name called out in the distance drowned it out, and it lapsed into silence.

“Yukio! Hey, what’s going on?”

The coincidence bloated the stagnant emotions inside him like pus in a blister, and his shoulders trembled imperceptibly with stifled laughter.

All it took was a sob story about getting dumped, and Hatano was all too happy to step into his trap. Mashiba sidled up to the man like a new best friend, and with Hatano already slurring and stumbling it was child’s play to lure him even further into his cups. They sat side by side at the counter of a bar, and he feigned his own exaggerated drunkenness as he purposely touched the other man, draping a hand over his shoulder or thigh. Nothing he did elicited even an inkling of alarm, and he realized immediately from Hatano’s persistent blissful ignorance that his companion was not a man who harbored such feelings towards other men. He was either fantastically dense, or so dead drunk that he had not noticed Mashiba’s fingers brushing a mere hair’s breadth away from his groin; either case was a convenient one for Mashiba.

Small talk revealed Hatano’s occupation, as well as the fact that he lived alone and was, despite all appearances, actually five years Mashiba’s senior, but most of this chitchat went in one ear and out the other.

“We’re called child caregivers now, I mean, officially.”

“So you’re a kindergarten teacher?”

A sliver of his attention followed along with the conversation, just enough to supply a comment or two in the lulls, while the rest was focused on making out the contours of Hatano’s body from beneath the folds of his somewhat frumpy clothes.

“Oh, no, I work at a preschool.”

“What’s the difference between a kindergarten and a preschool?”

Perhaps he was the type who was always cold? He was bundled up warmly in layers and a glance was not enough to gauge his proportions, but the slimness of his fingers and neck hinted at a delicate physique.

“Oh, so a kindergarten is an educational institution established by the Ministry of Education. In other words, it’s treated like a ‘school.’”

He didn’t like them too frail, but he could relax his standards for a night. Hatano’s single eyelids framed large eyes, far too homely to compare with Ikawa but pretty enough, he supposed.

“But preschools are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. They’re facilities meant to provide childcare for children lacking daycare—so basically, it’s a place parents can entrust their children if there are some circumstances preventing them from taking care of them.”

He took a swig of the cheap, acrid alcohol, and as Hatano chattered on with a relaxed smile on his face, Mashiba imagined him naked.

“Are there qualifications or something?”

“You’d need a teaching license to work at a kindergarten, I think. There are childcare qualifications for preschools, too, but I don’t have them yet. I’m kind of studying for it for free, though, since a friend of mine is letting me work at his preschool.”

His backside was almost definitely virginal, so Mashiba couldn’t expect much of a response. Forcing himself into the small hole might only induce the man to clamp like a vise around his penis.

“You know I used to be a regular salaryman, but I quit, changed jobs. I’m getting a late start, and at my age it’s not so easy picking up new things…”

He speculated about how it would feel to distort Hatano’s blithe face, to watch tears trace the curves of those serene cheeks, and he felt himself harden underneath his suit.

“I can’t even take the qualifications until I’ve had at least three years of experience, so I guess I’m like an apprentice right now.”

Hatano’s eyes were clear and bright as he added that he really did love children, and Mashiba understood that this man was guilty of nothing.

But he had said, “My name, Yukio, means ‘living in happiness!’” as he laughed in his merry voice slurred with alcohol, and so Mashiba wanted to break him. He would slake this dark, bestial hunger by any means necessary. Veiling his treacherous thoughts with a smile, Mashiba affected rapt interest in a conversation that meant absolutely nothing to him.

And all the while, hatred for his own limitless cruelty, and for Hatano’s oblivious ignorance, rankled in his breast.

He imposed on gullible Hatano, taking advantage of his offer to put Mashiba up for the night to gain access to his home, and when Hatano turned his back to generously pull out his spare bedding for him, he crushed all of that good will beneath his heel, coming upon him from behind and tackling him to the floor. The impact knocked Hatano clean out for a few seconds and Mashiba tore the clothing from his body, practically reducing the articles to shreds. The older man began to thrash wildly, and Mashiba wrestled him down without a single twinge of conscience. The shape of Hatano’s body was even finer than he had imagined, and his youthful skin was tight and supple. Vulgar lust welled up within him, and with only the barest of preparation for a body too exhausted to resist, he tore Hatano open.

