The sky is already orange, crimson, pink, sunset-colored. The sun sets behind the rooftops, long shadows stretch across the asphalt like someone's bony fingers. The air becomes cooler, after the daytime heat, even this weak freshness seems like a gift from the gods. Somewhere a dog barks, somewhere music plays from an open window, somewhere a woman calls her children home for dinner.
Raiden climbs to the third floor. The stairs creak under his feet, each in its own way. On the second-floor landing, it smells of borscht, someone is cooking, the smell fills the whole staircase. The apartment is quiet. His mother is probably at work, she's a nurse at the district hospital, her shifts are twelve hours, sometimes longer. She comes home late, leaves early. Sometimes they don't see each other for two or three days.
Raiden kicks off his sneakers at the doorstep. Walks into the living room. Squats down by the balcony door.
He looks at the sunset.
The window is open, warm air stirs the curtains. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the rooftops, a strip of the river is visible, it glitters like molten gold. The birds are no longer singing, only sparrows squabble before sleep.
Raiden wraps his arms around his knees. Leans his back against the glass, it's cool, pleasant.
He thinks about his brother.
Hiro. His younger brother. He was fourteen when he died. Fourteen, a funny age, pimples on his forehead, his voice cracking, he read manga under the covers with a flashlight. He loved dogs and fried tofu. He dreamed of becoming a doctor, like their mom. Raiden was fifteen then, he was hanging out by himself, and he sent his brother to the store to buy bread.
A car. A crosswalk. Green light for pedestrians. But the driver was drunk, got behind the wheel after a company party, lost control. He hit Hiro at full speed. The body flew ten meters. He died instantly, didn't even say "ouch."
Raiden ran up five minutes later. He saw his brother's sneakers, white, new, bought for his birthday, on the asphalt, separate from the body. And blood. A lot of blood. A puddle of blood reflecting the sky.
He fell to his knees then too. And he screamed too, like Ryuta today. But his scream was quieter, internal.
"Forgive me," he whispered over his brother's body. "Forgive me. I sent you. It's my fault."
His father couldn't handle the loss.
At first, he just fell silent. For two weeks he didn't speak at all, walked around the house like a shadow, opened the refrigerator, closed it, sat down on a chair, stood up. Then he started drinking. First a little, then more and more. He lost his job. He started screaming at night, woke up in a cold sweat, called for Hiro. His mother cried, tried to calm him, but he pushed her away.
Six months later, his father was gone. His heart. Too much grief for one organ. He died in the kitchen, his head falling onto the table. Next to him stood a full glass, he didn't finish it.
Raiden found him in the morning, when he was getting ready for school.
He didn't cry then. He couldn't. Inside was emptiness, vast, black, like space. He just stood and looked at his father, whose face had become calm, for the first time in six months.
His mother sobbed in the reception area, and the nurses gave her sedatives.
Several years have passed since then. His mother works, but somehow mechanically, gets up, goes, comes back, lies down. Sometimes Raiden sees her sitting in the kitchen with a cup of cold tea, staring at one spot. When asked "What's wrong?" she replies: "Nothing, just tired."
He knows – she's not just tired. She's dying inside, drop by drop, every day. But she doesn't complain.
Raiden lifts his head, looks at the sunset now orange turns to purple, the first stars appear on the horizon.
He thinks about pain.
"People create pain for themselves," he whispers. "Not gods, not fate, not karma. They themselves. With their decisions. With their words."
He remembers today's fight. How Ryuta squealed on the ground. How his collarbone crunched.
"He came himself," Raiden says out loud. "He chose this path himself. He drove himself to hatred. And hatred breeds pain. Mine, and his."
But there is another pain, the one that isn't chosen. The one that comes on its own, like a car at a crosswalk. Like a heart attack. Like death.
"You can't defeat that pain," he continues. "You can only survive it. Or not survive it. There's no third option."
He clenches his fingers into a fist, then unclenches them.
"Why do I even fight?" he asks himself, and answers himself: "So I don't go crazy. So I can feel something other than emptiness. So I can get so tired that I don't have nightmares at night."
He remembers his father. He also fought in his youth, in the ring, amateur bouts. He had a good right hook. Raiden remembers his father teaching him: "Never hit first. But if you are hit, hit back so they remember it for life. Because kindness without strength is weakness. And the weak get devoured."
"You were right, Dad," Raiden says. "I hit back. But every time I hit back, I leave a piece of pain inside myself. And it grows."
