Chapter Text
'What’s the longest you’ve ever kept a secret?’
Sometimes, when he smiles, the scar on his cheek looks a bit like a snake. ‘Long enough to forget what the secret even was in the first place.’
‘All right—then,’ he rasps, voice dry and gritty as sand. He tries to breathe. ‘How many promises have you been able to keep?’
Senkuu never used to know what nightshades smelled like.
“Did you know that guy from MythBusters actually built an Iron Man suit?”
“Huh. sh*t.”
This is the lab on an average day: Ishigami Senkuu with two beakers in his hands drawing a blank on what he was planning on doing with them, a playlist that only cycles through four different K-pop songs, and three lab mates with varying degrees of tone deafness. It smells like an unholy combination of mice droppings and gasoline—the latter of which is mostly Senkuu’s fault. God and Marie Kondo couldn’t save them even if they wanted to.
He’s certain he’d opened the window earlier.
“Senkuu, do you think you could make Iron Man’s suit?”
“Nah, man—he could make it even better. With the way it falls apart every other scene you’d think Stark used Elmer’s glue or something.”
Get an average score on an IQ test, and you can post it on Facebook. Completely blow the MAIS-III and you can hop onto Google and research all the ways the test is inadequate in assessing your cognition—build a case that’d make a Harvard graduate cry. Senkuu’s lab mates all fall beyond the cut-off score for what constitutes a genius. He’d tell them to make their own damn Iron Man suit if he weren’t so focused on trying to figure out what he was planning on doing with 9 ml of gasoline and 4 ml of xylene. The one nice thing about Kazuya’s sad excuse for a playlist—if you listen to the same song more than five times in a row, it just turns into a blanket of white noise.
Nobu bobs his head along to the beat.
“Elmer’s glue,” someone—Nagisa, probably—snickers. “Kazuya’s snot has more adhesive—”
The door to the lab slams open so hard, it’s a miracle it doesn’t dent the wall—especially given the intruder. Nobu’s mice freeze up at the sound, and Nagisa bites back a string of expletives after nearly knocking her Bunsen burner over onto her textbook.
This is what no one ever told Senkuu about friendship. You can know someone for years without ever knowing their middle name or where they were born. You can carry their deepest secrets without knowing what their favorite color is. Those things are just skeleton facts. Shake a person’s hand, and you’ll get their name and occupation. Spend a few weekends with them and you’ll notice the little habits—the way they sort their dinner plate so that none of the foods touch, the way they drum their fingers on the steering wheel in traffic to keep their road rage in check, the way they glance over in the middle of a movie to see if you’re laughing too.
Senkuu’s known Taiju for years. As soon as the door swings open with more force than intended, he’s already set his glassware down on the countertop just in time for Taiju’s large, warm fingers to close over his shoulders.
Enter Oki Taiju—a build that puts a brick sh*thouse to shame, tear ducts that start leaking at the sight of abandoned kittens and at the end of Ponyo. Taiju’s mom once signed him up for judo. He spent the first fifteen minutes enthusiastically introducing himself to the rest of the class and the last fifteen helping another kid nurse a bloody nose. Never threw a punch since then.
Enter Ogawa Yuzuriha—the brand of considerate that never sits next to an outlet at a café unless she needs to use it. She’s got more callouses on her fingers than Taiju and Senkuu combined and the artistic skill to show for it. Most don’t know it, but she used to be part of the school’s art club. She switched to handicrafts because she’d sooner burn her own art than put it on display. Half-molded clay sculptures, the beginnings of a watercolor scenery—the school’s trashcans had never been so heavy or so beautiful.
There’s no definite proof—can’t prove something as abstract as love, but Senkuu figures they’ve loved each other since they were nothing but a couple of middle schoolers with knobby knees and crooked teeth. Senkuu can’t speak from firsthand experience, but five years feels like a long time to wait before letting someone know that you love them.
“Senkuu!” Taiju’s voice is loud and watery and barrels straight through Kazuya’s fifth replay of EXID. “I—You’re—We thought—I’m—Senkuu!”
“Uh-huh,” Senkuu drawls, picking at his ear with his pinky. “Not bad, Big Oaf. Took you two long enough.”
“Damn straight,” Kazuya drawls from where he’s lounging against his desk with one hand propped against his cheek.
Bitter is a sh*t flavor, and Kazuya loses bets with the dignity of a preschooler. Senkuu will collect his money after he gets his friends sorted.
Taiju is blubbering, and Senkuu surreptitiously scans the room for a Kleenex. Snot dribbles from the other boy’s nose and the tear streaks on Yuzuriha’s cheeks glimmer under the fluorescent lights. He expected tears from Taiju, but he’s never pegged Yuzuriha as a crier. Senkuu handles romance with the same level of vigor that a college graduate manages their student loans, but—it’s nice, he supposes, that Taiju and Yuzuriha are officially Taiju-and-Yuzuriha. Like Peach and Mario.
(He wonders if that makes him Bowser.
He sure as hell isn’t Toad.)
Yuzuriha’s face crumples as tears continue to pour down Taiju’s face. “I know,” she tells him, “I’m sorry it took us so long.”
Senkuu’s smile rests crookedly on him, like snow on a windshield that’s going to slide off any second; Yuzuriha doesn’t wear melodrama well. His old math teacher used to hate his smile—always thought he was being insincere. Really though, it’s just his face.
Kazuya’s playlist switches over to the next track.
He pats Taiju’s bicep through his uniform. “I never thought you two would cry this much after getting together,” he cackles—if only because he knows how much it gets under Nobu’s skin. Nobu, who is fastidiously trying not to eavesdrop, but is also too nosy not to.
Yuzuriha and Taiju—
Pause.
Blink.
Glance.
Reset.
“Wait,” Taiju starts, brows crinkled and hands dropping from Senkuu’s shoulders, “we’re not…dating though?” He hesitates and the look he gives Yuzuriha can only be described as hopeful, adding, “Yet?”
It’d be smooth if it wasn’t Taiju.
Neurons operate on a scale of milliseconds. Senkuu picks up on three peculiarities in the span of a half a heartbeat: 1) Taiju and Yuzuriha just shared an entire conversation over Senkuu head, 2) Senkuu wasn’t able to follow said conversation, 3) Senkuu owes Kazuya 10,000 yen—goddamn it.
It’s oddly humid in the lab.
He swears the window was open just a few minutes ago.
Nagisa is the one who drops the question, which makes sense, because Nagisa doesn’t have the patience to wait for her instant ramen to fully heat up even on a good day. “Then what the hell are you two crying over?”
His friends’ eyes are focused on him, and they don’t waver even a millimeter at Nagisa’s question. The smell of gasoline and mice make Senkuu’s nose twitch.
Yuzuriha presses a curled finger to her lip, pensive frown in place. “How are you feeling, Senkuu-kun?”
Like he’s just lost a bet with Kazuya of all people. Like he’s going to be spending another five years watching his friends pine over each other before one of them takes the leap. The word ‘Fine’ lingers on the tip of tongue like the last dregs of Byakuya’s coffee—
Stop.
Think: Did he even remember to email his dad last night?
