Chapter 8: Yamato's Recollection
The sound of the shower was a white-noise roar, a wall between them. Yamato stood in the center of the living room, the soles of his feet glued to the cheap laminate. He didn’t breathe. He just stared at the bathroom door, at the thin line of light under it, at the vague, distorted shadow moving behind the fogged glass.
He’s like the sun.
The memory was an ambush. Five years ago, a stuffy casting office that smelled of old coffee and desperation. Yamato had been up since four, perfecting a three-page monologue for a samurai role he didn’t get. He was bone-tired, hollowed out, already thinking of the train ride home. Then the door banged open.
Taichi Yagami had blown in like a summer storm, all chaotic energy and apologetic grins, a soccer ball tucked under his arm. He’d forgotten it was an audition day, had come straight from practice. He’d looked at the script they handed him, shrugged, and then performed the whole thing with a spontaneity that felt like oxygen. He’d messed up lines, laughed at himself, and somehow turned the forgettable comedic sidekick into the only character you wanted to watch. His laugh had been a physical thing, bouncing off the soundproof walls. Yamato had sat there, clutching his perfectly annotated pages, and felt something dangerous and bright ignite in his chest. A thought, clear and stupid: He’s like the sun. I could burn in that light.
He’d gotten the lead role. Taichi had gotten the sidekick. They’d been rivals ever since. A convenient narrative for the press.
Now, that sun was hiding behind a bathroom door, scrubbing away the evidence of Yamato’s hands on him.
Yamato’s fists clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms. The urge to move was a live wire under his skin. He could cross the room in three strides. He could knock. He could say it all—the years of watching him, the careful curation of indifference, the way his heart had stopped last night when Taichi had looked up at him, not with confusion, but with want.
Tell him. Tell him it was real for you. That it’s always been real. That you remember the exact shade of his stupid jersey from that first day. That you’ve kept a mental list of every laugh, every frown, every unguarded moment you were ever allowed to see.
The fantasy was vivid. It curdled instantly.
Taichi’s voice, brittle and defensive under the blanket: It was a lapse. It doesn’t mean anything.
Pushing him would be like grabbing a startled animal. It would bolt. It would bite. The fragile, impossible thing that had happened in the dark would shatter completely in the glare of a confrontation Yamato had orchestrated.
The water cut off.
The sudden silence was a vacuum, sucking all the sound out of the world. Yamato’s heart hammered against his ribs. He could imagine Taichi on the other side of the door, toweling off, staring at his own reflection in the cleared mirror, wrestling with a truth he wasn’t ready to hold.
Space. He needed to give him space. Even if the absence of him felt like a physical withdrawal.
Yamato moved. It wasn’t graceful. He stumbled over the corner of the folded futon, his shoulder knocking against the wall. The framed poster of Taichi’s old drama rattled. He righted himself, a hot flush of humiliation on his neck. He was acting like a teenager.
His keys were on the kitchen counter, next to the half-empty bottle of sake from two nights ago, a silent witness to how this had all begun. He snatched them up, the metal cold and definitive in his hand. His wallet, his phone. He didn’t look toward the bathroom. He couldn’t.
He shoved his feet into his boots by the genkan, not bothering with the laces. His leather jacket was draped over the back of a chair; he pulled it on, the weight of it a familiar armor.
From behind the bathroom door, a soft, metallic click. The lock turning. Not to keep him out, but to finish the process of sealing himself in.
That small sound decided it.
Yamato yanked the apartment door open and stepped out into the hallway, pulling it shut behind him with a too-soft click. He stood there for a moment, forehead pressed against the cool wood. The hallway smelled of disinfectant and other people’s cooking.
He could go back in. Right now. He could say they needed to get breakfast, that they should talk it out like adults, that silence was the worst possible option.
Instead, he pushed off the door and walked.
The stairs echoed. The morning air outside was crisp, sharp with the promise of autumn. Shibuya was already a flowing river of people, a current he could lose himself in. He turned left with no destination, hands shoved deep in his pockets, his head down. The ghost of Taichi’s warmth was still on his skin, in his mouth. The memory of his own choked-off whisper—Tai—echoed in his ears, a secret he’d finally spoken aloud only to have it met with panic.
He walked faster, as if he could outpace the feeling of his own heart cracking open. He’d left. It was the right thing. The only thing.
It felt exactly like surrender.