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“A-a-a-a-ah,” Iori says into the floor fan, voice metallic, corrugated by its spinning, “i-i-i-it’s ho-o-o-o-ot.”
Though the balcony door is open, the hot air outside is no better than that stuffed in the apartment; its appeal in being open is really just pretending he and Yohei do not live in a box. Outside, seeping inside—if there is presently such a boundary separating them—the sounds of the city still. They do not still as in winter, with its muted whiteness, but as in the pit of summer, the sun a blinding disk that kills the motion of everything living. Only the skyscrapers manage the strength to shimmer falsely at their edges, but they have always been dead. Even the trill of cicadas is absent. This is not a day to live through; it is a day to endure.
That a corpse is rotting in their cramped bathroom does not brighten Iori’s mood.
Yohei walks by, a large plastic bag of ice in hand.
Iori throws himself back on the floor, the twin maneki neko figurines on top of their sole dresser watching him with upside-down smiles. “Danna,” he whines, “give me one goddamn ice cube… That’s all I ask…”
“Can’t,” comes Yohei’s voice from the bathroom. The apartment is so cramped they need not shout to hear each other from different rooms. “With this heat, this guy needs all the ice it can get. Fucking melts the second I put it in.”
“Maybe,” Iori says, forcing himself back up, “I should kill myself next so you treat me as nice—ow!”
An ice cube flung with impeccable accuracy bounces off Iori’s forehead and to the tatami mat, where it is already being drunk. Iori scrambles to pick it up and put it on top of his head for relief, however tiny.
“There’s your fucking ice cube. Now don’t say that ever again,” Yohei says, appearing next to him, frown severe. He jabs his thumb toward the bathroom. “If His Highness is through being a demanding asshole, he can come help me chop up the corpse.”
Iori stands, accepts Yohei’s silently offered hand with a smirk; the ice cube falls, forgotten, to the ground. “Danna always knows what to say to charm me.”
“Shut up. Don’t be gross,” Yohei says. Beneath the strands of hair falling over his ears, Iori glimpses red.
The tub, sink, and toilet barely fit in the bathroom, and much less do Iori and Yohei. The corpse itself has its stiff limbs splayed where they could not fold into the tub.
Iori opens the mirror cabinet, grabbing a few hair clips from the container he keeps them in. “I’m honored Boss trusts us with these jobs, but I like it better when we just have to kill them,” he says, tacking a hair clip on to fix his side bangs in place. He beckons Yohei with a finger.
Obediently, Yohei bends—as if there is much height difference between them, Iori thinks with a slight smile—to have Iori clip away his bangs.
Iori admires his handiwork. “I should get pink glittery ones!” he muses aloud, cackling when Yohei flips him off.
They learned from their last job. They’d lined the tub with trash bags before tossing the corpse on top, and they’ve cut holes into a pair of them to don themselves. They’ve tiled the floor with newspapers; they’ve stolen wickedly edged knives from a butcher; they’ve hung air fresheners throughout the apartment with the piety of ofuda at a temple.
“Your turn to pick the music,” Iori says, sliding on gloves.
Yohei doesn’t hesitate before connecting his phone to the wireless speakers. Hip-hop. What else?
Iori snaps on his goggles. “Well! He’s not getting any younger.”
Meat is meat. The toe-curling stench of the man’s innards is no different than the stench at a butcher’s. The cuts, too: red and white, marbled fat and muscle, thick and smooth. Cutting up the man, corpse, carcass, thing, whatever you want to call someone who hasn’t been someone for hours—that’s easy. Bone, though, is a bastard. Sawing through it is more of what they have to do. The butcher’s cleaver struggles against it, unused to such heavy work. Iori hacks away, but not deeply enough; he hacks again, in the same bloodied fissure. Or at least he tries. His aim is a little off, and though he deepens the extant gash, he also extends it shallowly, on new flesh the blade is unused to, dulling it. Another hack, arm raised high high high, more momentum to force the cleaver down like half of a beast’s maw.
That does it.
He needs to do it several times is all.
The body desecrated, the music plays on.