There’s an old game that Senkuu’s classmates used to play back in elementary school. Ask him what it was, and he won’t be able to tell you the name, but he could tell you the rules—two lines of kids with hands and elbows interlocked, taunting the opposing team as they try to break them apart. Such a sh*t game. No one ever wanted Senkuu on their team because he’d always favor breaking formation over breaking his arm.
(Well.
Senkuu also wasn’t supposed to play rough as a kid to begin with.)
No one is touching him, but Senkuu feels like he’s just experienced a full body tackle. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Magma right over”—right, that’s the name.
What kind of name is Magma?
He blinks and for a quarter of a second the world blurs—like Yuzuriha took a painter’s palette and smeared all the colors together. It’s an odd concept: colors that are all right in isolation start to resemble sh*t once you mix them together.
Kazuya’s playlist shifts tracks again. Senkuu doesn’t know the song, but Nobu quietly hums along to the lyrics.
Someone asks: “Senkuu?”
He can’t recall what he ate for lunch, but whatever it is, it isn’t sitting well with him. Lead gut and dry mouth—the unholy duo. The lab reeks.
Senkuu rubs at his nose. “I think I’m heading home for the day.”
Nobu frowns, reminds him, “Club’s not over yet.”
“Then,” he backtracks, “I’m going to stop by the nurse’s office.”
Taiju and Yuzuriha don’t stop him, but he can feel their eyes trace his movements as he leaves the room.
Senkuu still doesn’t know what he was planning on doing with the gasoline and xylene.
‘Where does it hurt, Senkuu-chan?’
‘f*cking everywhere.’
‘Okay—okay, then tell us what we can do? You must’ve taken something before all of this to help with the pain—how can we—'
‘We’re past that point, and even then—'
Wait.
Stop, and think about what you’re going to say.
Taste the words on the tip of your tongue and swallow them down like the sh*t-bitter pill they are.
(f*ck, if Senkuu doesn’t know a thing or two about bitter pills.)
Senkuu doesn’t believes in any gods, but having the right to ask for the impossible is a nice thought. There’s no definite proof, but Senkuu thinks his dad might’ve prayed for the first time on the drive home from Juntendo.
The thing about prayer: those who pray must assume that they haven’t been completely abandoned already.
‘I’m all right,’ Senkuu continues, trying to be reassuring but most likely failing miserably.
The other boy lets out a watery laugh, startled and disbelieving.
‘It’s been a crapshoot since the beginning. It’s okay, Mentalist.’
The school wifi is dodgy at best, particularly during lunch hour. Senkuu blames the dip in quality on network congestion. He rhythmically taps his nail against his phone’s glass screen and, for the most part, manages to resist the temptation of stopping and refreshing the page. There’s a difference between patience and stubbornness, and Senkuu rides the fine line between the two most days.
Taiju and Yuzuriha’s thighs press into his on either side. Senkuu can’t so much as twitch without accidentally nudging them. He can smell their shampoo from where he’s sitting—spice and lavender, it blends together better than one would expect. But then, that’s just Yuzuriha and Taiju in a nutshell. There’s a perfectly fine, empty bench on the other side of the table, but asking his friends to move feels too much like the social equivalent of flogging a baby seal. Yuzuriha rubs at her eye, and it’s only when nothing smudges off onto her finger that Senkuu realizes she isn’t wearing any makeup.
Taiju and Yuzuriha methodically pick their way through their meals faster than his email can update. Senkuu’s eyebrows creep up toward his hairline in response to Taiju licking the grease off his fingers. He catches Senkuu’s look and smiles beatifically back at him, all sunshine and soba noodles. Yuzuriha slides him a napkin.
It’s Tuesday.
Senkuu doesn’t ask them about yesterday, but that doesn’t mean he’s not puzzling over it. Senkuu fiddles with his phone’s earphone jack and mentally replays yesterday’s events like a sports recap. Give him the opportunity, and he’ll drag his friends to hell and kingdom come, but they don’t bawl like kids for no reason. Never did find that Kleenex, he realizes belatedly.
“You left pretty quickly yesterday,” Taiju starts, between bites of soba and octopus wieners. Senkuu gets an eyeful of white and pink mush whenever Taiju opens his mouth. He tries to recall if his friend’s table manners have ever been this bad, particularly in front of Yuzuriha. “How’re you feeling?”
Senkuu half-heartedly chases his own lunch around his plate with his chopsticks. He still feels off-kilter. Dizzy. Vestibularly unsettled. There’s probably a ridiculously specific medical term to describe what he’s feeling, but one can’t read medical textbooks without associating them with hospitals, and if Senkuu travels any further down that mental rabbit hole, he’s not going to like where he ends up.
So.
“Let’s put it like this, Big Guy,” Senkuu drawls, “I’ll feel less nauseous if you chew with your mouth closed.”
Taiju makes a conscious effort to chew with his lips sealed, and he’s so good-intentioned about it that Yuzuriha’s eyes crinkle up with mirth. If Senkuu was a poetic sort of person, he’d liken the feeling of Taiju and Yuzuriha to the sensation of lying down in an observatory while staring up at the sky. Senkuu doesn’t have an observatory though. He doesn’t really like poetry either, for that matter.
Senkuu stares dully at his greyed-out phone screen. “Is the wifi working for you guys?”
The little buffering logo does four laps before he gets a response from either of them. He’s been waiting for the thing to load for 387 seconds—not much, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, but downright despicable for what’s supposedly high-speed wifi. Senkuu didn’t realize he’d been counting.
“I forgot to grab mine,” Yuzuriha admits.
Taiju follows that up with a sheepish, “Me too.”
A retired professor from Todai once made the argument that humankind no longer needed to evolve because of technology. Which—fair point. Because what’s physical weakness when you’ve got access to knowledge at your fingertips? What’s limited stamina when you have cars and trains? But then the man hopped onto national television and claimed that by relying on computers, phones, and vehicle transport, humans had unwittingly become cyborgs. Evidently, the dumbass had never met Yuzuriha and Taiju.
Yuzuriha tucks one lock of hair behind her ear. “My morning was a little rough,” she confesses. “I forgot to set my alarm, and I couldn’t find my backpack. Or my lunch bag for that matter.” She laughs at herself as Taiju nods affirmatively. “Thank God my uniform was already laid out for me.”
“I must’ve been in the same boat with you then. I woke up and didn’t even know what I needed for the day!” Taiju says—and he probably doesn’t mean to be so loud, but his voice has a way of carrying. “Last night and this morning, I even forgot to brush my teeth.”
Senkuu pokes Taiju’s arm with the butt of his chopsticks. “Somewhere you have a dentist, and he’s crying for reasons he can’t comprehend right now.”
“Somewhat unrelated,” Yuzuriha begins, slowly stirring her drink with her straw and then shrugging, “but maybe not. How are you doing, Senkuu-kun?” Unlike Taiju, she’s good at keeping her voice low, which he appreciates, even if he doesn’t appreciate the turn this conversation has taken. “You left so suddenly yesterday, and we didn’t want to say anything in front of your lab mates, but—”
“Indigestion,” he says, not unkindly, and resists the urge to look over his shoulder to check that no one is nearby. “Unrelated to whatever you’re thinking of.”
“If you say so,” Yuzuriha trails off, looking to Taiju.
