[Auerbach]
Sep. 20th, 2013 06:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
answer_keyby rex_sun
Warning: Violence and Gore
Shells (part 2)
“It’s you,” Shindo breathes.
Shindo’s eyes well with tears. He twists his face as if annoyed by them. It’s achingly familiar.
Akira absorbs that face like it’s some precious miracle. Well. It is, isn’t it? Precious miracle, Shindo.
His hair looks so strange, just black, and choppily short. But those bright eyes haven’t changed at all. That smooth face with the full cheeks. He’s got a darkly stained baseball bat held tightly in his hand. He looks tired, but generally well. Shindo even manages one of his lovely crooked smiles. (Akira never thought of them as lovely until he stopped seeing them.)
“Always showing up out of nowhere,” Shindo says, laughing shakily. He stares into the dead shell’s eyes, and the dead thing seems to stare back. Might it remember Shindo like a dream from the time that Akira lived inside it? Shindo takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Just in the last place I would expect you. You haven’t changed.”
There is a small tear in the chain links. The shell raises a wasted arm and struggles its way through, scraping its flesh, reaching out for Shindo’s fresh heat.
Akira’s mind seems to spasm. Shindo doesn’t know— can’t know— the scarf hides the wound—
“Shindo!” Akira calls out. “Shindo, don’t! Don’t let it get you! That isn’t me; I’m not in there anymore—!”
Shindo’s throat convulses. He tilts his head back. Shindo looks Akira, the real Akira, right in the eyes. And he says tenderly, “I know.”
Akira chokes on his warnings. He gazes into Shindo’s eyes, and Shindo gazes into his. It’s warm. Wonderful Shindo. Miraculous Shindo.
Shindo nods, and they understand each other. Then Shindo draws back just a little and lifts his hand to the clawing hand of the shell. Akira wishes he could feel that skin— the comfort of a human touch…
Shindo examines the hand that used to be his, not unlike a distant time when Akira did the same as boys. It feels like an entirely different life. (An entirely different life, and yet Shindo is still here.) Shindo gently but firmly turns the hand, inspecting the raw fingertips, the long, bloodied nails. Then he lets go and steps back for real. He shifts his bat into his dominant hand.
“Come here,” he tells Akira. “You can, right?”
Akira blinks back at him blankly. “I— maybe, I…” He sizes up the fence. Could he climb that? What about the shell?
Shindo huffs out a laugh. “I mean, come inside.” He pats the space over his heart.
Akira can’t really believe his ears. “I—” He wants to say, I don’t know what you mean, but the words don’t make it out of his mouth, because it’s untrue. Somehow he does know exactly what Shindo means.
“Don’t worry,” Shindo murmurs. “I’ve got plenty of room.”
Akira takes one last look at the oddly calm shell of himself before walking straight through the fence like it was never there at all and to Shindo’s side. Without taking his eyes from Shindo’s eyes, he walks inside of Shindo and makes his home there.
The world shudders and flickers into darkness for a brief moment. Akira can’t see, but when he instinctively reaches out, his fingertips don’t exactly feel the texture but definitely feel the pressure of Shindo’s arm.
They come back to reality in the same position, with the shell on the other side of the fence beginning to shift restlessly. Akira is rushed with so many emotions, most of them pleasant— they’re together at last—
but Shindo seems unsteady. He stumbles backwards a few steps and leans heavily against his bat. He brings his hand to his forehead, scrunching up his bangs.
“Shindo!” Akira gasps, moving forward. He holds on to Shindo, the only thing that’s tangibly real.
“I’m fine,” Shindo pants out. “I won’t faint.”
“But—”
“Just dizzy,” he says roughly.
Akira would argue more, as is his nature around Shindo, but a jangling clatter draws their attention. Whatever made the shell pause— some distant lingering affection for Shindo, perhaps —has it paused no more. Very ineptly, it is making its way up the fence, kicking about as it looks for footholds.
“Aw, shit,” Shindo mutters casually.
“Put it out of its misery,” Akira hisses malevolently.
Shindo gives him a double-take like he can’t quite believe Akira said that, but he reflexively takes his bat in both hands. They back up, giving some room for the wind-up and swing. Any second now… stupid thing...
Shindo falters. “Wait, I don’t think I can!”
Akira glares. “What do you mean?” he demands. “It’s a monster. It isn’t me! Destroy that thing before it can hurt anyone else.”
Shindo takes his sight off the shell, never mind Akira’s panicking. His eyes are wide and round and childishly fearful. “But where are you bound? Isn’t it— isn’t it your body?”
Akira shakes his head, as if this nonsensical question is a fly he can scare off. “Bound? What do you mean, bound?”
Shindo steels himself. “I can’t lose you.”
And instead of facing the creature, he turns tail and runs, fast, faster than Akira’s shell can keep up, but not faster than Akira’s soul— because Akira is inside him, is him, and will not be separated from him. Akira stays by Shindo’s side, looks over his shoulder, and watches the thing in pursuit get left behind.
***
Shindo catches his breath on the sidewalk of a street Akira doesn’t really recognize. He’s got a sportsman’s backpack and a bottle full of water from which he sips.
“You’re very… quick,” Akira says awkwardly.
Shindo grins up at him, unabashed. “Soccer!”
“What?”
“Soccer, like every other day after work or school. I’m not just some pale little nerd, you know. I’ve got excellent cardio.” He snickers like a loon.
They fall quiet for a bit. Shindo suddenly stops looking at Akira, and only in its absence does Akira comprehend the intensity of the gaze that was just drinking him in.
“Do you think we’re far enough away?” Akira asks impatiently. He’s worried sick but not for himself.
Shindo shrugs. “Probably shouldn’t get too far, actually. Oughta be able to find it again, right?”
Akira raises his eyebrows. “Right? Wrong!” he shoots back, shaking his head.
How could he have missed this infuriating, waffling, annoying shrimp!
“No, yeah!” Shindo insists. “Look, I mean, if it turns out that you’re bound to it— I mean, we’ve gotta keep you here, right? Yeah, so, we’ve gotta make sure nothing happens to it.”
Akira shakes his head slowly again, this time in confusion as opposed to consternation. He floats down to sit next to Shindo. “I don’t understand.”
Shindo keeps looking around like a meerkat, except he doesn’t seem to be anything but casually uneasy. It seems his bat and leather armor have gotten some use. “Sorry?” he offers vaguely.
It’s extraordinarily strange to actually be talking to a human, a real live human being, and have the person talking back. It’s even stranger that it’s Shindo, of all people— but if he was paying attention, he shouldn’t have expected anything less. While Akira ponders this, Shindo ponders the sun, the simple map he memorized in his head, and whether he can manage to survive a few nights with the food he has packed. Akira absorbs this information for a second, and then snaps his head up to stare at Shindo in puzzlement. Shindo looks over at him, too, and smiles.
Shindo already knows what Akira is finding out. You’re inside me runs through Shindo’s head, meant for Akira.
“But if it doesn’t look too weird, I prefer talking out loud, to be honest. I mean, there’s no one here to find it weird, so…”
Akira puts his face in his hands and sighs. Shindo is getting a headache. Calm down, would you?
Akira doesn’t really breathe anymore, but he pretends to take a deep breath. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
Shindo clearly thinks that Akira’s being a bit slow. “You’ve gotta tell me, Touya. Where is your spirit bound?”
“Spirit?”
Shindo scratches his head. “Uh, yeah, you know… Your…” and he waves to indicate Akira’s— well.
Akira looks down at himself. “Is this— this is my spirit?”
Shindo shrugs awkwardly. His thoughts say, Duh.
Akira stares at him blankly. “That would make me… dead.”
Shindo frowns at him.
“I died.”
Shindo nods.
Akira processes this for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “No. Can’t be.”
Shindo scoffs heartily at him and stands up to stretch. “Y’know, you’ve always been kinda… I dunno, not really rigid, but— you just seem to think that things are gonna go your way until you get proven wrong. You’ve really gotta loosen up, man. I could smell you back there. You damn rotted.”
Only Akira’s current position allows him to feel as Shindo feels; only he knows that it pains Shindo to say such things. Shindo turns his back on Akira as if to survey the surroundings, but they both know it’s too hide the tears welling up.
“But I can’t be dead,” Akira tries to reason.
Shindo just snorts. “That’s some major denial going on there. You’ve got some issues you need to work through—”
“We can’t be talking if I’m dead!” Akira interrupts angrily.
