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Jouno never complained about his blindness.
It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it, so why spend his time moping over something so completely out of his control?
Besides, he had long since learned that sight was overrated. People relied on their eyes too much. They trusted what they saw, believed the first expression on a face, the first movement of a hand. Jouno, however, had never had that luxury. And because of that, he trusted far more reliable things.
Footsteps.
Breathing.
The faint shift of fabric when someone tensed.
To most people, those sounds blurred together into meaningless background noise. To Jouno, they were a language. Every step carried intention, every breath betrayed emotion, fear was sharp and quick. Confidence was slow and steady. Lies trembled.
His ability to rip someone’s lies apart from the simple way they breathed was what gave him a spot in the hunting dogs, it had saved lives — his or others — on multiple occasions.
That didn’t mean it was easy.
People often assumed that because Jouno functioned so effortlessly, the blindness didn’t matter. Like the way he walked without hesitation through unfamiliar buildings, or pinpoint a person’s location from across a crowded room, meant he was completely unaffected by it.
The simple truth was that he was affected. But not in the way most people would think. How he remembered people was something that had always bothered him.
Most people remembered faces.
A sharp jawline, the curve of a smile, eye color, hair, expressions.
Jouno remembered none of that.
When someone left a room, the image of them didn’t linger in his mind the way it did for others. There was no visual ghost to hold onto, no face to recall months later and say ‘ah, that’s who that was.’ Pictures were obviously useless to him as well.
Most people assumed a sadistic man like Jouno wouldn’t care to be able to recall memories of other people
But that wasn’t true.
—
“Tecchou, you’re heavy. Move.”
Tecchou did not move. Jouno could feel the weight of him clearly, solid, unmoving, and very intentionally planted directly on top of him.
Jouno let out a slow breath through his nose. “Tecchou,” he repeated, “if you don’t get off me in the next three seconds, I’m going to stab you.”
“I believe you,” Tecchou replied calmly.
Jouno could feel the faint rumble of Tecchou’s voice through his chest where the man was currently lying on him, like a particularly stubborn slab of muscle.
Jouno lifted a hand and shoved hard at Tecchou’s shoulder. It was like pushing a reinforced stone wall that occasionally breathed.
“Move.”
“No.”
“You are insufferable.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
Jouno exhaled slowly again, letting his head fall back against the couch cushion. For a moment neither of them moved.
The apartment was quiet in the comfortable way it sometimes was when neither of them had anything urgent to do. The faint hum lights overhead, the distant sound of traffic outside the building, Tecchou’s heartbeat.
Jouno knew that rhythm well.
Tecchou’s heartbeat was slow and heavy against his ribs. The kind of heartbeat that never seemed to rush, even in combat. Most people would probably remember Tecchou by the sharp lines of his face, by the dark brown of his hair, or by the rigid way he carried himself like a weapon that had learned to walk.
Jouno remembered none of that.
What he remembered was the weight of Tecchou’s presence. The quiet thud of his heartbeat. The way his breathing never faltered no matter how chaotic the situation became. The faint rustle of his uniform when he shifted.
The way his footsteps were impossible to mistake.
Jouno could pick them out of a hundred people.
Maybe a thousand.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Jouno said flatly.
“Yes.”
“At least pretend to have shame.”
“No.”
Jouno sighed again, a resigned, long-suffering sigh that he’d come to associate with Tecchou and Tecchou alone.
He reached up, fingers brushing through thick hair. His hair was exactly how Jouno remembered it, stupidly dense, straight, stubbornly refusing to lie flat no matter how many times Tecchou pushed it out of the way. Jouno’s fingers moved slowly through it, more out of habit than anything else.
Tecchou leaned into the touch like a cat, just slightly closer, probably without realizing it.
His fingers trailed down from his hair to Tecchou’s face, gently tracing his brow first, feeling the firm line of bone beneath skin, fingers slid carefully downward, mapping the slope toward the bridge of Tecchou’s nose, it was slightly crooked from being broken one to many times.
He had already known that, of course. He’d been the one to break it.
Jouno’s fingers continued downward. Over the slight bump where the break had healed imperfectly, across the firm line of his cheekbone. Tecchou’s skin was warm under his fingertips, faintly rough in places from old scars and the beginning of stubble he had apparently forgotten to shave.
