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Yusuke has gotten used to wandering on nights like these.
Even exhausted from Maruki’s glimmering Palace, he chooses to break off from the group at large and go skulking through these immaculate city streets, watching the stars above come into being. It’s beautiful, if uncanny– the light pollution should have drowned them out entirely. He’d want to paint such a sight, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to paint anything from this world: no still lifes, no plein air landscapes. What good is a painting of a perfect reference?
He strides his way back to the station, watching happy little shades pass by him in droves. The evening traffic hasn’t wound down quite yet, and yet Yusuke hasn’t been jostled even once. Now that his eyes are open to all this synthetic perfection, he can’t stop seeing it, in the same way that he can’t stop himself from seeing compositions within scenes and children out with their happy families.
Sometimes, Yusuke considers himself greedy. He imagines that it is greed to want as much as he does: to want companionship, to want a full belly, to want more than he is allotted.
So when he sees Goro standing upon the platform, he feels almost ashamed of himself as he joins him. He falls into step beside Goro: not quite shoulder-to-shoulder, but aligned all the same. “Good evening,” he says, as smoothly as he can muster. “Are you heading home as well?”
For a long moment, Goro does not look at him. Yusuke grows tempted to ask him again, but he turns to look at him sidelong just before Yusuke can bring himself to speak. “Where else?”
The phrasing gives Yusuke pause. He sees another question in the negative space: where else can I go? Yusuke is usually not one for social engineering, but Goro is enough of a puzzle to him that the situation demands it, from time to time. “I don’t recall if I’ve asked you this before,” he lies, “but I was considering inviting you along for sketching.”
“Sketching,” Goro repeats. “Are you propositioning me for modeling, or…”
“Perhaps,” Yusuke concedes, watching a train go by on the opposite platform. “However, I was hoping to– satisfy a curiosity of mine. I would like to see a sketch of your own.”
It’s not just an excuse to stay in proximity to someone else– Yusuke has thought about this before. He’s gotten to see how the other Thieves draw themselves during doodle-and-snacking sessions masquerading as study sessions. The data he’s gathered thus far: Haru is given to impressionism, Akira’s dexterity lends itself well to hatching, Ann’s style is akin to (somewhat unpracticed) fashion-design semi-realism, Makoto struggles to put lines on the page, and Ryuji & Futaba are the true masters of goofy little doodles.
Yusuke does not know a single thing about how Goro draws, how he presents himself on paper or canvas (because all pieces of artwork are, in some form, a self-portrait). His attempts to imagine a style for him fail miserably. Goro is as much a blank canvas to Yusuke’s mind as he is to everyone else. Utterly matte, nonreflective. Yusuke is not afraid to admit that it intrigues him.
Goro has still not responded by the time the train arrives and creeps to a stop in front of them. “Fine, then,” he says, waiting for the crowd to finish rushing around them like a river parting for stones. “Which stop is yours?”
Yusuke points it out on the map inside the car. He sits; Goro stands. Yusuke does not point out how there is room for both of them on the bench. When he recalls how many hits Goro took in the Metaverse, he thinks he should point it out, but he also knows that Goro is, on some level, sensitive about these things: about comforts and raw-healed wounds and social minutiae. Yusuke isn’t exactly sure where his own sensitivities lie– he pokes and prods at himself enough that his entire self-concept feels sensitive, some days– but he thinks his might be a little similar to Goro’s.
So. He sits. Yusuke’s view of the window across from himself is unimpeded, save for Goro bracketing his peripheral vision. He watches the few lights in the dark go by before Goro– who was staying more attentive to stops than Yusuke was– moves to leave and Yusuke follows.
Yusuke has to take the lead to bring them to his dorm, of course, and he can’t resist the urge to keep looking over his shoulder to make sure Goro is still there. It’s cold enough that Yusuke is grateful for the stuffy warmth of the building, and late enough that no one is around to see them climb the stairs and unlock the door.
When Yusuke steps inside, part of him is still surprised to see everything right where he left it. He hasn’t had to worry about roommates– gunning hard for a solo dorm has worked out for him so far– but he has had to worry about demiurges. His memories still feel muddled and indistinct, sometimes. There are ragged edges lingering where Maruki quietly lifted up his consciousness and put him back in the shack. He tries not to trip over spare paintbrushes and errant thoughts as he ushers Goro inside.
