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Jiro's therapist didn't want him to blame himself, but he wasn't sure how that was possible. Even if it seemed like he couldn't have had anything to do with Anko's suicide, with Suzu's, with Ritsuka's... there was no denying that he was a common factor.
He'd had three serious girlfriends in his life, three relationships lasting more than one year.
And all three of them had ended with her suicide.
Even the few other girls he'd gone out with, the relationships that never went beyond the first few dates, seemed to meet with misfortune. One started losing hair in clumps soon after they started seeing each other, and became so sure it was the stress of the city that she moved back to the countryside to be with her grandparents. One was struck by a delivery truck while biking home from her part-time job and lost all her recent memories, including all those of Jiro, when she woke.
Another, one who Jiro dated for nearly six months in college, found her dorm room splattered inside and out with blood-red paint, shaping horrible insults, accusations, and threats.
Cheater. Whore. Cunt.
Die. Die. DIE.
That red paint had spelled out far worse as well, things Jiro couldn't stand to remember. Rumors had spread like wildfire, her reputation ruined. It came out, eventually, that she had been cheating on Jiro. With three other guys, in fact. One of the others was ultimately caught as the culprit, but Jiro couldn't bring himself to hate her or think she deserved such a public shaming, no matter how unfaithful she'd been.
But those girls, those girls who Jiro had only seen for a little while, got off light.
Got off from what?
Jiro couldn't help but believe that he was cursed. And that curse had been potent enough to kill Ritsuka. Suzu. And now Anko.
Three young women committing suicide over a span of ten years, after all being romantically linked to the same man, was enough of a pattern for the police to speak to Jiro. But after a thorough investigation, they found nothing out of the ordinary. He was simply unlucky, they decided in the end. A man to whom death was drawn.
All of the deaths were ruled as undisputed suicides. There were notes, and signs of strife that the victims' closest friends and families had missed—but admitted, in retrospect, were evident. The police sent Jiro away with their sympathies, and advice to speak to a professional in his time of need. Whether that be a therapist or an exorcist.
After Anko, Jiro became certain that no one could help him. He became certain that it was his destiny, his duty, to live out the rest of his days in total isolation. Only going to work, then home. Only seeing Ichiro, Saburo.
The curse only seemed to affect the women who grew close to Jiro. That was one small mercy, he supposed. He could still have his brothers, if nothing else. Without them, he would have lost his mind.
Maybe he was losing it anyway.
Because some time after Anko, after he'd grieved for as long as they'd been together, he woke in a cold sweat in the dead of the night. Paralyzed. Eyes opening to fix on the dark ceiling above his head, the cord of the ceiling fan swaying lightly as an early autumn breeze flowed in from the open window.
Saburo lay next to him, curled up against his side like he was as small as he'd been when they were kids. He was so tall now, so lanky, that he barely fit in Jiro's bed, but he could still be adorable when he wanted to be. He could be anything he wanted to be.
He could even be...
Jiro swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut against the thought that entered his mind for the first time that night. It was horrible, that he'd thought it at all. How could he think such a thing about Saburo? They'd had their differences in the past, they even still bickered now and then. But Saburo was his precious little brother. He'd been visiting Jiro more and more often as of late, practically moving into the guest room of his apartment—though when he stayed over, more often than not, he slept in Jiro's bed.
It was obvious that Jiro was lonely, and Saburo—whenever possible—didn't let him be alone.
He was such a good brother. So thoughtful, so caring, even if he tried to act like he wasn't. There was no way he could have been... responsible. For all the things that had happened to isolate Jiro in this life.
Jiro's stomach roiled. It was such an ugly thought, springing up out of the dark for no apparent reason, that it left him feeling sick, tasting bile at the back of his throat until the sun started to rise.
But once that thought passed his mind once, it wasn't forgotten so easily.
Over the next months, that thought returned to him again and again, accompanied by scraps of what Jiro had thought was the long settled past.
After her death, the investigation discovered Ritsuka had been a bully online. Countless secret social media accounts surfaced, full of the vitriol she would spew at others. She'd been an artist, and according to her secret accounts, any artist younger and more talented than her deserved fates worse than death.
Several of her victims eventually stood up for themselves. They found a way to fight back. They'd threatened her from an anonymous account of their own, flaying open all her darkest vulnerabilities and flashing proof of the dirt they'd gathered on her. Evidence tying her to her secret accounts, to all the awful things she'd said.
That was what had driven her to take her life, before that truth could be exposed.
Suzu had been deep in debt. Online gambling. The investigators found, after her death, that the loan sharks she'd borrowed from were putting more and more pressure on her to pay back her debt. They threatened to go after her family, her friends, even Jiro.
The investigation into Anko's death had turned up a hidden social media account too, but it was nothing like the ones Ritsuka had created. She kept an online journal, seemingly meant only for herself, and her vitriol, her hate, was directed only at herself.
She'd written hundreds of thousands of words about her own shortcomings, her own failings. About how she related to the protagonists of the bleak tragedies she read, heroines who one and all ended their stories by ending their lives. She described in graphic detail the ways she imagined killing herself, and how the relief, the freedom, that would come afterwards might feel.
They were open and shut cases. Proven suicides, one after another after another.
But was that proof really good enough? Their deaths, their reasons, no matter how different... in the end, they'd all been tied back to something digital. Something online.
Jiro had never gotten very good at computers, but Saburo was always warning him not to blindly trust everything he saw on the internet. Because everything online, everything, could be faked.
Didn't that mean...?
Those dark, mounting thoughts, those stomach-turning suspicions, weren't all that came to Jiro in those months. His thirtieth birthday came as well. He insisted he wanted to celebrate alone, no friends, no coworkers. Just Ichiro and Saburo, a simple dinner at his apartment, like it was just the three of them back home again.
