Benji thought it was all horseshit. Not that it wasn’t sad, it was just something that didn’t really effect his life in any personal way.
But that was before he met Kawaki. The ultimate asshole with a sharp sense of cleanliness, who never seemed to be pleased with what Benji said or did.
He was also the person who tried to help Benji, in his twisted little bitch of a way. He was soft, too. From his hair, to his bare skin under Benji’s fingertips, to his mouth, everything Benji could touch or coax out of Kawaki was gentle and smooth. It was addicting, strange and different from his usual interactions with the rough and jagged.
And then he was gone. It happened in a flash — caught in a gang’s turf war.
The whole trip to the hospital, Benji felt numb. His world felt like it was crumbling. The ambulance bounced and rattled, but he only saw it, didn’t feel it.
He barely remembered what happened after that. He didn’t want to. Kawaki, someone who had filled his life with both frustration and affection, someone Benji never thought he had to live without, gone. Vanished, nothing but the husk of his soul left for mourning.
Not many people came to the funeral. It was Benji, Kawaki’s despondant parents, Kazuhiko, and a spare few others who Benji didn’t recognize. Hell, he knew the guy was an asshole, but he’d think someone else would come to the ceremony.
His chest burned in anger, swallowed quickly by grief. Kawaki was gone, and only about a dozen people showed up to send him away. It was sickening.
The funeral was short, with the usual Christianity-mumbling that Benji hardly payed attention to.
The minister then asked for eulogies from family and friends. Kawaki’s parents were both too upset to speak. Kazuhiko and the others had hardly anything to say.
So it was, ultimately, Benjamin’s job to send Kawaki off for good.
He stepped up to the podium, each creak of the wooden steps making him want to puke, the itchy collar of the one suit Kawaki had bought him years ago threatened to choke him.
He cleared his throat, and began to
speak.
"I’m not really… good with words." His voice sounded far away, and foreign to his own ears. "But… Kawaki was an interesting man, I’ll give him that." A laugh. A hollow, scratchy laugh, that tore at Benji’s throat on its way out. "But he and I… what we had was somethin’ I can’t really describe. He was… really special to me. It was kind of hard to tell sometimes, but I know he felt the same. And, it’s really kinda… cliché, but," a pause that felt like a century. "He was so alive. He had this, like… glow, about him, y’know? Didn’t help that he looked like the damn angels above wove him from gold. It’s…"
Another pause, with another chuckle that sounded more like a broken hiccup. Benji looked down at the wood podium beneath his hands, feeling the tears drop down and splash the carved masonry.
"It’s hard to think he’s gone." He recovered, his voice thick with restrained tears. "I keep… y’know, waking up, every mornin’… an I think he’ll be there. Callin’ me lazy, tellin’ me to shower… But," a hiccup, the beginnings of a sob clinging to his throat and choking him. Benji swallowed hard, forcing the lump in his throat back down.
"But he isn’t there. And it’s fuckin’ killing me, knowin’ he isn’t there no more."
He didn’t even stop to excuse his foul language, because the sob building in his throat finally ripped free, echoing back at him through the microphone system before him.
"I know that he didn’t have a lot of friends. Two of his best friends aren’t even fuckin’ here. But he once told me, he said, ‘I don’t need any friends. Benji’s enough for me to handle.’ And you know what? It was true. Once he knew he had me at his side, for better or for worse, he was happy. But I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t do this one thing for him. I loved him. But apparently God or whatever the hell’s up there ain’t on my side no more."
He stepped away from the mic, suddenly unable to hold back the emotions that had been brewing on his tongue for a week now. The pain finally rushed forward, and Benji did not stop walking. He didn’t stop for Kawaki’s mother’s hand genty reaching out for him, he didn’t stop at the doors of the chapel. He didn’t stop at the door of their — his…— appartment.
He did stop, however, when the plaster wall of the appartment met his fist in a desperate attempt for release, anything to distract him from the blinding rage he felt. He didn’t know why, or where it was supposed to be directed— himself, for letting this happen? Kawaki, for deciding to be a hero at the worst possible time? Fate? There was nothing to be mad at. No way to fix this, no matter how much Benji wanted to.
At some point, he had screamed. He could feel it, his throat stinging with the spew of curse words and other obsinities.
He just wanted his snippity, cranky, hiss-fitty Kawaki back.
Why couldn’t it happen like in the movies? When you cry hard enough or believe enough, they come back. They come back and tell you it’s going to be all right. That they love you and always will be there with you.