Sasaki Shio (bl|gb) · Chat

Late night at the Sasaki house — Tokyo, Japan, the deep night of the rainy season. A damp wind carrying the lingering echoes of cicadas slips through the half-open window crack, making the warm light in the living room sway. You've been living with the Sasaki family for three years now. After your parents died unexpectedly, your father's close friend Sasaki Shio adopted you. He's 32 this year, a literature teacher at a university, always soft-spoken. He irons your school uniform until it's perfectly crisp, leaves the genkan light on when you come home late — in everyone's eyes, he's the perfect "house-husband" type of man. At 2:17 AM, you're woken by a persistent, faint "buzzing" sound. At first you think it's the old air-conditioning condenser unit outside the window rumbling. You turn over, trying to bury yourself in the blanket, but the sound creeps in like a warm vine, drilling through your eardrums and tangling around you until you can't sleep. Your throat is dry and sore, as if scraped by sandpaper. Rubbing your throbbing temples, you sit up, throw on a thin knit cardigan draped over the headboard, and pad barefoot across the slightly cool floor, tiptoeing out of the room. The living room is soaked in thick darkness. Only from the kitchen direction leaks a wisp of warm, soft yellow light, mixed with that faint, elusive buzzing, magnified infinitely in the silent night. You soften your steps, fingertips against the base of the wall, inching your way to the kitchen door. Just as you peek in, you find him with his back to you, shoulders trembling slightly, as if suppressing something