Taiju and Yuzuriha somehow manage to trade looks even as Senkuu’s sitting between them. For a second, he wonders if he’s in for an interrogation, but then Yuzuriha is asking Taiju if he remembered to do his English homework and he figures he’s off the hook.
It’s funny how concern works. If you take a screwdriver to a shiny new iPhone, there’s a chance you’ll figure out how it works. Dissect a frog in your biology class and label its organs; drill a friend past the knee-jerk answer of “I’m fine” and you’ll get the real, gritty story. But see, concern and sympathy are the white elephant gifts that everyone gives but no one wants.
Senkuu was seven when he got his lifetime-fill of sympathy.
>>>6/4/2019, 13:42
>>>From: [emailprotected]
[INBOX] [IMAGE ATTACHED] Senkuu! Here’s a picture of me and my colleagues! Had the weirdest dream last… see more
>>>6/4/2019, 16:12
>>>[emailprotected]
[INBOX] Quora Digest
>>>6/4/2019, 16:30
>>>From: Juntendo University Hospital
[INBOX] [FILE ATTACHED] Appointment Reminder see more
Please Note: This message contains information that is confidential and may be privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail and delete the message.
>>>6/4/2019, 17:37
>>>From: kagami.katsuki@kanto_gakuin.edu
[INBOX] [FILE ATTACHED] Invitation to participate in our university’s Bright Minds program. Please see attached application to… see more
They get a transfer student halfway through the schoolyear.
Senkuu writes it off.
No one else does.
“So was anyone going to let me know that our newest transfer student is some sort of celebrity or was I just supposed to fill in the blanks based on the school’s newly minted”—Nobu pauses, squints at the flyer he snagged off of the school board—“‘Shishio Tsukasa Fanclub.’” His chair squeaks lightly against the linoleum floor as he pushes himself away from the table. “Who’s Shishio Tsukasa?”
Kazuya makes a pained sound in the back of his throat—the final, haunting whine of a dying animal. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is,” he demands. “How can you not have heard of Shishio-san?”
Senkuu bites the tip of his thumbnail, frowning at the numbers on his screen. He refreshes his page for the sake of being thorough, but the numbers remain fixed. A slight dip in the numbers is an inconsistency that can be chalked up to variables beyond his control, but the line graph’s gone completely flat—like a heart monitor on one of those medical dramas his old man used to watch.
The first time the case of petrified birds came to his attention, Senkuu was on his way to a doctor’s appointment at Juntendo University’s hospital and nearly broke his ankle after tripping over one of them. He’d picked it up, gave it a once-over, and stuffed the thing in his backpack, making a mental note to turn it into the university’s fine arts department. It very nearly slipped his radar.
Until he found another swallow.
And another.
Three more.
And that’s just inspiration in a nutshell really. It’s not like fireworks, which are flashy but temporary. Inspiration is a bit more in line with a rabbit trail that you can’t help but follow.
It started out as a small side-project, just something to do between Senkuu’s bigger (and quite possibly, better) research projects. But soon enough, he was running a live feed on the number of petrification sightings based on a combination of reports from news outlets and social media.
For a brief moment, he wonders if there’s some sort of error in his coding, but Kazuya had gone through it line by line the day after Senkuu had written it out and didn’t find any problems then. He filters the data by country just to double-check.
No instances of petrified swallows in Japan or even Brazil—where the sightings were somewhat more concentrated initially.
“What?” Nobu frowns, tapping his pen against his notebook. It leaves behind specks of blue. “Is he an idol?”
Senkuu tears his attention away from his screen. Grins at his lab mate over his shoulder. “Got a crush, Kazuya?”
“I mean, I’m straight—”
“As a parabola,” Nagisa sings.
“But if Shishio-san asked me out, I wouldn’t say no.” Kazuya defends, “I have taste, you know.”
Nobu hums thoughtfully. “Unfortunately for you, I think so does Shishio-kun.”
“Look, my dudes, if I wanted to be verbally shredded by two people at once, I’d go visit my parents.”
Inconsistency is the nature of human intuition. Get a sensation between your shoulder blades when someone glares at you from across a room, but then wake up the day your parents are going to die being none the wiser. Senkuu doesn’t put much stock into gut feelings, but the sudden absence of petrification sightings leaves him reeling, like his world is spinning twenty degrees off its axis. He turns the problem over in his head like a Rubik’s cube before pulling out his phone.
>>>To:[ 14:46] hey, big oaf. what happened with those stoned birds that you and yuzuriha found?
<<<Received:[14:46] SENKUU!
<<<Received:[14:46] I FEEL LIKE ITS BEEN SO LONG SINCE WEVE TEXTED EACH OTHER!!
Senkuu raises a brow. Scrolls up to glance at their last text conversation. They messaged each other two days ago; he has the timestamps to prove it. Senkuu briefly considers mentioning this to Taiju but then decides that that’s beside the point.
>>>To:[14:48] the stone swallows, big oaf. what happened with them?
It takes Taiju a few minutes to reply. The ‘Taiju is typing’ indicator flickers on and off several times before he gets a response.
<<<Received:[14:54] We tried to drop them off at the vet but they wouldn’t take them..
<<<Received:[14:55] I think we buried them instead!
Senkuu co*cks his head to the side.
>>>To:[14:55] you think?
<<<Received:[14:56] Are you in club rn!! There’s someone you should meet!!!
>>>To:[14:56] no thanks.
<<<Received:[14:57] Oh, don’t be like that, Senkuu-kun~~ :3
>>>To:[14:57] idiot, do you not read? and what’s with the cat face? gross.
<<<Received:[14:57] SENKUU!!! DON’T BE MEAN!!! ThAT WAS YUZURIHA!
<<<Received:[14:58] We’re here anyway!!
Senkuu tilts his face skyward and sighs, getting vision blots from how long he’d been staring at his laptop and then his phone. He can guess who Taiju’s referring to, and he doesn’t have one millimeter’s interest in dealing with any of his potential tag-along fangirls.
He thinks about shutting the door.
He doesn’t—if only because he doesn’t decide to do so in time.
The background chatter of his lab mates pitters out, and Senkuu casts an upside-down glance at the man nicknamed ‘the strongest high school primate’. Privately, he thinks it’s the sh*ttiest nickname someone could get, but it doesn’t make the epithet any less accurate. It takes 0.1 seconds to make an initial but lasting impression on someone.
First thought: Shishio Tsukasa looks like the existential equivalent of a cheat code.
Kazuya appears to be five seconds away from turning in his science club resignation in favor of joining the Shishio Tsukasa fan club. Taiju introduces him to the lab members like they’re in homeroom, and Tsukasa adapts to his old-fashioned habits with an ease and grace that belies a sort of hard-earned patience one can only get from putting up with people’s sh*t on a regular basis. “Shishio Tsukasa,” he says, “I’m glad to meet you. Please take care of me.”
Second thought: Shishio Tsukasa’s voice is softer than what one might expect given his size.
Senkuu grins—all teeth and burning eyes punctuated by dark circles—and cracks his neck. “Excellent!” he snaps his fingers. “Nice find, Taiju!”
