Hashirama:

That evening, I phoned Mito.

She was the gorgeous red-headed sweetheart of my early twenties. We had been a couple from I was twenty to twenty-four, before I realised I liked men, and we had separated. It had taken a few years, but now we had a flourishing, platonic friendship. She was the one I phoned to when I needed advice, and she and her husband sometimes invited me over for dinner.

"Hashirama!" she said warmly. "How are you?"

"Not great, honestly", I said with a sigh. I couldn't conceal any emotions from this woman, so I didn't even try.

"Tell your aunty Mito about it", she said kindly.

And I did.

I told her about that day two years ago when Madara had bumped into me.

I told her about not being able to stop thinking about him.

I told her about seeing him again in my class.

I told her about how I seemed utterly obsessed with him, and how that worried me.

"I know you don't fall for people easily, Hashirama", Mito said. "You need to be careful with your career, but most of all with your heart.

"You mean I should watch out for him?"

"Quite the opposite, actually." I was taken aback. "If  you've found someone your heart desires, you ought to explore it. Or your heart might never forgive you."

We chatted for a bit, and her advice made me feel calmer, more grounded. I was grateful for that.

"Anything else, dear?" she asked.

"There... There is one thing."

"Spill it out."

Mito was a doctor, but I had never gone to her with any medical concerns of mine. They rarely happened, and when they did, I didn't think they was her responsibility to take care of. But this time, I wanted to ask her.

"I get pain in both of my lower legs when I'm running. It's been going on for weeks, and it's not shin splints. Also, I've gotten swelling in my knees. I have tried resting, but it doesn't help."

She asked me a few follow-up questions.

"Hashirama, I think you ought to go see your doctor."

I was taken aback. I had expected her to laugh it off and telling me I needed to calm down with my running. 

"What makes you say that?"

"Your nightly sweatings."

"Oh..."

"Will you phone him tomorrow?"

"I promise."

Madara:

Izuna, my younger brother, stood next to me in the corridor of the university, holding my hand. His hand was smaller than mine, that was already pretty slight, and colder. But it felt good to have him next to me; an anchor.

He was visiting me and my university. We stood looking at a poster. Or, rather, he was looking at it, reading it to me who stood merely facing it. It was a competition for art students.

"You should enter", he said with his sweet voice.

"I might have a piece... I'm painting it in class now. It's turning out pretty good."

I sensed Izuna turning to face me. "It would be a great merit. It's judged by so many big names in your field."

I smiled. "I know."

Izuna had a way of calming down my snappy mind, of tethering me to the earth in a way no-one else could. It felt soothing, him standing next to me, holding my hand.

"Keep your sickening disease to yourself! We don't want to see how much of a faggot you are in public." The same voice as the one yesterday...

I turned to face him. I could feel Izuna squeezing my hand even tighter.

"Is this your girlfriend? Or does he have something in between his legs? Bet neither of you do, bet you're lesbian."

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" Izuna asked, so much mock sincerity and confusion in his voice, I had to keep myself from snorting. "I mean, can you imagine being a lesbian, Madara? The literal worst! My God!"

At this, I burst out laughing. Izuna's voice was dripping with so much irony, it made the floor sticky. It was hilarious

There were people in the corridor, so the man in front of me wouldn't dare try anything with us. Instead, he bent close and hissed at us.

"You're not going anywhere with your crappy blind-man's art. I'll take the price from right underneath your girly nose."

He turned and left.

"What's up with him?" Izuna asked. "'Girly nose?' He could have said so many bad things about you, like how horrible the bags under your eyes look, or how big your feet are, or-"

"Izuna!" I warned, but I was laughing. 

Hashirama:

"I will make sure you get an x-ray within the week. Depending on the results, we might have to send a referral for a biopsy of the skeleton. But so far, we are hopeful."

"Thank you, doctor."

I walked the short distance from the hospital, where my GP practice lay, to the university. I felt lost. What Mito had said had started a process of examinations and procedures I wasn't prepared to undertake. The doctor had drawn blood, and on Thursday I would get an x-ray of my skeleton. I didn't know what it all meant, only that they wanted to rule out serious disease. Mito had eased my mind regarding Madara, but had started something else that felt like a ginormous locomotive I couldn't stop.

I went into the main doors of the arts building, deep in thought, and that was when I heard it.

I had never heard his laugh, but I immediately knew it was his.

It sounded like pearls being dropped from a waterfall. It was pouring over the air, from his lips to reach my ears and it was melodic, musical, much brighter than his normal voice.

And all my worries disappeared.

All my worries were packed up inside the pearls that was Madara's laughter, and sealed away.

And I went to the studio to teach him.

I stopped dead behind Madara's canvas.

"Not what you expected, huhh, professor?" Madara smirked.

I stood, mouth agape.

The area I had pointed out where Madara had made the mistake of putting shadow over light had been altered. But it hadn't been fixed in the way I had anticipated. Madara had put an enormous amount of extra shading on top of that light, making the error even greater.

And it looked absolutely stunning.

"Madara, this is... It's genius."

"Would it..." Suddenly, he turned his head down. "Would it do well in a competition?"

I smiled warmly. He was talking about the Dean's Prize. The dean himself, as well as some other well-known artists, would be the judges. The pressure was enormous, seeing as the prize was exposure in an art magazine as well as a considerable amount of money.

I lifted my hand to put it on his shoulder, but stopped myself halfway. "Don't touch me!" His words from that day in the corridor, when I'd found him seemingly lost and exhausted, haunted me. "Submissions end this Friday", I said, implying with my words I thought he absolutely must enter.

Suddenly, Madara lifted a tentative hand and reached it towards my wrist, that was still hovering above his shoulder, not touching him. I didn't know he'd noticed it was there. I believed I had heard that the other senses of blind people were enhanced compared to seeing people, but I had never experienced it first-hand. Madara grabbed my wrist softly, and guided my hand towards his shoulder, put it there.

"It's okay", he murmured. "You can touch me. Sorry for... Sorry for what I said that day."

We stood there for a while.

That afternoon, walking home was agony due to the pain in my skeleton.