jewelledhours | [Broken Halves] In the Beginning

Title : Broken Halves
Chapter : Two - In the Beginning
Pairing : Ryo/Shige
Author :binmusic
Rating : G
Words : 3,027
Summary : The first and second meetings in the start of what could be a relationship.
A/N : Sorry for the rather delayed update. I actually had this chapter written not too long after the first was posted but it's been sitting and gathering dust due to the fact that I'm unsure of its quality. So I lack the confidence in this chapter, and I honestly hope it is bearable to read. I don't think there is anything that might confuse anyone, but if there is, I'd be happy to explain :]

Kato-kun told me he's been a salesman for eight years already, having started traveling through the prefectures since he was seventeen, before he was even of legal age. He said it was because he was born old, given wrinkles instead of bulging smooth cheeks and possessing a certain maturity despite his youth. He's probably right about that and it's also the only part of him, I think, that coincides with a side of Ryo-chan.

Ryo-chan is a vintage soul. He believes in the more old-fashioned things, delivering groceries for an elderly neighbor, earning his own yen coin by coin and of course marriage before sex. He's dated a few girls from our town before, two to be exact and one from another district about three hours drive away. None of them had ended badly but at the same time, he's not exactly married with two kids right now and considering his age, that isn't how it should be.

I can't say for sure whose fault it might be. If you ask my mother, she'd tell you with Ryo-chan for sure. Because those three girls have all been married and have set up their own respective families. At the same time though, one of the children had been born out of wedlock, and another is on the brink of divorce. And it's not that I believe Ryo-chan lucked out, it's just that I believe in a power higher up. Whether it be the Gods of Fate or some type of destiny, it couldn't have been a coincidence that Kato-kun had chosen that Thursday of June to wind up with a dead engine in need of a jump.

My mother's expression at that time had been one of mortification and appall. Kato-kun had knocked on our door as usual but for the first time, instead of asking to be allowed into our home, he had inquired if we could provide him with a jump. Unfortunately for him, my mother, like Ryo-chan, is also rather antiquated, but it's like comparing a record to a tape cassette. And instead of an electrical jump, she had mistaken his words as "Will you let me jump."

To this day, I'm unsure if my mother had closed the door on him due to her disgust at being "propositioned" or if she had done it to hide the blush that I noticed frequented her cheeks whenever Kato-kun visited. It wasn't until I left the house an hour later for my date that I noticed he was still on the front porch, hands in pocket and seemingly deep in thought.

"Kato-kun", I remember calling him. He had turned to face me and instead of a formal nod of acknowledgement he had just raised his right eyebrow and frowned. "The engine of my car is broken. And I'm afraid your mother might have mistaken my plea for help as, well, as something else."

I think at that point I might have smiled or maybe not, I've been told that I'm not much of a smiling person. But I must have done something to make him less bothered for he exhaled and gave me an awkward pat on the head. The kind of gesture that normally should have annoyed me, seventeen year old boys do not get pats on the head, but I wasn't irritated.

I'd felt a slight fondness for him instead and given him another smile. "Have you fixed your car yet Kato-kun?" He had responded with a rueful shake of his head and shrugged, "I sell toilet plungers and antique frames but somehow I can't find a spare battery or a jumping cable in my trunk." I remember laughing at his joke, Kato-kun was always good at that, charming and coaxing a smile out of people with practiced ease.

That was when I had noticed Ryo-chan poking around the front of his lawn. Maybe poking isn't the word he'd use, but he had been holding a rather long pole in his hand and burrowing it, creating tiny little holes no bigger than your average coin. "Ryo-chan might be of help then." Kato-kun had turned to face the side and asked, "What's he doing with that pole? Searching for the buried treasure?"

That was also when I had remembered that while Kato-kun was good at eliciting laughter with his funny jokes, he was also almost as entertaining with his lack of success sometimes. Ryo-chan had sneezed then, a few times in a row and according to old superstition, it meant someone nearby was gossiping about you. That's nothing he wasn't used to by now but still, he had flickered his gaze over towards us and exchanged nods with us.

"Ryo-chan!" I still remember calling out loud enough for the other neighbors to take note of and stare, "This is Kato-kun, his car needs to be jumped." I didn't like the attention we were generating and beckoned for Kato-kun to follow me as I walked to meet Ryo-chan by the gates. "Think you can jump him?", I had asked, unaware that I was lacking a few key words in my question.

In true Ryo-chan fashion though, he had merely nodded and walked away, appearing minutes later holding what I assumed was a green jumping cable. "That one is it?" Ryo-chan had stated more than asked, with a jerk of his chin towards the blue car that sat halfway between my house and his. Kato-kun took over at this point and leaned forward with a polite bow, "Kato Shigeaki, I can't express how much I appreciate your help."