He stands up. His legs have gone numb, goosebumps run over his body, either from the coolness, or from his thoughts.
He goes into the apartment. In the bathroom, he looks in the mirror. A broken nose, a bruise under his eye, scrapes on his cheekbones. His shirt is stained, like a vampire's costume. He takes it off, throws it into a basin of cold water, let it soak.
"Nice look," he mutters and washes his face. The water in the sink turns pink.
He doesn't go to sleep, sits down in the kitchen, pours himself some cold tap water, drinks it in small sips. Looks at the clock on the wall. Ten in the evening. His mother will be back in an hour.
"Need to buy her flowers," he thinks. "Tomorrow. Or the day after. When I have money."
He finishes the water, puts the glass in the sink, goes to his room, collapses onto the bed face-first into the pillow.
Sleep doesn't come.
Night.
Genzo lies on his bed.
The room is small, cluttered, an old chipboard wardrobe, a chair with a broken leg that he's been meaning to fix for a year but never gets around to, a laptop on the nightstand with a cracked screen, a floor lamp with a yellow light bulb that flickers if you hit it. On the windowsill, a dried-out cactus. Genzo hasn't watered it for a month, but the cactus is still alive, stubborn, like its owner.
The window is wide open. Night sounds fly into the room, the rustle of leaves, a distant dog barking, the hum of air conditioners in neighboring houses. The air is warm but not stuffy; a light breeze stirs the curtains, and their shadows glide across the floor like ghosts.
Genzo is not asleep.
He lies on his back, his T-shirt pulled up to his chest. His eyes are open – wide, aimlessly, staring at the ceiling. A white ceiling with a yellow water stain, like a map of an unknown land. A crack running from the chandelier to the corner, like a bolt of lightning.
He breathes evenly, but his heart beats fast, for no reason, simply because his body can't sleep, and it's looking for some kind of activity.
His right hand moves under the blanket.
Slowly, automatically, almost mechanically, like a wound-up clock mechanism that someone forgot to turn off. He doesn't even look there, his gaze is fixed on the ceiling, on the lightning-bolt crack, on the yellow stain. The movement long ago stopped bringing pleasure, it's just a ritual. Something to do at three in the morning, when the brain refuses to sleep and the body refuses to rest.
A monotonous rhythm. A quiet exhale. Muscles tense for a second, stomach, thighs, abs, then relax.
"Damn," Genzo whispers into the void.
He wipes his palm on the edge of the sheet. Looks at his hand – his fingers tremble with a fine tremor.
"What's wrong with me?" he asks the ceiling. The ceiling is silent.
He starts again. One more time. And again.
His body obediently responds, but his consciousness remains cold, clear, annoyingly alert. Genzo thinks about something vague, not about life, not about school, not about his mother, not about the fights. About something that has no name. About emptiness. About infinity. About why the stars don't fall, even though they should.
The fifth time tonight. Fifth.
He comes for the fifth time, a short spasm, a quiet moan, and again emptiness. He removes his hand, closes his eyes for a second, opens them.
"Insomnia," he mutters. "You bitch, insomnia."
He gets up. His legs tremble, from fatigue, from overload, from the fact that he no longer understands how long he hasn't slept. Two days? Three? He's lost count. His T-shirt sticks to his back, wet with sweat. Genzo pulls it off over his head, throws it on the floor, finds another on the back of the chair, clean, but wrinkled.
He makes tea in the kitchen. Boiling water from the kettle, he boiled it yesterday, and the water has cooled to lukewarm. Genzo doesn't care. The tea leaves are cheap, loose, in a tin can with a chipped edge. He scoops a full spoon, pours, waits a minute. The tea turns out bitter, dark, almost black.
He pours it into a mug, old, with a crack on the handle, which says "Best Dad", a gift from his father many years ago. Genzo warms his palms, steps out onto the balcony.
The balcony is small, cluttered with boxes, old shoes, a broken chair. The railing is rusty, the paint has peeled off, on the concrete floor, marks from flower pots that dried out long ago. Genzo leans his elbows on the railing, holds the mug with both hands, brings it to his face, inhales the steam.
The night over the city is velvety, dark, almost starless. Clouds hang low, lit from below by the orange glow of city lights. Somewhere in the distance, a neon store sign blinks, pink, green, pink. The rustle of leaves from the park behind the houses can be heard, poplars, they rustle even when there's no wind.
Genzo drinks his tea, staring into the distance.
And suddenly he notices it.