Shindo wipes his face on his shoulder and turns towards Akira. They glare intensely at each other for a long few moments before Shindo laughs to break the tension. “What, don’t you believe in ghosts?”
***
Shindo has lunch while Akira fumes at him. This isn’t the time to be closed lipped! But Shindo clams up on the subject of ghosts, clams up so hard that Akira can’t force the thoughts out of his mind. Shindo’s will is strong.
Shindo studiously avoids his gaze as he munches on a protein bar. Akira’s anger is giving Shindo one hell of a migraine; he squints his eyes against the sun and chews very slowly. Akira has the grace enough to feel bad for this and fishes for a different subject.
“That looks good,” he says dumbly.
Shindo gives him a weird look and shrugs.
“I just had crackers and rice and things,” Akira explains further.
“Oh.” Shindo throws the wrapper into the street. Cleanliness doesn’t exactly seem important right now. He says in a light but certain tone, “You’re not hungry now, though.”
“… no,” Akira admits.
Shindo nods to himself. “Because ghosts don’t eat granola.”
Akira can’t help the little huff of laughter. Shindo smiles a bit more brightly. “No,” Akira admits again. “We don’t tend to eat at all. …I suppose…”
Shindo stands and wipes his crumb-y hands on his worn jeans. Akira stands with him easily.
“Alright, listen, this is really important, okay?” Shindo looks like he would shake Akira if he could. “You’re dead. Alright? You got bit, I’m guessing, and the bite got infected, and you got sick, fever, right— and it killed you. It just killed you, okay?”
Akira glances around the desolate suburban streets around them as if they could give him a better explanation of events. But as Shindo says, it all aligns in his gummed-up memories.
“Fine,” he accepts quietly.
Shindo licks his lips. Akira feels Shindo’s heart twist. “Yeah, okay. And— and that must’ve sucked, but— but you’re not gone. You’re right here. You’re not gone.” Shindo’s eyes are shining and hurting. “So I need you to think, Touya. You really have to think about it. What’s keeping you here?”
Akira feels unnaturally sluggish trying to process this question. “I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do,” Shindo insists gently. “You’ve gotta. Just, you know, listen to your heart or whatever. How are you… feeling?” When this gets no results, he tries again. “What were you doing before you died?”
“Nothing much, to be honest,” Akira bites out. “Just… hiding like an animal.”
Shindo’s hands twist around his bat and he scuffs the pavement with his dirty sneakers. Akira may understand Shindo well now that he’s inside of him, but it seems Shindo has a harder time understanding him. He peers at Akira with something like confused pity. “So… so… are you, uhm, mad that you hid?”
Akira considers that. Considers Shindo, with his pure black hair and his leather jacket and his white-kneed jeans. His bloody bat, his big backpack. His newly rough palms and the way he isn’t afraid to be standing out in the open. “Yeah,” Akira says at last.
“Where’d you hide?”
“I just barricaded my home.”
“And you would rather have… been on the move?”
“I’d rather have— I don’t know. I just— really wish I hadn’t been so— so scared!” Akira forces out. And once he does, the rest tumbles out, too. Why not, if Shindo is the only one who’ll ever know. “I just sat around my house and played go! I told my parents—”
“—where are your parents?”
“—China. I told my parents that I’d just sit still like a good boy, that the government would take care of me. And I did, I just sat there, even when people started getting crazier and the sane ones started moving out, when the curfews got stricter and they were shooting people in the streets! When the rations got smaller and then they stopped delivering them! And I just went home and locked myself up and stopped going outside—”
“—that’s normal—”
“Yes, sure, normal! I was being so very sensible, so very mature! But I was a caged rat, trapped inside myself! It was me, not them!”
Shindo’s face is crumpled like the floodgates of his tears are about to burst. Funny what dying does to a man; Akira can’t ever remember being this open in his entire life.
“I mean, look at you,” Akira continues, this time much softer and quieter. He gestures up and down. “You’re not even—” He tries a laugh but it’s pathetic. “Why are you always the crazy one?”
Shindo lurches a few times and massages his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” Akira whispers. “Am I doing this to you?”
Shindo doesn’t answer, lips closed tight. Akira forcibly calms himself for Shindo’s sake.
“I was just playing go,” he says. “Just sitting around and playing go like nothing had changed.”
Shindo straightens up. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he smiles. “Go?”
“…yeah. Go.”
Shindo bites his lip as his shoulders start to shake. “Nerd.”
Akira sends waves of ghostly enmity at him. (Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work this time.) “It’s not funny.”
But Shindo is so shiningly fond in this moment that it feels warm even to a ghost. It’s a blessing.
Then Shindo gasps and looks to the distance. Startled, Akira whips around. “What is it? Is there someone—” But there isn’t anyone coming. “What the hell, Shindo, I thought you saw danger—”
“You were… playing go.”
“Can we not talk about that?”
“No, but… I mean… that might be…”
Akira groans in frustration. Shindo does not have the courtesy to be sorry. Shindo looks at him and says, “Let’s go to your house!”
“…what,” Akira says flatly.
“Well, come on!” Shindo cajoles, smile taking a decidedly smarmy twist. He’s already walking back the way they came with a spring in his step and bat propped against his shoulder. “This feels right, I bet this is it. Good, that’s much easier!”
Akira follows right behind his shoulder. “What the hell are you going on about? And why are you going this way!” he demands with a touch of fear.
“I think you might be bound somewhere in your home,” Shindo says confidently. “Yeah, like… when I think of it, it doesn’t really make sense for you to be bound to your body, does it? I mean, the corpses walk on for a while, but eventually even that will stop, right? You need something more solid. I think I know—”
“That thing is back this way, you realize!”
Shindo falters, but continues walking more sedately.
Akira presses his advantage. “So, if my body and spirit are completely separated, if I’m not bound to that thing… Then you can destroy it.”
Shindo treks on without looking at him.
“You can do it, right?” Akira points to the bat. Shindo must see him in peripheral. “I can’t stand its very existence. Are you strong enough?”
And Akira meant, Are your arms strong enough to swing the bat forcefully?
But Shindo means something else entirely when he lets himself think, No.
***
They make it back to the chain link fence in short time. Shindo, finally nervous, darts around corners. “Check for me,” Shindo whispers.
Akira gapes in confusion for a moment before— “Ah!” Of course, if he’s a ghost, then he’s not really in any danger, is he? He floats ahead of Shindo a bit, and it’s pretty liberating to be able to yell back, “You’re safe.”
Then Shindo climbs the fence and Akira walks straight through it, and they keep going like this, with Akira scouting ahead and Shindo looking over his shoulder. We’re the perfect team, Shindo thinks. Akira is proud to agree. Shindo alternates between a march and a jog, somehow keeping his breath— yes, great cardio —and they make truly excellent time. But even having met in the morning, they are barely even halfway to the next section’s wall by dark. Shindo points out a particular house as the sun turns red.
Shindo stands on the porch of the home, bat at the ready and nerves made of steel. Akira senses mostly firm determination underneath his still-living heart, pumping with mounting adrenaline. He slowly opens the door with the handle of the bat. Before them is a long hallway, plunged in darkness, and at the end is a staircase.
Shindo glances at Akira and wiggles his eyebrows. Watch this.
“Please excuse the intrusion!” he yells into the house. For good measure, he chucks a rock so that it bangs and scuffs the floor.
“You’re an idiot,” Akira hisses. He’s not quite sure why he’s being quite.
Shindo rolls his eyes and holds a hand up to his ear, like a cartoon character listening to a pebble dropping down a dry well. And, indeed, from within the house, there is a faint clatter.
Akira feels cold again and clams up. Shindo, on the other hand, whoops loudly and backs off the porch and onto the sidewalk. The shuffling approaches rapidly. Shindo winds up, light on his feet.
The shell of the woman is in her nightgown and a hairnet. She’s maybe 40, and much disheveled, and her middle is all red, and there’s a cigarette hanging out of her shriveled lips. One last cigarette before I die, she probably thought.
She presses her hands to the doorframe and snarls, the very image of an irate mother of young, rowdy children. Then she stomps towards Shindo, who laughs and doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Alright!”
Akira watches the bat connect with her skull, and as a spray of thick blood blossoms from her head, so the dawning horror blossoms in Akira’s mind. He turns away quickly, but cannot help but to see her fall and to see Shindo follow up the knock out with a finishing blow.