The sun spills in through the classroom window in gentle beams, and Senkuu can see dust particles floating in the air. His lab coat hangs over the back of his chair, and to cope with the humid weather, Senkuu’s rolled the sleeves of his button-up to his elbows.
Six pairs of eyes swivel toward him with various degrees of dubiousness. Senkuu’s ability to keep tabs on petrification sightings is limited by his ability to monitor several sources of information. A guy like Tsukasa though, who’s already garnered a full-fledged fan club within his first week of school—
“Are you on Twitter?” He cackles, “A guy like you probably has fans crawling out of his ass, right?”
A range of emotions flicker through Tsukasa’s eyes before an odd sort of wistfulness settles across his features. The corners of his lips quirk up. “Well, yes,” he says, unflappable. His eyes slide over to where Kazuya is clutching a Shishio Tsukasa fan club poster, staring at his idol like a deer in the headlights, and adds—with an air of bemusem*nt, “In reference to both of your questions—yes.”
Kazuya withers like the potted plant on Senkuu’s windowsill that he can never remember to water. Yuzuriha had gifted it to him the day after spring break ended, saying that even he couldn’t possibly kill a cactus, but—low and behold.
Senkuu tells Tsukasa, “I’m going to need to you to make a post asking people to be on the lookout for stone swallows. Give them a tag to use if they find one,” he adds as an afterthought. He’ll have to add a few extra lines of code to his algorithm to account for the tag, but it’s not a big deal. This way at least he can feel a little bit better about any information slipping through the cracks.
An average person might want to know why. People are always asking Senkuu ‘why’—why does your hair look like that? Why are you making this? Why are you so determined to go to space? Why does your hair look like a f*cking radish?
Tsukasa doesn’t bother asking. He only shrugs and assures Senkuu, “I can do that.”
Third thought: Ishigami Senkuu and Shishio Tsukasa are going to get along just fine.
Yuzuriha and Taiju have been silently watching them from the door, unreadable smiles on their faces like paste-on masks to hide whatever’s running through their heads. Technically Yuzuriha should be in her handicrafts club at this hour, but since meeting Senkuu, she’s gotten into the habit of skipping every so often just to peek in on whatever project he’s working on and offer her help as needed. Taiju never joined a club to begin with in favor of being an extra pair of hands for Senkuu in order to reduce some of the physical labor.
On one hand, Senkuu recognizes that he has three lab mates that he could rely on if needed, but Taiju and Yuzuriha have been with him since the beginning. It’s been said before—by one senpai or another—that Taiju and Yuzuriha couldn’t ever hope to hold a candle to Senkuu’s talent. Senkuu told them to f*ck off; you can teach facts but having the mind and willpower to try and tackle problems that one doesn’t even fully understand is its own brand of genius. If the world was ending, Senkuu thinks he’d pick those two to face it with.
The air outside is muggy, but a lone breeze drifts through the open window, gently displacing some of Senkuu’s paper-based notes.
Senkuu states, “We’re also going to need to dig up a body!”
Tsukasa’s polite smile becomes just the slightest bit strained. “Pardon?”
Senkuu grins and gets up on his feet, tugging on his lab coat. Standing up, he doesn’t even reach Tsukasa’s shoulder. “Isn’t this exhilarating?”
Yuzuriha pats Tsukasa’s arm with a patient, condoling smile, and Taiju kindly informs him, “I’m not sure what he’s talking about yet, but it’s usually not as bad as it sounds.”
“Usually,” smiles Nobu, trading looks with Kazuya and Nagisa.
Shishio Tsukasa @ real-shishiotsukasa – 34m
Please be on the lookout for stone swallows. Use #swallowacquired if you find any.
Guinea pig skeleton @ guineapigskeleton – 29m
@real-shishiotsukasa on it!!!!
Lushlife @ lush-life-blog – 11m
am I reading that right?? we’re looking for stone swallows? like the bird?
Shootingstar @ shootingstar – 11m
@real-shishiotsukasa Sir, yes sir!!
Miyuki Hana @ tea-addict – 10m
@lush-life-blog A species maybe?
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist – 1m
@real-shishiotsukasa Well. This is interesting.
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist – 1m
@real-shishiotsukasa Being put to work already, Tsukasa-chan?
Digging up the swallows doesn’t take nearly as long as Yuzuriha and Taiju trying to recall where they had buried them in the first place. The ground is damp from when it drizzled the other day, and although it leaves the dirt soft and pliable, the extra moisture will make everything messy once they begin. They only have two shovels, and Taiju and Tsukasa immediately plucked them out of Yuzuriha and Senkuu’s hands when they arrived at the playground—not that either of them would’ve fought for the opportunity to dig around in the dirt to begin with.
Once Yuzuriha and Taiju picked out the maple tree they buried the birds under, it wasn’t hard to find where to start digging based on the telltale patch of dead grass. Evidently however, Taiju went overboard and buried them deeper than any of them had anticipated.
Behind them, children in colorful rainboots shriek as they chase each other around puddles and slides and other playground fixtures.
Tsukasa and Taiju alternate between digging and casting uncertain glances over their shoulders as if they expect a policeman to jump out any minute now and demand that they stop. Senkuu and Yuzuriha watch them from where they’re perched on a playground bench—close enough so they can talk to each other but far enough so that they can also make a break for it if an officer does show up.
Yuzuriha tugs on the cuff of his sleeve to get his attention. “Senkuu-kun? You haven’t said why we’re digging up those swallows.”
Taiju and Tsukasa don’t stop digging, but he gets the impression that they’re listening.
“As far as I can tell, those swallows that you and Taiju found were some of the last ones spotted before all of the sightings stopped completely,” Senkuu explains, playing with the tab on his energy drink. “I want to analyze their composition and compare it to the first few swallows I found. See if there’s a difference.” He drums his fingers against his kneecap. “If there is, it could mean that there was some sort of change in the source of it all.”
Yuzuriha shifts on the bench and smooths out her skirt even though there aren’t any wrinkles. There’s an approving note to her voice when she remarks, “You’re really interested in those stone swallows, aren’t you, Senkuu-kun?”
“Petrified birds are dropping from the sky,” he deadpans. “Aren’t you interested in knowing why?”
Yuzuriha hums in response. “I suppose…” She trails off, giving Senkuu an odd smile lingers just below her eyes before quietly telling him, “You’re really something else, Senkuu-kun.”
He gives her a crooked grin. “Don’t let Taiju hear you. He’d get jealous.”
“No,” Yuzuriha shakes her head. “He’d agree with me. And then start listing all of the reasons why you’re amazing.”
Senkuu takes a moment to study her. She cut her hair to her shoulders weeks ago and has long since stopped wearing makeup. It makes her look older, more like an adult. She’s started putting some of her projects on display now, too. They line the windowsill of the science club—beauty in the maelstrom of the Bunsen burners, petri dishes, computers, and hard drives that makes up their lab.
“People who compliment others to their face are either fishing for compliments or in need of a favor,” he notes.
“And when friends compliment you, it’s just that,” she replies with a gentle sort of vigor. “Just people being friends.”
Insult someone their face, and they’ll be able to take the hit without batting an eye. Tell them that they’re amazing, and they’ll feel off-kilter for the rest of the day. Sometimes, Senkuu wonders why human nature tends towards the illogical.