“This is quite nice for a dorm,” Goro muses. The comment feels more like idle words than anything else– insubstantial by nature. Yusuke isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to answer him or not. He channels some of his nervousness into looking for spare charcoal and a mostly-blank sketchpad, rifling through his various caches of supplies.
“I figured we could start with charcoal,” Yusuke says, finding a stick of it and holding it out to Goro, who hesitates. He’s still wearing his gloves, and Yusuke watches him silently debate whether to dirty his gloves or his hands. Yusuke himself always ran into the same sort of hesitance whenever he tried out a new art medium (years ago, when he still had new media to try), wary of unfamiliar textures and strange sensations. It was Madarame’s advice that convinced him to go for it, try it out, get over yourself each time.
He does not offer the same advice to Goro. “If you would like, I have a charcoal pencil somewhere that may be a bit tidier.”
Goro nods, eyes shadowed. “That would be appreciated, yes.”
Yusuke feels Goro’s eyes on him as he continues his hunt. He only has to try two pencil cases before he successfully finds a charcoal pencil: nice and sharp, at that.
“I think that you’ll find that these are a perfect introduction to drawing.” Yusuke talks mostly to spare himself the silence as he prepares his own materials and drags a stool to the center of the room, where the lighting is least awful. “Charcoal is quite forgiving, and the broad nature of its strokes works well for beginners, so you only have to think about basic values and shapes rather than intricate details.”
Yusuke thinks through the rest of the process– sketchpad for Goro, sketchpad for himself. Is there anything he’s forgotten? He hopes not, handing a pad to Goro and watching the way the light plays off his gloves. Goro looks down at it like he’s not sure what to do with it.
“I understand your hesitance,” Yusuke says, and here he suddenly remembers what he’s forgotten. “Ah– I was planning on modeling for you, to provide an introductory figure of sorts, but if you’d prefer to draw something else–”
“That’s quite all right. I think I’ll manage.” Goro lifts up one of the sketchpad’s pages before thinking better of it. “I suppose I’m starting from zero either way. Total inexperience is a boon, in that regard– I’m equally skilled at anything I could choose to draw.”
Yusuke nods; it’s a fine sentiment. He realizes he’s forgotten a second thing: a chair for Goro. He pulls over the least paint-stained folding chair he has and gestures for Goro to sit. “I will say,” he notes, as he takes his own seat, “that for now, you should focus on the fundamentals. Note how the pencil feels in your hand, and how the motions come together through your wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Capture broad shapes and proportions– train your eye to render alongside your hand.” He looks up from his instructions to see Goro’s gaze still unreadable, but with a different texture than before. It’s enough to make him falter. “Does… that make sense?”
“It does. You’re quite clear, in fact.” He looks down at his own blank page, considering it. “You make a fine instructor.”
Yusuke is largely incapable of blushing, but if he weren’t, he’d blush. He’s almost ashamed to admit to himself how much the compliment affects him. It ends up manifesting in a shift of his pose, as he does his best to grow comfortable and present a clear image. With his head held high and looking at Goro not-quite-head-on, he can see his own page in his periphery. That’s all he needs– he could practically sketch blind. “I’m ready to begin if you are.”
“Likewise.” Goro settles back into his chair and does not begin sketching until he’s finally shucked off his coat, scarf, and gloves. He folds each of them and drapes them over the chair behind him without getting up. Yusuke watches this series of actions more closely than he intended at first. He’s been told this sort of thing is rude, so he does not ask why Goro has only taken off his outer layers now, or why he inefficiently chose to remain seated. As a general rule, he does not ask Goro about the decisions he makes. This is just another in a long series of curiosities.
Yusuke gracefully looks away from Goro when he begins to sketch. His own sketch progresses simply, automatically: he isn’t trying to do anything fancy, just capturing the blocks of light and shadow over Goro. Charcoal is already starting to dust over his fingertips. He puts fifty strokes over the page in the time it takes Goro to manage twelve. In many ways, Goro draws exactly as he expected– haltingly, with some degree of decisiveness dampened by his doubt. He clearly wants to be one of those artists who turns a handful of lines into a cohesive piece; Yusuke sees it in the tightness of his grip and the impatient tap of his heel against the chair’s crossbar.