“No problem,” Shindo says with barely a deepened breath. He scratches his blood-flecked nose as he walks up to the porch again and bangs the bat between the door frame like ringing a bell. “Anyone else? Any munchkins? Come on out if you’re here! I’ll take you on!”
Nothing comes running. Akira floats forward to check, still sick and fearful.
“Nothing on the first floor,” he calls back to Shindo, who has been cautiously edging inside. Shindo spares his a strange sideways look before nodding at the stairs. Akira floats up while Shindo makes loud taps on each step.
Eventually they have the whole house cleared. Akira lets Shindo know what a massive idiot he is. Shindo sticks out his tongue and makes a comment about questionable opening moves.
Shindo rifles through cabinets and drawers efficiently before successfully finding a few battery-operated accent lights. Then he locks the door against the setting sun and goes about setting pots and pans on all the window ledges.
“Sweet,” Shindo mutters as he opens the pantry to find just three rationed meals left. He eats two of them in one go. Akira sighs pointedly in exasperation.
When the sun no longer glows into the house from behind thick, drawn curtains, Shindo finds it to be time to retreat upstairs, and as he goes, he layers each step with the remaining pots and plates of the house. They search the rooms upstairs. There’s quite a nasty scene in the kids’ rooms: two skeletons and daddy in a suit. They close the door on it. The master bedroom, however, is relatively fine if one can get past the large bloodstains on the bed sheets. And apparently, Shindo can. (Apparently, Shindo has gotten used to a lot of things in the past three months, including sleeping amongst blood and bashing in corpses’ skulls. Who would ever have looked at the go-playing geek in the sports jersey and thought what a warrior he could make.)
Shindo tests his swing a few times to make sure he’s got room for emergency defense. Satisfied, he wipes his bat on one side, then flips and folds the sheets until he can lie where the bed is clean. He keeps the accent lights on the bedside table. They gently flicker over his sleepy face. He’s got his shoes on, and it seems the bat might be permanently attached to his hand.
Still, Akira thinks as he looks down at his friend, he looks almost peaceful.
“You okay?” Shindo whispers.
Akira doesn’t know what to do with his not-body, but it isn’t really a problem seeing as how he isn’t tired. He simply lowers his face to Shindo’s level. “I’m dead, Shindo, you idiot. No, I’m not okay.”
“But you’re still here,” Shindo murmurs warmly. Akira falls silent and Shindo closes his eyes. “Would you mind?”
And since Akira is right there with him, he knows what is meant. He floats over to the window and surveys the street below. “There’s one, but he doesn’t know we’re here… He’s moving on…”
“Good, good.”
Akira hesitates. He has to speak up before Shindo sleeps.
“Shindo.”
“Mmmgh?” is the sleepy reply.
“Did she have a ghost?”
Shindo yawns. “No.” Don’t think so.
Akira looks over to see Shindo’s half-open eyes gleaming in his direction. “Are you some kind of medium?”
“Some kind, I guess,” Shindo agrees. “Must be.”
Akira frowns in annoyance. “It’s just that you seem to be relatively casual about ghosts.”
“Yeah, well,” Shindo mumbles. Meet one, you feel like you’ve met them all.
And then— well, who knows. Maybe it’s because Akira is actively searching Shindo’s brain for the answer; maybe it’s because Shindo is too tired to fight; maybe, and this one seems right, maybe Shindo has finally decided that ‘today’ is ‘someday’.
The flicker of light in Shindo’s swimming eyes is positively hypnotic.
In his mind— their mind, shared— Akira is before the go board in a dark room. The intensity is great. A smooth hand appears from nowhere to place white. And Akira knows this: this is sai. sai… the letters rearrange in his knowledge. This is Sai. And what was once just a hand in his imagination extends into a real memory, up a pure white sleeve and crossing over long strands of hair. Strong chin, noble forehead and nose, beautiful eyes. This is Sai.
Akira remembers like he lived it. Go boards, pointing fans, sweet smiles, swimming tears. He sees himself as a puzzled little boy and perceives Shindo as a tormented teenager. Farewells. Lots of love.
Akira knows he is crying without knowing how he even could anymore. Shindo closes his eyes so that he won’t.
Shindo sleeps. Akira keeps on watching.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Shindo mumbles when he wakes briefly around midnight. Then again he sleeps more gladly than Akira ever managed. Akira glows with gentle happiness; he can do this much for Shindo.
***
On the next day they travel in the silence of comrades. Akira looks at this man who has puzzled him for so long and suddenly knows all his secrets. He is surprised to find that this only endears Shindo more to his heart. Shindo transforms from an anomaly to a life support system, and neither of them minds the change. As he said before, as he was originally told by Sai—
Hikaru has enough room in his soul for this.
They camp again in a new house just before the wall. There are soldiers cleaning up the town just beyond here. Hikaru doesn’t believe he’d get in too much trouble, but it isn’t really ideal to run into them anyway. He beats down a few locally roaming monsters and bemoans the state of his jacket, which, so he says, was a gift from his friend, Tsubaki. Akira thought it looked a little big on him.
“Is Tsubaki alive?” Akira asks delicately at night.
“Oh, yeah!” Hikaru says gladly. “And so are my friends Akari and Mitani, believe it or not! ...actually, I was holed up with them in the safe zone… Uhm, I just volunteered for a little run. Oops. I hope they aren’t searching for me.”
He at least blushes. Akira tries not to show his amusement. “You moron. Typical Shindo. You’ve got them worried sick, you inconsiderate jerk.”
“Yeah, well…” Hikaru pillows his head in his arms and stares up at the ceiling. “Zombie movies are really too hysterical. This is far from an apocalypse, you know. Whatever. We’ll head over there after we’ve finished business at your house.”
***
In the early morning, they stand before the wall. Akira walks through, takes a fair look around without getting too far from Hikaru, and drifts back. Given the all-clear, Hikaru tosses his bat over, then crawls his way through the tunnel Akira had originally made.
The streets here are familiar, not just to him but even to Hikaru, who visited him many times in the past. Akira no longer has to strain to remember his general path. They pass by the convenient store.
“Oh! Oh! Let’s stop here!” Hikaru pipes up, wandering off course.
“There’s nothing there,” Akira scoffs. “We need to keep going—”
“It’ll just take a sec if what I want is here. Come on.”
Akira sighs and keeps a lookout while Hikaru browses barren shelves.
“A-ha!” he crows at last, and he holds a box of cheap hair bleach above his head.
Akira, ashamed in his place, hides his face in his hands. “I can’t believe…”
Hikaru drowns him out with laughter.
***
Having braved barbed wires and dodged soldier and smashed one more of what Hikaru calls zombies and Akira prefers to think of as shell-people, they stand before the gates of the magnificent Touya home in silence. Hikaru gives Akira one last sympathetic but determined look before striding through the debris that once was the barricade. He enters this house quietly.
Akira stares up at the ceiling and wills himself to be anywhere else. Hikaru understands and sweeps the house on his own steam. Akira looks to the phone on the wall, the untouched state of the kitchen, the door to his parents’ room, anywhere—
but he still can’t help but to see Hikaru following the trail of blood, Hikaru standing in Akira’s bedroom doorway, the burdened slump of Hikaru’s shoulders. Blessed, life-supporting Hikaru.
Akira pointedly turns away when Hikaru drags out the convenience store girl wrapped up in Akira’s bedding. He hears Hikaru chuck it into the road, and then hears the creak and slam of the gate.
“First thing’s first,” Hikaru says mock-cheerfully when he returns. “Do you have any food?”
Akira manages a small smile and gestures toward the kitchen. Hikaru enters immediately, and after some more slamming around, whoops with glee.
Akira watches Hikaru eat the porridges that Akira couldn’t stomach. Then Hikaru packs the rest very tightly into his previously deflated backpack and moves on. He searches Akira’s house as unabashedly as he searched the other two, but his ignoring the bloodstains is too stiff this time.
Hikaru finds the go room quite naturally and grins as he enters. Akira, trailing behind, suddenly feels a twang in his soul. There’s something pulling at him from the go room, something like a big magnet, and it feels… ecstatic.
Akira floats inside. His eyes are immediately drawn to the bloody go board.
Hikaru laughs softly, exhilarated. He crouches down beside it and reverently caresses the lines.
“This is mine,” Akira whispers. This feeling is as amazing as the first time he played against Sai in the go salon of times passed.
