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He met Tori after that accident. No one else could see him on the streets, trying to emulate the moves of the dance crew a few streets down, aside from the design student walking around with a sketchpad tucked underneath his arm. Tori stopped to watch him, took a seat at the nearby bench, and began to draw.
Minato didn’t notice until a few moments later, how Tori kept looking up, then back down at the sketchpad, like he could see him. He stopped, and came over to peek at what Tori was drawing. It looked almost like the wind, before Tori angled the sketchpad away.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” Tori said to him. “I’ll just finish this design. It’s not like I’m some kind of creep, okay?”
Minato stared at him with wide eyes. “You can see me?” he asked.
“Duh. I have eyes.”
That was the beginning of their friendship.
—
“Drafting up another design?” Minato asks curiously. He peers over Tori’s shoulder to get a better look at what he’s sketching up. It’s a dress, with a long, flowy skirt that contrasts with the sharply angled sleeves. Minato can see all the faint lines from how much Tori has erased and redrawn them. There aren’t any colors yet, but Minato can imagine the colors swirling around the skirt, bright and bold, just how Tori likes them.
“Yeah,” Tori says. He grabs his eraser from the open pencil case lying on the bed beside him and angrily rubs at the lines of the skirt to redraw them just right. “It’s going some kind of way. I’m still not satisfied with it.”
Tori rarely is, Minato has learned. It’s what allows him to work hard and pushes him to improve with every design he makes. It’s a little like choreography, Minato thinks, though he’s not very good at that himself. He’s much better at just flowing through the movements. “I think it’ll be great!” he says nonetheless. “A Lily K. original, right?”
“Yeah,” Tori says, before sighing. He flips the sketchbook shut and starts to put away the pens and erasers lying scattered on the bed. The pages of the sketchbook curl up from years of watercolors and paints warping the paper. “I’ll just do the rest later. I need to get out of here for a bit before the boredom actually kills me.”
Minato nods, watching as Tori stretches his arm out and reaches over to call for someone. “Getting fresh air is nice!” he agrees. He wishes he could help Tori out a little more. “And maybe you’ll get some ideas for the design, right?”
“Maybe,” Tori says. “Though I already have a vision for what it’ll look like. Black and red.”
Minato blinks. “Black and red?” he repeats. “That’s different from your usual stuff, huh? Is it a special occasion?”
Tori looks at Minato and his lips quirk up in a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It makes Minato’s chest tighten, though his heart doesn’t beat, and he doesn’t need to breathe. “The most important occasion of my entire life, ghost boy,” Tori tells him.
—
Whenever Tori had a new design completed, he always showed Minato first. They sat on Tori’s bed in his bedroom-slash-studio, and Tori showed him the new design colored in with paints or markers or whatever he had on hand, explaining his inspiration, and what materials he would use, and what kind of people would wear them. Sometimes, Tori would show him older designs, ones from before they met, preserved safely in the pages of sketchpads that lay in piles by his dresser.
“Your style’s really changed a bit, huh?” Minato noted during one of these occasions, eyeing the different designs spread out across the bed. “Not in a bad way! But it’s really different.”
“Yeah?” Tori asked. “How so?”
Minato floated over to one of the earliest designs, motioning to it. “Like, see, this one! It’s kind of… pointy?” He gestures to the collar and the sleeves and the pleats of the skirt, pressed flat and crisp. It’s a lot of geometric patterns and straight lines, sharp and bold.
“And then this one…” Minato floats over to a more recent one, one that Tori showed him a week or two ago. “It’s softer, and kind of flowy.” The colors are still just as bold, but the sleeves and pant legs swish around freely.
Tori considers them. “Huh, I guess so,” he says. “I’ve been finding some more inspiration from a lot of places, recently, so it probably just got in there somehow.”
“Like where?” Minato asks curiously.
Tori runs his fingers over the most recent design. “Movement, you know. Like the air, like the water. Flowing. Like a dance.”
—
“They didn’t let dad bring over a sewing machine,” Tori tells him huffily. “Said that there was nowhere to put it and that it’d be too heavy, and that it’s not like I can sew something like that while I’m here. It makes me want to just crochet the most stupidly long scarf imaginable, just to prove them wrong.”
Minato laughs. “That’d be funny,” he says. “And I’m sure it would be just as fashionable as the rest of the stuff you make, Tori-kun!”
Tori smiles wryly at him as they continue down the hallway leading out to the little garden. “You have such faith in my designs, ghost boy,” he says. He sounds a little fond, if Minato does say so himself. The tops of his ears are a little red, flushed with the blood that still runs through his veins.