The situation had spiraled even beyond Mashiba’s control. What the hell are you doing?, a part of him scorned his actions, but he continued to pump his hips as if to gouge into Hatano’s body, already wounded from the forced coupling.

He was not a heterosexual but he had never considered himself any kind of deviant, and in a sense the event posed a crisis of identity. He honestly would have preferred to never discover the brutality that had lain dormant within him. That was how ruthless his actions had been.

The inside of Hatano’s body was warm as he bruised and battered him open, and once blood had coated the narrow channel his strokes turned slick and smooth, yielding to Mashiba an intoxication close to rapture.

For Hatano, who had never in his life even taken a man inside of him, it must have been agony. He had blacked out, slumping limply beneath him except for the several fits of convulsions and vomiting. There was most likely internal damage, as well—not surprising, considering the rectum was never intended for such acts.

Of course I knew something so basic. After the deed was done and Mashiba had regained a semblance of composure, he felt a pang of regret—not in compassion for the man he had savaged, but for his own imprudent handling of the situation.

A pity.

He gazed upon the slender body he had wounded and defiled, and a peal of laughter bubbled up his throat. This man who loved children, peaceful and gentle by nature, a kind soul who extended his utmost hospitality for a lovelorn stranger—what a pity, that he should suffer such a fate; that his offering of goodwill should be so trampled underfoot.

Mashiba performed the most cursory aftercare, wiping clean the vomit and bodily fluids even as he recoiled from the smell. Those, too, were consequences of Mashiba’s actions, but the sight of them inspired neither guilt nor regret.

A pity. You’re only going to keep getting hurt by me from now on.

With exceeding coolness he reflected on how far he had fallen. He would not turn back now. If his humanity still clung to him by a thread, he would sever it himself and fully embrace the demon inside him.

Perhaps then, he would understand Ikawa’s feelings.

How would Hatano look when he opened his eyes? Would he be afraid? Furious? Would he curse Mashiba, and weep? These base musings of his imagination were somehow soothing to his exhausted nerves. He realized that degrading others was actually rather gratifying. He would give Hatano a taste of this crippling misery, and if his spite was just an excuse to cling to the scrap of kindness that Hatano had afforded him, he turned a deliberately blind eye to it.

“Sorry about this, Hatano.”

The sarcasm he had intended lodged in his throat and the naked words slid past, a frail, insecure little whisper that was heard by no one. Mashiba settled in front of an unconscious Hatano, his sunken eyes glaring brightly, and the night traveled tick by tick towards the morning but sleep did not come for him.

What had possessed him with that aberrant arousal? He would swear on the vestiges of his honor that he had never before coerced a partner into such violent sex. That night had been one long spell of madness, a desperate frenzy to throttle the shrieking that rang out from the rubble of his broken heart. But with the inevitable coming of the dawn came the realization of one important miscalculation: Hatano was made of far stouter stuff than he had expected. His delicate face and petite frame clothed an unbelievable iron nerve, and Mashiba felt almost cheated by the ease with which Hatano yielded to their arrangement. He had shied away from sex only the first few times, and even that resistance had disappeared once his body had grown accustomed. It was plain enough from the man’s demeanor that Hatano had harbored no previous attraction to men at all, which only left Mashiba all the more bewildered by the speed of his acclimation. Hatano opened his door to Mashiba’s regular visits with matter-of-fact acceptance, and every time Mashiba saw him, every time he had sex with him, he walked away feeling as if he knew less about the man than he had before.

His threat of ‘blackmail’ had no real potency. He had exposed his own identity by furnishing his business card that first night on the street, and that left him in the most precarious position. All that remained, then, was the matter of their emotions, and this was what truly baffled him. Hatano would have been perfectly justified in reviling him—Mashiba had practically engineered the situation to that end—and yet curiously enough the more time passed, the more their relationship began to feel familiar, comfortable, and it was Mashiba who was the most disconcerted by this.

