The Five Senses: Sight (1/6)

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Sight

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Yamapi, more than anything, is scared. Actually, he’s terrified, because everything is dark, and Yamapi has always been afraid of the dark.

 

He can hear, and smell, and taste, and touch, but he can’t see, he can’t see anything and it feels like he’s trapped inside his own mind.

 

***

 

It’s the last day of filming. Yamapi just wants to go home already, but there’s one more scene. One last action scene until freedom. Besides, Yamapi likes being up on the wires.

 

When the wire snaps, and Yamapi falls six feet to the ground, his head smacking painfully on a metal chair, he doesn’t have much time to think before everything fades to black.

 

***

 

His mother’s voice is frantic in his ear. “What happened? Wasn’t he just shooting a movie?”

 

A thin, nasal voice, Kamenashi, answers. “It was an action scene. He was up on the wires to help him do the more ridiculous flips, and he fell. It wasn’t that far, though. The problem is that his head hit the chair…”

 

***

 

“Why can’t I see anything?” Yamapi asks, and he’s proud that his voice only quivers. The hand holding his tightens.

 

“What do you mean, you can’t see?” Jin asks, his voice sounding on the edge of hysterical.

 

“Don’t freak out, Jin,” Ryo’s voice says. “Just calm the fuck down.”

 

“What do you mean, ‘don’t freak out?’ His eyes are open, Ryo!” Jin’s fingers tangle with Yamapi’s, and it’s something familiar.

 

“Yamapi,” Ryo’s voice is calm, in direct contrast to Jin’s panicked tone. “Can you see anything at all?”

 

“No,” Yamapi whispers, and he’s shaking, suddenly, and why is it so dark? He feels Jin climb onto the bed next to him, and Jin’s solid warmth at his side is soothing. “I can’t see anything at all.”

 

***
 

“It’s called transient blindness.”

 

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jin asks belligerently, and Yamapi is glad Jin is there to ask all the questions, because his mother is too meek, and he’s too lost.

 

“It’s a rare side effect of minor head injuries. It basically means temporary blindness. Things in his head are fixing themselves, and in the mean time, he won’t be able to see.”

 

“How long is the mean time?” Jin’s voice is calmer now, perhaps quieted by the word temporary.

 

“Maybe six months? It’s pretty rare, but it usually reverses quickly.”

 

Six months in the dark makes Yamapi feel like crying all of a sudden, but he hasn’t cried since he was seventeen, so he’s certainly not going to cry now.

 

***

 

“I’m going to need your keys, Jin, so I can stop by the apartment and pick up some of Tomohisa’s clothes and personal things,” Yamapi hears his mother say as he tiptoes toward wakefulness.

 

“What are you talking about?” Jin says sharply. “Pi can stay at home.”

 

“It’s not like taking care of a puppy, Akanishi,” Kamenashi’s voice cuts in. “He’ll need to be watched and helped all the time. It’ll be frustrating and tiresome. Let his mother care for him.”

 

“He’s my best friend,” Jin says, and his voice hits the lower register, to what Yamapi affectionately dubs the ‘stubborn tone.’

 

“He’s my son, and it’ll be fine for him to come to my house,” Yamapi’s mother adds.

 

“Jin, it might be better that way. You have work, and obligations,” says another voice, Ryo again.

 

“No,” Jin says. “Absolutely not. He’s just lost his vision, and he needs to be somewhere familiar where he knows his way around. I’ll do what I have to do to make it work.”

 

“Jin,” Ryo sighs, and Kamenashi snorts.

 

“Made up your mind then?” Kamenashi says, and it’s silent.

 

“I’m taking him home, with me, to our apartment,” Jin says again, firmly. “I can do it. I know it’s not something to take lightly. I’ll take care of work too.” Jin pauses. “I want to do it. I need to do it. Pi is my best friend.”

 

Ryo grunts. “Don’t fuck this up, Jin. Be there for him now.”

 

“Of course I will,” Jin protests. “Of course I will.”

 

***

 

Yamapi and Jin look at six apartments the week after they decide to move in together. It makes sense, Yamapi thinks, since all they do is constantly crash each others' apartments anyway, and no matter how much Ryo teases them about it being gay, it’ll save on rent and he won’t have to worry so much about how much sleep Jin is getting because he can monitor it more easily if they live in the same space.

 

Yamapi has always taken care of Jin. Jin is half child and half adult, some curious mix of the two that blends in a way that is uniquely Jin—Yamapi never knows how Jin will react to anything, because his nature makes him inherently unpredictable.

 

The seventh apartment is on the ninth floor of an older apartment complex. The realtor looks almost embarrassed to show them the place, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Jin looks charmed the moment he walks into the building, because the elevator is one of the old style ones, with open sides where you can see the floors passing you by.

 

The door creaks when they open it, and Yamapi stares, a little in despair, as Jin runs his hands along the fading wall in delight. He grins over at Yamapi, his eyes bright and full of mischief. “Jin, no,” Yamapi pleads, but somehow, he knows it’s futile.

 

“It’s perfect,” Jin whispers excitedly.

