NOISE

The night after the hospital was long and restless. Juichi tossed and turned on the hard mattress of the capsule. The smell of the hospital—a pungent mix of antiseptic and fear—had seeped into his clothes and seemed to cling to his very skin. He could smell it even over the scent of cheap laundry detergent and the mustiness of the hostel. But more persistent than the smell was a heavy, nauseatingly familiar feeling—guilt. It was different now, not like three years ago when he’d watched the life drain from that unfortunate guy’s eyes on the dirty basement floor. That had been all-consuming horror, animal fear, and the realization of the irreparable. This guilt was subtler, and perhaps because of that, more poisonous. He’d ruined everything again. He’d barged into someone else’s life with his crude intention to help and was breaking someone’s fragile survival mechanism. "Happy? Out of work for a month." Kanao’s words burned inside him like a red-hot needle. He saw his face, twisted not so much by pain as by the humiliation of being forced back into a position of helplessness and dependence. Juichi knew that feeling. In prison, during the first months, when more seasoned inmates took his rare care packages, when guards could subject him to a rough search at any moment, he’d felt the same. A complete loss of control over his own life. And he, without meaning to, had done that to Kanao. He remembered the musician’s fingers: long, thin, with calloused pads. He imagined how forcefully they gripped the guitar neck, how they slid over the strings, drawing out that raw, naked pain that had hooked Juichi from the very first time. And now they were immobilized by white bandages, useless. His own hands, resting on the blanket, clenched into fists. Hands that only knew how to break. Hands that had once clenched into fists in that drunken fight that ended in tragedy. He still remembered the dull, bony crunch, astonishingly loud in the sudden silence. Someone screaming from the sidelines. And then—silence. And only his own heavy breathing. Hunched over, Juichi sat up on the cot, burying his face in his knees. He breathed heavily, trying to force the memories back. But they didn’t leave. They intertwined with today. Back then, he’d taken a life. Today, he’d taken a job, a means of survival. He was cursed. Everything he touched turned to dust. He felt drawn to that house. Unconsciously, like a moth to a flame. He couldn’t stay in that stuffy capsule any longer, alone with the demons tearing his soul apart. It was still dark, the pre-dawn hour when the city holds its breath before a new day. He stood across from the same three-story house, smoking one cigarette after another. His eyes were fixed on the dark third-floor window. What was he doing in there? Sleeping? Suffering in pain? Cursing him? Suddenly, a light came on in the window. Juichi’s heart gave a jolt. He froze, holding his breath, as if afraid to scare away this lone beacon in the sleeping city. He pictured Kanao tossing and turning in bed, carefully sitting up, trying not to jostle his injured hand, shuffling to the kitchen for water for his pills. His body tensed. A strange, burning desire ignited within him—to be there. Not to apologize or explain. Just to be. To stand in the doorway of his room, silently watching him drink water, seeing his throat move with each swallow. To make sure he was okay. This desire was so physical, so sharp, it stole Juichi’s breath. He mentally pictured Kanao. Thin, pale, in a simple white tank top and sweatpants. He imagined him sitting on the edge of the bed, running his good hand over his face. Flinching at the touch of his own skin. Tension. A tight, uncontrollable tension he’d been unconsciously suppressing suddenly washed over him with renewed force. It was inseparable from the guilt and this urge to destroy. He didn’t just want to help Kanao. He wanted to enter that room, press him against the wall, feeling the fragility of his bones under his palms. To make him forget the pain, the resentment, everything—only through pain of a different kind, through animalistic, rough physical contact. He wanted to hear his ragged breathing not from fear, but from something else. He wanted to leave bruises on his pale skin—not from an accidental blow with a crate, but his own. Marks of his ownership, his guilt, his atonement. Juichi swallowed the lump in his throat. It was perverse. A sick, dirty impulse. But it was as real as the cold air burning his lungs. His vision darkened. The light in the window went out. Juichi jerked back from the wall, pushing off it with his whole body. He felt like a stalker. A violator. Even here, at a