“Yes,” Hikaru hisses.
“Mine.”
Hikaru beams up at him. He says, “Play a game!”
The bubble of shining glory pops, leaving Akira like ice. “No.”
Hikaru’s face falls. “Why not?”
Akira’s face twists and Hikaru’s stomach twists in nauseated response. “This damn game— this wretched thing—”
“What?” Hikaru asks in astonishment. “Touya, what’s up?”
“I never want to look at this game again!” Akira spits.
“Touya,” Hikaru says. “It’s go, Touya…”
Akira clicks his tongue at Hikaru. “Listen, you can dye your hair and play baseball with people’s skulls and holler like a madman when the rest of the world is trying to stay as quiet as possible—” Akira grows louder and louder, feeling absolutely possessed with rage like never before, swelling with it— never mind the dangerously calm mask Hikaru’s adopted like the face he used to wear before the board— “We’ve grown up, and so has the world, Shindo. All of our luxuries— our McDonalds and our internet and our television comedy shows— they’re all gone, Shindo. You say it’s not the apocalypse, well that’s fine. But if you say this isn’t a serious wake up call, I don’t know what you’re trying to sell.”
Hikaru has knelt on the opposite side of the board. Something deep within Akira notes that it is desperately sad that Sai’s fan isn’t in his hand. Akira forcefully ignores that note.
He continues, “With so much suffering in the world, are you honestly going to tell me you have time for go? I’m sick to think of my foolish, living self! Even when hell came up to swallow me, I sat here, placidly playing go, meekly wishing for the way things used to be. It’s all so very pointless! Don’t you see?” This last bit he positively yells, because nothing seems to be affecting Hikaru.
“Go is completely trivial! No one can afford themselves go in a world like this!” Akira winds down. “I spent my life blindly dedicated to this… to tiny little stones and a chunk of wood. Now in death let me be spared from remembering my past mistakes…”
Hikaru doesn’t move even after Akira’s done. But he refuses to feel ashamed before Hikaru’s cold fury and even deeper sadness.
“It isn’t,” Hikaru says lowly after many long, lonely minutes. “Please don’t ever say that in front of me again.”
Akira purses his lips and glares elsewhere.
“Sai would have cried to hear you say that.
“Go is not useless. Go will never be useless. I would never say that music is useless, or paintings are useless. I would never say that love is useless.”
Akira meets Hikaru’s tearful eyes.
“Go let Sai live for a thousand years, and brought me and him together. I loved Sai. Now he is gone, and the only thing left of him is go. If I were to forsake go, I would forsake the love I had for Sai. If you forsake go, you forsake the years of love your father poured into you. And…” Hikaru gulps around the thickness in his throat.
“Go brought me to you,” Hikaru tells Akira. “If it can do something like that, then it will never be useless.”
He ends by saying, “I won’t force you to play me. But if you stay here… if you remain on this earth, by my side… Please play me again some time.”
Akira hunches over to hide his anguished face behind the curtain of his hair, and is not unaware that it looks like bowing to the victor.
***
That night Hikaru is quiet but gentle. His cheer, while notably muted, is still exuded like a peace offering. Akira takes that gracious hand and follows Hikaru about the house with the occasional rusty smile.
He says nothing when Hikaru peers into Akira’s own closet, brings out the kind of shirt Akira’s sure he’s worn to many a pro match, and breathes in the last vestiges of the scent of Akira’s living skin. Hikaru avoids his eyes but slips the shirt into his backpack.
More businesslike, he finds the bags Akira uses for travel and stuffs the bloodstained go board inside of it. He also stuffs a few more articles of clothing in another bag, citing the approaching fall. “Your mom’s coats could maybe fit my friend Akari, is that okay?” He also drains the boxed water into his large water bottle and then stuffs a few more little boxes into the already full backpack. All that finished, he piles the three bags— the food and water, the clothes, and the go board —in the front hall.
“How are you going to carry this all back?” Akira can’t help but to nitpick. “It’ll weigh you down, tire you out— how will you swing your bat— this isn’t a good idea—”
Hikaru chuckles. “Yo, Touya, relax. I’m gonna put my hands in the air and turn myself over to the soldiers. They’ll drive me to a safe zone. No problem.”
Akira has his misgivings. “Is that really going to work?”
“Yeah, totally! Don’t believe sensationalist media, Touya.” He laughs loudly. “They wouldn’t have let me in, but they’ll gladly let me out of this section. I’ve done it before.”
“If you say so…”
After that conversation, Hikaru announces it’s time to do his hair. Akira snickers into his hand as Hikaru whips off his jacket and shirt and digs the bleach from his backpack. He leans kneels beside the tub in the bathroom and bends over. He uses the boxed water to and Akira’s shampoo to wash his hair. They chat about the safe zone while Hikaru dries off, but then Hikaru claims he needs absolute quiet to do his hair. He looks like a moron with Akira’s mother’s clips holding sections of his hair and his tongue sticking out as if it might help his concentration.
“I’m glad you don’t pull that face at the go board.”
“Shut up, will you!” he snaps lightly as he pushes the paste into his roots.
***
Later on, he yawns and lies back on Akira’s parents’ bed. Akira gazes down from above and admires how fond he can feel for those stupid bangs. Hikaru looks like Hikaru again, and thus the years that the crisis had wrecked on his face now magically melt away.
“Hey, Touya.”
“Yeah?”
“When was the last time you talked to your parents?”
Akira tries to reign himself in. He knows strong emotions give Hikaru physical ailments; he doesn’t want to hurt Hikaru…
“I don’t know anymore. It was a long time ago. The phones haven’t been working.”
Hikaru yawns again. He seems to have lost the capacity for speech. We’ll find them. We can make calls on a satellite phone, right? Hikaru isn’t sure what exactly a satellite phone looks like, or how they work, but he’s fairly confident he can find one if he tries.
Akira wants to sink into the floor, but he’s also fairly touched. “What could you possibly tell them?”
Hikaru closes his eyes. I don’t know. The most basic truth, I guess. They have to know that you’re…
“…I suppose,” Akira concedes, though it hurts. “They wouldn’t believe in something as ridiculous as ghosts, would they?”
Hikaru laughs through his nose. Don’t underestimate that dad of yours. He’s clever. And then he thinks, I know! We’ll play a game against him! Just like I helped Sai play go against him, I’ll help you…
Akira gapes incredulously. “I don’t know… Would that help him or hurt him? —and anyway, even if we contact him and he and mom are safe, he’s all the way in China. With the state the world is in, we won’t be allowed to travel.
But Hikaru lies there with a content smile. I’ll make it happen somehow. Since it’s for you.
“…why—”
“Because you’re still here,” Hikaru says, and it sounds loud in the quiet of the world. “Despite all odds, you’re still here, and so you still matter.”
And since Akira knows him best, is part of his being now, he feels the simple love radiating from Hikaru’s soul, and he settles down beside it to enjoy its warmth.
***
When he wakes, it’s time to go. Hikaru stretches and prepares for the long journey back. Akira stands before the gates and looks back at his childhood home. He may never see it again. He may last a thousand years on this earth and watch it change irrevocably. Or maybe he’ll stay with Hikaru until Hikaru dies, too, and then their souls can depart this world together. Akira likes that better. He doesn’t know what god has in store for him, but if he has any say in the matter, then that’s how he wants to cross over.
“Let’s go.”
Hikaru loads up the bags, gets a good grip on the bat. Then he smiles his blessed, crooked smile and shoves aside the barricade and opens the gate.
They turn out onto the street—
and are greeted by the shell that once held Akira, there at the opposite end of the street, slowly approaching.
“How!” Akira gasps. “How did it know to come here?”
Hikaru shrugs out of his gear and readies up. Maybe it can’t help but be drawn towards me. Maybe even that version of you has been looking for me this whole time.
“Akira,” he says out loud.
“…yes?”
Hikaru doesn’t take his eyes off the shell, but smiles his bright, sunny smile. At the same time, the scarf on the shell flutters away in the breeze of approaching fall. Its gruesome, gaping maw flashes gnashing teeth.
“Tell me you’ll stay with me,” Hikaru says.
Akira understands. Hikaru needs all the strength he can get. He doesn’t feel embarrassed to speak the truth.
“I’m not going to disappear. I’ll be with you until the end.”
Hikaru steps forward and the shell comes running. Hikaru winds up. Hikaru swings.