The solid warmth beneath his hands, the faint scratch of stubble that meant he’d forgotten to shave again, the slight dip in his eyebrow where an old scar split the hair growth. His even voice that always seemed to lacked emotion, his footsteps, heavy, yet too soft to be anyone else's, the kind that never hurried or hesitated.
That was how Jouno remembered Techou.
But Jouno learned over the years that sensations, voices, and rhythms. They all faded eventually.
They faded slowly, but they did fade.
Voices changed with time, injuries altered the cadence of footsteps, scars healed, or new ones replaced them. Even heartbeats could grow faster, weaker, uneven.
Memory, Jouno had learned, was fragile when it had nothing solid to anchor itself to. He remembered people clearly when they were there, when he could hear them, touch them, feel the space they occupied. But when they were gone — truly gone — the details blurred in a way that always left him vaguely unsettled.
It was like trying to hold water in his hands, he could feel it while it was there.
But it always slipped through eventually.
His old mentor was now just a faded voice in the back of his mind, Jouno could remember what the man said. He could remember the feeling of a hand on his shoulder when he corrected his stance, the tap of a wooden cane against the floor when he walked, the smell of bitter tea that always clung to his clothes. But the voice itself had blurred into something indistinct.
Even his own mother had long since faded from his memories, she was all gentle touches and warm hugs, but the person she had been had dissolved into fragments. A hand smoothing his hair, the soft press of lips against his forehead, a lullaby hummed just slightly off-key. He could remember the idea of her voice, but not the exact pitch or cadence. If someone asked him to recognize it now, he doubted he could.
That had been the first time Jouno realized memories could die.
Not all at once. Not violently. Just slowly, quietly. Like sound fading down a long hallway until there was nothing left but the knowledge that it had existed once. It had terrified him when he was young, when he first realized he couldn’t recall her voice anymore.
He had tried, at the time. Sitting alone in the large cold room he’d grown up in, repeating the lullaby she used to hum under his breath over and over again, hoping that if he repeated it enough the sound of her voice would return with it.
It hadn’t.
The melody remained, the memory of warmth remained. But the voice itself had slipped away like it had never been there in the first place.
It had been the first time Jouno understood that remembering, for him, required effort. Effort most people never had to think about.
Which was why his fingers lingered where they were now, resting lightly against Tecchou’s cheek. Tecchou, as usual, didn’t question it. He simply laid there, heavy and patient, his breathing under Jouno’s hand.
Their job was dangerous, unpredictable. In a way that no matter how strong they were, there was never a guarantee that either of them would come back from the next mission.
Jouno knew that better than most. He had listened to heartbeats stop before, heard voices cut off mid-sentence. Listened to footsteps that he had learned well enough to recognize disappear from hallways forever.
When sighted people lost someone, they had photographs. Faces frozen in time, a smile caught mid-moment, preserved neatly on paper.
Jouno had none of that.
And the thought of Tecchou fading as well, it settled somewhere deep in Jouno’s chest like a slow, unwelcome weight.
Not fear exactly. Jouno didn’t fear death the way most people did. He’d been surrounded by it for too long, had listened to too many final breaths, too many heartbeats that simply stopped. Death was inevitable, predictable even.
What he disliked was absence.
The kind that left nothing behind.
His thumb shifted slightly against Tecchou’s cheek without him really thinking about it, brushing once over the rough edge of a familiar scar.
He wondered, sometimes, how long he would remember this exact feeling if Tecchou disappeared tomorrow.
A year?
Five?
Would the memory stay sharp, or would it dull the way the others had? Would the solid line of Tecchou’s jaw become vague in his mind, just another shape in the fog? Would his voice eventually blur into something unrecognizable just like his mentor and mothers?
Jouno hated the idea of that. Not that he would ever say it out loud. He was good at pretending things didn’t bother him. But no matter how much he pretended, it was still there, like a splinter he would never be able to dig out.
Tecchou shifted slightly beneath his hand, a small movement, but Jouno felt it immediately. the subtle tightening of muscle under his palm, the quiet shift of Tecchou’s breathing.
“You’re thinking hard,” Tecchou said.