It occurs to Yusuke that he has a correction to make. He stops sketching and, in waiting for Goro to look back up at him, starts scripting his response in his head. He prepares himself to speak the moment Goro rises; the immediacy of it locks him into anticipation.
Goro looks up at him. Yusuke bridges the gap.
“If you don’t mind, I have some advice for you.” He gestures to Goro’s hands. “You’re gripping your pencil far too tightly. You’ll hurt yourself that way, or make your wrist sore. Loosening your grip may also make your strokes smoother. It’s quite counterintuitive, but that is how it works.”
Goro raises an eyebrow. He takes up his pencil in his other hand, twisting and stretching his wrist, curling and uncurling each finger one by one. When he prepares to draw again, he passes his pencil back to his drawing-hand and gestures it vaguely in Yusuke’s direction. “Is this grip alright?”
Yusuke inspects it for a moment, then nods. He returns to his piece. Goro returns to his piece. Everything is perfectly fine.
For a time, Yusuke focuses solely on his own sketch. He manages to capture Goro’s shifted posture– now hunched– and in doing so, gets charcoal all over the meat of his hand from having to smudge it. The revisions come together well enough, and Yusuke is delighted to find that the piece actually has some emotion brewing within it. He wasn’t expecting that at all; part of him figured this piece was just silly little practice, doomed to burn or be lost from time or whatever’s going to happen at the end of the world they’re instigating.
He takes a moment to ask the sketch what sorts of feelings it’s depicting. I’m restless , it tells him, I’m desperate, I’m uncertain, I don’t know why I’m still here.
Yusuke looks across the chasm of the room at Goro’s piece. He can see most of it, albeit upside down, and he manages to piece together fairly little from it. That is what he was expecting, this time– novice works often struggle to convey emotion without it getting lost in translation. Goro himself is entirely engrossed in his drawing, and Yusuke tries to pick out something intelligible from his real-world posture and grip and expression.
It feels odd to Yusuke, sometimes, that he has an easier time extracting emotions from art than people. He can tell that Goro is frustrated, and possibly trying to hide it (so, even more frustrated than he’s obviously letting on), but beyond that surface level everything goes murky and indistinct. There’s no line quality or color choice for him to latch onto. He can’t quite see Goro’s eyes– with his head bowed, his hair mostly covers them, and even then Yusuke can only see the tops of his eyelids– but even if he could, Yusuke’s not sure he could glean anything at all from them.
Goro looks up and makes direct eye contact with Yusuke. He watches Yusuke in turn for a moment, and Yusuke gets the sense that Goro’s done all the same analysis he’s done in a fraction of the time– and to much greater success. Yusuke feels like a pane of glass balanced on its edge. He hasn’t really put much thought until now into his actual act of modeling, but now that he realizes he is being seen something hot-cold strikes him between the ribs.
Whatever Goro was looking for, he must have found; the calculating look disappears from his face. “I can’t say I’ve made that much progress,” he says, somewhat quieter than his usual volume. “I’d like to get your opinion on it so far.”
Yusuke nods. He tries not to jostle whatever wound is growing inside him as he stands and crosses the room to look over Goro’s shoulder. Right-side-up, he can see it for what it is: a genuinely decent first attempt. His legs have been blocked out in careful dark shapes, although it looks as if Goro didn’t really know what to do for the background and haphazardly smudged some gray around. Goro’s endeavor to capture Yusuke’s hands on his lap is clearly where he got frustrated, but the end product is gestural enough to work– certainly praiseworthy. The proportions are alright, though Yusuke has half a mind to insist that his torso isn’t quite that long, and when he reaches his own head Yusuke has to pause.
One eye of his own stares back at him, the other tactically obscured by his hair. Goro must have drawn it early on; there’s enough detail there that he must have used the sharp edge of the pencil before it wore itself down. His pupil and iris are dilated, abyssally black. A mistake around the eyelashes has been corrected into a dark smudge that renders his eyes hollow, deepened. It is the truest Yusuke has seen himself in weeks.
Yusuke takes a moment to collect himself and his thoughts before he answers Goro. He is well aware that any feedback or praise he gives him will be cradled in his brain (or ruminated on) until the day he– dies, or disappears, or whatever happens to boys full of rage when the world doesn’t care about them anymore. When he speaks, he tries not to sound too measured.