In another part of the neighborhood, about a kilometer and a half away, on the other side of the district, a window is lit. A rectangle of yellow light against the dark building. Genzo doesn't pay it any attention at first, plenty of people can't sleep, like him.
But then the window goes dark.
And lights up again.
Dark. Light.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
A pause.
And again. One, two, three, four, five.
"What the hell?" Genzo squints, trying to see.
The window keeps blinking. Rhythmically, unhurriedly, with the precision of a metronome. As if someone is sitting at a switch and pressing it in a certain sequence.
Morse code? Or is the wiring just glitching? Or is he already glitching, from lack of sleep, from loneliness, from everything at once?
Genzo puts the mug on the railing, carefully, so it doesn't fall. Goes into the room, rummages on the shelf, finds an old pair of binoculars, his father's, in a leather case, with scratches on the lenses. His father's binoculars. Dad used to take them to soccer games when Genzo was little, and they sat in the stands, and his father explained the rules. Now the binoculars gather dust on the shelf, and his father is far away, in Tokyo, on a construction site.
Genzo focuses the binoculars.
In the lenses, the night city, blurry, hazy. He turns the adjustment wheel, finds focus.
The window approaches.
Fifth floor. Or sixth? A gray panel building, one of many. The curtains are half-drawn, inside there's a faint light, looks like a desk lamp. A silhouette. Someone is sitting by the window – the figure is indistinguishable, just a dark spot against the yellow.
The blinking continues.
One, two, three, four, five. Pause. One, two, three, four, five.
Genzo smirks. His throat goes dry, from the tea, from the tension, from the strange feeling creeping up his spine.
"Go on," he says loudly into the night, addressing the invisible person a kilometer and a half away. "Sniper. Kill me. Whatever. I'm sick anyway. Insomniac. With an empty head and a mouth full of longing. Who would even notice?"
Nothing happens. The window keeps blinking.
Genzo stands on the balcony, one hand holding the binoculars, the other holding cooling tea. Stares at one spot.
"Maybe it's an SOS?" he mutters. "Maybe it's a cry for help? Maybe someone's locked in an apartment and can't get out? Or a scared child? Or an idiot with a remote control checking how far it's visible?"
He peers closer. The silhouette doesn't move, just sits there.
"Or maybe I'm already hallucinating," Genzo whispers. "How long have I not slept? Two days? Three? Or maybe four? I don't even remember the last time I slept normally. Maybe in a past life."
He blinks, rubs his eyes. His eyes are red, inflamed, like a rabbit's, just without the ears.
The window blinks. One, two, three, four, five.
Genzo stands there all night.
Not because he's a hero. Not because he's curious. But because he still can't sleep, and at least it's something to do. Because sitting within four walls and staring at the ceiling is even worse. Because on the balcony, at least there's wind and stars.
He stares at the blinking window, takes sips of cold tea, bitter, cold, disgusting, but he keeps drinking. He smokes two cigarettes he found in a pack on the balcony, old, dried out, with a bitter taste like tar.
Around one in the morning, the window stops blinking and just glows steadily, yellow and warm. At three, it goes dark completely. Just a dark rectangle against a dark wall.
Genzo keeps staring. Even when the window isn't lit, he stares at the spot where it was.
"Tomorrow I'll go," he decides. "I'll find it. I'll find it somehow. I'll see who's there. Or what."
The clock reads six in the morning. The sky brightens – from black to hazy, then gray, then pink, then gold. The clouds in the east flare up like a fire. The birds begin their roll call, first timidly, one by one, then louder, and soon a whole chorus is ringing out in all voices.
Genzo goes back inside. Sits on the bed, puts his head on the pillow, closes his eyes for five minutes.
He opens them, it's already seven.
"Damn," he says.
His mother is at work. She works at the post office, sorting packages, letters, parcels. Hard work, monotonous, for next to nothing. But she never complains. Leaves early in the morning, at six, comes back late in the evening, at nine. Sometimes, if there's a lot of work, at ten. His father is in Japan, lives in Tokyo, works on a construction site. They see each other once a year, if they're lucky, if there's enough money for tickets.
Genzo gets up, goes to take a shower. The water is cold, almost icy, because the water heater is broken, and his mother has been promising to call a repairman for three months now. The cold burns his skin, washes away the remains of night's stickiness, sweat, insomnia. He washes his hair with cheap shampoo that smells like something chemical and green. Dries himself with a towel, old, rough, with a hole in the corner.