Jouno scoffed softly. “You say that like it’s unusual.”
“It is when you’re quiet.”
“Rich coming from you of all people.” Jouno shot back.
Tecchou hummed faintly, the sound vibrating against Jouno’s chest again. His hand lifted and settled over Jouno’s wrist where it still rested against his face, fingers loosely circling it.
Jouno didn’t pull away.
For a moment neither of them spoke. The silence between them was familiar. Not the tense kind that filled interrogation rooms or mission briefings, the type of quiet that came from spending far too many hours existing in the same space.
Jouno tilted his head slightly. “Tecchou.”
“Yes.”
“If you die before me,” Jouno said casually, “I’m going to be extremely annoyed.”
Tecchou was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet he sometimes had when considering something strange Jouno said. Then, very seriously, he said, “I will try not to.”
Jouno snorted. “Try harder,” he muttered.
Tecchou’s thumb brushed once over the inside of Jouno’s wrist, absentmindedly tracing a vein there. “I’ll try, so long as you do too,”
Jouno huffed quietly. “How considerate of you.”
Tecchou didn’t let go of his wrist. Jouno could feel the warmth of his hand there, steady and grounding, his thumb occasionally brushing against Jouno’s pulse like he was checking that it was still there. Tecchou had a habit of touching him like that, practical contact that somehow lingered longer than necessary.
Jouno suspected Tecchou didn’t even realize he did it.
Most of the time Tecchou didn’t seem aware of the small things he did at all. How he always stood slightly to Jouno’s left in crowded spaces so Jouno’s better ear faced the room, the way he cleared chairs out of Jouno’s path without saying anything, when he paused half a step before turning corners so Jouno could adjust with him.
He just did it.
Which made it worse.
Jouno could handle people who pitied him. He could mock them until they shrank back or simply ignore them altogether. Pity was loud, obvious, and easy to dismantle.
But Tecchou didn’t pity him. He simply treated Jouno like someone worth accommodating.
It was incredibly inconvenient.
Because if Tecchou pitied him, Jouno could hate him for it. Hatred was simple, a sharp thing you could hold comfortably in your hands and stab someone with.
But this quiet, unspoken attentiveness was something else entirely, something able to slip past all of Jouno’s carefully built defenses and settled somewhere inconveniently soft.
And Jouno hated soft things.
They made people reckless.
His fingers were still resting against Tecchou’s cheek when the thought crossed his mind, and before he could stop himself, “Tecchou.”
“Yes.”
“If you get a haircut without telling me,” Jouno said flatly, “I will kill you.”
Tecchou went very still. “What, Why?”
“Because,” Jouno replied, like it was obvious, “I like your hair the way it is.”
Tecchou considered this. Jouno could practically hear the slow grinding of his thoughts.
“Alright,” Tecchou said eventually.
Jouno’s brow scrunched, “That was suspiciously easy.”
“You like it, that’s enough of a reason” Tecchou replied simply, like that explained everything.
Jouno opened his mouth, paused, and then shut it again. That answer was so irritatingly straightforward that arguing with it felt pointless.
“Besides,” Tecchou added after a moment, “it would grow back.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
Jouno made a vague gesture with his free hand. “The point is that if you suddenly change something important without warning, it ruins the reference.”
Tecchou was quiet again. “The reference?” he repeated slowly.
“Yes, the reference,” Jouno said, like he was explaining something obvious to a particularly dense child. “How I recognize you.”
Tecchou shifted slightly, enough that Jouno felt the change in the pressure of his weight.
“You recognize my footsteps,” Tecchou said.
“Yes.”
“And my breathing.”
“Yes.”
“And my heartbeat.”
Jouno huffed. “Yes, Tecchou, congratulations. You’re familiar with the concept.”
“So my hair is not necessary.”
Jouno clicked his tongue in annoyance. “It’s part of the structure.”
“The structure.”
“Yes.”
Tecchou went quiet again, apparently filing that away somewhere in the filing cabinet that was his brain. Jouno could almost hear the drawer sliding shut.
For a while neither of them spoke. Tecchou’s hand still rested around Jouno’s wrist, thumb occasionally brushing the inside of it in that absent way he had, like he was verifying that Jouno still existed.