“I’m your number one fan, after all!” Minato says. “What about the dress, though? Are you just going to leave it for now?”
Tori shrugs. “I asked my mom if she could have it made instead, since I won’t be able to,” he says, sighing. “Anyway, she has my measurements, and I’m sure they can make alterations if it doesn’t fit when I wear it.”
Minato nods. “It’s a pretty dress,” he says. “You worked hard on it… You’re always working hard, you know. Even now, when you should be resting.” Tori looks so tired these days. It’s not as though Minato doesn’t know why, but he still wishes he would take a break.
Tori looks away. “Not enough yet, ghost boy,” he says, voice dropping. “It’s not enough yet. I still have to leave my mark on the world. Leave something that means something, before I run out of time and—!” He’s cut off by a fit of coughing that Minato can’t do anything but wait out.
Minato can’t say he understands, not really. He’d barely had a future to consider, back when he was alive. Ideas of leaving marks, leaving a legacy… He tries to understand, but they’re foreign to him. He’d just wanted to live in the moment and dance with his friends.
“You’re important to your parents,” Minato says. “And your schoolmates. Like that Mikami guy, right? He’s come to visit a few times.”
“Mikami,” Tori repeats, wiping his mouth. “He’d make it even without me. And that’s just one person.”
“One person whose life you changed,” Minato says. “And besides, even after you die… you can still change someone, right? Like your newest designs. You said you got inspired by my dancing, right? And I’m super dead!”
Tori does crack a smile at that. “Who told you I got inspiration from you, ghost boy?” he asks wryly. He looks away. Minato doesn’t want to push him. It’s scary – he knows that. Tori’s only 20. Just a little younger than Minato would be. “Come on, let’s head out to see the flowers already. If the sun sets before I get to, then this is totally your fault.”
“Don’t blame me! It’s because you go too slow. I’m just following you!”
—
Minato isn’t a stranger to the hospital. Back when he was alive, he’d practically lived in one, spending most of his childhood unable to go to school or play with the other kids because of his weak constitution. When he’d gotten older, gotten well enough to go to high school and join the dance team, he’d still have to come by for the occasional check up. And after the accident, he’d been brought back to the hospital too, before his body had given out on him two steps through the door, and he was declared dead on arrival.
He’s spent a lot of time in the hospital recently, too. Tori doesn’t need his constant presence or company, but Minato likes to spend time with him, so he comes by whenever Tori doesn’t have a visitor.
Tori’s dad comes by every day, but the nurses never let him stay past midnight. When he’s busy handling sales affairs for KIKUKAWA, Tori’s mother comes by instead. They care for their son, Minato knows, even though he also knows that their relationship with Tori can be rocky. He’s glad that they come to visit.
When neither of them are here, and neither are Mikami, or any of Tori’s classmates in Yamanoue, Minato hangs around. He shows Tori all of the secrets that the nurses don’t want him to know, follows him around as he pushes his wheelchair through the halls, and accompanies him to the gardens, and the recreational areas, and the rooftop.
Minato doesn’t really like the hospital. He knows that Tori doesn’t either. But leaving is almost worse, because he knows that there’s only one way that this is going to end.
—
Minato hovers around Tori as the night passes. He doesn’t normally spend the night unless Tori asks, and he didn’t ask, but he's spent enough time in these places to know when time’s up, even if he weren’t a ghost himself. Tori passes in his sleep, and wakes up to the sound of the heart monitor flatlining.
He sits up and looks around, eyes wide, and Minato is there by his side.
“I’m here, it’s okay,” Minato whispers, reaching over to take Tori’s hand for the first time. They’re shaking.
“Ghost boy?” Tori whispers. “Minato?” He looks lost, and afraid. He’s never looked so scared before, in all the time Minato’s known him. Not when he told Minato about the illness, not when he’d first gotten hospitalized, not when he had two close calls earlier in the year. Not like this.
Minato smiles sadly at him and cups his face with his hand. Tori feels so solid under his touch – it only means that they’re on the same plane now. “Sorry, Tori…” he says quietly. “I wish I could help you more.”
Tori doesn’t speak. He leans in closer, pressing his face into Minato’s shoulder. “... this is it?” he asks softly, quietly, so his voice doesn’t break.
“Looks like it,” Minato replies, running his fingers through Tori’s hair. “But… It's okay, Tori. You did well. There’s still a lot of things that you weren’t able to do in life, but you can still do them now. All the time in the world. And…”
Tori shakes his head. “Just… just shut up and hold me for a while,” he whispers. Minato does.