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When Yuki reaches out and Ayame makes the wrong choice, sunlight is cutting into the corridor in thick, cold bars. Outside, there’s something of summer in the composition of the sky, even though it’s still early spring, and cool. Ayame’s more interested in that, the promise of warmth to come, than this child he can't know. Ah, springtime! So many possibilities exist at the beginning of the year! So many decisions to be made, so many things to do!
Ayame thinks of nothing but sun and air.
And, fine, no. That’s not true. He’s occupied by those trivialities when he approaches Yuki, yes, but as he walks away, everything else is eclipsed by his brother. Not that he wants a brother. Or a debtor. Not even a memory, not when it’s Yuki. Still, he has one. It is but momentary, but for that moment, Yuki is something to him.
He forgets soon. As he walks on, into the day, he crumples up the encounter, and with a laugh, tosses it away over his shoulder.
It takes years and years and years, but eventually, he trips over it again. Yuki refuses to be left behind, even if he doesn't realise it.
Ah, yes. There’s another inconsistency. Another lie. The child is only Yuki in hindsight. At the time, quite simply, he’s not. At best, when Ayame is feeling truly (sharply, cruelly) generous, he’s the rat. At worst, nothing. A blank which Ayame thinks around, white noise where a person could have been.
Still, by leaving, Ayame makes himself a blank too.
Walking away, leaving Yuki reaching, is the wrong choice though. That's true. That's bedrock. Ayame can’t deny, obfuscate or misremember that, anymore than he can change it.
Sunlight is cutting into the corridor in thick, cold bars when Yuki — not Yuki — reaches out to Ayame. Outside, even though it’s still early spring, there’s something reminiscent of summer in the composition of the sky. Ayame is caught up thinking about what the rest of the year might bring: the trips away from the Sohma Estate he might undertake, the people he may meet and laugh with and dismiss. There is so much for him to look forward to. His eyes are set so far forward that he doesn't realise Yuki — not yet — is there, until a hand grabs at the fabric of his sleeve.
Even then, he doesn’t notice who the hand belongs to — not Yuki, and not Yuki’s hand, either, because nothing of Yuki’s is really his — until far too late. He’s already pulled on his shiny, greeting personality, the charming one, the one so natural it’s almost entirely him, a double image only just out of focus. So good that it doesn’t waver, even when he realises the mistake he’s made.
Ayame smiles, and knows his eyes are as bright and blank as a rabbit’s. A real rabbit, not the human one growing up nearby, another kid that Ayame barely bothers with. One day, he’d like to be able to use a simile without secret second meanings elbowing into his words uninvited. It happens all the time. He began sewing recently, and struggled to find an embroidery pattern for an animal he hasn’t had a conversation with. The curse fills the world with layers of meaning, which pile up so high it almost gives him vertigo. He keeps his head raised, so he doesn’t look down.
When he looks down, the breath catches imperceptibly in Ayame’s throat; the movement is flattened beneath his teeth. The child’s eyes are big, desperate. They widen at Ayame's smile, as they should: it's a treat, honed to honey by practice, like any good skill. He’s taller than Ayame remembered; Ayame still thinks of him as a baby. The hole he thought was baby-sized has grown bigger when he wasn't looking at it. Ayame hadn't realised how far the hollowness had rotted through. Because this is a child, one who must have thoughts, and emotions. Like fear. Ayame is sure that's what's in the child's eyes, because if he was to let down his defences, his expression would be much the same as his brother’s.
Ah.
Honestly, it's instinct, not empathy, that causes Ayame to crouch down. It's what he would do if he came across the rabbit, or the little sheep: smile and dismiss; it's always nice to meet a fan. Not that he doesn't realise the danger of what's he's doing, which thrums through his head and echoes down the empty hall. He's still smiling like it’s an alibi, as though the crouching isn't a whole confession.
"Hello," he says, quietly. Not confidingly, though; he’s as careless as ever. "Can I help you?"
The corridor is empty, but for them and the shadows of sun on the ground, leaning through the windows like the silhouettes of spies.
The child hasn’t thought this far, and just blinks at Ayame. He’s probably used to silence, to being silenced.