Hikaru slays the monster.
rex_sun Warning: Violence and Gore
Shells (part 2)
“It’s you,” Shindo breathes.
Shindo’s eyes well with tears. He twists his face as if annoyed by them. It’s achingly familiar.
Akira absorbs that face like it’s some precious miracle. Well. It is, isn’t it? Precious miracle, Shindo.
His hair looks so strange, just black, and choppily short. But those bright eyes haven’t changed at all. That smooth face with the full cheeks. He’s got a darkly stained baseball bat held tightly in his hand. He looks tired, but generally well. Shindo even manages one of his lovely crooked smiles. (Akira never thought of them as lovely until he stopped seeing them.)
“Always showing up out of nowhere,” Shindo says, laughing shakily. He stares into the dead shell’s eyes, and the dead thing seems to stare back. Might it remember Shindo like a dream from the time that Akira lived inside it? Shindo takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Just in the last place I would expect you. You haven’t changed.”
There is a small tear in the chain links. The shell raises a wasted arm and struggles its way through, scraping its flesh, reaching out for Shindo’s fresh heat.
Akira’s mind seems to spasm. Shindo doesn’t know— can’t know— the scarf hides the wound—
“Shindo!” Akira calls out. “Shindo, don’t! Don’t let it get you! That isn’t me; I’m not in there anymore—!”
Shindo’s throat convulses. He tilts his head back. Shindo looks Akira, the real Akira, right in the eyes. And he says tenderly, “I know.”
Akira chokes on his warnings. He gazes into Shindo’s eyes, and Shindo gazes into his. It’s warm. Wonderful Shindo. Miraculous Shindo.
Shindo nods, and they understand each other. Then Shindo draws back just a little and lifts his hand to the clawing hand of the shell. Akira wishes he could feel that skin— the comfort of a human touch…
Shindo examines the hand that used to be his, not unlike a distant time when Akira did the same as boys. It feels like an entirely different life. (An entirely different life, and yet Shindo is still here.) Shindo gently but firmly turns the hand, inspecting the raw fingertips, the long, bloodied nails. Then he lets go and steps back for real. He shifts his bat into his dominant hand.
“Come here,” he tells Akira. “You can, right?”
Akira blinks back at him blankly. “I— maybe, I…” He sizes up the fence. Could he climb that? What about the shell?
Shindo huffs out a laugh. “I mean, come inside.” He pats the space over his heart.
Akira can’t really believe his ears. “I—” He wants to say, I don’t know what you mean, but the words don’t make it out of his mouth, because it’s untrue. Somehow he does know exactly what Shindo means.
“Don’t worry,” Shindo murmurs. “I’ve got plenty of room.”
Akira takes one last look at the oddly calm shell of himself before walking straight through the fence like it was never there at all and to Shindo’s side. Without taking his eyes from Shindo’s eyes, he walks inside of Shindo and makes his home there.
The world shudders and flickers into darkness for a brief moment. Akira can’t see, but when he instinctively reaches out, his fingertips don’t exactly feel the texture but definitely feel the pressure of Shindo’s arm.
They come back to reality in the same position, with the shell on the other side of the fence beginning to shift restlessly. Akira is rushed with so many emotions, most of them pleasant— they’re together at last—
but Shindo seems unsteady. He stumbles backwards a few steps and leans heavily against his bat. He brings his hand to his forehead, scrunching up his bangs.
“Shindo!” Akira gasps, moving forward. He holds on to Shindo, the only thing that’s tangibly real.
“I’m fine,” Shindo pants out. “I won’t faint.”
“But—”
“Just dizzy,” he says roughly.
Akira would argue more, as is his nature around Shindo, but a jangling clatter draws their attention. Whatever made the shell pause— some distant lingering affection for Shindo, perhaps —has it paused no more. Very ineptly, it is making its way up the fence, kicking about as it looks for footholds.
“Aw, shit,” Shindo mutters casually.
“Put it out of its misery,” Akira hisses malevolently.
Shindo gives him a double-take like he can’t quite believe Akira said that, but he reflexively takes his bat in both hands. They back up, giving some room for the wind-up and swing. Any second now… stupid thing...
Shindo falters. “Wait, I don’t think I can!”
Akira glares. “What do you mean?” he demands. “It’s a monster. It isn’t me! Destroy that thing before it can hurt anyone else.”
Shindo takes his sight off the shell, never mind Akira’s panicking. His eyes are wide and round and childishly fearful. “But where are you bound? Isn’t it— isn’t it your body?”
Akira shakes his head, as if this nonsensical question is a fly he can scare off. “Bound? What do you mean, bound?”
Shindo steels himself. “I can’t lose you.”
And instead of facing the creature, he turns tail and runs, fast, faster than Akira’s shell can keep up, but not faster than Akira’s soul— because Akira is inside him, is him, and will not be separated from him. Akira stays by Shindo’s side, looks over his shoulder, and watches the thing in pursuit get left behind.
***
Shindo catches his breath on the sidewalk of a street Akira doesn’t really recognize. He’s got a sportsman’s backpack and a bottle full of water from which he sips.
“You’re very… quick,” Akira says awkwardly.
Shindo grins up at him, unabashed. “Soccer!”
“What?”
“Soccer, like every other day after work or school. I’m not just some pale little nerd, you know. I’ve got excellent cardio.” He snickers like a loon.
They fall quiet for a bit. Shindo suddenly stops looking at Akira, and only in its absence does Akira comprehend the intensity of the gaze that was just drinking him in.
“Do you think we’re far enough away?” Akira asks impatiently. He’s worried sick but not for himself.
Shindo shrugs. “Probably shouldn’t get too far, actually. Oughta be able to find it again, right?”
Akira raises his eyebrows. “Right? Wrong!” he shoots back, shaking his head.
How could he have missed this infuriating, waffling, annoying shrimp!
“No, yeah!” Shindo insists. “Look, I mean, if it turns out that you’re bound to it— I mean, we’ve gotta keep you here, right? Yeah, so, we’ve gotta make sure nothing happens to it.”
Akira shakes his head slowly again, this time in confusion as opposed to consternation. He floats down to sit next to Shindo. “I don’t understand.”
Shindo keeps looking around like a meerkat, except he doesn’t seem to be anything but casually uneasy. It seems his bat and leather armor have gotten some use. “Sorry?” he offers vaguely.
It’s extraordinarily strange to actually be talking to a human, a real live human being, and have the person talking back. It’s even stranger that it’s Shindo, of all people— but if he was paying attention, he shouldn’t have expected anything less. While Akira ponders this, Shindo ponders the sun, the simple map he memorized in his head, and whether he can manage to survive a few nights with the food he has packed. Akira absorbs this information for a second, and then snaps his head up to stare at Shindo in puzzlement. Shindo looks over at him, too, and smiles.
Shindo already knows what Akira is finding out. You’re inside me runs through Shindo’s head, meant for Akira.
“But if it doesn’t look too weird, I prefer talking out loud, to be honest. I mean, there’s no one here to find it weird, so…”
Akira puts his face in his hands and sighs. Shindo is getting a headache. Calm down, would you?
Akira doesn’t really breathe anymore, but he pretends to take a deep breath. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
Shindo clearly thinks that Akira’s being a bit slow. “You’ve gotta tell me, Touya. Where is your spirit bound?”
“Spirit?”
Shindo scratches his head. “Uh, yeah, you know… Your…” and he waves to indicate Akira’s— well.
Akira looks down at himself. “Is this— this is my spirit?”
Shindo shrugs awkwardly. His thoughts say, Duh.
Akira stares at him blankly. “That would make me… dead.”
Shindo frowns at him.
“I died.”
Shindo nods.
Akira processes this for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “No. Can’t be.”
Shindo scoffs heartily at him and stands up to stretch. “Y’know, you’ve always been kinda… I dunno, not really rigid, but— you just seem to think that things are gonna go your way until you get proven wrong. You’ve really gotta loosen up, man. I could smell you back there. You damn rotted.”
Only Akira’s current position allows him to feel as Shindo feels; only he knows that it pains Shindo to say such things. Shindo turns his back on Akira as if to survey the surroundings, but they both know it’s too hide the tears welling up.
“But I can’t be dead,” Akira tries to reason.
Shindo just snorts. “That’s some major denial going on there. You’ve got some issues you need to work through—”
“We can’t be talking if I’m dead!” Akira interrupts angrily.
