"Where the fuck is Seguchi?"

The last thing he needed was for his brother-in-law to have gotten killed in the car accident—and it would have been his fault. He'd been driving and the driver is responsible for all of the passengers, annoying and overbearing or not. Eiri did not want the blood of another man on his hands again.

"He's fine!" choked out Shuichi. "Well, not fine, but he's still alive! At least he was last time I checked." Eiri's stare was murderous now. "Wait! That's not what I meant! He's okay! Really! Yuki, I can't breathe!"

Eiri released Shuichi's shirt and ran both hands through his hair. Hearing that Tohma was still alive was a relief; it meant that later, he could grab the shorter blond by the shoulders and shake him. If he had just taken a taxi home, none of this would have happened.

"Yuki?" Shuichi wrapped his arms and Eiri's neck and nuzzled him as he took a seat in the chair again. "Are you okay?" Always quick to forgive an offense from him, wasn't he?

"Yeah," said Eiri softly. "I'm fine."

Shuichi looked at him, a pouty expression on his face. He knew Shuichi didn't believe him, but he didn't feel like explaining to the kid what was wrong. A week's worth of memories were apparently missing. He'd hurt his hands somehow in the car crash and he didn't remember how. Then there was Tohma who was in some unknown condition—but he was still alive, at least.

"Shuichi." Eiri glanced at the boy beside him. "You said the passenger side was hit. What exactly happened?"

Shuichi frowned for a moment. "You really don't remember?"

"Look, I don't want to play games. Just tell me."

"Well…." Shuichi removed his arms from around Eiri's neck and took a seat next to him instead, a thoughtful expression on his face. "There were witnesses who said you were stopped at a red light when another car just plowed right into the side of your car. The people standing around were the ones who called the police."

Plowed into the side of the car where his brother-in-law had been sound asleep, sitting with his head against the window in that half-twisted position. When the car had smashed into the passenger side of his Mercedes—he really should have been dead. The older man had been very lucky.

"They said you were just sitting there in your car. Your hands were cut up when the police came, but you wouldn't tell anyone why. Not even me. The people who were driving the other car are fine, but their car got a little dented."

Dented. Bastards.

Eiri wished he had been aware enough to tell Shuichi. At least then Shuichi could have told him why his hands had gotten injured since he'd apparently forgotten the entire accident. Logically, he could conclude that the window had shattered and somehow he'd gotten the cuts that way. The thing that irritated him was that he didn't know for certain.

"Seguchi-san got pretty banged up and Sakano-san nearly had a heart attack when he heard the news! I haven't been to see him yet since only immediate family members are allowed. We've come here every day, though, and I always get you an iced coffee right before visiting hours are over."

So that was why Shuichi had been carrying two cans of iced coffee. From the looks of it, Shuichi also seemed to have caught on that Eiri didn't remember the past week, or at the very least assumed Eiri hadn't been paying attention to anything at all. Either way, he was a little grateful for the explanation—not that he ever intended on letting the boy know.

It was unsettling to sit there in the waiting room at the hospital when the last thing he remembered was driving Tohma home from the airport. The way he'd blocked out an entire week was reminiscent of the way he'd blocked out the incident in New York for six years. Had it been that horrifying? He'd probably seen his brother-in-law covered in glass shards and blood. Maybe that's what freaked him out enough to forget.

But that didn't explain why the whole week was missing, just the night of the accident. What had horrified him so much that he'd been in a trance for a week? And what had snapped him out of it?

"He doesn't remember anything," said Shuichi quietly, breaking Eiri's train of thought. The boy must have retrieved the cans of iced coffee from the floor because one was being pressed against his cheek. "Radioactive something-or-other."

"Radioactive?" Well, now Eiri knew he had nothing to worry about. There wasn't anything radioactive within a hundred miles. He took the can and pulled the tab back but didn't drink from it yet.

Eiri wasn't sure if being Tohma's brother-in-law made him 'immediate family.' Probably not. What he was sure of was that whenever he got the chance to see him, the first thing he was going to do was make Tohma pull out his checkbook and pay for a new Mercedes. Waiting for the insurance money would take too long and he doubted his Mercedes was salvageable. Besides, if Tohma had taken a taxi….

"He means retrograde, not radioactive." Mika was standing in the doorway to the waiting room, arms crossed over her chest. "They said it's temporary. Most cases only last a couple minutes to a few hours, but leave it to Tohma to go above and beyond."