Well, Ayame can’t speak for him. In a sharp moment of violence, like a sword caught in light, or a sudden stitch of red thread against black cloth, or a slap, he pulls his arm away, stands quickly, and leaves.
And perhaps — perhaps — that smile, drenched in silence as it, means something to Yuki. Perhaps it comforts him, perhaps he thinks it was meant kindly. By the time it means something to Ayame, though, by the time Yuki is Yuki, it's useless. It's a salve slowly pooling where it's been spilt, among the ashen ruins.
Even when he imagines himself doing better, Ayame can’t imagine himself good.
Sunlight is cutting into the corridor in thick, cold bars and Yuki-but-not-yet-Yuki has grabbed Ayame’s arm. His shirt is expensive and crisp, and the little fingers curl up into it, breaking through the carefully ironed surface, plunging below. Ayame stops.
The child is a child, and so he’s probably grubby. Probably ink-stained. He’s leaving his little fingerprints across Ayame’s arm like a common criminal trying to steal a painting he’s heard is worth a lot of money, with no thought for its beauty. Ayame likes that comparison, because he would be a wonderful painting. He would appreciate it if the artwork was not touched.
All this to say, Ayame is angry: he doesn’t want his shirt ruined. He’s a boy of elaborate and prodigal emotions, so this overreaction isn’t exactly strange, even if Ayame tends towards geniality. He still gets mad, sometimes. That's within the realms of his spread-wide arms. It’s not the anger that fixes him, though, pinned-butterfly against the corridor air. It’s that the subject of his anger is an empty space. Was an empty space. The empty space that was his brother, and is now being given form by Ayame’s anger, which has to have a subject.
Ayame has never thought about his brother as important enough to have feelings towards, before. This is a kind of reaching out. But, if he were to swoon, and faint, and as he did, his arm fell delicately and unknowingly in the direction of some bystander, that too would be a reaching.
“Don’t touch me,” Ayame hisses — which is somewhat of an unusual noise for him to make, funnily enough — as he pulls his arm away, leaving the little fingers hoping loosely in the air. The face behind them, which is coming into focus, wavers. Eyes which Ayame has never noticed are grey, a mouth Ayame newly realises is their father’s, all quiver like a heat haze. The child probably won’t yell, all the Zodiacs are too well trained for that, but his war against outburst is evident. Still, he doesn’t look away.
Ayame meets his gaze. He knows his nose has wrinkled unpleasantly, his façade has shed itself, but he’s still stuck, glaring, delicately impaled in place (and looking like nothing so much as a teenager). It’s heavy, to suddenly have a person in your life, where you thought there was a hole. It's hard. He hurts.
“Don’t touch me again,” Ayame repeats. He expands. He pushes towards the edges of this new relationship, which this new person comes bundled with. Neither of them move. “This shirt is worth more than you could imagine.”
Then he scoffs, and for some reason, that’s what upsets the stillness. The child’s face clarifies completely for a moment, into an expression as clear as a window pane, and then it splits open and he’s crying. Ayame made him cry. The child is muffled, trying to muffle himself, but still the noise is insidious. It reminds Ayame, bizarrely, of when he has to go outside on days that are too cold for him. The chill is everywhere, up his sleeves, in his shoes, completely immune to his charms: he can’t do anything but wait for it to transform him. Except get away, into the warm.
He gets away, walking with tight, fast steps which strike against the composure of the corridor, giving a beat to the quiet sobs behind him. He doesn’t think he would get in trouble for making the child cry, because it’s not like the people who care about him (his mother, Akito, but never Ayame, still not Ayame) care about him being happy. But still, he’s scared they’d notice something was different. That something existed, now, where it didn't before. Anger isn’t much of a feeling, but it’s more than nothing, and nothing was safe. And across the way, tears are something too, something with shape. Something which exists in the world, which stains its fabric darker, if only for a minute or two. Maybe Ayame simply scared his brother, scared him away, but that’s more than nothing too.
There’s a postscript to this version of the meeting. Later, Ayame finds Shigure, and drapes himself across him, dangling a hand in front of the book Shigure is reading, acting like the same kind of nuisance he’s always been.
“Darling, you must comfort me,” he says, eyes fluttering, voice as languid and low as the snake he is. “I have had perhaps the most terrible, harrowing, horrible experience a man could possibly endure today! I simply do not know how I survived it! Look!”