Shindo wipes his face on his shoulder and turns towards Akira. They glare intensely at each other for a long few moments before Shindo laughs to break the tension. “What, don’t you believe in ghosts?”
***
Shindo has lunch while Akira fumes at him. This isn’t the time to be closed lipped! But Shindo clams up on the subject of ghosts, clams up so hard that Akira can’t force the thoughts out of his mind. Shindo’s will is strong.
Shindo studiously avoids his gaze as he munches on a protein bar. Akira’s anger is giving Shindo one hell of a migraine; he squints his eyes against the sun and chews very slowly. Akira has the grace enough to feel bad for this and fishes for a different subject.
“That looks good,” he says dumbly.
Shindo gives him a weird look and shrugs.
“I just had crackers and rice and things,” Akira explains further.
“Oh.” Shindo throws the wrapper into the street. Cleanliness doesn’t exactly seem important right now. He says in a light but certain tone, “You’re not hungry now, though.”
“… no,” Akira admits.
Shindo nods to himself. “Because ghosts don’t eat granola.”
Akira can’t help the little huff of laughter. Shindo smiles a bit more brightly. “No,” Akira admits again. “We don’t tend to eat at all. …I suppose…”
Shindo stands and wipes his crumb-y hands on his worn jeans. Akira stands with him easily.
“Alright, listen, this is really important, okay?” Shindo looks like he would shake Akira if he could. “You’re dead. Alright? You got bit, I’m guessing, and the bite got infected, and you got sick, fever, right— and it killed you. It just killed you, okay?”
Akira glances around the desolate suburban streets around them as if they could give him a better explanation of events. But as Shindo says, it all aligns in his gummed-up memories.
“Fine,” he accepts quietly.
Shindo licks his lips. Akira feels Shindo’s heart twist. “Yeah, okay. And— and that must’ve sucked, but— but you’re not gone. You’re right here. You’re not gone.” Shindo’s eyes are shining and hurting. “So I need you to think, Touya. You really have to think about it. What’s keeping you here?”
Akira feels unnaturally sluggish trying to process this question. “I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do,” Shindo insists gently. “You’ve gotta. Just, you know, listen to your heart or whatever. How are you… feeling?” When this gets no results, he tries again. “What were you doing before you died?”
“Nothing much, to be honest,” Akira bites out. “Just… hiding like an animal.”
Shindo’s hands twist around his bat and he scuffs the pavement with his dirty sneakers. Akira may understand Shindo well now that he’s inside of him, but it seems Shindo has a harder time understanding him. He peers at Akira with something like confused pity. “So… so… are you, uhm, mad that you hid?”
Akira considers that. Considers Shindo, with his pure black hair and his leather jacket and his white-kneed jeans. His bloody bat, his big backpack. His newly rough palms and the way he isn’t afraid to be standing out in the open. “Yeah,” Akira says at last.
“Where’d you hide?”
“I just barricaded my home.”
“And you would rather have… been on the move?”
“I’d rather have— I don’t know. I just— really wish I hadn’t been so— so scared!” Akira forces out. And once he does, the rest tumbles out, too. Why not, if Shindo is the only one who’ll ever know. “I just sat around my house and played go! I told my parents—”
“—where are your parents?”
“—China. I told my parents that I’d just sit still like a good boy, that the government would take care of me. And I did, I just sat there, even when people started getting crazier and the sane ones started moving out, when the curfews got stricter and they were shooting people in the streets! When the rations got smaller and then they stopped delivering them! And I just went home and locked myself up and stopped going outside—”
“—that’s normal—”
“Yes, sure, normal! I was being so very sensible, so very mature! But I was a caged rat, trapped inside myself! It was me, not them!”
Shindo’s face is crumpled like the floodgates of his tears are about to burst. Funny what dying does to a man; Akira can’t ever remember being this open in his entire life.
“I mean, look at you,” Akira continues, this time much softer and quieter. He gestures up and down. “You’re not even—” He tries a laugh but it’s pathetic. “Why are you always the crazy one?”
Shindo lurches a few times and massages his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” Akira whispers. “Am I doing this to you?”
Shindo doesn’t answer, lips closed tight. Akira forcibly calms himself for Shindo’s sake.
“I was just playing go,” he says. “Just sitting around and playing go like nothing had changed.”
Shindo straightens up. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he smiles. “Go?”
“…yeah. Go.”
Shindo bites his lip as his shoulders start to shake. “Nerd.”
Akira sends waves of ghostly enmity at him. (Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work this time.) “It’s not funny.”
But Shindo is so shiningly fond in this moment that it feels warm even to a ghost. It’s a blessing.
Then Shindo gasps and looks to the distance. Startled, Akira whips around. “What is it? Is there someone—” But there isn’t anyone coming. “What the hell, Shindo, I thought you saw danger—”
“You were… playing go.”
“Can we not talk about that?”
“No, but… I mean… that might be…”
Akira groans in frustration. Shindo does not have the courtesy to be sorry. Shindo looks at him and says, “Let’s go to your house!”
“…what,” Akira says flatly.
“Well, come on!” Shindo cajoles, smile taking a decidedly smarmy twist. He’s already walking back the way they came with a spring in his step and bat propped against his shoulder. “This feels right, I bet this is it. Good, that’s much easier!”
Akira follows right behind his shoulder. “What the hell are you going on about? And why are you going this way!” he demands with a touch of fear.
“I think you might be bound somewhere in your home,” Shindo says confidently. “Yeah, like… when I think of it, it doesn’t really make sense for you to be bound to your body, does it? I mean, the corpses walk on for a while, but eventually even that will stop, right? You need something more solid. I think I know—”
“That thing is back this way, you realize!”
Shindo falters, but continues walking more sedately.
Akira presses his advantage. “So, if my body and spirit are completely separated, if I’m not bound to that thing… Then you can destroy it.”
Shindo treks on without looking at him.
“You can do it, right?” Akira points to the bat. Shindo must see him in peripheral. “I can’t stand its very existence. Are you strong enough?”
And Akira meant, Are your arms strong enough to swing the bat forcefully?
But Shindo means something else entirely when he lets himself think, No.
***
They make it back to the chain link fence in short time. Shindo, finally nervous, darts around corners. “Check for me,” Shindo whispers.
Akira gapes in confusion for a moment before— “Ah!” Of course, if he’s a ghost, then he’s not really in any danger, is he? He floats ahead of Shindo a bit, and it’s pretty liberating to be able to yell back, “You’re safe.”
Then Shindo climbs the fence and Akira walks straight through it, and they keep going like this, with Akira scouting ahead and Shindo looking over his shoulder. We’re the perfect team, Shindo thinks. Akira is proud to agree. Shindo alternates between a march and a jog, somehow keeping his breath— yes, great cardio —and they make truly excellent time. But even having met in the morning, they are barely even halfway to the next section’s wall by dark. Shindo points out a particular house as the sun turns red.
Shindo stands on the porch of the home, bat at the ready and nerves made of steel. Akira senses mostly firm determination underneath his still-living heart, pumping with mounting adrenaline. He slowly opens the door with the handle of the bat. Before them is a long hallway, plunged in darkness, and at the end is a staircase.
Shindo glances at Akira and wiggles his eyebrows. Watch this.
“Please excuse the intrusion!” he yells into the house. For good measure, he chucks a rock so that it bangs and scuffs the floor.
“You’re an idiot,” Akira hisses. He’s not quite sure why he’s being quite.
Shindo rolls his eyes and holds a hand up to his ear, like a cartoon character listening to a pebble dropping down a dry well. And, indeed, from within the house, there is a faint clatter.
Akira feels cold again and clams up. Shindo, on the other hand, whoops loudly and backs off the porch and onto the sidewalk. The shuffling approaches rapidly. Shindo winds up, light on his feet.
The shell of the woman is in her nightgown and a hairnet. She’s maybe 40, and much disheveled, and her middle is all red, and there’s a cigarette hanging out of her shriveled lips. One last cigarette before I die, she probably thought.
She presses her hands to the doorframe and snarls, the very image of an irate mother of young, rowdy children. Then she stomps towards Shindo, who laughs and doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Alright!”
Akira watches the bat connect with her skull, and as a spray of thick blood blossoms from her head, so the dawning horror blossoms in Akira’s mind. He turns away quickly, but cannot help but to see her fall and to see Shindo follow up the knock out with a finishing blow.