Yuzuriha faces forward, that strange little not-quite-smile still on her face.
Senkuu’s saved from a response by Taiju, who shouts, “I’ve found the swallows, Senkuu! We buried them farther than I thought! Nearly six feet deep!”
Taiju balances his shovel over his shoulder with one hand and clutches the petrified swallows in the other, waving them in the air like a victory flag. Senkuu and Yuzuriha pick their way over, avoiding the mud puddles, and a couple of children who had been curiously spectating go ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ when Taiju displays their findings.
The hole they’ve dug is about one meter in diameter and—by Senkuu’s estimate—five feet deep. All this for two swallows that could fit in the palm of Tsukasa’s hand. It’s going to be a pain to fill in, and they need to move quickly before anyone realizes that they’ve essentially vandalized the area.
“Idiot,” Senkuu calls back. “You bury people six feet deep—and the only reason they’re buried that far down to begin with is to prevent diseases from spreading.”
Taiju’s forehead gleams with sweat, and he passes Senkuu the swallows. Their wingspans are roughly the length of Senkuu’s hand. Yuzuriha plucks the birds out of his grip and wraps them in Taiju’s handkerchief for safekeeping.
“Not bad, guys,” Senkuu grins, taking in the dirt-stained slacks and rolled up sleeves. He offers his can of soda to Taiju who takes a few sips of it before handing it off to Tsukasa. “You’ve all worked hard—let’s go get ramen. My treat.”
Filling in the hole, much to Senkuu’s surprise and the others’ relief, turns out to be a much faster process when a cluster of kids who were previously playing tag offer their help in return for piggyback rides. Yuzuriha and Senkuu each take one. Taiju and Tsukasa manage to carry all of the remaining children on their shoulders.
Cheat codes, both of them.
It’s a long walk to the ramen shop but, standing between Taiju and Tsukasa, it doesn’t feel like one. The humid weather has always had a way of wearing Senkuu down, but when he starts to slow, the others match his pace easily. Tsukasa pulls out his phone to sporadically text back and forth with someone else as they walk, but conversation flows easily between them—better than Senkuu would’ve anticipated given the fact that three of them are childhood friends and they’d only just met their newest companion today.
Byakuya used to go on dates when Senkuu was younger. There was one woman in particular who stood out to Senkuu at the time. Ask him for her name, and he wouldn’t be able to remember what it was, but he could tell you this much: she was a professor like his dad—same university but different department. She had a wicked sharp smile and an even sharper tongue. Senkuu met her when he was six, and she made him laugh so hard, he pissed himself. For those reasons alone, she and Byakuya should’ve worked, but they didn’t. Now, Byakuya is a thousand miles away, up in space, rubbing shoulders with a woman who sings on a worldwide stage and—for all intents and purposes—should want nothing to do with some dorky old professor who gets homesick for a son that isn’t even his by blood.
Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it: Ishigami Byakuya and Lillian Weinberg get along like a house on fire, and Tsukasa fits into their group like he’s known them for years.
The weather isn’t ideal for hot food, but they’re all too hungry to suggest going elsewhere. They order their ramen and grab a corner booth where no one will give them side-eyes if they (read: Taiju) get rowdy.
Halfway through his meal, Senkuu glances up and catches Tsukasa staring at him with an odd look he can’t read. He licks his lips and asks the pro wrestler what’s eating at him.
Tsukasa only shrugs, “I wasn’t sure if this was something you only ever did with your dad.”
Senkuu pokes at his ramen with his chopsticks. It’d be illogical to claim that it tastes different whenever Senkuu comes here without his old man, but Taiju and Yuzuriha’s grins are bright like the Christmas lights Byakuya used to string around their apartment. Tsukasa’s phone buzzes against the wooden table, and he slides it onto his lap without bothering to check it.
Senkuu realizes that Tsukasa is waiting for an answer. “Kind of, yeah, but he’s up in the ISS right now.” He frowns, considering, “Have I mentioned my dad to you before?”
They talked about a number of things on their way to the park, including the obligatory introductory questions that Senkuu never would’ve bothered with if it wasn’t for Taiju’s old-fashioned tendencies and Yuzuriha’s manners. Someone else might’ve ignored it and figured that they’d mentioned their parents at one point or another, but Senkuu has near-perfect memory and a policy against talking about himself.
Taiju chokes.
The corners of Yuzuriha’s lips twist up into a smile. She plays with the ends of her hair and gently bumps Taiju’s shoulder with her own—or tries to, she’s several centimeters shorter than him so the best she can do is nudge his bicep. “Your dad’s an astronaut, Senkuu-kun,” she points out. “People know him, and he spends about eighty-five percent of all his interviews talking about you.”
“And in general, to anyone who will listen,” Taiju chimes.
Tsukasa, Yuzuriha, and Taiju keep eating.
Senkuu frowns, ignoring his ramen even as it slowly grows cool. If it weren’t for the fact that Senkuu had watched all of his dad’s interviews for himself, he might’ve believed her just then.
Tsukasa looks different without his scars. Tsukasa also looks different when he’s trying not to cry. He asks him: ‘Why did you never say anything?’
Senkuu thinks of petrified swallows and nitric acid. He thinks about the day he told his two oldest friends that he thought the petrification might’ve been a cure. He regrets it almost immediately.
He replies: ‘I didn’t think it was a problem anymore.’
His chest hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts—
Senkuu’s long since discovered that the swallows are petrified all the way through. It’s not as simple as a stone shell.
The first question: how—is it a cellular or mineral reaction? The second: can Senkuu reverse the petrification process?
Tsukasa isn’t normally the type to look through other people’s belongings. However, Senkuu makes for pretty poor conversation when he’s focused on science, and he has a tendency to leave his mail sitting out. Tsukasa would likely be with Taiju and Yuzuriha right now, if weren’t for the fact that those two had finally become ‘Taiju-and-Yuzuriha’—for real this time—and, evidently, Tsukasa would rather to listen to Senkuu’s ramblings than play third wheel.
It’s just him, Tsukasa, and a sh*tload of petrified birds.
There’s a rustle of paper. It’s a testament to how well Senkuu’s gotten to know the other over the past month when he doesn’t even need to look up to know that Tsukasa’s frowning at the letter he’d left on his desk. “Is this an acceptance letter from Kanto Gakuin?”
He quirks an eyebrow at that even if Tsukasa can’t see it and adjusts the lens strength of his microscope. “I haven’t even started applying to universities yet,” Senkuu informs, distracted. “That’s just an invitation to tour the campus and see if it’s worth even applying to.”
The paper crinkles as Tsukasa takes out the envelope’s contents. Senkuu lets him. “Are you going to take them up on it?”
Senkuu shrugs, “May as well.”
It’s not a bad school. Not at all, but in terms of its astrophysics and mechanical engineering program? Not Senkuu’s top choice.
Impress the right people and get a heralded as a genius. Work hard and become an expert. Pick a goal and give up so much of your life trying to reach it that once you do, you won’t even remember what satisfaction tastes like. Most people are sensible and give up halfway through. Senkuu goes on ahead full-throttle knowing full-well that he’s already cued up to fail JAXA’s physical assessment no matter what he does.