distance, he had ruined everything again, with just his thoughts. He turned and walked away, almost running, trying to drown out the voice in his head with the noise of his boots, the voice that whispered he wasn't even worthy of looking in that direction. That his touch would defile the one he seemingly wanted to protect. But the image of Kanao, pinned against the wall, his head thrown back, his lips slightly parted, and eyes filled not with fear but with defiance, wouldn't leave him. It pursued him, mingling with the memory of that hoarse voice singing of a pain Juichi now understood far more deeply. He didn't want to save him. He wanted to shatter him to pieces, so that maybe, later, he could try to put him back together. Only with his own hands. And that thought frightened him more than anything in the world. And intoxicated him with its cruel beauty. The work at the "Rising Sun" market was as gray and bleak as everything else in his new life. From four in the morning until noon, he unloaded crates of fish, vegetables, frozen carcasses. The air was layered: the sweetish smell of rotting fruit, the sharp tang of seafood, the acrid chemical stench of cleaning agents. It was physical, almost animal labor, and Juichi immersed himself in it with grim relish. Every blow of the hammer on the ice, every thud of a crate on the concrete floor was an attempt to drown out another sound, the one that still echoed in his ears: the clang of a prison door slamming shut. It returned every time someone called his name or threw a suspicious, wary glance his way. The flashbacks came unexpectedly. He’d be hauling a heavy crate of rotten fish, and the smell would suddenly merge with the smell of that basement—cheap alcohol, sweat, cigarette smoke, and righteous retribution. One of the loaders would laugh loudly, and for a second, the laughter would match the hoarse chuckle of that guy, Suzuki, right before Juichi hit him. The first blow hadn't been the fatal one. The first was a warning, a rough shove to the chest. The second... The second was quick, sharp, reflexive. Suzuki slipped on the wet floor, his head hitting a concrete ledge with a dull, forever-etched-in-memory thud. Silence. And then, the painfully familiar, quiet scream of someone else. And his own, ragged: "Get up! Get up, you asshole!" But he didn't get up. Juichi would straighten up, wiping his hands on his rough pants, and exhale sharply, trying to blow the phantom smell of blood and fear from his nostrils. He’d catch the glances of the other workers—wary, fleeting. They sensed a stranger in him, a beast on a chain of conscience that could snap at any moment. And he didn't try to convince them otherwise. His silence and grim focus became his protective camouflage. By evening, having washed off the market's stench under the hostel's icy shower, he became a "ghost." His spot at the "Silence" bar was always the same—the farthest table in the corner, where the light from the spotlight above the tiny stage barely reached. He arrived when Kanao was already on stage and left before he finished. He ordered the same cheap beer, one glass, and drank it in small sips, making it last all evening. His presence was so quiet and unobtrusive that Kanao pretended not to notice him. But his gaze still skimmed over the dark corners of the room, sometimes lingering for a second on the massive, motionless figure in the corner, but never meeting Juichi's eyes. He played. Sometimes alone, sometimes with the drummer, Kenta. His fingers, freed from the bandages, once again moved deftly over the fretboard, but Juichi, with his painfully acute vision, saw how he slightly spared them, avoiding overly complex, aggressive riffs. Kanao's playing had become more restrained, more melancholic. More truthful. One evening, as Juichi sat in his corner, trying to dissolve the weight of hard labor and the ghosts of the past in his beer, the first change in their silent ritual occurred. The bartender, the burly Tetsuo, placed not a glass of beer in front of him, but a simple white mug from which a light steam rose. Juichi looked up, surprised. Tetsuo jerked his head towards the stage. Kanao was just finishing a song, and in the ensuing silence, without looking towards the corner, he simply nodded. It was tea. Simple, cheap, probably from a bag. But it was hot. Juichi slowly wrapped his palms around the mug, feeling the heat seep into his always-cold hands. He brought it to his face, inhaling the faint herbal aroma. He didn't look at Kanao. He just drank the tea, slowly, with a feeling he had almost forgotten. It wasn't an act of friendship. It was something else. An acknowledgment of his presence. A