WEEK FIVE: Wednesday (Touji)

The halls of my house were too dark. Not just the normal darkness that happened at night, but an eerie black mist that swirled around me, isolating me from the surroundings. It smelled foul, like spoiled meat. Cold fear slid up my back and curled icy claws over my scalp as I turned all the way around, seeing that the fog surrounded me on all sides.

No! No, no, please, not this again...

I didn't want to move, didn't want to play along, but found myself in front of my parents' bedroom door. I raised a hand to knock, and my hand and wrist passed right through the door to the other side without touching it. The rest of me followed, carried forward by the momentum of my arm, and then I was in their room at the foot of their bed, my breath coming short and shallow. That wasn't supposed to happen. That's not how doors worked. I could see the lumps of their sleeping bodies under the covers, breathing evenly up and down.

"Mom! Dad!" I knew there wouldn't be any sound by the time my lips shaped the words, but I couldn't help attempting it anyway. "Wake up. Wake up, please. It's happening again. Help me!"

They couldn't hear me, because I had no voice. I moved to Dad's side of the bed, reached out to shake him awake, and just like the bedroom door, my hands went right through him like an illusion. "Dad. Dad, please wake up. It's me, it's Touji. I'm in trouble, I need help."

He kept right on sleeping, his features obscured by the darkness and the reeking black mist that was thickening in response to my desperation. I was going to go around the bed to Mom's side, but to my horror the instant I thought about being over there I suddenly was. Like I'd teleported without taking a step. I tried to gulp back panic. "Mom? Mom, can you hear me?"

I couldn't even hear myself, so of course she couldn't. But I could feel the tears that were starting to come down my cheeks. "Mom, something's wrong. Wake up." She didn't even twitch.

I turned around in a circle, scanning their room with dread. Shadows played behind the long curtains that were a cream color in the daylight, but now were a foreboding shade of gray. I didn't want to go near the window, because I knew what I was going to see, but I ended up in front of it anyway. Where our backyard was supposed to be, with its pretty flower beds and koi pond, there was just empty space. Not darkness, but actual emptiness. A blackness so absolute it was sucking everything else into it, and the fog surrounding me was drawn to it like a supermagnet. I could feel it pulling me toward the window, trying to get me out, and I knew that if the door wouldn't hold me the window wasn't going to either. I had to get away, now, or that void was going to swallow me whole.

I would have screamed, if my voice was working. I turned to run, but it was like trying to run at the bottom of a swimming pool. My feet kept slipping because they couldn't actually make contact with the floor, and no matter how hard I strained I kept getting dragged backward little by little.

I fought it with everything I had, everything, until it seemed like my head was going to explode with the pressure. And then, suddenly, I broke free. I shot forward so violently that I went right through my parents' bedroom wall, across the hall and through the opposite wall. Now I was in the bathroom, frantically trying to backpedal before I got too close to the bathroom window and ended up in the tow of the void outside all over again.

There was nothing I could grab onto to slow myself down. My hands went right through the sink and counter. Luckily, though, I remembered the teleportation trick and thought about the piano downstairs. I pictured it as clearly as a photograph in my mind, told myself that's where I wanted to be. Without even closing my eyes I was suddenly there instead, sitting at the piano bench, my butt hovering over a bench cushion it couldn't make a dent in. I panted in relief.

The piano was open, the ivory keys gleaming orange in the light from the electric fireplace. I put my hands on the keys, but my fingers couldn't press them down.

Natsuki walked past the sitting room door. I sprang up, barely paying attention as my hips went right into the piano's keyboard. I moved forward, the piano passing through my midsection like a hologram, and followed Natsuki down the hall toward the kitchen. I was calling his name, but there was still no sound from my mouth, so he didn't turn around. He scratched the back of his head lazily, entered the kitchen, and bent in front of the open refrigerator.

"Please!" I yelled, reaching out for him. "Bro, you've got to hear me! I'm standing right here, just look."

He pulled a container of pickled radish out of the fridge, and helped himself to rice from the rice cooker. I watched him sit at the kitchen counter, eating his midnight snack and scrolling through some spreadsheets on his tablet. I tried grabbing his shoulder, then slapping his back. Eventually I got so frustrated I took a swing at the back of his head, which was about as effective as socking the air. My fist went right through him and he kept on eating, a couple grains of rice stuck to his chin.

"Come on," I pleaded, looking around in fright. I didn't know how much time I had, but it probably wasn't much. I smacked his tablet, and my hand passed through it... but the screen flickered.