“What the hell is he thinking?” he muttered under his breath, only to catch himself with a start. When had thoughts of Hatano begun to monopolize his spare moments like this? He scowled, lips twisting around the cigarette still dangling from them.

He’d traded one galling source of irritation for another, but this had a subtly different tone from the displeasure that assailed him every time he crossed paths with Ikawa. Sensing danger in pursuing this train of thought, he strove to displace Hatano from his mind, but it would only be another day or two before he would find himself retracing his steps to Hatano’s apartment and confining the baffling, unreadable man in the cage of his arms.

He had tailored Hatano to his liking and sex with him was good—this, he would freely admit. The excessive slenderness of his limbs had initially been a source of some dissatisfaction, but Hatano’s pale, silken skin, and the foolish things he did when Mashiba’s teasing became unbearable, excited Mashiba’s arousal like nothing else. When Hatano clung to his shoulders, sobbing in overstimulation, Mashiba was overwhelmed by the desire to cradle the man to his chest, to smother him in tenderness. And each time, he would remember that he was forcing this situation on Hatano, and he would clench a fist in disgust.

“This is ridiculous…”

He thought he had torn all capacity for pain or compassion clean out of him but he felt their embers now, flickering weakly back to life. Every second with Hatano fanned those embers brighter, and their time together was as much torment as pleasure. He should just call the whole thing off, he knew that, and yet six months had seen him unable to broach the topic. The dark dregs of his emotions only festered in the pit of his chest. In the end, he couldn’t even play a proper villain, and Mashiba felt a tickle of laughter at his own petty smallness.

His thoughts seemed to insist on taking paths he would just as well have left alone, but for all his brooding he still felt no desire to end things with Hatano, and that was the greatest mystery of all.

* * *

A glance at his watch told Mashiba he’d loitered longer than he meant to. He recalled the stack of documents that had to be processed before the day’s end, and his already poor mood turned sour.

“Better get back…”

Another of the heavy sighs that had become a recent habit passed his lips, and he flattened the remaining half of his cigarette in a flutter of ash. Just as he began to stand, a pair of leather boots strode into his field of vision, obstructing his retreat.

“Sure you got time to be slacking off here?”

The sound of that voice overhead grated in his ears and he slowly rose from his seat, eyes trained on the floor. He made no move to acknowledge the other man but Ikawa chattered away at him unapologetically as he purchased a can of coffee from the vending machine.

“Come on, what’s that nasty frown for?”

The coffee was held out before him, but Mashiba spared it only a fleeting glance before brushing past him down the hall. Ikawa’s free hand darted out to catch his arm, and the loose pressure of the other man’s fingers curled around his bicep made his skin crawl.

“What do you want?” Mashiba snapped icily, shaking himself free of Ikawa’s grip. Ikawa stared at his own hand which had been so rudely rejected, visibly taken aback. He knit his brows in displeasure for a split second before he flashed his charming smile.

“I heard there’s gonna be a re-org based on this term’s performance. Did you know?”

That smile was indeed beautiful coming from a man who fully appreciated the magnetism of his own appearance and bearing, but seeing it again now so closely, Mashiba recognized it for the elaborate performance that it was.

“So they’re laying people off. So what?”

It was absurd that he had ever tiptoed so self-consciously around this man. He confronted him now with an unflinching gaze, and there was a lack of any passion or determination in his eyes that left them cold. Pinned by this gaze, this time Ikawa left his displeasure on full display. His glower betrayed his arrogant conviction that all men and women existed to serve him, and Mashiba was disgusted by the sight of it.

“You’ve changed, Takaaki.”

You have no right to say that to me, he thought, but decided against wasting the breath to say so aloud. Ikawa’s intimate use of his first name had already aggravated him enough.

“I don’t have time to make small talk with you,” he said frostily, and the unspoken so get to the point was loud and clear. Ikawa’s façade of a smile crumbled from his face.

“You don’t have to talk like that…” There was a faint tremble to his voice as his expression wilted, hurt. But Mashiba knew that this, too, was just another of Ikawa’s theatrical productions, designed to manipulate others to his advantage.