silent truce. From then on, it became a tradition. Beer disappeared from his evening ritual. Now, he was always brought tea. And no one ever said a word about it. One night, Juichi stayed later than usual. Closing time was dragging on; a few drunk office workers refused to leave, loudly demanding more drinks. Tetsuo, grim and already tired, was muttering something in response. Juichi saw Kanao, having already put his guitar away, silently walk behind the bar, grab a mop and bucket, and start washing the floor at the far end of the room, deftly maneuvering around the rowdy patrons' feet. One of the clerks, a fat man with a face flushed from alcohol, noticed him. "Oh, look! Our musician also mops floors!" he roared with laughter and kicked the bucket. Water sloshed across the floor, splashing Kanao's pants. "Sing us something else, boy! Sing about how good you are with a mop!" Kanao froze, his head bowed. His fingers turned white, silently gripping the mop handle. He just stood there, taking the humiliation, as he must have done many times before. And in that moment, something inside Juichi snapped its chain. It wasn't just rage. It was something primal, animal, a feeling of possession mixed with that very guilt. He saw the tension in Kanao's back, how he was trying to breathe evenly, and the sight was unbearable. Juichi slowly rose from his table. His shadow, huge and heavy, crept along the wall, engulfing the group of laughing clerks. They fell silent, sensing trouble. Juichi walked past them without a glance, heading for the exit. He walked steadily, calmly. But as he drew level with the fat man, his foot, seemingly accidentally, with inhuman force, hooked the leg of a heavy metal chair. The chair overturned with a deafening crash right into the path of the fat man, who was apparently heading to the restroom. The clerk didn't have time to react, tripped over the overturned chair, flew forward, and landed heavily on the floor, hitting his knee and elbow on the tiles. A pained howl erupted. A dead silence fell over the bar. Everyone looked at the man screaming on the floor, then at Juichi. He stood by the door, utterly impassive, his face like stone. He slowly turned and looked at Tetsuo. "Clumsy," he uttered in his low, emotionless voice. Then his gaze slid over Kanao for a second. Kanao was staring at him with wide eyes. There was no fear in them. There was a shocked, almost frightening understanding. Juichi walked out into the night without looking back. He didn't see Kanao continue to mop the floor, but now his hands were trembling, and the corners of his lips were pressed tight not from hurt, but from something complex and inexpressible. Kanao had seen. He had witnessed that silence could be dangerous. And how someone could become his shadow, his silent protector, without uttering a single word. Every evening became for Juichi a ritual of self-flagellation and quiet, almost religious devotion. He came to "Silence" like a penitent sinner to a church where the only icon was a skinny guy with a guitar, radiating a pain Juichi craved but was afraid to touch. He came silently, drank his tea, and left without a word when Kanao finished. His corner table was his confessional, his cell. He didn't just watch Kanao; he studied him. How the shadow fell on his cheekbones when he leaned into the microphone. How the tendons in his neck tightened when he hit a high note. How his fingers, the very ones he had saved, flew over the fretboard, pouring out what must have been impossible to express in words. It was beautiful. Terribly and wonderfully beautiful. This buffer of the unspoken and silence became a refuge for Juichi and a protection for Kanao. And Juichi felt something in his mutilated soul thaw and ache from this imperfectly beautiful, yet incredibly sincere voice. He caught every accidental glance Kanao threw his way: quick, furtive, and each time he inwardly flinched. Those glances no longer held fear or anger. There was curiosity. A question. Perhaps even an invitation. But Juichi stifled it at its birth. "You have no right," pounded in his temples, merging with the rhythm of the drums. "You are a destroyer. A killer. Your touch will defile him. Your presence will only bring him pain." The dreams turned into flashbacks. From pleasant, lingering episodes with Kanao to ragged shreds of flesh with Suzuki. A flash. Suzuki's laughing face, too close, smelling of cheap wine. A sound. His own voice, hoarse with rage. "Back off! Get lost!" A sensation. The resilient resistance of flesh under his knuckles, and then—a terrible, frightening pliancy. Silence. The most terrifying silence of his life. Juichi would wake