Sleeping Scholar of the Forest - Chapter 8

Wakened Scholar of the Sea

When the window was open, the sea spread out before them. Any time they took a deep breath, they could faintly smell the salt water.

Two weeks had passed since Koutarou Seno and his lover Shuuji Shiraishi had moved into this apartment with a view of the ocean.

Living in a town where no one knew anything about them was more exciting than Koutarou had expected. Maybe it was because they were setting out on a new life. Everything he saw felt fresh and new.

Since Koutarou was dead, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, he couldn’t go out openly, so all the official procedures were handled by Shuuji. Instead, Koutarou handled most of the actual moving, including tidying up. Considering that not long ago he couldn’t do anything outside of research, he could hardly believe how much he’d changed.

Even now, he went out to the balcony quite naturally, took in the dried laundry with quick, practiced motions, and then went back inside. In the past two weeks, the actions had become simply part of his daily routine.

The corner apartment of the two-story building where Koutarou and Shuuji lived was a 2DK layout,1 and wasn’t really big enough for two full grown men. But it wasn’t a problem for the two of them, since Koutarou especially had hardly any material possessions.

There was the dine-in kitchen, and they made one of the other rooms their bedroom, and then the remaining room was the living room and Shuuji’s work space. Koutarou spent a lot of time in that room too, even while Shuuji was working.

Shuuji’d turned on his PC first thing this morning, again, had been working there all day. Only when it was time for lunch did Koutarou call him and force him to interrupt his work, but other than that, he’d had his head down all day. When he was concentrating, he didn’t even seem to hear things around him, didn’t seem to see anything but the screen in front of him, so Shuuji probably had no idea what time it was.

He was concentrating so hard that Koutarou didn’t want to interrupt him, but he was worried that Shuuji was concentrating maybe too hard. So after Koutarou was finished putting the laundry away, he made some coffee and called out casually.

“How about a little intermission?”

He didn’t know if it was his voice reaching him or perhaps that he was invited by the smell of the coffee, but Shuuji responded immediately.

“Ah, thanks.”

Shuuji turned around, the traces of concentration still on his face, and a bit spacey somehow.

“You have amazing powers of concentration, as ever.”

“Do I?”

“There’s been some serious clattering around here, and you haven’t noticed a bit of it,” Koutarou pointed out, and Shuuji flashed a small, wry smile.

“What have you been doing that makes such clattering?” Shuuji asked, turning around to face Koutarou, and putting himself fully in intermission mode.

“I’ve been putting together the bookshelves we bought the other day. Look.”

Shuuji’s eyes followed Koutarou’s pointing finger, and he got a surprised look on his face. There was a large bookshelf that reached all the way to the ceiling, which they’d bought online, and which now contained Shuuji’s work materials.

“You did that by yourself?”

“There were instructions on how to build it. You seem pretty busy, I have to do what I can.”

“You can really do anything now, huh.”

The words made it seem like he was impressed, but Koutarou felt an echo of loneliness in his tone. Until now, Koutarou had relied on Shuuji for all of the daily chores, including the housework. But now that he didn’t have any research work, he had plenty of free time and nothing to do with it.

“Sorry. I have to get this done…”

“We promised not to say stuff like that, didn’t we?” Koutarou pointed out with a grin, and Shuuji let out a surprised little noise, and then smiled, embarrassed.

They’d promised not to think of anything as entirely their own fault. That was the one of the rules the two of them had decided after they’d moved to this apartment. Shuuji had implemented it in order to rebuke Koutarou, who’d repeatedly apologized that his clone self did nothing but cause Shuuji trouble.

Along with a rule that they wouldn’t decide important things by themselves, and that they wouldn’t hide things, those were the three rules for living in this apartment. Mainly, Shuuji had implemented them for Koutarou’s sake, but strangely the one who broke the rules most often had been Shuuji.

“How long are you going to laugh?”

“That is so you, Shuuji.”

They’d been going out for a long time, but Shuuji could never quite seem to stop worrying about him. Whenever he felt Shuuji’s kindness, a joyous smile ended up spilling onto his face.

“Oh right. Do you have any requests for dinner? I was going to go shopping after this.”

“Is it that late already?” Shuuji muttered, glancing at the wall clock. Koutarou always went shopping in the evening, so he knew some time had passed without even looking at the clock.

“It’s nice to be so into your work, but I think maybe you’re getting a little too into it and ignoring things. You worked late yesterday too, didn’t you?” Koutarou asked, and for a moment, the words caught in Shuuji’s throat.