“I’ll talk however I want. Do you have something to say or not?” he spat out, and in response Ikawa pouted his lips and glared up at him.

Is he an idiot?

Was he unaware that his pretense of sulking only held sway over those who felt some modicum of affection for him? Mashiba was so dumbfounded at the farce that he could only sigh again. How long had he gone out of his way to avoid the man, hadn’t even dared to meet his eye, for fear that his heart might waver! It all seemed so comical, now that he felt nothing at all even with Ikawa here within arm’s reach. Mashiba himself was the biggest clown, for ever letting this man wrap him around his little finger, for all the tears shed mourning what he thought had been his greatest love. To think that he had ensnared himself in this quagmire of a relationship with Hatano all because of this—it was enough to give him a migraine.

He cast a deliberate scowl down at Ikawa, standing a full head taller than him, and Ikawa recoiled as if in dismay. He had never been looked down upon with such disdain by Mashiba before, and the hostility in Mashiba’s keen gaze seemed to have shaken him. He probably hadn’t the slightest clue what he had done. The man was living in his memories of the two of them, sweet and in love, imagining that he still had Mashiba at his beck and call.

“Yes, there’ll be some layoffs, but I heard the main reason for the re-org is internal transfers,” Ikawa said finally, spurred by Mashiba’s repeated prompting. He was curiously reluctant to speak, despite having initiated the conversation. “They’re saying the fourth division has been turning out amazing numbers, and some people might get promoted to the head office.”

The source of the news was most likely his wife’s father; the information was too detailed to have reached his ears via normal channels, even at his position. The passing observation left him unmoved, even at the reminder of Ikawa’s marriage. Now Ikawa had shown his hand as to his true motivation for bothering to seek him out in this remote corner of the building, and Mashiba stifled a burst of laughter.

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

If Mashiba entered the same department as Ikawa, their rivalry would be inevitable. His contacts and connections had carried Ikawa up the company ladder, but in practical ability he had never been a match for Mashiba. This emotional appeal was doubtless Ikawa’s attempt to coax his cooperation early in the game. It was a pitifully shallow maneuver.

According to the grapevine Ikawa was sociable and shrewd, but his tendency for careless blunders had earned him an unfavorable reputation in his department. Rumors of his infamous mood swings were often on the lips of the female employees. Beginning in their college days and continuing through new employee training at S Commercial, Mashiba had silently caught and corrected each one of Ikawa’s slight mistakes. Consequently, at least on paper it had been Ikawa who had excelled, and that paper excellence had reaped him his assignment to the head office and a wife. That may have been the reason why Kamata had judged Ikawa so harshly.

“It’s all well and good that you two get along, but keep it professional,” he had warned him, but Mashiba had been blind to the truth at the time, and the admonition had offended him. Now, he could appreciate the wisdom of his boss’s assessment.

“Well, I mean, we’ll be coworkers! I’m glad I’ll be able to work with you agai—”

“What are you talking about?” he cut in mid sentence, interrupting the shameless wheedling that proved all his assumptions true. He threw Ikawa an amazed glance. “Nothing’s decided yet, it’s a bit premature to be imagining things.”

He flicked the wheel of his lighter and brought the flame to the tip of his cigarette. The familiar bitterness soaked into his lungs, and he enjoyed the faint intoxication as he continued, voice flat and dry, “And even if it is true, and I am transferred to the head office, I’m not cleaning up your messes anymore.”

In fact, he would expend all of his energy and resources to kick Ikawa to the dirt and see him crushed and ruined.

Ikawa’s handsome face drained of blood, as if he had heard Mashiba’s thoughts. Having once been closest to him, sponging off the rewards of his hard work, Ikawa was keenly aware of Mashiba’s expertise and harshness.

“Wh-Why are you being so cold?” Unaccustomed to being refused, he began to plead in a honeyed tone. “I never said that you… I just want things to be like they were—”

“You think that’s ever gonna happen? The fuck is wrong with you?”