A puzzled frown crossed his face. Elation went through me like electricity, and I thwapped the tablet again. Whatever app he was using crashed, taking him back to the home screen. He grumbled and tapped the app's icon to reopen it. I hit the screen again, shutting it down.

It wasn't much, but it was the only thing I seemed able to have an effect on. Still, Natsuki just sighed and clicked the tablet off, shuffling his dishes to the sink and then heading back up the stairs.

"No, no, come back," I cried, chasing after him. But when we got to the foyer I felt the void sucking at me from beyond the front door, and it was much stronger this time. "Ah! God, no... Natsuki! Mom, Dad! Anybody, please help!!"

But even as I was reaching for my brother's retreating back, the black mist around me had gotten so thick I couldn't move. It wrapped my hands, crushed my torso, drove into my mouth and nostrils until I was gagging on its stench. It dragged me outside, through the closed front door.

And then it started ripping me apart.

I shot upright in bed with a gasp deep enough to scorch my lungs. I was drenched head to toe in sweat, and my heart was going so fast it was painful. But the cry that left my throat was so sweet, so reassuring, that I had to clap a hand over my mouth to resist the temptation to shout again.

It's okay. It's okay, I'm awake now. It was just a dream. But it wasn't just a dream, it was the dream. That nightmare had haunted me for as long as I could remember. The last time I'd experienced it I had to have been what, ten or eleven? When I was little it came all the time, usually several nights a week, until I was so terrified to fall asleep that I would hide pins in my bed to prick my finger with every time I started to doze off. I put on headphones and played the loudest music I could find. I sat up on my computer all night, until my eyes were grainy and my brain was swollen between my ears, trying to distract myself with video games. Of course, nobody could stay awake like that forever, and inevitably when exhaustion won out the dream came back, more vicious than ever.

The basic elements were always the same. The dark house, the black mist, the inability to touch anything. The smell. No one able to see or hear me. Sometimes, though, nobody was home. Sometimes it was only my parents, or just Natsuki. Sometimes my grandfather was there, or my aunts or cousins or schoolteachers. It didn't really matter, since I was invisible to everyone. The fear that built while I ran around begging for help was terrible. But the absolute worst part was the void outside the windows that always, always succeeded in pulling me out, before anyone ever realized I was in trouble.

It wasn't so much the dream itself that frightened me, it was the emotions that came with it. An overpowering sense of helplessness. Inescapable aloneness. Something very, very bad was going to happen to me, but I was cut off from the people I trusted. And even though it wasn't their fault they couldn't see or hear me, I felt betrayed... like somehow they just weren't looking hard enough. When the void started tearing me into pieces, it wasn't physical pain I felt. It was more like my soul was being destroyed with the knowledge that no one had cared enough to see me.

I shuddered and threw my blankets to the foot of my bed. I hadn't had more than a couple hours' sleep in days. That had to be why the nightmare had come back. Maybe I shouldn't have taken those pills Mom gave me. One of them hadn't done much of anything on Monday night, so I'd taken two tonight because, god, I was just so tired. I guess it had worked, but I'd rather never sleep again then go back to that nightmare house even one more time.

I got out of bed, running a hand through my hair, and threw a hoodie on over my sleep shirt. I couldn't stay in my room after that. I needed to get out. I needed to touch things... Like the doorknob of my bedroom.

My fingers took hold of it and I closed my eyes briefly in gratitude. I pulled it open and walked out into the hall, relishing the hard press of the floor under my bare feet. I went down the stairs, past the sitting room—I shut my eyes as I went by so I wouldn't see the piano—and into the living room, where the giant Christmas tree shimmered in front of the glass-paned back doors.

Before I was brave enough to approach the doors, though, I reached for a couple of the ornaments on the tree. A smooth, cool glass ball. A pointy icicle, crusty with glitter. The tip of a tiny lightbulb that was hot enough to burn my fingertips. The dry, rustley material of the fake pine needles. Every texture brought me a little more surety, a little more calm. My thudding pulse was easing up.

I took a few deep breaths, then walked to the back doors and forced myself to look outside. There was our little backyard, the flower beds covered in tarps for the winter, the slivered white moon glinting in ripples across the surface of the koi pond. I put my hand on the door handle, and it was solid and obedient. I opened the door. Cold night air came rushing in to slap my cheeks and throat, whisking the breath right out of me.

"Touji?"

I don't think I'd ever been so happy to hear my brother's voice. I turned around, and the wintery breeze started throwing my hair into my face.

"What the hell are you doing? Do you know what time it is?"

Natsuki stomped over to me, banging the door closed and twisting the lock. He gave me an incredulous glare. "It's two in the morning, kid. Go back to bed."