Between the two of them, it takes a few hours, less than last time. The body is in pieces, thrown into different plastic bags to be disposed of throughout the city—except the left pinky. That, Yohei chops off in one swift movement, placing it in a silk-lined, cedar wood box to be delivered to Boss. The man’s sin was betrayal, the debt unpayable but by death, and here—a finger—is the proof.
Bits of bone and gore fleck Iori’s make-shift gown. Slipping everything off is a relief; the mask has dug indentations across his face, the gloves have concealed a film of sweat on his hands. He and Yohei throw their protective wear in a separate bag, one to be burned for the evidence it has of them, the culprits.
Iori puts his hands on his hips, heaving a relieved sigh. “Finally done!”
“Finally,” Yohei echoes, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “Done cutting it, anyway. Getting rid of it sucks ass since we have to rely on other people. When are we doing drop-off tonight?”
Iori grabs Yohei’s phone, pausing the music. Without a repeating bass after hours of its hum, the bathroom echoes with its own dead silence. Yohei has a text notification: “Boat guy says he’s game at midnight,” Iori says, then tosses Yohei the phone, who easily catches it. “Counting the drive and the time it’ll take to throw the bags in the car, we’ll be fine if we leave an hour beforehand.”
“The question is what the hell we’re gonna do for the next four hours.”
“Danna,” Iori says, grin wilder, eyebrows raised, “isn’t it obvious?” He savors the redness on Yohei’s ears, nothing the summer has divined, before laughing, patting Yohei’s shoulder. “We go take a bath! Man, this sort of work leaves me all gross. And our tub is—well, occupied.”
“Yeah,” Yohei says, making a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “We reek. But, Iori,” he says, walking out of the bathroom, Iori trailing him, “you gotta quit saying shit like that. People get the wrong idea.”
“Hmm?” Iori pokes Yohei’s back. Traces a quick shape across it: could be a heart, could be nothing at all. “Like what, danna?”
“You know damn well,” he mumbles. He kneels in front of a drawer, rummaging through its mess, their clean clothes combined, and pulls out four towels—two large, two small. He turns around and gives a pair to Iori. “Where’s this bath at, anyway? Will they let us in? We don’t exactly look like the kinda customer they’d want...”
“No worries, no worries! I’m cool with the owner.” Iori slings the towels over his shoulder. “He actually owes Boss a favor.”
“Of course that’s why you know him,” Yohei says, smiling.
“I know people for other reasons! I’m a friendly guy. If anything, I think you should be jealous, danna.”
“That you’re friendly?”
“No, that—never mind. Hey, do I got any shit on me?” He slowly turns in place. “Blood or bone or whatever?”
Yohei squints. “I don’t think so, but stop turning. Lemme get closer.”
Iori, surprised, is already forward when he finds Yohei right at his face, studying him carefully. His eyes travel from Iori’s down to his feet like it’s physical—Iori feels it, clean as a knife dissecting him.
“You’re good, Iori,” Yohei says. “Iori?”
“Ah! Yeah. Thanks, danna.”
Yohei, after a moment, rubs the back of his neck. “What about me?”
“What about you?”
Yohei gestures at himself.
It’s one thing to throw sweet words at Yohei where, at worst, he will swear at Iori. It’s another thing entirely to have to look at Yohei—really look—while Yohei himself expects it.
Iori looks him over, brief as the life of ice in a summer like this one. “Handsome as ever, danna!” He walks past him. “Let’s go then, eh?”
Pouring water over himself, like a priest’s ablutions, lifts away the grime the others at the bathhouse can’t see. Iori straightens, skin fresh and new. He glances over to the stool next to him, where Yohei, close-eyed, is rinsing his hair. It hangs in wet strands where it doesn’t cling to his neck.
Iori’s mouth quirks up. “Your hair’s getting long.”
“...Tsubaki-san said it’s nice like this.”
Iori’s expression flattens. When Yohei opens his eyes, though, it’s to see a smile on Iori again.
“What, no wise-ass comment?” Yohei asks, rumpling a towel around his hair.
“Nope! I’m a very nice guy.”
“Nice and friendly.” Yohei, smirking, nudges him. “It’s a wonder you don’t have a girl.”
