They strode down the street side by side in silence. Ryo’s shoulders were hunched as he walked, hands tucked into pockets; from time to time he surreptitiously glanced at the man beside him. Aya’s face was grim, the tautness of his jaw hinting at the tension within as he stared straight ahead as if he were marching to battle. Ryo didn’t think this forebode well for the upcoming conversation.
Neither spoke on the way to the hotel, in the lobby, nor in the elevator. Ryo opened the door without a word and gestured for Aya to go inside. He watched the man’s eyes move swiftly over the room, taking in the details, pausing on the sight of the sketchbook.
Ryo sighed. He could already feel the beginnings of another headache fast approaching.
“You really didn’t expect to ever see me again, did you?” he asked, switching back to Japanese now that it was only the two of them.
“No,” Aya answered, looking over at him briefly. “I wanted you to be happy.”
“And I was happier without you around?” It seemed a logical question to ask.
“It’s complicated.”
Ryo suddenly laughed, the sound earning him a narrowing of Aya’s eyes. “I’m an amnesiac. Of course it’s complicated. Tell me something I don’t already know.”
He watched Aya draw in a breath as he sat down on the edge of the bed, one finger tracing the portrait of himself on the sketchbook page.
“Your name is or was Kudoh Yohji.”
“Okay, that’s something I didn’t know. When’s my birthday?”
“The third of March.”
“That’s only a couple of weeks away. Hold old am I?”
“You’re twenty-six now, twenty-seven on your birthday.”
“Yeah, doctor told me he thought I might be somewhere in my mid-twenties. Only my body sure looks like it’s been through a lot of shit for a twenty-something man. Know anything about that?”
Ryo moved toward the bed, walking past Aya to collect his cigarettes and lighter from the nightstand. He lit one and waited, watching the other man closely.
There was no mistaking the slight twitch of Aya’s facial muscles or the extra bit of tension that made his shoulders visibly tighten. He kept his gaze fixed to the sketch and said nothing. Ryo grunted at the tell-tale signs.
“So you do, but you either won’t or can’t tell me. You know, when I saw all those scars I first thought I might have been a cop or something. But that doesn’t fit with some of the things I seem to know how to do or vague snatches of dreams. So, what does that leave? Special Forces? No, don’t think so. Someone I know would have come looking for me by now.” Ryo paused, inhaling long and deep of his cigarette and letting the smoke out slowly.
Aya turned to regard him, his expression betraying nothing, but in Ryo’s mind that nothing meant more than any denial.
“Asuka used to call me paranoid for some of the ideas I had about my past. Told me to just let it go, live for the future, be happy. I tried. I really did, but there’s not much a man can do if his past won’t allow it. The way I figure it now, I must have been doing something fairly covert for a living. And I suspect you know what it was because we used to be lovers, right? I must have told you. The only thing I can’t quite piece together is why whoever I worked for didn’t come back for me. Unless they thought, like the doctors did, that I really wouldn’t remember a damn thing.”
Ryo waited and watched, but still Aya said nothing. It had been a gamble, he knew. The thoughts he’d been having lately were far more suited to some American crime drama than the everyday life of a salary man. As the seconds clicked by he began to steel himself for the redhead’s inevitable laughter. Really, what was he thinking? Ryo certainly hadn’t been a spy in his other life…
“It’s complicated.”
It took him a moment to realize Aya had spoken.
“Come again?”
“I said that it’s complicated. You can’t expect me to sit here and recount your entire life to you as if it were a story to be read in a book. There are others involved. It’s their story too. It’s not fair…”
“Not fair? Not fucking fair to whom exactly? Please, I’d like to know. I’d like to understand why I was left without family, friends or memories nearly three years ago. Why the man who sends me flowers and a card that says he’ll always love me, but is too afraid to sign it, and who knew I was alive, left me in that hospital and didn’t bother to help me get my life back.”
Ryo pulled the cigarette from his mouth with a hiss of breath, grinding it out in the ashtray before he advanced on Aya, leaning forward with one hand on the edge of the bed for balance. Aya frowned up at him, back rigid, hands fisting the comforter.
“Go on then, Aya. Tell me. Explain it to me. Make me believe that I’m being unfair to everyone else who knew me, but obviously didn’t care enough to be there for me. You do that and I’ll leave you and Ken and whoever else is in that sketchbook the hell alone for good. You want me out of your life? Then just fucking tell me.”
Aya was the first to break eye contact, glancing away from Ryo to whisper, “No.”
“No?” Ryo pressed in closer, reached out and cupped Aya’s chin, urging him to meet his eyes again. “What do you mean, no?”
“No, I do not want you out of my life. No, I did not leave you in that hospital because I did not care. I left you there because before the accident you had talked about wanting to have your past wiped clean. You wanted to forget and be reborn. I thought you’d been granted your wish. I only wanted you to be happy.”
Ryo stared back at Aya, searching his face for any signs of falsehood and finding none. And he knew, then and there, that this man who had haunted his dreams and driven forward fragments of his memory was telling him the absolute truth. He had wanted to forget. For reasons he still didn't remember, Kudoh Yohji had desired to wipe out his existence.