up in a cold sweat in the stuffy capsule, his first impulse to drive his fist into the wall. But he’d grit his teeth until they creaked and lie there, staring at the ceiling, until his heart stopped hammering against his ribs. After nights like these, he came to the bar especially grim. He’d sit, drilling his gaze into Kanao as if trying to purify himself through him, to absorb even a grain of that fragile, sincere pain pouring from the stage. His craving for him was carnivorous, physical—his stomach clenched, his fingers went numb. He wanted to shield him from the whole world, to stand between him and any possible threat. He was his silent guardian, his jailer, and his prisoner all at once. He waited for those threats, understanding that only by saving another could he muffle the noise of guilt surging through his veins. But as soon as the final chord faded, Juichi would vanish. He’d stand up and leave quickly, without looking back, while Kanao was still putting his guitar in its case. He was afraid that one day he wouldn't be able to bear it and would stay. Approach. Say something. And ruin everything. His nighttime wanderings through the city grew longer. Juichi roamed the deserted embankments of the Sumida River, where the wind off the water howled his own despair. He’d look at the dark, almost black water, and it seemed to beckon him, promising oblivion. But he couldn't. It wasn't self-preservation that held him back, but something else. The warm light of a lamp in a third-floor window. The knowledge that someone was there. Someone who, like him, was a hostage to their own insomnia. One night, passing by that very house, he saw him. Kanao was sitting on the windowsill of his room, leaning against the frame, smoking. The orange dot of the cigarette flared and faded with his breath. Juichi froze in the shadows across the street. His heart hammered so hard it became difficult to breathe. He stood and watched as the man he desired with his entire crippled soul smoked alone, and felt the chasm between them grow immense. He could have approached. Picked up a pebble and thrown it at the glass. But what would he have said? 'I can't sleep either?' 'I'm in pain too?' 'Your pain is the only thing that makes me feel alive?' It would have sounded like madness. Like sacrilege. He stood there until Kanao finished the cigarette, stubbed it out on the windowsill, and disappeared into the depths of the room. The light went out. Juichi walked back to his hostel, climbed into his capsule, and closed the hatch behind him. Darkness and silence closed over him. He lay there, staring into the blackness, a void howling inside him. He intended to guard Kanao from everyone: from drunk clerks, from the rude bartender, from the whole world. But who would protect Kanao from him? From his destructive, poisonous, obsessive attachment? From his past, which would always follow at his heels like a bloodstain? There was no answer. Only silence. And the guilt that had become his only and most faithful companion. And then the day came when Juichi didn't show up. Three days. Seventy-two hours. One hundred seventy-three thousand, two hundred and eighty seconds of silence. At first, Kanao didn't notice. Monday evening was quiet; he played for three regulars and an empty chair in the corner. "Tired," a fragmented thought flickered. "Work. Couldn't make it." On Tuesday, the emptiness in the corner had gained density, become tangible. Tetsuo, accustomed to placing tea on the table now claimed by Juichi, remarked indifferently, "Your bodyguard is skipping again today." Kanao nodded without looking up, but his fingers slipped, hitting a wrong note. He corrected himself, but the rhythm was broken. By Wednesday evening, Juichi’s silence had become louder than any music. Kanao played on autopilot; his hearing was tuned not to the music of the strings but to the creak of the opening door, to the footsteps behind him. Nothing. Only the hum of the equipment and the whispers of patrons at the bar. After closing, he mopped the floors, his gaze returning again and again to that table, as if he could materialize a silhouette there by sheer force of will. The anxiety, at first as light as a fly against glass, had by Thursday turned into a cold, heavy stone under his ribs. He knew nothing about Juichi. No address. No phone number. He was a ghost who appeared in the evenings and dissolved into the night. The only thread connecting them was this bar. And it had snapped. Kanao did what he did best: he remained silent and observed. He started leaving the light on in his room at night, even when he went to sleep. The yellow square of the window was a beacon in the