It hadn't crossed my mind before that Ryo-chan and Kato-kun might not be acquainted with one another, after all, Kato-kun is a traveling salesman, and it's his job to know people and to be known in return. But then, it's also not too surprising that they aren't familiar with one another, for even amongst those who've known him his entire life, Ryo-chan is still a stranger, someone you know is a good person but can't begin to describe beyond that.

Ryo-chan is very much a part of our community, a fixture not unlike that statue of the mayor that stands in the square. The town claims us from birth, a stronghold that continues until either our death or our departure from here. It's not a role he has a choice in and I get the feeling he went through all the motions of being a dedicated member because it's easier to pretend to be someone everyone loves than to be someone you know they'd hate.

They had exchanged the typical introductions and I believe Kato-kun managed to fold about six business cards into Ryo-chan's hand as he was shaking it before Ryo-chan had stepped on his foot in a not so subtle hint for him to stop. Ryo-chan's always been like that, just a bit shy of being too blunt. And while you may not always know what he's thinking, it's easy to tell how he's feeling.

The entire process seemed jinxed from the start, the keys to the car were misplaced and we had spent a little over fifteen minutes searching for them before Ryo-chan located them still stuck in the car ignition. The hood of Kato-kun's car was jammed and it took both of them six minutes to just wrench it open, the metal nicking Ryo-chan's hand in the process, cutting another jagged line into his palm. Needless to say, by the time the car was running, Ryo-chan was not in too happy of a mood and it was obvious he wished he hadn't volunteered his help in the first place.

At the end, Kato-kun had handed Ryo-chan a small brown box, unwrapped and unmarked. He had labeled it a token of his appreciation and insisted that Ryo-chan accept it, which eventually he did after the standard repeated refusals. What was in the box I never got to know for sure, I can only guess as to what was there and it's not even an educated guess, just a hypothetical one based on instinct and some observations made later on.

Afterwards I watched from the curb and waved as Kato-kun drove off, explaining apologetically that he had another city he wanted to get to before the bridge closed up for the night. Ryo-chan had waited with me, more out of courtesy, than because he actually cared to bid farewell to Kato-kun. We parted ways then, I headed for the movie theater thinking better late than never and he continued straight up the sidewalk to his house, box still in hand.

The box probably sat on some table for a while, unopened and disregarded as yet another addition to his collection of things, for Ryo-chan was also a collector. He liked picking up random babbles off the street, an old television set with a crooked antenna or that telephone with the broken dial that buzzed when touched. He kept an eye out for those kind of discarded objects, the ones that others no longer had a use for and had left out to be taken away. Ryo-chan had a fixation with almost broken items, intent on keeping them in that state of near dilapidation, just short of falling apart.

I think that what's drew him to Kato-kun in the beginning. Like I said before, Ryo-chan had seen something in Kato-kun that none of us had noticed and just like he would be attracted to a cracked figurine, Ryo-chan was also drawn to Kato-kun. I had asked him once before what it was that he liked so much about those basically useless things, and he had told me that with the chipped edges and fractured pieces, he found them all the prettier for they added character and history to what would otherwise just be ordinary.

Kato-kun doesn't have a set schedule for when he visits. Sometimes he'll be back in one week and sometimes it takes months for him to make his way up to us again. That's the charming life of a traveling salesman he told me once, there is no deadline for when you have to get to Osaka, you just have to get there.

The next time he got to town was three months later, on a rather cold autumn day and I remembered him walking into the restaurant with his bright smile and being mobbed for his scarf, hat and gloves. By the time he made it over to the counter where I sat, he was plain Kato-kun in his crisp black suit. He enjoyed doing that, giving away little objects that he had on him, "personal items don't hold much importance to me", he had said once.

Besides the picture, I have never seen what could classify as a personal item in Kato-kun's possession. Everything about him is generic in a sense. Classic leather loafers, silky black skinny tie and always the same cream collared dress shirt with the tiny clear buttons. In all these years I've hardly ever seen him in any other forms of attire, never has he worn a plain t-shirt with the obligatory random English phrase and he doesn't even seem to own jeans, and the one time I've seen him in a pair, they weren't his own but Ryo-chan's.

Three days after his arrival, Kato-kun had already made his way through almost all of town. He actually operated under a rather organized system he'd set up for himself. In his car were dozens of boxes, all taped and labelled with the name of the respective prefecture written across in his cramped neat script. He hardly ever sold the same thing in each place twice, there was always something uniquely different about the wares he peddled.