Last night, Shuuji had said he had a little more work to do, and so Koutarou had gone to bed by himself. But since he’d woken up when Shuuji finally got into bed, he knew that Shuuji had been up till close to dawn. But if he pointed it out, Shuuji would only worry that he’d woken Koutarou up, so Koutarou mentioned it obscurely.

“You never know when work is going to dry up when you’re freelance. So I try not to refuse requests. Well, I say that, but actually the jobs are kind of piling up at the moment.”

Shuuji said it all in a bright tone, but Koutarou wasn’t going to be taken in so easily.

Until Koutarou had gotten in that accident, Shuuji had worked at his own pace. He’d never put in any effort to sell himself. But now he was proactively looking for work. Koutarou’d even heard him making sales calls.

Clearly it was because of Koutarou. Koutarou didn’t have a job, and they didn’t know whether he’d ever be able to get one, so Shuuji was working hard for him.

– – –

“I’m back.”

Koutarou opened the door and entered the apartment, and Shuuji greeted him with a smile from the kitchen.

“Welcome home.”

Charmed by Shuuji’s smile, one naturally broke out on Koutarou’s face as well.

“You done with work?”

“More or less. I mean, I haven’t gotten the official okay quite yet,” Shuuji said, adding that he’d only just emailed his data.

“Well, good job though. So, you’re done with work for the day then?” Koutarou asked, and Shuuji nodded.

“I think I’m gonna stop for today. I need to hit the reset button on my head.”

Koutarou could see a bit of exhaustion on Shuuji’s face as he answered. With all the jobs he’d been taking on lately, his schedule seemed to have gotten pretty tight, and he’d been basically living in front of his PC twenty-four hours a day.

He wanted to help however he could, but Koutarou was a layman in the field of book design, so there was nothing he could do.

Shuuji said he wanted to cook, to switch his brain over, so Koutarou stood next to him in the kitchen. He could have left everything to Shuuji, but he wanted to be by his side, even for a little while. Koutarou had been trying not to get in the way of his work, so even when they were in the same room lately, they’d hardly spoken with each other.

They made dinner together, ate it still together, and for the first time in a while, they got to spend slow, easy time with each other. It was still a bit early to go to bed, so they moved to the living room and had some coffee.

“Maybe I’ll come shopping tomorrow too.”

“You have become a bit of a shut-in. Running out of ideas?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Shuuji smiled, confirming Koutarou’s suspicions.

If all he did was output, his pool of ideas would end up drained. Koutarou decided to talk about what had happened to him that day, maybe it would be one piece of input, at least.

“Speaking of, at the supermarket earlier…”

He told Shuuji all about the man who’d collapsed, and how he’d done emergency first-aid until the ambulance arrived.

“You did all that?” When the story was over, Shuuji didn’t hide his surprise.

“I didn’t have any real life experience, but I managed.”

He didn’t necessarily want to boast, but he just wanted to report that there were things he could do, even as he was now. But Shuuji’s face was pale.

“Jeez, is that alright?” Shuuji muttered, like he was talking to himself.

“What?”

“What if someone had noticed you, Koutarou…”

“I’m not that famous.” Koutarou flashed a grin to say Shuuji was worrying too much.

“Someone in the medical field might know you.”

“It was only the EMTs who saw me,” Koutarou said, trying to reassure him that it was okay. They had asked him if he would accompany the man to the hospital, but he didn’t really know the man, and the EMTs were there, and besides, Koutarou only had theoretical knowledge, he wasn’t really needed, so he’d refused. So the only ones Koutarou had actually spoken with there had been the EMTs.

But, the smile didn’t come back to Shuuji’s face. He still looked tense.

“Nobody was really looking at people’s faces that well anyway. Everyone was focused on the man who collapsed.”

“If you were a normal person, maybe, but you’re different, Koutarou. You should be a little more self-aware, your looks catch people’s eyes.”

“Do they?” Koutarou tilted his head, not understanding.

“With a face that good-looking, and you’re tall, and you carry yourself well, anybody would notice you. If you had any clothing sense, you’d look like a model.”

“Well, because it doesn’t matter what I wear, right,” Koutarou said, looking down at himself. He didn’t have any hang ups about clothes, so he just kept wearing the same stuff for years, until they got damaged or hard to keep clean.

“To be honest, I’ve always thought it was kind of a waste. You would look so amazing.”

“Isn’t it better if I don’t stand out?”

“Which is why I haven’t said anything, have I,” Shuuji said, like it really was such a shame.

It seemed that they were going to drop the matter without having to change his wardrobe, and Koutarou sighed to himself in relief.

If Shuuji said he wanted it no matter what, he’d be happy to dress however Shuuji liked, but if he didn’t have to, he’d never go that far on his own. He wasn’t picky about what he wore, but neither did he want to press for change himself.