Chapter 35: The Locked Door
Yamato lasted until four in the afternoon.
The run Sora suggested was a punishing five-mile sprint through the park, sweat and cold air doing nothing to clear the static in his head. He’d tried to write. The notebook page in his room still held only three words: time, please, hate, circling each other like sharks. The silence from down the hall had grown from a quiet to a noise all its own, a high-pitched hum of absence.
He stood in the hallway, the neon glow of the Welcome Home sign casting a pinkish wash over the walls. Taichi’s door was still shut. The scent of instant ramon from someone’s earlier lunch had faded, leaving only the clean, sharp trace of Taichi’s citrus body wash, clinging to the space under the doorframe. It felt like a taunt.
Sora had texted him twice. I offered food. He read it. Didn’t reply. And then, an hour later: You’re pacing. I can hear you through the floor. Stop.
He couldn’t stop.
He raised a hand, hesitated, then knocked. Three sharp raps. “Tai?”
Nothing. No shuffling, no voice telling him to go away.
He knocked again, harder. The sound was too loud in the quiet dorm. “Taichi. Come on. Open up. Just… let me see you’re okay.”
Silence. But then, the faintest strain of music, something acoustic and mournful, leaking through the wood. A sad playlist. Taichi only listened to sad playlists when he was in a hole.
A cold dread, sharper than before, coiled in Yamato’s gut. This wasn’t processing. This was disappearing. Yamato’s fist connected with the door again, the impact shuddering up his arm. “Taichi!”
“Hey. Knock it off.” Sora’s voice came from behind him. She was there, leaning against the wall opposite, her arms wrapped tight around herself as if she were cold. Her face was pale. “You said you’d wait.”
“It’s dinner,” he argued, the logic thin and desperate.
“It’s four PM.”
“He hasn’t eaten! He hasn’t said a word!” Yamato’s voice broke on the last word. He pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the door, closing his eyes. The music was a little clearer here, a guitar riff he recognized from one of his own darker B-sides. The irony tasted like metal. “He always lets me in,” he whispered, the confession ragged. “Always, Sora. Even after the claustrophobia stuff, even when he’s mad. He always lets me in.”
Sora had no answer for that. Her confident pragmatism from the kitchen was gone, dissolved in the face of this uncharted, silent territory. She just watched him, her green eyes wide with a worry that mirrored his own.
Defeated, Yamato slid down the length of the door until he sat on the floor, his back against it. He could almost imagine he felt Taichi’s warmth on the other side. He pulled his knees up, resting his arms on them, and dropped his head. His knuckles were raw from knocking.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Long enough for the neon sign’s hum to become the only sound. Long enough for the hope to curdle completely.
Then, a soft scrape. A rustle.
A corner of white appeared under the door, sliding from the darkness of Taichi’s room into the hallway light. Yamato stared at it, uncomprehending for a second. A piece of paper.
He snatched it up, his heart hammering against his ribs. It was a torn edge from a notebook, the lines blurred in one spot where something wet had hit it. Not rain. Taichi’s handwriting, usually a chaotic, energetic scrawl, was cramped and small, each letter pressed into the page as if by force.
I need time.
Please don’t hate me.
Yamato read it. Then he read it again. The words didn’t change. They didn’t expand. They just sat there, finite and devastating.
He read it a third time, and the blurring wasn’t on the page anymore, it was in his vision. A hot, sharp pressure built behind his eyes. He’d braced for anger, for a gentle let-down, for a confused we need to talk. He’d braced for anything but this. A plea. A fear of hatred.
“What is it?” Sora asked, her voice tight.
Yamato couldn’t speak. He just held the note up, his hand trembling. She crossed the hall and took it, her eyes scanning the two lines. She sucked in a breath.
“Oh, Taichi,” she murmured, a sigh full of pain.
Yamato leaned his head back against the door, a dull thud. The music from inside had stopped. The silence was absolute now, a vacuum. Please don’t hate me. The words echoed in the hollow place behind his sternum. He thought of every intense look he’d given, every song he’d written, every time he’d hovered too close. He thought of the interview yesterday, his own barely-veiled confession posing as a joke, the camera catching Taichi’s stunned, deer-in-headlights blush for the entire world to dissect.
He didn’t hate Taichi.
He hated himself. A deep, violent wave of it washed over him, cold and suffocating. He hated his own hunger, his own stupid, careful years of pining that had somehow led to this—to Taichi, the most vibrant person he knew, cowering behind a door, afraid of Yamato’s judgment, afraid of his disappointment.
He’d pushed too fast. He’d shone a light too bright, and instead of warmth, it had burned. He’d scared the only person who mattered.
Sora sank down to sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder in the dim hall. She didn’t touch him. She just held the note in her lap, staring at the kanji on the wall. “What do you want to do?” she finally asked.
Yamato closed his eyes. The momentum of his worry, his love, his fear, had crashed into a solid, immovable wall. There was nowhere to go.
“Nothing,” he said, the word empty. “I do nothing.” He had given Taichi time, and Taichi had used it to build a barricade. The only thing left was to respect it, even if it felt like letting a part of himself die right there on the hallway floor. The silence from the other side of the door was no longer an absence. It was an answer.