Behind them, a kid younger than they are runs, feet smacking on the wet, tiled floor; his father walks briskly behind him, crying his admonitions. On the opposite side, a group of grandpas complain about everything. In the corner, a serious man, seemingly alone, scrubs his arms. This is not Yohei and Iori’s small, comfortable space; here, in public, words carry. Words matter.
Iori swallows and nudges him back. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a bastard, danna?”
Yohei splutters a laugh.
They exist in peace together, even outside their apartment. Iori won’t call it home, not when it’s a space they are being lended, and not when it’s a space that bleeds with what they do for the clan.
“Hey,” he says, lightly, “you going to the tub?”
“I wanted to, but I’m craving a smoke now.” Yohei puts his hand under his nose. “It’s not just that I want one, though. I can’t get the smell out.”
Exchanging the stench of blood for tobacco. They’d done that last time, too; it had worked, if worsening their habits, because the itch for one is strong under Iori’s skin, too. Or maybe it’s a general itch, an anxiety festered by not knowing where to look, Yohei beside him covered with nothing but a towel, rivulets of warm water gathering at his shoulders from the tips of his hair.
Iori hurriedly stands, wrapping his towel around himself faster than that. The small one is bunched in his hand. “Say that sooner, danna! I wanted one, too, but here I thought you were eager for a soak. I’m also kinda hungry.”
“Same. But let’s not do meat,” Yohei says.
Iori laughs. It’s dry, and the humidity in the bathhouse absorbs it. “No meat.”
They make their way to the dressing room, changing and gathering their things. Yohei, ever reliable, already had a cigarette packet and lighter ready, contraband that made it through here. He shows them off smugly to Iori before he stuffs them in his pockets.
Outside, with the bathhouse out of sight, Yohei digs the cigarette box back up, tipping two cigarettes out of it; he hands one to Iori, who plucks it in his mouth with a hummed thank-you. Hand freed, Yohei finds the lighter. One click, then two, lost in the hot night breaths of the city; finally, at the third click, the lighter sparks on.
“I need a new one,” Yohei grumbles through the cigarette between his teeth, bringing the light, cupped carefully by his other hand, to Iori’s cigarette.
Iori almost startles: Yohei is there, suddenly, for the second time today. And with no reservations. If it had been Iori who’d leaned in for something so intimate, Yohei would have pushed him away.
What am I to you, danna? he asks him in the sanctuary of his own mind, breathing in the smoke the cigarette exudes—and the very scent of Yohei, clean and pure to the dark dryness of the cigarette coiling from his throat to his lungs to the circuitous path that air, stripped to its base components, must take to his heart, pattering much too quickly for one mere inhalation. He turns his face away from Yohei to exhale it in a haste.
Yohei withdraws, the flame steady. He brings it to his cigarette next, taking one immediate drag, holding it, and then letting it go, gracefully, curling to the heavens.
The silence has gone on too long. “Danna, so cool!” Iori says.
“Damn right,” Yohei says, struggling to keep away a smile.
A moment later, as mildly as Iori can: “Can you believe we hated each other at first?”
“It’s hard to believe, huh?” Yohei’s chuckle is quiet. “Boss knew what he was doing after all, making me team up with you. I was wrong to doubt him.”
“Me too,” he replies, quieter.
The shuffle of their steps starts out of sync. Something shifts—maybe the sense of rhythm innate to them both, maybe something deeper than that—and the simultaneous susurration of twin souls gets lost to the din of the city, save those two who know how to hear it.
So lost in it is Iori that the clang of something metallic falling, reverberating, makes him jump, him and Yohei both reaching for guns that are not there.
In the alley, he sees it: a lithe silhouette darting from the ruckus it caused. Another follows.
And Yohei’s laugh rings louder than the metal. “Just some cats.”
Iori looks down at his cigarette, dropped from the motion. He presses the heel of his shoe to the smoldering flame. “And they made me lose my cigarette…”
“You say that like there’s none left,” Yohei says, reaching for his pocket. Iori stops him.