Mika lightly shrugged her shoulders and walked over to him and Shuichi. "He's right, though. Tohma doesn't remember a thing. When he woke up two days ago, he needed to be told his name, his age and even that he was an expecting father."

"I'm not in the mood for sick jokes," said Eiri and took a swig of his iced coffee. Retrograde amnesia happened in movies and cheap books. There was no way his brother-in-law was going to just forget everything, especially not when he clung so desperately to the sixteen-year-old Eiri that was supposedly somewhere 'deep down inside, sleeping.'

"I'm not joking," said Mika. She took a seat beside him and crossed her legs. "So, you decided to talk again?"

Eiri shot his sister a glare. He wasn't in the mood to explain how he had erased the events of an entire week from his mind, either. "Yeah, I guess so."

He leaned back in his chair, one thought in his mind: he needed a cigarette. If the boy attached to his arm and even his sister were going to go through with this elaborate ploy, he was definitely going to need one and by 'one' he meant one carton.

"Care to share why you haven't said a word the entire week?" his sister said.

"No." To be fair, even if he did know exactly why he'd been so out of it, he wouldn't have told her.

Mika sighed and stared at him with what was probably a concerned expression. She was always concerned about him, both her and Tohma; so concerned about him that they didn't know how to be concerned about themselves or each other unless they were sure he was just fine.

"Visiting hours," said Eiri. "They're over?"

"They're over. The doctors are lifting the restrictions on visitors tomorrow so you can see him then."

Eiri took another swig of his iced coffee. What he wanted to know was how he was getting home. Surely he hadn't driven himself there and the thought of Shuichi behind the wheel of a car powered by anything more than a paper fan was horrifying.

"Jerk," said Mika under her breath.

Again with this? What was she doing, reading his mind?

"I'm five months pregnant. I really don't need this kind of stress and he knows it."

Oh, so Tohma was the jerk. Eiri could agree with that without hesitation. Tohma did exhibit qualities of a Grade A Jerk.

"Yuki, let's go." Shuichi was tugging at the sleeve of his shirt now. For a moment, Eiri sat horrified in his chair—Shuichi had really driven him there? A flood of relief washed over him when Mika stood up and pulled out her car keys.

Whatever happened next passed by in a flurry of motions and smoked cigaretes. Mika drove him and Shuichi home and said she would be back around 10AM before taking off again and suddenly Eiri found himself showered and dressed for bed.

The bit of comfort he'd felt originally from Shuichi's presence was slowly turning itself into annoyance. He didn't want Shuichi to dote on him or congratulate him for speaking as though he'd been a mute all his life. He didn't want Shuichi to offer to make dinner or breakfast-in-bed. All he wanted was time to lie in his bed and think. Another cigarette probably wouldn't hurt, either.

He was getting obsessive with this thinking business, wasn't he? Even through Shuichi's non-stop chattering, he was still thinking about Tohma. If the bastard knew how much he was thinking about him today, he would probably explode in delight.

Eiri doubted he really had anything to worry about at the hospital tomorrow. Tohma was a good actor—those cold, plastic smiles that actually made some people swoon were evidence of that. His brother-in-law was just doing it for the attention. When he walked into the room, Tohma wouldn't be able to keep up the act and Eiri would stand at the doorway and smirk as Mika punished him for making her stress out so much when she was pregnant.

"Yuki! I ordered pizza!"

Eiri was ripped from his thoughts again. Oh, great. Now pizza boxes were going start stacking up in the living room. Couldn't Shuichi have ordered something else?

"Want some?"

"I don't."

Shuichi appeared in the doorway to his bedroom, a determined frown on his face. "You have to eat something."

"I'll eat tomorrow."

"That's what you said yesterday!"

Well, he didn't remember yesterday, did he? If he didn't remember yesterday then it didn't count. Wasn't that simple enough to understand?

"Just shut up. You're giving me a headache."

A headache wasn't something he wanted to deal with on top of everything else. The paperwork for the insurance, replacing his Mercedes…. He heard the door to his room shut and sighed. If Shuichi was upset, Eiri was sure the boy would get over it soon enough, if not in just a couple of minutes.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow at 10AM he would walk into Tohma's hospital room and prove that it was just a sick game the businessman was playing and he'd find out if Shuichi and Mika were in on it, too. Nobody lost all of their memories like that.

Nobody forgot walking in on a post-rape and murder scene. No one could ever forget that and Eiri didn't want to be the only one who remembered that day.