“This is quite impressive for your first attempt,” he says, leaning not quite over and not quite around Goro to point things out. “You’ve captured the general shapes quite nicely, especially the face– and although it seemed as though you struggled on rendering the hands, the end result has just enough detail to be interpreted properly by the viewer. Very well done.”
Yusuke draws back, and for a single, dizzying moment, everything snaps into place– he knows exactly what it feels like to be Goro in this moment, and he knows exactly what Goro is doing, and he knows that Goro doesn’t think Yusuke’s noticed any of this. The distillation of all these observations is that the miniscule sigh Goro lets out and the tilt of his shoulders are both speaking to a thought writhing within him: I’ve done well .
It passes quickly. Goro’s critic’s eye returns as he looks over his own piece. “Perhaps. I can’t help but feel there’s quite a lot of detail left to add or refine, though.”
Goro is technically correct, but Yusuke knows he doesn’t have to be. “Don’t worry yourself about early missteps. Works like these are temporary, transient, and it’s alright to discard th–”
Yusuke cuts himself off on the cue of his head suddenly going prickly with shame and embarrassment. He looks up from the piece to see Goro looking impassive in a perfectly manufactured way.
“I apologize,” Yusuke says, concentrating on schooling his tone into the proper shape. “I didn’t mean to imply or– or bring up–”
“The truth?” Goro tilts his head a few degrees to the left. “You can’t be apologetic about that, can you?”
Yusuke looks down at Goro. Years with Madarame have made truth sit heavy and poisonous in Yusuke’s mouth, seeping into his blood and bones and brain because it was better to let himself rot than to spill any of it onto his sensei.
“Perhaps not,” he says, “but even so. I should have been more conscientious.”
Goro looks like he’s stopped just short of outright rolling his eyes at Yusuke. “I don’t need to be coddled, you know. I know how this is all going to end.”
Yusuke blinks at him. He isn’t actually sure what Goro means, and after this evening he no longer cares if he looks like a fool in front of him. “You do?”
Here Goro does look away from him. “Well,” he says, “I know how this will end for me. Either I will die– go back to being dead, really– or I will be remade into some happy little dead thing. It’s all the same, in the end.”
Yusuke considers this, running a hand through his hair to try and soothe himself. It doesn’t really work. He picks Goro’s words open like a scab, and he knows he’s going to bleed him or leave a scar, saying something like this, but he can’t stop himself. He steps closer to Goro, well aware of how he’s looming over him at this point, all one-hundred-eighty-one centimeters put towards a purpose: of capturing Goro in his shadow, of drawing his gaze to what Yusuke is certain is a backlit, charcoal-stained tableau. A portrait of a man-like creature. A portrait of someone with enough greed to swallow up all of someone’s light. A portrait of someone that wants something better for him.
“Do you really believe your life to be incompatible with happiness?”
Goro studies him. He does not visibly react to Yusuke’s words with anything more than a slight widening of his eyes, and that might just be from the proximity or the shifting dynamic between them or both. If he wanted to, he could reach out and touch Yusuke without having to extend his arm. Yusuke knows he will not.
When he speaks, his voice does not waver. “I don’t think I’m compatible with the happiness the good doctor has conjured up for us. I don’t think anyone is. At its core, it’s not real. It’s all as simple as that.”
Yusuke feels like he’s been outmaneuvered at a game he didn’t know they were playing. He should have expected this– should have expected an argument to form– and there’s nothing he can say right now that doesn’t sound like a defense for the perfect world, in one form or another.
So: he remains silent. At the end of the world he does not move, looking down at Goro with just enough bewilderment on his face to capture Goro’s attention and curiosity. It’s only when Goro’s posture shifts and he begins the process of standing that Yusuke extends a hand forwards, staining what little empty space remains between them. It stops him, and Goro himself goes still again as Yusuke’s fingertips nearly brush his face.
Yusuke isn’t trying to touch Goro’s cheek, nor his shoulder, nor his throat, but the gesture manages to capture all three waypoints all the same. He isn’t really trying to do anything as his fingertips trace, just barely, over the line of Goro’s jaw, rotating gently to settle down over the side of Goro’s throat. For a split second Yusuke’s thumb extends just enough to make it look like he could strangle him– to bring the possibility into hypothetical space. This is how one would do it, after all: here’s the jugular, and here’s the windpipe, and here’s the network of muscles gently cradling all the other fiddly little pieces that make up one’s lifespan.
