Wanted Men

Mukashi couldn't want to be around Miya.
     He stood in the transitory room that led to the elevator, both locker rooms, and the gymnasium. It's solid metal doors loomed behind him as he looked down at his hands.
     He couldn't want to be around her.
     He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as he forced himself to examine the situation coolly and logically.
     He had wanted to receive the same affection Sando had received; that had not happened.
     He had wanted to stay with Nishiyama; that had not happened.
     He'd wanted Neatle to stay together; that hadn't happened.
     He'd wanted to keep managing Parii; that hadn't happened.
     His heartrate increased; he shut his eyes tighter; he tried to force his feelings to freeze over and die. However, the feeling he experienced in that moment was entirely new, and so he had no experience in dealing with it.
     He was afraid.
     That like everyone else in his life that he'd dared to care about, she would disappear. 
     Unceremoniously. 
     That was what made it worse.
     It was like everything in his life happened, and nobody else cared about it. 
     His grief with Nishiyama had never been brough up by his parents or brother. 
     Their lack of affection for him wasn't 'odd' or 'concerning;' it was how things were.
     Mukashi forced himself to open his eyes.
     He looked up at the ceiling. The simple fluorescent lights did not flicker at all. He forced his breathing to slow down, and his heartrate eventually did the same thing, but something strange happened. 
     The fear didn't disappear.
     He breathed deeply and made a new filing cabinet in his mind. It was solid black, and the only smell coming from it was the faint scent of smoke. 
     He put his fear into the black filing cabinet, closed it, and locked it. The fear was still there, still alive, but as long as he never opened the filing cabinet, it wouldn't matter. If he couldn't freeze it to death, he would simply lock it away. 
     He passed by the amber, honey-scented filing cabinet, and stopped. 
     Slowly, he pushed the amber cabinet into a far off corner of his mind. He looked at it solemnly as it filled his mind with the smell of honey. 
     He pulled out a key from his mind and locked the amber cabinet. 
     Mukashi was back in the transitory room of the fifth floor of Zygeist Media. 
     If he never wanted to be near Miya, then it would eventually happen. 
     He walked back into the gymnasium and resumed watching Miya practice with a cold, clinical expression.
~~~
     "Gene, I don't think you understand how much your thank you note means to me."
     Gene stood in front of his mailbox, reading the letter that Miya had sent only to him. The envelope for it had been stuffed into his pocket, and he was reading it by the light of the street lamp that was on the edge of his property. 
     The buzzing of cicadas and the chirping of crickets were the only sounds that he heard.
     "But I feel bad now, because I should have thanked you and your sister."
     A smile tugged at the edge of his lips as he thought about how really, Miya should be thanking Annabelle.
     "So thank you. Both of you. If it hadn't been for you two responding, I wouldn't be alive."
     Gene felt all the breath leave his lungs. He couldn't imagine Miya actually ending her life. It didn't seem like something she was capable of doing.
     "Thank you for the note Gene. Annabelle is lucky to have an older sibling like you. I know you said you neglected her, but you obviously care about her now, so you have the chance to make up for lost time. And personally, I think that if she'd ever gotten into trouble, you would've rushed back to her. I can't see you being completely uncaring."
     He appreciated her words, but he didn't think they were right. He could've done a lot better as Annabelle's older brother. 
     "Maybe my life would have been different if I'd had an older sibling to protect me. I probably would have stayed out of the idol industry; but then, I wouldn't have been able to write to the two of you. I don't know how to end this letter, so I'll say thank you for the letter, Gene."
     Gene held the letter in the yellow light of the street lamp. He and Annabelle had already written their letter for the day, but now he had more things he wanted to tell Miya. He bit his lip and went into his house. 
     He passed by his small kitchen and grabbed a small notepad from his bedroom, then sat down at the kitchen table and began writing. In the dim light of the kitchen, he wrote a simple letter asking a few questions. It took him until ten in the evening to finish it. 
     He held up the letter and analyzed it with both eyes critically, scanning it and making sure that it said exactly what he wanted it to. 
     He threw it into the trash can and started over.
     By the time it was eleven in the evening, he had finished another letter. It asked the same questions, and it had a small section that he'd written simply because he had wanted to write it. He liked parts of it, but it wasn't right; something about the structure of the letter rubbed him the wrong way, and so he threw it into the trash can as well.
     At midnight, as the moon hung overhead and his eyes struggled to stay open, he finished the third letter. It didn't ask any questions; all it was were his thoughts and feelings about what she'd written. He hadn't thought much of it when he was writing it; it was too abstract, in his opinion. 
     However, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it was exactly the right thing to send. 
     He read over it once, to make sure he hadn't made any egregious errors in judgment, then yawned and stood up from the kitchen table. He opened up one of the drawers and pulled out a simple envelope. He put the letter into the envelope, wrote the same address he always did for Miya onto it, pressed a stamp onto the envelope, then walked back into the night.
     It was warm outside, and he yawned as soon as the door opened. His steps toward his mailbox were slow and staggered, and he was barely able to keep himself from tripping. He put the envelope into his mailbox and closed it, then yawned again as he went back into his house. 
     He flopped onto his bed, but just before he could doze off, he thought he felt his phone buzz. He reluctantly pulled it out of his pants. 
     There hadn't been any new notifications. He frowned, and went to toss his phone onto the bedside table, then stopped. He opened his phone and made sure to set his alarm to five in the morning. Tomorrow was Monday, and he'd have to go to work.
     He groaned at the thought, then went to sleep.