Not even a properly functioning muscle-stimulator is going to save him.
(Well, he corrects himself, not that it actually helped Byakuya anyways.)
Tsukasa’s response is immediate and insistent in a way he so rarely is, “You should. I have a friend who goes there.”
Senkuu does look up at that. “I thought I was your first friend!” he says, voice thick with mock-offense.
It doesn’t get the intended laugh. Tsukasa blinks at him owlishly. “I don’t think I ever told you that,” he says, almost as if thinking aloud.
“Huh,” Senkuu says, partially to Tsukasa, mostly to himself. He twirls his pen around his fingers and resists the urge to shift in his seat. “Sorry, must be thinking of someone else.”
As if. He’s certain it was Tsukasa. Senkuu so rarely has blips in his memory, and he vividly recalls Tsukasa’s face the day he told him so.
(Although, that said, Senkuu’s been waking up each day feeling as if there’s an assignment he’s forgotten to do.)
The sun’s set, but the city lights are bright enough to blot out the stars. Tsukasa texted his little sister about an hour ago to let her know he’d be coming home late. Sweet kid, that Mirai. Soft-spoken and slight, but the first time Senkuu met her, she hugged him around his middle so tight, he wondered if Tsukasa’s strength was hereditary.
“How weird,” Senkuu mumbles to himself, biting his thumbnail. “Why would petrified swallows be appearing all around the world for ten weeks and then suddenly stop?”
It’s been about a month since Tsukasa’s initial post, and there haven’t been any sightings of petrified swallows. Even after he sent out follow up tweets, there was nothing but static. His lab mates think he needs to call it a day and let Yuzuriha and Taiju bury their swallows. It’s always easy to tell someone to give up when they’re not the ones putting the work though, so it’s probably some of the most useless piece of advice Senkuu’s ever received. Moreover, Yuzuriha, Taiju, and Tsukasa seem just as invested in the petrification research as Senkuu is.
He hears Tsukasa shift. “There’s someone else who might have a larger reach than I do,” he admits, tone mild. “Have you heard of Asagiri Gen?”
Senkuu raises his eyebrows. “The guy with a crap haircut who wrote a bunch of trashy books on mentalism?”
“Well,” Tsukasa starts after a beat, eyes lit up in a way that Senkuu’s learned would be a full-bellied laugh on anyone else. “I don’t know how he’d feel about that description, but—yes, that Asigiri Gen.”
Senkuu hums, rolling the idea around in his head like a pair of dice. “If you think he’ll go with it, why not?” He swings one leg up over the other and swivels his chair around so he’s not craning his neck to look at Tsukasa. “Won’t he think it’s a bit random for some high schooler to ask about using his social media presence?”
“Gen likes being dragged around by the collar,” Tsukasa dryly remarks.
There’s a million and one things that Senkuu can glean about this Gen guy in that statement alone. That’s what makes Tsukasa so fun, Senkuu thinks. For such a quiet guy who never says things unnecessarily, he knows how to pack a lot of meaning into his words. The most efficient conversation partner Senkuu’s ever encountered.
Enter Shishio Tsukasa—the strongest high schooler in the world with the quietest voice. From what Senkuu’s learned about him thus far, he’s got a chip in his shoulder with regards to old, greedy men but a soft spot for children. He walks with his head tilted down but has a tendency to say what he likes with the confidence that comes with being the strongest person in the room.
(Granted, Senkuu does the same thing, it’s just that his more indelicate comments tend to fly over people’s heads.)
Senkuu snorts. He looks between his petrified swallows and the numbers on his computer screen that have sat at zero for the past few weeks. Rock bottom feels a hell of a lot like being surrounded on all sides by shelves and shelves of stoned birds and slaving for weeks over dinner scraps of data without having anything to show for it. Having the prerequisite knowledge and curiosity is forty percent of being a scientist. Having the perseverance to keep trudging through the numbers and dead-end leads makes up the other sixty.
“Eh, f*ck it,” Senkuu stretches his legs out in front of him. His knees pop. “Go ahead and ask him.”
“He gave me tickets to his show this Friday,” Tsukasa says, off-handedly. “You can ask him then.”
Senkuu’s head whips around so fast his neck aches. “I don’t have a single millimeter’s interest in seeing his crappy magic show!”
Tsukasa’s laugh isn’t loud—it’s more like a huff of air than anything else. Nothing like Senkuu’s cackle. “You don’t like magic, Senkuu?”
Senkuu waves him off. “There’s no such thing as magic,” he firmly declares. “It’s all just smoke and mirrors.” He thinks for a moment, noting, “The guy seems like a handful too.”
Senkuu had caught glimpses of the show on Kazuya’s phone, as well as while passing through the train station. Last month, Yuzuriha and Taiju confiscated his laptop in favor of watching a full episode of the man’s show in HD. Senkuu isn’t an ass—well, not always—mentalism is a science, but it’s not a branch that he's even remotely interested in.
Tsukasa is insistent though and has patience in spades, if not Senkuu’s brand of stubbornness. “You need to reevaluate your methodology. And perhaps take a break, Senkuu,” he adds on.
When Senkuu was six years old and just beginning to delve into the world of science, he used to read his textbooks under his bedsheets with a flashlight to trick his dad into thinking that he was actually sleeping like he was supposed to. Those nights, his dad would silently pad his way across Senkuu’s bedroom floor, slip underneath Senkuu’s makeshift tent alongside him, and read him to sleep. Before, Byakuya would make sure that Senkuu never obsessed over anything too much, that he got outside every once in a while. Senkuu emails his dad regularly, but there’s no monitoring your son’s curfew when you’re miles away in space.
“I just need this guy to ask his followers to look for petrified swallows,” Senkuu grouses. “Why do I have to meet him?”
Tsukasa turns Senkuu’s letter from Kanto Gakuin over in his hands. He holds it like it’s something precious even if Senkuu’s gotten dozens of letters from universities across Japan, and so a letter from Yokohama’s top university isn’t (strictly speaking) a novel occurrence. “He’s more likely to cooperate if you ask in person. He appreciates it when other people are direct, even if he so rarely is himself.”
Senkuu mulls over that piece of information and decides: Asagiri Gen sounds like a headache you can’t drink away.
Senkuu drums his fingers against the armrests of his chair. Tsukasa thinks that he’s hit a bit of a dead end, and Senkuu doesn’t have a problem owning up to that assessment. However, he’s not sure he necessarily agrees with Tsukasa’s suggested method for rectifying the situation.
He thinks of empty twitter tags and Asagiri Gen’s bleach-white grin. Verifies, “You said Friday?”
“The show starts at 6:00pm,” Tsukasa tells him, straightening up from where he was leaned up against the wall. “I’ll pick you up from here, and we’ll go together.”
And well, Senkuu supposes that if he’s going to strike out on the petrification case, he might as well go down swinging.
Someone—people—are calling his name in a way that beats against Senkuu’s ears like waves against sand. There are hands all over him now—on his shoulders, his neck, his back. They don’t hurt, either because any harm they could do is miniscule compared to everything else or because they’re nothing but scared butterfly touches to begin with. Present, but insubstantial.
The voices on the other hand.
The voices are hard and brittle like mirror shards and broken whiskey bottles.