"I'm sorry for waking you," I said, and the sound of my own voice was immensely comforting. "I'm going to hang out down here for a while. You can go back to sleep, I won't bother you again."

His eyes narrowed. "You don't look well." He put a hand to my forehead, then peeled it back with disgust when he realized how sweaty I was. "Ugh. You been doing jumping jacks in your room or what?"

I shook my head and reached for him, because the physical contact was helping drive away the residual terror of the nightmare. He raised an eyebrow at my grip on his wrist, and looked me over more carefully. Concern spread over his features. "Touji, did you... Don't tell me you had the ghost dream again?"

"Mm." I let go of him a little sheepishly. I wasn't a little kid anymore, I couldn't expect my big brother to comfort me after a bad dream. I was going to have to deal with these things on my own.

"Come sit down," Natsuki said after a second. We went over to the couch in front of the television. He flipped on the lamp on the side table, adding a warm glow to the room that I hadn't realized I needed. I shivered with relief, settling onto the seat next to him.

"Look, Touji, I know the past couple months... hell, the past year, has been hard. And I know I haven't been around much recently."

"You mean you've been avoiding me," I said, somewhat hesitantly.

"I... Yes. I have. It was cowardly of me, and I'm sorry."

"Cowardly?" Not the word I would have expected.

He nodded, giving me side-eye. "I still don't really know how to face you. For god's sake, I... I stole my little brother's girlfriend. What kind of asshole does that? And I can't even honestly say I'm sorry, because I don't know how I'd live without her, I really don't. But god, Touji, I never meant to screw you over this bad, and I don't know what to do."

I blinked at him in confoundment. "What are you talking about?"

His handsome features crinkled into a wince. "I know damn well what a hypocrite I am for being pissed at you. For thinking of Shino as my girlfriend, when you're the one she started out with, the one she kept going back to. I wanted her to pick me. I wanted it so bad that I hated you, because I never actually thought it was going to happen. When it did, I couldn't look you in the eye anymore. Every time she looks at you I kind of get this impulse to punch you in the throat. How can I call myself your brother when I feel like this?"

"Natsuki..."

"I've tried to tell myself you couldn't possibly love her as much as I do. Then you ran off and got into such a boatload of trouble with that older boy at your school. I know it's my fault, and if Mom and Dad ever found out they'd skin me alive and I'd deserve it, not to mention what they'd do to Shino. But damn it, Touji, she wants to be with me, and I..." He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his head hanging down and his hands clenched together so tightly the tendons strained in his forearms.

"I'm going to marry her," he said softly. "Which makes me just about the worst brother in the world. If you never forgive me for it I'll understand. But I love her, and if I have to make a choice, I'm choosing her. Even if I get disowned by our entire family."

It took me a second to find my voice, because my mind was reeling. "Natsuki, that's not... I don't want... Listen, I'm happy for you guys. Honest. Get married, if you want to. I hope you live long, happy lives together and make a dozen good-looking, genius kids."

He sat up to look at me, eyes wide. "Are you serious?" When I nodded, something worked in his throat. "Touji, are you sure? It would really be all right with you?"

"You definitely love her more than I do, Bro, because I don't love her at all. If she makes you happy, then be with her. The only thing is, well..." I looked over at him uncomfortably. "Any chance we could agree to forget that I might have slept with your wife a few times? In the very, very distant past, when we were young and stupid?"

The tiniest hint of a smirk touched one corner of his mouth, while his eyes squinted up like he was cringing. That facial expression pretty much summed up how I felt about the situation myself. "Here's hoping Shino will let us forget it," he said, so dryly that I snickered.

"God, probably not."

"Probably not," he agreed with a grimace. "But, uh, I won't say anything to Mom and Dad if you won't?"

"Deal," I replied, and his face filled with relief. "Even though you really don't have to worry, because none of this has anything to do with my relationship with Yuzuru-san."

"Bullshit," Natsuki snorted. "He even has Shino's name."

"Coincidence. Or maybe fate, I don't know. I just know that the way you're talking about your feelings for Shino, that's how I feel about him, too."

Natsuki shook his head heavily. "Look, I get that this whole thing has seriously screwed with you, but believe me, in a week or two when your mind gets clear, everything's going to look different."

"Did it ever look different for you?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"All those times you and Shino broke up. Did your feelings change after a week or two?"

He patted my knee. "This isn't the same. I realize you might think so right now, but—"

"I'm gay, Natsuki." The minute I said it out loud, I felt the truth of it all the way to my bones.