After Ichiro took his leave, to get home to the family he'd been lucky enough to find and form beyond them, Saburo pulled his chair closer to Jiro's on the apartment balcony and laid his head on Jiro's shoulder.
"It's been a while," Saburo began, his voice as soft as his hair that tickled Jiro's cheek. "Are you really planning on staying alone? Forever? Never dating again, never looking for someone, finding someone?"
Jiro froze, his fingers twitching around the neck of the bottle of beer he held. It was the first time he and Saburo had spoken of anything like this out loud, but he supposed it wasn't all that surprising that Saburo had noticed him dodging all attempts by his friends and colleagues to get him to go out with them, even for casual, friendly drinks.
"Aren't you lonely?" Saburo continued, lifting his head, pulling back just enough to look Jiro in the eye.
Jiro swallowed thickly and wrenched a smile to his lips. "Nah. Got you, don't I?"
Saburo hummed. "What about sex?"
Jiro choked out a strained laugh. "H-huh?"
"It's been over a year since you had sex. You like it, don't you?"
"U-uh, as... as much as most guys, I guess." Jiro ducked his head with another forced laugh, thumb scraping over the cool bottle in his hand. "Nothing I can't live without."
"You shouldn't have to live without it, though. Just because you've had bad taste in women—"
"Saburo," Jiro warned.
"I'd have sex with you if you asked," Saburo went on, shifting course so abruptly that Jiro choked on air.
Jiro turned to fix Saburo with a glare, to tell him off, to tell him that that wasn't remotely funny. But Saburo wasn't laughing. His lips weren't quirked with the smirk they always wore when he teased and taunted Jiro.
His lips were so close, and his cheeks so rosy in the winter cold, that there was nothing Jiro could do but reach for him, hold him, when Saburo leaned in to kiss him.
The first time was right there, out on the balcony, in the biting chill of early February. Saburo climbed into Jiro's lap and kissed him until their lips were sore, until Jiro was panting, until his cock pulsed, releasing his seed inside Saburo for the very first time.
Jiro woke alone in bed the next morning, so petrified with revulsion at his own actions that he thought he might throw up right there. Maybe he would choke on it and die. Maybe that was what he deserved.
He only unstuck himself from bed and began to move when he heard the sounds of Saburo in the kitchen. Jiro shambled out like the living dead. As soon as he laid eyes on Saburo, on the evidence his own lips and teeth had left on the pale skin of Saburo's throat, he was prepared to drop to his knees and grovel, sob, and swear to do anything Saburo asked to atone.
But Saburo beat him to it. He was on his knees first, backing Jiro up against the kitchen cabinets, taking Jiro's cock out of his pants and into his mouth, until all common sense and rational thoughts left Jiro once more.
They didn't talk about it, but it became a daily occurrence. Every morning, before Jiro left for work, Saburo kissed him. Every night, when Jiro got home, Saburo was there to kiss him again. They didn't talk about Saburo moving in, either, but it was obvious it had happened. More and more of Saburo's things began to appear in the guest room, filling it up to the point that they had to get rid of the bed to make space.
No one was using that bed, anyway. Saburo spent every night in Jiro's arms.
It wasn't Saburo who initiated every time, either. Maybe Jiro had missed this more than he'd known, this heat, this closeness, the company of another body melding into his own. Or maybe this had been the inevitable end for them, ever since they were children, refusing to sleep in separate beds at the group home even when there had been room.
Had Saburo known? How long had he known? That this was something they could have, something they could do, something they could want.
Had he wanted it?
How long had he wanted it?
How... how far had he gone, to have it?
There would never be any proof, Jiro was sure of that. If Saburo really had done what Jiro's darkest, vilest, most unwanted suspicions thought, he would have been careful about it. Smart about it.
He would have made sure to get away with it. Not only for his own sake, but for Jiro's. He would have been careful, so that Jiro would never have to know.
Jiro was getting thinner. He spent a day or two every week hunched over the toilet bowl in the mornings, emptying his guts with sheer terror and disgust vibrating through his bones. Disgust at what he thought of Saburo, what he did to Saburo, and what he knew he wouldn't stop doing.
Because there was no stopping now.
Whether it was true or not, what Saburo had done, there was no longer a line between where Jiro ended and where Saburo began. There was no longer any need to pretend there had ever been such a line at all.
"Did someone confess to you today?" Saburo asked as they undressed for bed one night. It had barely been three months since Jiro's birthday, but already it felt so morbidly, comfortably familiar to sink into bed with Saburo every night.
"A new girl at work asked if she could share the bench I usually take for lunch," Jiro said as he climbed onto the bed after Saburo, settling between his legs and letting Saburo snake his arms around him, drawing him closer. "That's all. But if someone did confess..."
Saburo squeezed Jiro's hips with his thighs. "I'd kill her, of course."
"I know."
Their eyes met and for one, long moment, they were silent. They saw each other and only each other. They knew each other, inside and out.
Then they laughed, the sound bubbling out of them in unison. Jiro's laughter spilled out of him along with his panic, his fear. Toxic and gut-wrenching, so noxious he almost expected to see it billowing out between them, a cloud of poison that had brewed for too long in his guts.
"I was only joking, dork," Saburo murmured.
"I know that too," Jiro reassured.
He didn't, he couldn't, he wouldn't ever know. But if this was his curse to bear, he would bear it. He would take it inside of himself and let it beat in his chest like a second heart, no matter how much dread it pumped through his veins.
Because no matter what, he couldn't lose Saburo too.