dark sea of the city, a silent question: "Are you there? I am here." He sat on the windowsill, smoked, and stared down at the empty street for a long time, scrutinizing every shadow, hoping to see the familiar, motionless figure across the street. But the street was empty. On Friday, after an especially exhausting shift where Tetsuo had been angry about a broken beer line and had taken it out on him, Kanao left the bar well past midnight. The air was cold and sharp, making him huddle into his thin coat. Obeying an inexplicable impulse, Kanao didn’t go straight home but stopped by his entrance, leaning against the rough wall. He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. He waited. He, who always avoided any commitments and the gaze of others, now stood in the night, offering himself to the wind, hoping to be seen. The cigarette burned down to the filter, scorching his lips. He threw the butt into a puddle where it died with a quiet hiss. And in that moment, the silence of the night was torn apart by footsteps. Not heavy and measured like Juichi’s, but fast, uneven, stomping. Three figures spilled out from a neighboring alley. Young, cocky, with empty, shiny eyes. They reeked of alcohol and aggression. “Oh, lookie here,” one of them, the largest, laughed hoarsely, spotting Kanao. “A little night kitten come out to warm itself.” Kanao pushed off the wall, trying to maintain an indifferent expression. He tried to move toward the door, but they deftly surrounded him, cutting off his path. “Where you off to in such a hurry, pretty boy?” another one, with bruised knuckles, poked him in the chest. “Let’s get acquainted.” “Leave me alone,” Kanao’s voice came out quieter than he intended, breaking off halfway. “Ooh, he talks!” the third one mocked him. “Pretty boy, hand over the cash and we won’t touch you.” They pressed in on him, forming a tight circle. The smell of their sweat, stale alcohol, and wildness hit his nose. Kanao’s heart hammered, seized by a panicked, animal fear. He suddenly remembered himself as that kid being cornered in the school bathroom—helpless, transparent, made of glass. “I don’t have any money,” he forced out, clenching his keys in his pocket. “We’ll check that!” the big guy yanked him by the lapel of his coat. And in that instant, a shadow was born from the darkness, from behind the streetlight. It appeared silently, like a nightmare. And it moved forward with an inhuman, devastating speed. The first blow, short and precise, to the solar plexus, sent the big guy to the ground with a hoarse, senseless exhale. The second, the edge of a hand to the throat, made the second one choke and stagger back, gagging and gasping for air. The third turned around, his face twisted in horror. He didn’t have time to do anything. Juichi. He looked like an escapee from hell. His face was pale, gaunt, with a feverish glint in his deeply sunken eyes. A fresh bruise darkened on his cheek, and blood trickled from a split lip. He was breathing heavily, raggedly, and his entire figure radiated a wild, uncontrolled rage. He didn’t shout but made a low, growling sound coming from the very depths of his chest. He grabbed the third thug by the scruff of the neck and slammed his head against the wall of the building. The guy slumped down without a sound. It all took mere seconds. Silence reigned on the street again, broken only by the gurgling of the one who’d been hit in the throat and Juichi’s heavy breathing. He stood, slightly hunched, his powerful shoulders tense like a beast ready to pounce. He looked at Kanao, and in his gaze was something primal: horror, rage, pain, and a heart-wrenching, almost animal relief. Kanao stood frozen, pressed against the wall, unable to move. He looked at this wounded, furious avenging angel who had appeared out of nowhere and felt the ground vanish beneath his feet. “You…” his voice was a whisper. “Where were you?” Juichi didn’t answer. He took a step forward, then another. He came so close that Kanao felt the heat radiating from him, the smell of blood, sweat, and something bitter, medicinal. He raised his hand, the very one that had just been crushing and breaking, and slowly, almost hesitantly, touched Kanao’s cheek with his fingers, as if checking if he was whole, if he was real. The touch burned with cold. “Couldn’t come,” Juichi rasped in a broken voice. “Thought I could. Thought… thought of you. Thought of you all the time.” And in those simple, clumsy words, Kanao suddenly heard everything needed to break through their shared wall, built from the noise of longing and nights of waiting. Their silent dance was over. Now, neither of them had anywhere left to hide.