He glimpsed himself reflected in the tearful sheen of Ikawa’s upturned eyes, and he found it hard to breathe. He knew with perfect clarity that this was nothing like the vague aching he felt towards Hatano. When Ikawa slunk near and cozied incorrigibly up against him, what he felt was horror and revulsion, creeping in shudders down his spine.

“You got a wife now, shouldn’t you be a little more careful?” he said, eyeing the other man with baleful contempt.

But Ikawa seemed to have construed his words in a spectacularly convenient manner.

“Oh, Takaaki.” In the blink of an eye, the wounded lines of his face had rearranged themselves into a bewitching smile, and the speed of the transformation left Mashiba astonished. “You’re jealous…?”

The meaning of Ikawa’s words momentarily escaped him. He stood there in stunned silence, his back against the wall and flesh crawling. When had Ikawa cornered him?

“Then why’ve we been apart these six months?… You know I was waiting for you to call me?”

What was this?

Unable to grasp the true identity of what felt like an insect wriggling between his legs, he asked himself again: What was this brazen, repulsive object brushing lukewarm against his lips?

“Hey, you don’t hate me now, do you…?”

“Get away from me!”

A platinum ring glinted on that thing that had sidled up his thigh. His revulsion surged until his stomach churned with it, and he shoved aside the body draped over his, scrubbing the memory of the man’s lips roughly away on the back of his fist.

Perhaps shocked by the rejection, Ikawa only stared at him blankly.

Mashiba’s shoulders heaved with a deep breath. “You, and I, are finished.”

“Taka—”

“And it’s about fucking time you realize why!” he snarled, and Ikawa caught his breath. His expression twisted unpleasantly to match the crude words that left his lips:

“So what, you’ve got yourself a new boy toy?”

“The hell does that have to do with anything?” he groaned, shaking his head.

“How can you be so calm without me?!”

“You’re not making sense. This conversation is pointless,” he said bluntly, turning on his heel again, and a vicious voice hounded his steps.

“Fucking humiliating me like this… You’ll be sorry!”

Every word he exchanged with the man was a trial but Mashiba faced him one last time, delivering his retort like the killing blow.

“Humiliate you? You’d need some dignity for that.” He watched the black storm of fury flush Ikawa’s face. “It’s over between us. And you’re going to have to lose a little weight if you want me to fuck you again. That happy home life put a few pounds on you,” he jeered with callous precision, knowing it would hit him where it hurt most. Ikawa’s predisposition to gaining weight had always been a source of anxiety, and he religiously followed a regimen to maintain his figure. In fact, Mashiba’s arms had grown accustomed to Hatano’s willowy shape, and there was too much of Ikawa for his taste now. This sincerity was not lost on Ikawa.

“You—!”

Something hurtled towards him in his peripheral vision and Mashiba quickly lurched out of the way, the projectile flying past to crash into the wall with a clang. Judging by Ikawa’s weapon of choice, the unopened can of coffee, Mashiba surmised that he was quite enraged.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do it even if you asked. Already got my hands full.” His lip curled cruelly, and this time Mashiba did not look back.

“You bastard!” Ikawa’s guttural voice rained curses behind him but his heart had gone cold as ice, and his former lover’s tantrum moved him no more than the droning of the air conditioner.

He returned to his seat, and his body sagged with fatigue. He felt a little silly coming back from a break more tired, but at the same time there was a complicated sense of relief, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. That man no longer occupied even the smallest niche of his heart. As long as they worked for the same company it was futile to hope that he would disappear; it would have to be enough to banish him completely from mind.

At this, Mashiba felt bitter regret for his own shortsightedness. If he had only been able to part ways with Ikawa like this six months ago, he never would have gotten Hatano involved. Even now, it wasn’t too late. Now that he had resolved to excise from his life the source of his former turmoil, there was no longer any need to ‘divert’ himself with Hatano.

All it would take is two words from me. “It’s over,” and it would be…

Two words that Mashiba knew he would likely never speak. He wondered at the inexplicable sense of frustration that was creeping up on him again, commanding all of his attention and mounting to an urge that felt a lot like hunger.

At that moment, Mashiba was certain of only one thing: this craving could only be sated inside Hatano’s body.