My mother for example, she's always purchasing glass made objects - vases, frames, and ornaments, as long as it's glass, she'll take it. Our entire living room, kitchen and even half of my bedroom is decorated with the things that Kato-kun had sold to us. My mother spends most of her days dusting all her treasures and if you ask her, which I suggest you don't, she'd be able to tell you the differences in each one of them. The curved picture frame in the bathoom has tiny rose details whereas the one downstairs with my grandfather's portrait in it is made of a more clouded glass. The glass angel that sits on the mantel has a Grecian dress while the angel I've placed on my dresser wears a hood over her curled hair.

One night I was coming home from studying at the library when I noticed Kato-kun standing on the sidewalk of Ryo-chan's house with a bundled bag in his hand and watched as he strode forward and knocked. It's always a two-three-one knocking sequence that Kato-kun uses, I suppose it is sort of like his calling card in a way. It had taken a moment for Ryo-chan to reach the front door, it was past eight and usually he's cooking at that time. Kato-kun had dawdled a bit, I caught sight of the hesitant look on his face as he contemplated coming back or waiting just a little longer.

Eventually Ryo-chan opened the door and it took him a few seconds to process that the traveling salesman whom had never knocked on his door before was now standing on his porch with a wide smile and package. With a hand tucked into his back pocket, a sign that he was uncomfortable, Ryo-chan gestured for Kato-kun to enter. Luckily for my curious self, Kato-kun shook his head and just handed over the package.

"What's this?", I heard Ryo-chan finally ask after staring at the bag in his hand.

"It's for you, a token-"

"Another token of your appreciation? Look, Kato-san right? I really don't need another token. I jumped your car once, you gave me something then and that's enough. Thanks but I'm good."

I had somehow been walking off the sidewalk and farther from the illuminated glare of the lamps onto the very edge of Ryo-chan's side lawn, safely out of viewing distance from them but still close enough to hear their awkward attempt at conversing.

"Nishikido-san, please, this isn't for that. I do feel grateful and would like to express my thanks once again, but this is from a client of mine, a Nakata Tamura-san in Tokyo. I was asked to pass this along."

Nakata Tamura is possibly the only person Ryo-chan would voice out his hate for. He's also the one name we refrain from mentioning in Ryo-chan's presence. Nakata Tamura is Ryo-chan's uncle. The kind of uncle that everyone in town had envied Ryo-chan for having growing up. One that'd buy him a bagful of candy, fancy new light up sneakers and drove shiny cars all of us had only seen on television. Nakata Tamura is also the man that his mother had left town with.

Ryo-chan's mother tried to reconnect with him a few years ago by sending a letter to him when he was eighteen, asking how he'd like moving to Tokyo to be with her. Ryo-chan in return had sent back one of the two things that his mother had left behind, the colorful silk brocade that had been worn over her wedding kimono twenty years ago. At the same time, he enclosed a note, if she wanted the other thing back, she'd have to come back to town herself for it. He was not going to leave.

That was the first time I had ever felt anything remotely resembling sympathy towards Ryo-chan. Contrary to what most would believe, Ryo-chan did not hate his mother, he held no grudge against her. In his mind, she had left town because she couldn't stand the false pity and constant scrutiny anymore. She had made her choice and left, but Ryo-chan would not do the same. I don't believe it ever crossed his mind that she wouldn't return for him. No child wants to think they've been abandoned. That was a belief he held onto and that was the reason why he never left town.

Ryo-chan remained in the house with the greying paint and creaky wooden floors. He kept the broken hinges of the gate at the same forty-five degree angle they had been when she left. Her room upstairs remained the same, royal purple curtains and hundred count thread sheets still intact. The only thing that had changed was him.

I remember the fumbling attempt of a catch Kato-kun made as Ryo-chan tossed the package back to him. It had dropped to the floor with a splendid crash, clear evidence that whatever had been inside was fragile and most likely expensive. Ryo-chan had bent down then and picked up the bag. This time he had held it out until Kato-kun reached forward for it.

"What do I tell him?"

"That there's nothing he could buy that'd change any of this."

Kato-kun nodded slowly then and bid him farewell but just as he was leaving, he had tripped over the welcome mat and fell forward into the freshly painted landscape portrait that Ryo-chan had just finished that day.

"Oh God, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, I apologize. I'll pay for it."

"Forget it, this sort of stuff seems to happen a lot when you're around. You're like a walking disaster."

"I've been told that. My grandmother used to say that I was born with two left feet, no good for anything but at least I could get cheaper shoes."

Ryo-chan had pushed opened the door then and beckoned for Kato-kun to enter. Fifteen minutes later he had exited with blue rubber soled slippers instead of loafers and a pair of too short jeans that hugged all the wrong places and clearly didn't belong on someone of his height.

With two rather disastrous meetings like that, I didn't expect Kato-kun and Ryo-chan to strike up a friendship, and they didn't. But attraction isn't always blatantly obvious, and logic has been known to err. So it was a surprise, but not overly so, when I discovered that following year that Ryo-chan and Kato-kun had become involved.