“No problem,” Shindo says with barely a deepened breath. He scratches his blood-flecked nose as he walks up to the porch again and bangs the bat between the door frame like ringing a bell. “Anyone else? Any munchkins? Come on out if you’re here! I’ll take you on!”
Nothing comes running. Akira floats forward to check, still sick and fearful.
“Nothing on the first floor,” he calls back to Shindo, who has been cautiously edging inside. Shindo spares his a strange sideways look before nodding at the stairs. Akira floats up while Shindo makes loud taps on each step.
Eventually they have the whole house cleared. Akira lets Shindo know what a massive idiot he is. Shindo sticks out his tongue and makes a comment about questionable opening moves.
Shindo rifles through cabinets and drawers efficiently before successfully finding a few battery-operated accent lights. Then he locks the door against the setting sun and goes about setting pots and pans on all the window ledges.
“Sweet,” Shindo mutters as he opens the pantry to find just three rationed meals left. He eats two of them in one go. Akira sighs pointedly in exasperation.
When the sun no longer glows into the house from behind thick, drawn curtains, Shindo finds it to be time to retreat upstairs, and as he goes, he layers each step with the remaining pots and plates of the house. They search the rooms upstairs. There’s quite a nasty scene in the kids’ rooms: two skeletons and daddy in a suit. They close the door on it. The master bedroom, however, is relatively fine if one can get past the large bloodstains on the bed sheets. And apparently, Shindo can. (Apparently, Shindo has gotten used to a lot of things in the past three months, including sleeping amongst blood and bashing in corpses’ skulls. Who would ever have looked at the go-playing geek in the sports jersey and thought what a warrior he could make.)
Shindo tests his swing a few times to make sure he’s got room for emergency defense. Satisfied, he wipes his bat on one side, then flips and folds the sheets until he can lie where the bed is clean. He keeps the accent lights on the bedside table. They gently flicker over his sleepy face. He’s got his shoes on, and it seems the bat might be permanently attached to his hand.
Still, Akira thinks as he looks down at his friend, he looks almost peaceful.
“You okay?” Shindo whispers.
Akira doesn’t know what to do with his not-body, but it isn’t really a problem seeing as how he isn’t tired. He simply lowers his face to Shindo’s level. “I’m dead, Shindo, you idiot. No, I’m not okay.”
“But you’re still here,” Shindo murmurs warmly. Akira falls silent and Shindo closes his eyes. “Would you mind?”
And since Akira is right there with him, he knows what is meant. He floats over to the window and surveys the street below. “There’s one, but he doesn’t know we’re here… He’s moving on…”
“Good, good.”
Akira hesitates. He has to speak up before Shindo sleeps.
“Shindo.”
“Mmmgh?” is the sleepy reply.
“Did she have a ghost?”
Shindo yawns. “No.” Don’t think so.
Akira looks over to see Shindo’s half-open eyes gleaming in his direction. “Are you some kind of medium?”
“Some kind, I guess,” Shindo agrees. “Must be.”
Akira frowns in annoyance. “It’s just that you seem to be relatively casual about ghosts.”
“Yeah, well,” Shindo mumbles. Meet one, you feel like you’ve met them all.
And then— well, who knows. Maybe it’s because Akira is actively searching Shindo’s brain for the answer; maybe it’s because Shindo is too tired to fight; maybe, and this one seems right, maybe Shindo has finally decided that ‘today’ is ‘someday’.
The flicker of light in Shindo’s swimming eyes is positively hypnotic.
In his mind— their mind, shared— Akira is before the go board in a dark room. The intensity is great. A smooth hand appears from nowhere to place white. And Akira knows this: this is sai. sai… the letters rearrange in his knowledge. This is Sai. And what was once just a hand in his imagination extends into a real memory, up a pure white sleeve and crossing over long strands of hair. Strong chin, noble forehead and nose, beautiful eyes. This is Sai.
Akira remembers like he lived it. Go boards, pointing fans, sweet smiles, swimming tears. He sees himself as a puzzled little boy and perceives Shindo as a tormented teenager. Farewells. Lots of love.
Akira knows he is crying without knowing how he even could anymore. Shindo closes his eyes so that he won’t.
Shindo sleeps. Akira keeps on watching.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Shindo mumbles when he wakes briefly around midnight. Then again he sleeps more gladly than Akira ever managed. Akira glows with gentle happiness; he can do this much for Shindo.
***
On the next day they travel in the silence of comrades. Akira looks at this man who has puzzled him for so long and suddenly knows all his secrets. He is surprised to find that this only endears Shindo more to his heart. Shindo transforms from an anomaly to a life support system, and neither of them minds the change. As he said before, as he was originally told by Sai—
Hikaru has enough room in his soul for this.
They camp again in a new house just before the wall. There are soldiers cleaning up the town just beyond here. Hikaru doesn’t believe he’d get in too much trouble, but it isn’t really ideal to run into them anyway. He beats down a few locally roaming monsters and bemoans the state of his jacket, which, so he says, was a gift from his friend, Tsubaki. Akira thought it looked a little big on him.
“Is Tsubaki alive?” Akira asks delicately at night.
“Oh, yeah!” Hikaru says gladly. “And so are my friends Akari and Mitani, believe it or not! ...actually, I was holed up with them in the safe zone… Uhm, I just volunteered for a little run. Oops. I hope they aren’t searching for me.”
He at least blushes. Akira tries not to show his amusement. “You moron. Typical Shindo. You’ve got them worried sick, you inconsiderate jerk.”
“Yeah, well…” Hikaru pillows his head in his arms and stares up at the ceiling. “Zombie movies are really too hysterical. This is far from an apocalypse, you know. Whatever. We’ll head over there after we’ve finished business at your house.”
***
In the early morning, they stand before the wall. Akira walks through, takes a fair look around without getting too far from Hikaru, and drifts back. Given the all-clear, Hikaru tosses his bat over, then crawls his way through the tunnel Akira had originally made.
The streets here are familiar, not just to him but even to Hikaru, who visited him many times in the past. Akira no longer has to strain to remember his general path. They pass by the convenient store.
“Oh! Oh! Let’s stop here!” Hikaru pipes up, wandering off course.
“There’s nothing there,” Akira scoffs. “We need to keep going—”
“It’ll just take a sec if what I want is here. Come on.”
Akira sighs and keeps a lookout while Hikaru browses barren shelves.
“A-ha!” he crows at last, and he holds a box of cheap hair bleach above his head.
Akira, ashamed in his place, hides his face in his hands. “I can’t believe…”
Hikaru drowns him out with laughter.
***
Having braved barbed wires and dodged soldier and smashed one more of what Hikaru calls zombies and Akira prefers to think of as shell-people, they stand before the gates of the magnificent Touya home in silence. Hikaru gives Akira one last sympathetic but determined look before striding through the debris that once was the barricade. He enters this house quietly.
Akira stares up at the ceiling and wills himself to be anywhere else. Hikaru understands and sweeps the house on his own steam. Akira looks to the phone on the wall, the untouched state of the kitchen, the door to his parents’ room, anywhere—
but he still can’t help but to see Hikaru following the trail of blood, Hikaru standing in Akira’s bedroom doorway, the burdened slump of Hikaru’s shoulders. Blessed, life-supporting Hikaru.
Akira pointedly turns away when Hikaru drags out the convenience store girl wrapped up in Akira’s bedding. He hears Hikaru chuck it into the road, and then hears the creak and slam of the gate.
“First thing’s first,” Hikaru says mock-cheerfully when he returns. “Do you have any food?”
Akira manages a small smile and gestures toward the kitchen. Hikaru enters immediately, and after some more slamming around, whoops with glee.
Akira watches Hikaru eat the porridges that Akira couldn’t stomach. Then Hikaru packs the rest very tightly into his previously deflated backpack and moves on. He searches Akira’s house as unabashedly as he searched the other two, but his ignoring the bloodstains is too stiff this time.
Hikaru finds the go room quite naturally and grins as he enters. Akira, trailing behind, suddenly feels a twang in his soul. There’s something pulling at him from the go room, something like a big magnet, and it feels… ecstatic.
Akira floats inside. His eyes are immediately drawn to the bloody go board.
Hikaru laughs softly, exhilarated. He crouches down beside it and reverently caresses the lines.
“This is mine,” Akira whispers. This feeling is as amazing as the first time he played against Sai in the go salon of times passed.
“Yes,” Hikaru hisses.