It’s all an absurdity. Yusuke entertains the thought for barely any time at all before his thumb curls back up where it’s supposed to be and his hand is resting on the junction between Goro’s neck and shoulder. He’s stained with charcoal, now. Yusuke can’t find it in himself to care.
On a sleepless night months ago– practically eons, now, after everything– Yusuke had been looking up whatever he could find about the making of art supplies, moreso to stave off the vicious thoughts tearing up his head than anything else. He’d treaded water through videos and Wikipedia articles alike, and the only detail he ended up remembering in the light of day was about the structure of charcoal: how charcoal itself is just the blackened skeleton of the wood cells. There are no remnants of anything alive within them.
On that night, the thought was almost comforting, that when he eventually burns nothing would remain of such a boy– that the ashes would hold even less meaning than the carbonized xylem his master pretended to wield. Today, in this bright, cold January drawing to a close, he cannot imagine a worse fate.
Yusuke removes his hand from Goro’s shoulder in order to gently take his artwork.
Throughout all of this, Yusuke has not been paying any attention to Goro’s reaction, so he sees only the aftermath of the all-burning. Nothing about Goro has crumbled: not his posture, not his expression, not his walls, but Yusuke sees little tells that could be cracks, or could be something else altogether. A mouth slightly ajar, a hand curled over his thigh. His other hand did not cling to his sketchpad, letting Yusuke take it freely.
Yusuke knows if he stays here– this close, over him– he’s going to burn up, or inhale enough charcoal that the end result will be the same. He takes a step away to look for a place to put Goro’s piece, as well as his own, which had barely occurred to him as another mark Goro will have left upon the world. He settles for setting them down atop a stack of books and a disused chair respectively, where they won’t be disturbed.
At some point when Yusuke had his back turned, Goro had risen and started to put on his coat and gloves. Yusuke sees him with one glove on, one glove off when he turns back. He has not yet made an attempt to wipe the charcoal off his neck and shoulder.
“I suppose I should be going soon,” Goro says. It almost makes Yusuke laugh. He’s not quite sure at what– the absurdity of the situation, or the fact that Goro made it absurd by virtue of his non-reaction.
He carefully curtails his laughter before it breaks. “I apologize for keeping you so late.”
Goro shakes his head. “It’s fine. This was an interesting little diversion.”
The banality of the interaction suddenly injects frustration into Yusuke. He was approaching something , some unnameable emergent quality there– where did it go? A well-worn path in his brain immediately answers him: it’s your fault , it whispers. Calamity wherever you go. Nothing lives pleasantly in your wake.
Goro slips his shoes on by the door. Without thinking, Yusuke slips into his own shoes. He opens the door for him and Goro stops just past the threshold, not fully turning back to address Yusuke.
“Good night, Kitagawa.”
Yusuke waits until Goro is a couple of steps away, now illuminated by the mildly flickering hallway light, to respond.
“Good night, Goro.”
Goro stops. When he turns back– and he does, eventually, haltingly– something like hurt is etched over his face. Something like hurt reflects back onto Yusuke, comes to him in words and images of words: why are you doing this? Why are you doing any of this?
Yusuke doesn’t answer him as he closes the door.
He washes and dries his hands carefully, so carefully, before he goes to find Goro’s piece atop the books, where he left it. He treats it with more care than he would treat the real Goro: this piece is real, too, in its own way. The entire sketchpad, piece and all, finds a home on Yusuke’s mildly overstuffed bookshelf, weighted down with another book placed on top of it.
In eighty-one days Yusuke will knock that book over and the sketch will come back to life. In two thousand, four hundred and forty-one days, Yusuke will instruct a peer on how to hold a charcoal pencil properly and he will have to leave abruptly. For now, there are barely any days left, and he wants to hold them all as closely as he can– he can’t settle for anything less.
He will not admit to himself that he wanted more days here until nearly three thousand days have passed. Something like greed has died within him by then: blackened, carbonized, distilled to its purest, most deadened form. He redraws his want with it and watches the shapes converge.