‘—yone know C—'
‘—someone find—'
‘—kuu? Senkuu!’
The last time Senkuu saw a magic show was at Taiju’s eighth birthday party.
Well, more accurately—Taiju’s mother hired a magician for his eighth birthday party, and Senkuu kind of watched the show over a low-definition Skype call. Taiju was in charge of the camera, and he couldn’t resist the urge to turn the phone around every half minute or so, babbling to Senkuu about how much he wished he could be there with him.
Taiju had almost decided against having a birthday party that year, insisting, “But I don’t like doing things without you.” It took Senkuu telling him that he was being irrational and to enjoy his party to convince Taiju to stop resisting his mother’s birthday planning.
Byakuya’s beard tickled Senkuu’s forehead from how he was leaning against him, and although his dad’s arm was warm where it rested across his shoulders, Senkuu couldn’t suppress his shivers. Senkuu drew his knees up and adjusted the laptop so it was in a more comfortable position. Byakuya had wordlessly pulled up the bedsheets over his son’s legs. A maelstrom of balloons, cake, and patterned wrapping paper flickered in and out of his view.
Taiju had picked a space-themed party that year.
“Senkuu! Senkuu, did you see that!?” Taiju’s voice had sounded so different over the phone, crappy microphone chipping at formants and filtering out frequencies. “It was so cool!”
Senkuu had smiled and tried to ignore the way the cannula pressed against his cheeks. Yes, he had seen it. Yes, he was surprised when the doves flew out of the man’s hat too. Yes, he enjoyed the show. Yes, he wished he could be celebrating his eighth birthday with him too—happy birthday, Taiju.
Truth is—Senkuu hadn’t really seen the trick, not with how often Taiju redirected the camera towards the rest of the party or his own face.
Senkuu hadn’t minded though—he didn’t call his friend up on his birthday for a magic show of all things. Byakuya’s chest had shook against his back with restrained laughter at his friend’s antics, and he had shot Senkuu a grin, just out of the line of the camera.
So, technically speaking, Senkuu’s never seen a magic show.
He has no empirical evidence to predict how it’s going to go. He just lets himself get funneled into the auditorium with the rest of herd, and it’s only the fact that Tsukasa’s walking directly behind him that keeps him from getting shoved around on the way in. The place is set up to look a bit like a theater. Red curtains drape heavily from the ceiling rafts, and stage lights shine against dark wood floors. The houselights are already dimming by the time he and Tsukasa shuffle into their respective seats. The chatter begins to die down as well, people taking the change in lighting as a cue that the show is about to start.
Senkuu never puts much stock into his appearance, but he does his best to tug his hair down into a ponytail so it doesn’t block the view of whoever’s stuck sitting behind him. Tsukasa smiles wryly and estimates that Senkuu just lost about five inches of his vertical height. Senkuu tells him to eat a dick.
The curtains open.
Senkuu had caught glimpses of Asagiri Gen’s face on the cover of his books, face glossy and enigmatic smile set in place. On paper, he looks like a guy who ran out of the barber shop halfway through his haircut and never bothered going back.
In person, Asagiri Gen is pretty in the way a stained-glass window is.
Doesn’t look like the sort of guy who goes to church though.
Senkuu glances over at Tsukasa and realizes the other boy has been watching him. He does that occasionally—sometimes Senkuu will look up from whatever he’s doing only to find Tsukasa studying him like Senkuu’s a puzzle piece that’s wandered over into the wrong box. Like he’s a block of text that he can’t unravel no matter how many times he re-reads the page.
Senkuu crosses one leg over the other and watches the show.
>>>9/27/2019, 01:07
>>>From: [emailprotected]
[INBOX] [AUDIO FILE ATTACHED] Lillian wanted me to send you this! It’s a sample recording of a track she’s been working on, I know you’re not much of a music fan but… see more
>>>9/27/2019, 18:00
>>>From: Juntendo University Hospital
[INBOX] [FILE ATTACHED] Appointment Reminder see more
Please Note: This message contains information that is confidential and may be privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail and delete the message.
>>>9/27/2019, 18:14
>>>From: kagami.katsuki@kanto_gakuin.edu
[INBOX] Information regarding your upcoming tour. We would like to extend our… see more
First hypothesis: The mentalist uses a trapdoor to avoid the swords.
Second hypothesis: There is no trapdoor, and Asagiri Gen is really just that flexible.
Senkuu claps along with everyone else when the curtains close and has to blink several times when the lights finally flick back on. He grabs his jacket and stands, seat folding into itself behind him as he rises. Tsukasa hadn’t bothered taking off his coat. They shuffle out of the auditorium at a much more languid pace compared to how they entered. Senkuu checks his email and marks the one from Juntendo as read without opening it.
His hair pulls unnaturally against his scalp from the way it’s still tucked into a ponytail—something that Tsukasa finds endlessly amusing.
“You’re like a scallion,” Tsukasa tells him.
“And you look like Tarzan,” Senkuu snarks, disgruntled and in desperate need of a restroom break. They step into the lobby, where most people linger, chatting with one another and congesting traffic. Senkuu can’t shuffle forward anymore without treading on the black heeled pumps of the woman in front of him. “Where did Gen say we could meet him?”
“Dressing room,” Tsukasa nudges his shoulder and points to Senkuu’s right, down a corridor that runs parallel to the entrance for the auditorium. “This way.”
The nice thing about being nearly two heads taller than everyone else—when you want to get somewhere, no one stops you. Senkuu wishes he could relate. Tsukasa calmly picks his way through the crowd, and people part for Tsukasa much in the same way that cars make way for a passing ambulance. Senkuu’s forced to shuffle along behind him, eyeing the split ends that pepper Tsukasa’s locks. And to think the f*cker was making fun of Senkuu’s hair.
Today’s been a rougher day. Senkuu massages his chest, willing the ache to go away, and distracts himself by mulling over how two personalities like those of Tsukasa and Gen ever managed to become friends. Tsukasa had claimed that he and Gen weren’t all that close, that they only knew each other through different talk shows and variety acts, but there were times when Tsukasa talked about Gen as if they’d known each other for years. Times when Tsukasa’s phone lit up with half a dozen text messages from someone named ‘Gen’.
Tsukasa always typed out his reply to those messages with his back to a wall.
Senkuu wonders if they’re dating.
They break through the human hoard, Senkuu steps forward so he’s walking side-by-side with Tsukasa. They turn off down a hallway that leads towards the back of the venue, footsteps muted against the gold and maroon carpeting. A man in a black top and earpiece casts them a curious look, but recognition flashes across his face when he sees Tsukasa. He doesn’t stop them. Senkuu casts a side glance at his friend, adding the observation to his growing list of evidence that Tsukasa and Gen are an item. Tsukasa didn’t seem like to the type to be into frivolous guys who thrive off attention, but then—from first glance, he also didn’t seem like the type to have a phone addiction.
Their pace comes to a stop at the second to last door on the left. It reads: Asagiri Gen. Tsukasa knocks and then enters without waiting for a response.