He looks in the mirror.
Dark circles under his eyes, purple like bruises. His face is pale, grayish, like a corpse's. His lips are chapped. His hair sticks out in all directions.
"Beautiful," he says to his reflection without a smile. "Go and conquer the neighborhood."
He gets dressed. A T-shirt – gray, with a faded print of some band. A hoodie, black, with a hood, worn at the elbows. Jeans, blue, but almost white at the knees. Sneakers, once white, but now gray from dust.
He checks his pockets: keys on a keyring, a phone with a cracked screen, a few coins, old flavorless gum, a hair tie he never uses.
He locks the apartment door, two turns of the key. Goes down the stairs. The steps creak, each in its own way. On the second-floor landing, it smells of cats and cheap laundry detergent. One of the neighbors has already turned on the TV, the voice of an announcer talking about the weather can be heard.
On the first floor, Genzo notices the trash can. Plastic, green, overflowing. A bag sticks out, about to fall.
"Right," he says. "An excuse."
He takes the bag, heavy, smells of potato peels, onion skins, something both sour and sweet. He ties it in a knot so it won't spill.
He steps outside.
The morning is gray, cool, sunless. The sky is covered with a light haze – not fog, but a thin veil, like gauze. The trees stand still – not a breath of wind, the leaves don't even move. There's no one in the yard, just a janitor with a broom in the distance, sweeping up last year's leaves. The broom rustles on the asphalt – rhythmically, soothingly.
Genzo throws the bag into the dumpster large, metal, with peeling green paint. Looks around.
The neighboring entrance, fifty meters away. Just as gray, shabby, with a doorbell button that hasn't worked for ten years. The front door hangs on one hinge. Above the door, a house number sign, faded, almost unreadable.
Genzo walks over, pulls the door.
It's open.
"Lucky me," he mutters.
He goes inside.
The stairwell is like his, smells of dampness, old dust, and something else cats, probably, or just time. The walls are peeling, paint coming off in layers like old skin. On the floor, cigarette butts, sunflower seed shells, some scraps of paper. The steps are concrete, chipped, with black electrical tape on some that has been there for years.
The spiral staircase goes up, like the esophagus of a concrete beast.
Genzo begins to climb.
First floor. Apartments 1, 2, 3. Numbers on tin plates, faded, some torn off, some nailed on crookedly. The windows on this side face west, but that window was on the east side. Not these.
Second floor. Apartments 4, 5, 6. Genzo stops outside apartment 5. Puts his ear to it – silence. Knocks, with his knuckles, three times. No one answers. Apartment 6, also no one. Apartment 4, someone is home, footsteps and the sound of a TV can be heard, but no one comes to the door.
Third floor. Apartments 7, 8, 9. Genzo walks back and forth down the hallway, counting his steps. Looks at the numbers, compares them to his memory. The east side, where is the east side? He goes to the window on the landing, looks out. Yes, that building is over there in the distance. So the windows of the apartments on this side should face that direction.
Fourth floor. Apartments 10, 11, 12.
Fifth floor. Apartments 13, 14, 15.
Sixth. Seventh.
Genzo walks through the stairwell for two hours. Climbs up, climbs down, climbs up again. Knocks on doors, behind some, voices and footsteps are audible, but no one opens. In some, dead silence, as if no one is there. In some, the smell of fried onions from under the door. In some, a child's cry, thin and piercing.
He looks for the window, east-facing, fifth or sixth floor, blinking light. But he can't figure it out. The apartment numbers are mixed up, the numbering in this building is strange, illogical. The hallways are crooked, like intestines. The stairwells don't line up in height. Somewhere on the fifth floor, instead of apartments, there's just a wall. Somewhere on the third, a door with no number, boarded up with planks.
"God damn it," Genzo whispers, stopping on the sixth-floor landing. Sweat soaks his back under his hoodie. "What the hell? Are you mocking me?"
He sits on the windowsill, wipes his forehead with his sleeve. Looks at the door opposite, 34. Not his.
"Maybe I imagined it," he tells himself. "Maybe it's just insomnia hallucinations. Maybe it wasn't a window blinking, but car headlights. Or an ad. Or I'm already going crazy."
He sits for five minutes. Then stands up, goes back down.
He passes by the doors he's already seen ten times. He feels like a rat in a maze. Or a ghost wandering in a closed loop, unable to find an exit.
He goes outside. Squints at the light, the sun has finally broken through the. Yellow, bright, but not hot yet.