Content Note
Suicidal ideation.
Rare are the moments where Enjyu can lean back in his bathtub and let himself relax. Water is his only solace on evenings like this, when he’s been sold by the Boss to the highest bidder, when he has a day of fakery and swallowing his pride to look forward to while a stranger hangs off his arm. He breathes in deeply, the wretched odor of the city filling his lungs through the tiny window he’s left open in his little apartment.
Yamato is somewhere out there in the city. Enjyu knows he can take care of himself, but wonders if he shouldn’t have left him alone, should have at least brought him back here to this dingy, barely serviceable place. It’s too late now, he tells himself. He grumbles and sinks further into his tub and causes water to splash out onto grimy tiles below. Yamato should never have come here. Yamato should never have come to this city that is too far beneath him and his world. Yamato should never have come for him, not when he’s surely sunken too deep to be pulled back out.
He wonders if he should let the water claim every inch of him, both inside and out. Then there would be nothing. There would be no more of this. No more of anything.
Enjyu shuts his eyes and lets himself submerge, teetering against the instinct of refusing to breathe in when surrounded by water.
Something silly flashes through his mind—
If I die tonight, who will cry?
…
“Enjyu.”
His father’s back is a broad expanse of unbearable familiarity. It is the sight he knows best from his distant childhood, accompanied by the shuffling noises of paper or the clinking of metal as his father tinkers away and works on something unknowable to him.
“What do you think you’re doing back here?” His father’s voice is indistinct, an ambiguous noise even if he recognizes the words. “You haven’t been out long. Why’re you back already? Get the hell out of here and don’t come back till you’ve got something for me.”
“Dad, please—” Enjyu tries to say, tries to protest, tries to tell him he just wants to stay here and doesn’t want to go back out there. He doesn’t want to go down to the fields and peddle the lightning and warmth that dances in his heart anymore to anyone who’ll pay him for it. He wants to hold them close to himself instead. They are his. They are his. The lightning and fire are his.
“See you later, pal.”
Cornell’s fingers brush against his own as they step apart, and something arcs between them. He’s always pulling on Enjyu, always pushing on him, like a wave roaring into a smoldering fire. Rain pours down around them, but Cornell keeps it from touching them with a grin and a wink.
“Wish I could walk you back to your place.” Cornell’s voice isn’t easy to make out even within the bubble of rainless air he makes, and the crashing of rain around them makes it even harder. “But this is my stop. Stay dry, you hear?”
“I don’t want—” Enjyu tries to stop him, tries to keep him from just going and leaving him here in the rain, where he’ll have to start picking his way down to the slums and home to his father’s back. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stick by Cornell, to hang onto the friendship Cornell offers him, even if he knows in the end it is meaningless. Even if, in the end, what he offers is not enough. Even if, in the end, loneliness is all he has.
“I trained you better than this.”
Ababa’s eyes are on him, their bright yellow a beacon in the darkness of the training room. The cat’s gaze is always so pointed, always piercing deep into Enjyu’s heart like a finely shaped blade. When it withdraws, it always drags with it everything he feels and fears.
“Get up, boy.” Ababa’s voice is so far away, somewhere above him. It is rare that Enjyu slips up during practice, but Ababa never takes his few mistakes kindly. “I plucked you from the pit you grew in and gave you a life—and this is how you repay me? Falling over just because the fire was too much for you? Get up, Enjyu.”
“I can’t keep going—” Enjyu tries to reason with him, tries to plead. He wants to ask how much more he must push himself, how much more he must fight against his body’s limitations. He can’t wield both his fire and lightning at once.
It’s too much…
Enjyu gasps for air as he sits up, water sloshing about around him in his rush.
Numbness settles in, but he takes a moment to breathe.
It’s a long while before he finds the strength to pull himself out of the bath and stumble off onto his unbearable lump of a bed. The lone lamp dangling above him is broken and all he has to occupy himself is the bustle of the city slipping in through the open window. Lights drift by accompanied by the rumbling of cars moving through the streets outside.
Six months. Enjyu has been here six months and he supposes he’ll live for one more night.
But he’s not sure he’ll make it the next time he sinks.
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