Then Tecchou said, very matter-of-factly, “If I die, I’ll write things down first.”
“…What?”
“So you will remember,” Tecchou continued, voice calm as ever. “Descriptions, measurements. Important structural elements.”
Jouno stared upward at the ceiling he couldn’t see.
“You’re planning a death documentation?”
“Yes.”
“That’s deeply concerning.”
“It seems efficient.” He shrugged.
Jouno dragged a hand down his face. “Tecchou, I swear to God.”
Tecchou continued like he hadn’t been interrupted. “Height, weight, hair density, scar locations.” he listed, “Voice recordings would also be helpful.”
“You think I’m going to sit around listening to recordings of you after you die?” Jouno scoffed.
“Yes.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“It would solve the memory problem.”
Jouno opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. Because the irritating thing was, it probably would. And that somehow made it worse.
The slow, steady brush of his thumb over Jouno’s wrist continued. Jouno could feel the rhythm of it line up with his own heartbeat, like Tecchou was unconsciously matching the tempo.
Annoying.
Deeply annoying.
Jouno shifted slightly under him. “Your plan is still stupid.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you assume I’d want a written catalog of your physical attributes after you die!”
“It would be useful.”
“It would be creepy.”
Tecchou was quiet for a moment, clearly evaluating that.“…Acceptably creepy?”
“No.” Jouno exhaled through his nose again, the sound carrying a faint edge of frustration. His fingers were still resting against Tecchou’s cheek, though he hadn’t realized he’d left them there.
Tecchou hadn’t moved away. That wasn’t unusual. Tecchou tolerated contact in the same quiet way he tolerated most things. Which was to say, completely.
Jouno traced the line of his jaw again, slower this time. He told himself it was practical, reinforcing the reference points, rebuilding the mental structure. Memory was a skill like anything else, repetition improved retention.
Tecchou’s skin was still warm under his fingers.
Jouno traced the shape again. Brow. Nose. Jaw. The crooked bridge he’d broken years ago, the scar over his eyebrow, the stubborn thickness of his hair, the subtle texture difference where freckles scattered over his face.
The annoying thing about Tecchou was that he said things so plainly it left no room to hide behind sarcasm. ‘If I die, I will write things down first.’
Jouno could practically hear the seriousness in the way he’d meant it, like it was a practical solution to a logistical problem. Which meant he probably would do it.
That idiot.
Jouno exhaled slowly. “Tecchou.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t write anything.”
“Why.”
“Because,” Jouno muttered, shifting slightly under his weight, “that would mean you expected to die first.”
Tecchou thought about that. “…That is a possibility.”
“I know it’s possible,” Jouno snapped. “Our job description includes ‘frequent near-death experiences.’”
“Then preparation is logical.”
Jouno pressed two fingers against the bridge of Tecchou’s nose in annoyance.
“You are unbelievably irritating,” he muttered.
Tecchou did not disagree. Instead, he simply adjusted slightly where he was, his weight shifting just enough that Jouno felt the change in pressure across his chest. One of his hands slid up from Jouno’s wrist to loosely rest over his forearm.
For a moment Jouno said nothing. The apartment was quiet again, filled with the small, ordinary sounds most people never noticed. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant rush of a car passing outside, and Tecchou's slow breathing.
“Then remember this instead.”
Jouno frowned slightly. “Remember what.”
Tecchou shifted again, just enough that Jouno felt the movement of his head as he tilted it, pressing more firmly into Jouno’s hand where it rested against his face. “That I’m here.”
That was not the kind of answer he had expected. It was too simple, Tecchou had a habit of doing that, reducing complicated thoughts down to something blunt and immovable, like a wall you couldn’t argue with.
Jouno scoffed softly. “How profound,” he said dryly.
Tecchou hummed in acknowledgment, apparently satisfied.
He stayed there, quiet and solid beneath Jouno’s hands like it was the most natural thing in the world, and because of that, Jouno could feel everything.
The warmth of his skin, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the slow, patient beat of his heart beneath his ribs. Things that couldn’t be written down in some ridiculous post-mortem catalog.
Things that only existed right now.
Jouno exhaled quietly. “…You’re still heavy,” he muttered after a moment.
“I know.”
“Get off.”
“No.”