 

“Jin, why? There were six other, perfectly respectable, not-dilapidated apartments where we could live like we’re from a first world country, so why, why must you do this to me?”

 

“Please?” he asks, and Yamapi knows he’s damned. He turns to the realtor with a sort of sunken resignation.

 

“There had better be a hell of a good price on this place for all the repair work we’re going to have to do,” Yamapi tells him, and the realtor looks at him as if he’s lost his mind, while Jin whoops and runs to explore the rooms.

 

Later, when Yamapi is taking a break from calling electricians to inquire about their prices for complete wiring overhauls, Jin leans against him and hugs him from behind. His breath tickles Yamapi’s neck as Jin’s chin digs into his shoulder. “Thank you,” Jin sighs.

 

“Can you at least explain to me why you love it?”

 

“We can remake the whole thing ourselves,” Jin says quietly. “It’ll never have been anyone else’s.”

 

Yamapi grunts in acknowledgment, but his heart warms. “There will be no plaid,” Yamapi says firmly, because he can’t just give in about everything, and Jin laughs softly in his ear.

 

“Okay,” Jin agrees, and Yamapi turns to the next name in the YellowPages, and dials another electrician.

 

***

 

Even if it’s familiar, when Jin brings him to the apartment for the first time, it’s like they’ve just moved in, because everything is two steps closer or five steps further away than Yamapi thinks it is, and he’s bumping into things left and right. Jin just laughs and picks him up, guides him gently. They do a walking tour of the apartment, and Jin and Yamapi count aloud the number of steps it takes to get to certain things, and Jin grabs his hand and runs it along these wall guides he put up to help Yamapi figure out where he is in the house. If there are two bumps, he can follow it to the bathroom, and if there is one bump it leas to the kitchen and living room.

 

It’s thoughtful, and strange. Not because Jin isn’t thoughtful, because he is. Jin is always thinking about other people, and even though half the time his clumsy gestures of friendship or love ruin more than they fix, it always comes from his heart. What is strange is being taken care of. Yamapi has always taken care of Jin, and now, to be completely in Jin’s care feels surreal.

 

But he’s not afraid to rely on Jin.

 

Jin is steady beside him, emanating warmth and ease, and Yamapi is coming to depend on the comforting feeling of Jin’s hand at his elbow, gently directing him to where he needs to go.

 

No, that’s not scary at all.

 

What’s scary is when Jin can’t be there. When Jin inevitably has to go into work and leave Yamapi alone, in the dark.

 

Yamapi has been afraid of the dark for a long time.

 

***

 

Yamapi’s favorite color is pink. It’s well known. It’s how he got his nickname after all.

 

When Yamapi is four, he falls in love with a lilac bush at the park near his house. It has five or six gorgeous pink blooms in the early summer, and every day as he and his mother walk past the park, he gazes at it in wonder. 

 

“I’ve never seen lilacs that color,” his mother remarks. “There must be something special about the soil.”

 

One day, they walk past the park, and the lilac bush has been uprooted, and the entire park is being dug up for construction.

 

“This is going to be a kindergarten,” one of the construction workers says when Yamapi’s mother asks him what’s going on.

 

Yamapi can’t stop crying, and his mother gathers him up in her arms and tells him it’s okay.

 

“It was just a plant, Tomohisa. It probably didn’t feel a thing.” Yamapi sniffles and longs to see the blossoms again.

 

He never forgets that color, and spends years collecting things that remind him of those summer lilac blooms, in that rare shade of pink.

 

***

 

“Thank you,” Yamapi says, as Jin wipes tomato sauce off of his cheek after he misses his mouth and crushes the slice of pizza into the corner of his lips.

 

“No problem,” Jin says, and his voice is nonchalant. “It’s just a little sauce.”

 

“Not for the sauce,” Yamapi says. “For everything. For being here.”

 

“Of course I’m here,” Jin says. “You’re my best friend.”

 

“How’d you get this much time off of work?” Yamapi asks, because it’s been a week and Jin has been with him almost every hour of the day.

 

Jin is silent for a while, and then he speaks. “Well, I have to go back eventually.” His voice sounds a little embarrassed. “Actually, I’ve been going to the studio and recording while you sleep.”

 

Yamapi bites his lip, holding his slice of pizza aloft. “Then Jin, when are you sleeping?”

 

Jin laughs, and Yamapi notices the tiny strain in his voice now. He couldn’t hear it before, but now that he knows to look for it, it’s obvious. “I’m getting enough sleep. Naps here and there.”

 

“Jin,” Yamapi says, his mouth falling into a frown.

 

“Don’t worry!” Jin says cheerfully. “I’m fine! I’m a Johnny: I survive on techno beats, adrenaline and lip gloss—sleep is a luxury I’ve lived without before.”

 

“But Jin…”

 

“Let me take care of you,” Jin says firmly. “Just let me. I want to.”

 

All Yamapi can do is surrender, because in the darkness, Jin is a tiny, twinkling light. He wants to tell Jin to sleep, to go to work in the day, but he can’t. It’s selfish, he knows it is, but he doesn’t want Jin to leave him alone in the pitch black.



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