“Mine.”
Hikaru beams up at him. He says, “Play a game!”
The bubble of shining glory pops, leaving Akira like ice. “No.”
Hikaru’s face falls. “Why not?”
Akira’s face twists and Hikaru’s stomach twists in nauseated response. “This damn game— this wretched thing—”
“What?” Hikaru asks in astonishment. “Touya, what’s up?”
“I never want to look at this game again!” Akira spits.
“Touya,” Hikaru says. “It’s go, Touya…”
Akira clicks his tongue at Hikaru. “Listen, you can dye your hair and play baseball with people’s skulls and holler like a madman when the rest of the world is trying to stay as quiet as possible—” Akira grows louder and louder, feeling absolutely possessed with rage like never before, swelling with it— never mind the dangerously calm mask Hikaru’s adopted like the face he used to wear before the board— “We’ve grown up, and so has the world, Shindo. All of our luxuries— our McDonalds and our internet and our television comedy shows— they’re all gone, Shindo. You say it’s not the apocalypse, well that’s fine. But if you say this isn’t a serious wake up call, I don’t know what you’re trying to sell.”
Hikaru has knelt on the opposite side of the board. Something deep within Akira notes that it is desperately sad that Sai’s fan isn’t in his hand. Akira forcefully ignores that note.
He continues, “With so much suffering in the world, are you honestly going to tell me you have time for go? I’m sick to think of my foolish, living self! Even when hell came up to swallow me, I sat here, placidly playing go, meekly wishing for the way things used to be. It’s all so very pointless! Don’t you see?” This last bit he positively yells, because nothing seems to be affecting Hikaru.
“Go is completely trivial! No one can afford themselves go in a world like this!” Akira winds down. “I spent my life blindly dedicated to this… to tiny little stones and a chunk of wood. Now in death let me be spared from remembering my past mistakes…”
Hikaru doesn’t move even after Akira’s done. But he refuses to feel ashamed before Hikaru’s cold fury and even deeper sadness.
“It isn’t,” Hikaru says lowly after many long, lonely minutes. “Please don’t ever say that in front of me again.”
Akira purses his lips and glares elsewhere.
“Sai would have cried to hear you say that.
“Go is not useless. Go will never be useless. I would never say that music is useless, or paintings are useless. I would never say that love is useless.”
Akira meets Hikaru’s tearful eyes.
“Go let Sai live for a thousand years, and brought me and him together. I loved Sai. Now he is gone, and the only thing left of him is go. If I were to forsake go, I would forsake the love I had for Sai. If you forsake go, you forsake the years of love your father poured into you. And…” Hikaru gulps around the thickness in his throat.
“Go brought me to you,” Hikaru tells Akira. “If it can do something like that, then it will never be useless.”
He ends by saying, “I won’t force you to play me. But if you stay here… if you remain on this earth, by my side… Please play me again some time.”
Akira hunches over to hide his anguished face behind the curtain of his hair, and is not unaware that it looks like bowing to the victor.
***
That night Hikaru is quiet but gentle. His cheer, while notably muted, is still exuded like a peace offering. Akira takes that gracious hand and follows Hikaru about the house with the occasional rusty smile.
He says nothing when Hikaru peers into Akira’s own closet, brings out the kind of shirt Akira’s sure he’s worn to many a pro match, and breathes in the last vestiges of the scent of Akira’s living skin. Hikaru avoids his eyes but slips the shirt into his backpack.
More businesslike, he finds the bags Akira uses for travel and stuffs the bloodstained go board inside of it. He also stuffs a few more articles of clothing in another bag, citing the approaching fall. “Your mom’s coats could maybe fit my friend Akari, is that okay?” He also drains the boxed water into his large water bottle and then stuffs a few more little boxes into the already full backpack. All that finished, he piles the three bags— the food and water, the clothes, and the go board —in the front hall.
“How are you going to carry this all back?” Akira can’t help but to nitpick. “It’ll weigh you down, tire you out— how will you swing your bat— this isn’t a good idea—”
Hikaru chuckles. “Yo, Touya, relax. I’m gonna put my hands in the air and turn myself over to the soldiers. They’ll drive me to a safe zone. No problem.”
Akira has his misgivings. “Is that really going to work?”
“Yeah, totally! Don’t believe sensationalist media, Touya.” He laughs loudly. “They wouldn’t have let me in, but they’ll gladly let me out of this section. I’ve done it before.”
“If you say so…”
After that conversation, Hikaru announces it’s time to do his hair. Akira snickers into his hand as Hikaru whips off his jacket and shirt and digs the bleach from his backpack. He leans kneels beside the tub in the bathroom and bends over. He uses the boxed water to and Akira’s shampoo to wash his hair. They chat about the safe zone while Hikaru dries off, but then Hikaru claims he needs absolute quiet to do his hair. He looks like a moron with Akira’s mother’s clips holding sections of his hair and his tongue sticking out as if it might help his concentration.
“I’m glad you don’t pull that face at the go board.”
“Shut up, will you!” he snaps lightly as he pushes the paste into his roots.
***
Later on, he yawns and lies back on Akira’s parents’ bed. Akira gazes down from above and admires how fond he can feel for those stupid bangs. Hikaru looks like Hikaru again, and thus the years that the crisis had wrecked on his face now magically melt away.
“Hey, Touya.”
“Yeah?”
“When was the last time you talked to your parents?”
Akira tries to reign himself in. He knows strong emotions give Hikaru physical ailments; he doesn’t want to hurt Hikaru…
“I don’t know anymore. It was a long time ago. The phones haven’t been working.”
Hikaru yawns again. He seems to have lost the capacity for speech. We’ll find them. We can make calls on a satellite phone, right? Hikaru isn’t sure what exactly a satellite phone looks like, or how they work, but he’s fairly confident he can find one if he tries.
Akira wants to sink into the floor, but he’s also fairly touched. “What could you possibly tell them?”
Hikaru closes his eyes. I don’t know. The most basic truth, I guess. They have to know that you’re…
“…I suppose,” Akira concedes, though it hurts. “They wouldn’t believe in something as ridiculous as ghosts, would they?”
Hikaru laughs through his nose. Don’t underestimate that dad of yours. He’s clever. And then he thinks, I know! We’ll play a game against him! Just like I helped Sai play go against him, I’ll help you…
Akira gapes incredulously. “I don’t know… Would that help him or hurt him? —and anyway, even if we contact him and he and mom are safe, he’s all the way in China. With the state the world is in, we won’t be allowed to travel.
But Hikaru lies there with a content smile. I’ll make it happen somehow. Since it’s for you.
“…why—”
“Because you’re still here,” Hikaru says, and it sounds loud in the quiet of the world. “Despite all odds, you’re still here, and so you still matter.”
And since Akira knows him best, is part of his being now, he feels the simple love radiating from Hikaru’s soul, and he settles down beside it to enjoy its warmth.
***
When he wakes, it’s time to go. Hikaru stretches and prepares for the long journey back. Akira stands before the gates and looks back at his childhood home. He may never see it again. He may last a thousand years on this earth and watch it change irrevocably. Or maybe he’ll stay with Hikaru until Hikaru dies, too, and then their souls can depart this world together. Akira likes that better. He doesn’t know what god has in store for him, but if he has any say in the matter, then that’s how he wants to cross over.
“Let’s go.”
Hikaru loads up the bags, gets a good grip on the bat. Then he smiles his blessed, crooked smile and shoves aside the barricade and opens the gate.
They turn out onto the street—
and are greeted by the shell that once held Akira, there at the opposite end of the street, slowly approaching.
“How!” Akira gasps. “How did it know to come here?”
Hikaru shrugs out of his gear and readies up. Maybe it can’t help but be drawn towards me. Maybe even that version of you has been looking for me this whole time.
“Akira,” he says out loud.
“…yes?”
Hikaru doesn’t take his eyes off the shell, but smiles his bright, sunny smile. At the same time, the scarf on the shell flutters away in the breeze of approaching fall. Its gruesome, gaping maw flashes gnashing teeth.
“Tell me you’ll stay with me,” Hikaru says.
Akira understands. Hikaru needs all the strength he can get. He doesn’t feel embarrassed to speak the truth.
“I’m not going to disappear. I’ll be with you until the end.”
Hikaru steps forward and the shell comes running. Hikaru winds up. Hikaru swings.
Hikaru slays the monster.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 04:12 pm (UTC)