He waves the offending sleeve in front of Shigure, and presses his other hand against his forehead, faintlike. Shigure pinches the fabric of Ayame’s sleeve carefully, slowing Ayame’s arm waving, and then almost immediately lets go. “Terrible,” he murmurs.
“You didn’t even look!” Ayame says, gasping, as if he’s actually hurt. “Fine! I shall tell you the tale! I was wandering, peacefully minding my own business, when I was ruthlessly grabbed, man-handled, apprehended! My poor sleeve, ripped at and ruined by some terrible child! But not just any terrible child, no— Shigure, it was my own kin! My brother!”
“Yuki?” Shigure says, and takes Ayame’s sleeve back between his fingers, looking more closely at it. He’s not listening to Ayame anymore, Ayame can tell: his lust for attention means that he knows implicitly when it's lost.
Still, today he’s distracted too. “Yuki, yes,” he confirms, more quietly. Of course, Yuki. That was it. Rude little Yuki. Frightened little Yuki. The feeling is unsettling, but at least he can put a name to it now.
Sunlight is cutting and Yuki is grubby handed and grabbing and Ayame is angry. Only, the child is about to cry, and Ayame hates unpleasant noise, just like he despises trampled flowers or spilt ink. So he crouches (again— no, for the first time), and hushes him. The child blinks, and his eyes are wide, but now he's had time to process Ayame's presence, they've filled with something comprehending. Rats are smart, or so Ayame's heard.
(In a class once, he thinks. "Yuck," he'd said. "What repulsive creatures." The other boys had laughed, classic Ayame and his taste, except for Shigure, who'd merely smirked, and Hatori, who'd shaken his head unhappily at Ayame. Dearest Hatori: always right eventually.)
The child isn't a rat now, thought. He's a little boy, and stupid enough to think Ayame will do anything for him. Ayame’s young too, though, and maybe, in that moment he could be stupid too, enough to want to try.
"Brother," says his brother, like a question. Sometimes, Ayame even imagines he'd answer.
He can't imagine how, so he lets himself think further. From a word or two, perhaps, everything changes, one grain of hourglass sand at a time, falling steadily in the wake of an unknown turning.
He returns his brother’s glances when he feels them pushing through the crowds at family gatherings, and sees him, and is seen. He slips Yuki a needle and thread, maybe, and is shown in return neat little vegetable patch handkerchiefs, flowering with feeling let loose. Later, Yuki comes to his shop when he's allowed out, and Ayame thinks it does him good, to know people choose to fill their life with beauty purely because they can. To know people can choose. And of course, he learns Yuki’s name in this one; but he learns other people's too, and doesn't even know how truly terrible it would be to not. He learns and is ignorant. He is better, a piece of sand at a time.
In an hourglass, even after every grain has fallen, has shifted, has completely upended itself, the shape of things is still the same. The glass walls are still there. Ayame can only offer the smallest distractions, trivial ones you can fold up into your pocket.
Even in Ayame's most self-indulgent self-corrections of his selfishness, he knows the shape of his world, and himself in it. Even with his best intentions, Yuki remains caged. At least until he, smart as a rat — smart as himself — imagines something new. He seeks out sunlight not shaped by windows. When the time comes, they are both good at leaving.
(Yuki reaches out, through the air, across the sun and shadows, and somehow, despite all those obstacles, manages to seize Ayame's sleeve.
Oh, no. Not Yuki, in fact. Just a child, a useless piece of scenery in another mundane day, passed before the joyous, fearless future to come.
Ayame doesn't even bother reacting. The world is full of people impressed by him, attracted by him; it’s full of sleeve grabbers. This boy is one of a crowd. He's a dust mote, caught in a beam. He's blank, he's nothing. Ayame looks at him with nothing in his eyes, and leaves first. He doesn’t stop leaving for years.
Behind him, the boy reaches towards the empty wake that grows from Ayame’s departure. It spreads and spreads until that's all there is between them. The empty space where footsteps retreated, the empty space where an arm has been lowered in answer: their first conversation, nothing replied to with nothing.)
Through tiny somethings, smiles and needles and simply returned looks, Ayame dreams he makes the wait a little kinder.