He closed his eyes and turned his face away a little. "No, you're not. You're traumatized, which is perfectly understandable. I'll take responsibility, but I'll never forgive that kid for taking advantage of you like this."

Whoa. Now I was starting to get pissed. "Yuzuru-san never took advantage! Not ever." If anything, it was the other way around. "Even if it hadn't been him, I would have ended up with a guy eventually."

"Touji, you like girls." I'm sure he thought he was reasoning with me, but for some reason it sounded patronizing. "You've dated just about every girl in your school by now, haven't you? You and I even fell for the same woman. Just because you didn't end up with Shino, that doesn't mean—"

"You're not listening," I said, frustrated. "The biggest reason I liked Shino was because you liked her."

Well, at least that shut him up. He sat back against the arm of the couch. "What?"

My face was starting to heat, because I hadn't actually planned to tell him this. But I was desperate for him to listen. "Why do you think I dated around so much this last year? I couldn't feel anything for any of them. No matter how cute or smart or kind or sassy the girl was, it all felt forced, and awkward, and... unnatural. At first I thought Shino was the reason, but even my feelings for her weren't about her, as a person. Being with Shino felt good because when she paid attention to me, it was like..." How could I put this? "Like, if a girl who my perfect, amazing brother Natsuki liked actually liked me, maybe something about me was special. Maybe I wasn't just your loser younger brother."

Natsuki's lips parted in astonishment.

"It wasn't until I met Yuzuru-san that I realized what real love feels like. What it's supposed to feel like. And every time my heart beat faster, when I couldn't breathe just looking at him, when I touched his hand or held him, I wasn't thinking about you, or about Shino, or even about me. It was just him. He was the only thing that mattered." I pressed my lips together, trying to stop my chin from quivering. "He still is. But the only thing I can do for him now is leave him alone, and it's killing me."

"Touji." Natsuki lifted a hand and hesitated, like he wasn't sure how to respond. His dark eyes looked worried, even a little pained, and he finally settled for resting his palm on my shoulder. "Look, you've been through a lot, and I'm so, so sorry that things got so out of hand. For the record, I've always thought of you as my perfect, amazing little brother. If you can stand seeing me and Shino together, then I promise I'll do everything I can to help fix this. Don't give up, I know we'll find you the right girl."

"Natsuki, I'm telling you that even if I do fall in love again someday, it's not going to be with a girl."

He sighed. "Bro, you're still in your first year of high school. You're way too young to be making such big decisions about your life already. "

"It's not a decision," I replied indignantly, "it's who I am!"

But as he continued giving me that tender, compassionate, slightly guilty look, all I could think was If I ever did fall for someone else, you wouldn't be able to accept him, would you? Suddenly the black mist from my dream was coiling in front of my eyes, creating a barrier between the two of us that only I could see. And what about Mom and Dad? They'll never accept me like this either.

Oh, god. The panic was coming back. I could feel it closing in around me, dense and vile. My throat was getting too tight, and my lungs cramped up too much to get the oxygen they needed. My chest and stomach folded in on themselves. Natsuki's face started to dissolve behind the curtain of nightmare fog.

What's happening? I'm not even asleep!

I clutched at my t-shirt, gasping, and Natsuki leaned closer to me. "Hey. Hey, whoa, calm down." His arms came around me and I wheezed against his shoulder, fighting the fog back as hard as I'd run from it in the dream, every blood vessel in my head feeling like it was about to burst from the effort. But Natsuki was patting my back. His shoulder was solid under my chin. I could feel the warmth of his body and hear the soothing rumble of his voice.

This isn't the same, I told my frenetic heart. It's okay. I'm okay. Natsuki sees me. He hears me. He won't let the dark take me, it's okay.

There was a vibration against my back, and Natsuki withdrew a little to check his watch. "I have to start getting ready for work," he said with chagrin. "I'm opening the Sakuragichou store this morning."

I resisted the instinct to cling to him some more. "Can I come with you?"

"I think you should get sleep," he said, then sighed when I shook my head so hard that my hair whipped his face. "Okay, okay, if you think you can handle it. I actually could use the help. Today's Christmas Eve, it's going to be crazy."

"I can handle it," I said quickly. My ears were ringing and my stomach felt like it was eating itself, but there was no other place I could think of where I would feel safer.

Except with Yuzuru, but it's not like that was an option.

So I followed my brother upstairs to get dressed for a day of work, and tried not to think about how Yuzuru would be spending Christmas Eve in a hospital room with his mom. And how that was because of me.

And how my entire life had been so radically upended, because of him.

Please be okay, Yuzuru-san. Please.