Story: Keep the Faith
by: ezyl-who-lives-in-the-hole.
Chapter title: dysthemic dystopic dyslectic (two of four).
Rating: Kill the writing staff, it's PG-13.
Summary: When all else fails, keep the faith.
Notes: A silent protest towards lack of Yumiko-nee in fic. I've been RPS-ing too much. Oh hey, look! It's also a KAT-TUN reference. *loopy*
...
It starts with the suicide note.
He had been rummaging through Fuji's things for quite a while, now, since Yumiko had said it'd be okay, but it was the first time he'd come upon this sheet of paper. Folded once, the note was neatly lettered, carefully trimmed and the pen that slipped across the paper was a somber black ink tip. He had unfolded it without much thought, but after realizing what it had said, he was sure he would never be able to think properly, anymore.
What Fuji had written would haunt him for the rest of his life.
I think I'm going to give up.
I wish I could say that you never loved me, but I don't know. I wish I could say that you've always loved me, but you never say.
Goodbye, Tezuka.
Is it too late, he thinks, to tell you that I love you?
That was last year. It was also the year his doctor's report turned-up with insomnia, dysthymia, and schizotypy, along with a slew of prescription medications and a note suggesting indefinite hospice-boarding options. To his part, Atobe gave him an expensive oak medicine cabinet with gold-plated hinges.
"Unnecessarily-complicated polysyllabic language," he declared, after the business meeting and after Tezuka had informed him of these new developments, "They should just call you depressed and insane and let it go, Tezuka. It's bullshit."
"Since when does anyone ever use 'polysyllabic'?" He asked, amused.
"I'm is not going to let you quit my company." Atobe said flatly, "You're the only—" he opened his mouth, and then closed it.
"The only what?"
He's ignored. "Whatever. Go on a vacation or something. You don't earn four thousand yen per hour for nothing."
"I'm saving it." Tezuka told him.
"For what?" his boss laughed, "Retirement? Trust me, guys like you don't last after forty-five. I know I won't."
"That's a pleasant way of putting it. I don't suppose the Canadian whisky last night had anything to do with it?"
Atobe snorts. "As if. Ore-sama's tolerance of alcohol knows no bounds."
He only smiles to himself. He certainly hadn't been the one tripping up his co-worker's front steps, whining in a loud voice about not getting laid with a big-breasted girl.
--
He didn't want to burden her anymore. The woman had her own life, her own girlfriends. He had been so wrapped up in his sorrows for the first few years, and she had kept up with him, smiling and never doing anything for herself. She accompanied him on all his hospital visits, she made excuses to family and friends when he wanted to be alone, opened her legs when he wanted sex, not delivering a word of complaint when he shunned her for weeks. She was everything and anything he could've ever wanted.
But that was what had been troubling. Yumiko was simply too perfect for him. She didn't even question it when he asked for a divorce, merely nodded her head and told him that she understood. Someone like Fuji Yumiko…he would probably never come across any girl like her again.
He was a horrible person for even wanting to become close to her. Atobe agreed.
And it goes on like this, these days of being alone and tormented and confused and becoming victim to the very vestiges of this half-life, until Echizen comes back.
Because Echizen Ryoma always comes back.
A/N: And indeed, he does. Would you like to review? *pokes* Thanks for reading.