“Let’s get to the apartment first, before any other stray cats scare the hell out of me. And let’s get there fast.” He flexes his hand. “I don’t like not having a weapon.”
“I could take out a guy!” Yohei says, raising his fists. “You’ve seen it.”
“Yeah, I have.” Iori throws his arm around Yohei. “Me being in danger motivates danna.”
“Well, yeah. I look out for you and you look out for me. That’s how we do it.”
“Now why hasn’t Tsubaki-san fallen for you when you say things like that so freely?”
“Oh, fuck you, Iori!” Yohei says, pushing him away. Here in the light-speckled city, the night is not deep enough to conceal the color on Yohei’s ears.
Iori’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
The stairs up to the apartment are rickety metal, creaking under their weight as they scramble up. Not yet twenty and already masters of their own space. It’s freeing.
Under the air fresheners, the smell of decay pervades. Fire, Iori thinks as he slurps ramen quickly heated in the microwave, might be the only thing that could cleanse this place. Still, it’s theirs. Where they gather around their single table, the centerpiece of the room, for cheap meals, hands cleansed of blood, on a tepid night.
There are worse ways to live.
Yohei smokes and eats. He picks up the stub of his cigarette to complement the ramen he’d just chewed, and the last of its ashes fall on his own ramen cup. “Shit!”
Iori laughs. “Here, have mine. I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
Yohei thanks him as he takes it. Iori pads away, a few measly meters, to toss the ruined cup and his disposable chopsticks. He takes it in for a moment, the sheer mundanity of it, creeping on domesticity, all in their space.
There are no better ways to live.
“Iori,” Yohei says through a new cigarette, the smoke puffing out to the shape of his name, “you want it now?”
He blinks. “Want what?”
“The cigarette.”
Iori crosses the small space to the balcony, re-opening the doors. With the sun having dipped, the heat has abated, something almost cool swirling into the apartment. “Yeah,” he says.
The balcony can snugly hold two people. Iori leans against the railing, paint coming off in flecks under his palms, watching the city. It is less like a city than darkness interspersed by shapes of light: stationary in buildings, blinking overhead from planes, roaming on cars and people on their phones.
A city of this size has a way of making you feel lost. Boss had extended a warm, kind hand, reminding him of his worth, believing in it. And Yohei—
—is also leaning against the railing, and his presence dissipates any worded feelings Iori might have been considering. Makes them too real. So he doesn’t think about them, makes them quite literally unreal.
Iori slinks down to sit on the floor. He stretches his legs out and leans back against the railing. Yohei joins him, clicking the lighter after giving Iori a cigarette, but each click is less sure of itself.
“Come the fuck on,” Yohei mutters. “I haven’t had it that long…”
Iori chuckles. “It’s dead, danna. But it’s fine. Birthday present idea! I’ll get you a fancy one, none of this cheap shit that won’t work when we want it to.”
“Way to spoil the surprise, Iori.”
An idea comes to him. It’s selfish, pushing it, but what’s he got to lose on the night of a corpse drop-off with someone as bound to the clan as he is?
“Hmm, that’s how I want danna to be. Spoiled,” Iori says, the cigarette filter moistening with the tightness he clamps it with. He leans in close to Yohei, where the end of his cigarette flares, Iori’s own cigarette tip brushing it, the fire feeding it faithfully. He doesn’t look at Yohei as he pulls away, purposefully tilting his head up, wondering if the smoke leaves him as beautifully as it does Yohei. Or if Yohei would think so, anyway.
“That’s—” It comes out like a croak, and Iori almost looks at Yohei. Almost. He knows better. Yohei clears his throat. “You got your kinds of ‘spoiled’ mixed up there.”
Iori laughs, so relieved there are tears in the corners of his eyes. “Did I?”
“You can be damn annoying,” Yohei says, but it’s far too fond to mean anything.
“Well, don’t start hating me enough to leave, ‘cause I know what you did this summer.”
It’s Yohei who laughs. “Nah, man. We’re seeing this thing through.”
“And the next thing?”
“And the next thing.”
Iori raises his cigarette like a toast, daring to hold Yohei’s gaze. The ends of their cigarettes are bright in his eyes. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says, grinning.