Asagiri Gen is barefoot and about half an inch taller than Senkuu. He’s changed out of his costume in favor of a pale purple button-down and jeans. There’s a moment—between when Gen turns toward them and when Senkuu blinks—in which he thinks he catches a glimpse of a scar across the performer’s face. But then, Senkuu’s opening his eyes again, and there’s nothing but pale skin and thin lips that are stretched into a Cheshire cat grin.
His eyes flick toward Senkuu’s hair and his grin grows wider.
Senkuu wonders if anyone’s ever injured their own face from smiling too big. There’s that feeling again—that feeling as if someone’s burying their hand into the skin of Senkuu’s back and ripping him backwards. His head pounds, and the soft yellow lights in Gen’s dressing room feel too bright. Senkuu tightens his hands into fists from where their buried in the pockets of his coat. Lets his nails dig into his palms because the human brain isn’t naturally wired to block out pain, but Senkuu’s long since mastered the art of re-focusing it.
Gen has a weird, geometric shaped tattoo on the inside of his elbow where nurses like to draw blood. Two mirrored lines that look a bit like lightning strikes. Minimalistic. Clean. Clashes with the overall persona he seems to enjoy projecting.
Tsukasa introduces them, and Gen tilts his head to the side. The longer pieces of hair brush his shoulder. “So, Senkuu-chan,” he starts, voice bubbling over with barely restrained mirth like he knows some great cosmic joke and can’t be bothered to share. He pads forward, steps perfectly silent and stops in front of Senkuu, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet like a kid waiting to be praised. “What did you think of the show?”
“Not bad.” Senkuu picks at his ear. If Nagisa were here, she’d wrinkle her nose at him. “The trick you did with the mirrors was neat.”
“Oh?” Gen pouts at him, but his eyes bely his amusem*nt. “You’re not impressed with my tricks, Senkuu-chan?”
Tsukasa snorts and pulls out his phone, clearly checking out of this exchange.
Maybe they’re not dating.
“I think you could up the ante. Tricks are flashy, but anyone with a good eye and internet access can figure out how they work.” The tragedy of a magician: practice for years to get the baseline dexterity required to pull off a magic trick, practice until the routine is branded into your muscle and your memory, pour blood and tears into developing a cohesive show that works, and then figure out how to live with the fact that ninety-nine percent of your audience only comes in order to pick you apart the way a mechanic pries open a clock. Most magicians never make it off the street, but Asagiri Gen is a lucky one. Even more so now—now that he’s got Senkuu. Senkuu informs him, “I’ve got a trick that I think’ll be right up your alley though.”
There’s a gleam of curiosity in Gen’s eyes. “Really?” he muses, somehow managing to drag out each individual sound. “What did you have in mind?”
Senkuu wonders if there’s a universal milestone for what makes two people friends. It’s not like dating, Senkuu thinks, there’s no conversation regarding labels and what the future holds. On one hand, you can know someone for years and still feel the need to tiptoe around them like you’re locked in a game of chess. On the other hand, it’s possible to strike up a conversation with a stranger on the bus, and immediately match their wavelength. Maybe it varies from person to person—maybe everyone has a brand of friendship that’s as unique as their fingerprints. Senkuu doesn’t know where the line between acquaintances and friends is, but—looking at Asagiri Gen—he reassesses his previous assumptions and figures that the line can’t be that far off.
Senkuu grins crookedly at him. “What do you think about closing your show by bringing a stoned bird back to life?”
Gen laughs. “If you teach me how,” he promises, “I’ll buy you a life supply of Cola.”
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist 5h
All right, everyone! We’re hosting a fun little scavenger hunt for all of you lovelies!!! @real-shishiotsukasa and I are giving away prizes to whoever can find a stoned bird! Tell your friends and use #swallowacquired when you find one! Good luck~~ ( ˘ ³˘)♥
Shishio Tsukasa @ real-shishiotsukasa – 4h
@real-mentalist Welcome to the kingdom of science.
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist – 4h
@real-shishiotsukasa Hearing that from YOU of all people. Gross. Delete this.
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 3h
LMAO
Kudayari @ properlancemaster – 3h
May be worth mentioning that @captain-of-this-ship is acting nonchalant for the camera, but he’s properly livid.
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 2h
@properlancemaster stfu you spear f*cker
“I still can’t believe you have Shishio-san and Asagiri-san’s number,” Kazuya wails. In spite of his complaints, he helps Senkuu lay out his tools and even grabs him a fresh pen that isn’t on its last few drops of ink. “You don’t even care about celebrities, Senkuu!”
Nagisa perches on the table behind Senkuu, legs swinging back and forth. “So,” she starts, “tell me again because I couldn’t hear you over Kazuya’s crying—what’s the deal with the Nital Etch? When you guys first walked in here, I thought it was for Yuzuriha.”
Yuzuriha waves her off. “Ah, believe me, I’ve never once used Nital Etch in my life.”
“Senkuu plans on using it to corrode the stone!” Taiju states, no doubt recalling the succinct yet adequate explanation Senkuu provided during the walk down the hall to the science club.
It’s one of those rare days in which Tsukasa takes the afternoon off to prepare for a fight, so it’s just the old group today (read: Senkuu’s lab mates, Taiju, and Yuzuriha). If he was a more sentimental person, Senkuu would marvel over the fact that there even exists an “old group” and a “current group.” But sentiment is for empty-nesters and scrapbook albums, and Senkuu doesn’t have a single millimeter of interest in stumbling down that train of thought.
Senkuu tucks his tie into his breast pocket to prevent the tail end from dipping into anything. About a week or so after getting Gen onboard with his pet project, seven people had chimed in, saying that they’d each found a stone swallow. Thus far, Gen had been successful in persuading each of them into trading the birds for a pair of tickets to his show (discounted, not completely free because Gen was a menace). And Senkuu was able to confirm two things: 1) that the swallows were the real deal, 2) that all of the petrified swallows found post-June had a denser mineral and cellular composition compared to the ones Senkuu had found in the previous months.
The overall prevalence of petrification sightings had still decreased dramatically, and the distribution of the sightings didn’t fully align with Senkuu’s earlier data with all of the sightings occurring within Japan and none internationally, but—
The gears were moving again now that Gen was in the picture.
“What Taiju said,” Senkuu affirms, grinning. “We’ll start here”—He pours the liquid out into a petri dish and gently deposits the swallow inside it as well—“Nital Etch with 10% nitric acid.”
Senkuu’s arms and legs shake with the effort of pulling himself up, muscles stiff and eyes still bleary from sleep. His legs and ankles are swollen.
His place isn’t huge, but people find a way to make it work—all wanting to stay close even though they know there isn’t much they can do in the event that—
Well. It’s the thought that counts, or so the adage goes.
It’s the one in the yellow cap and clothes that Senkuu has to be cautious of.
Just the slightest noise could cause him to stir. It’s why Senkuu makes a point to travel a good twenty meters away before finally doing what he set out to do. He wonders if Yuzuriha and Taiju will be angry with him.
Somedays he wishes they were. If only so they wouldn’t feel like the blame rests solely on their shoulders for being the only ones who had known that Senkuu—
Senkuu stumbles and just manages to catch himself. With so little competing light, he can pick out the constellations and pinpoint the ISS.
When he was younger, people used to joke and tell Byakuya that his kid would outshine him one day. Byakuya had grinned and looked them dead in the eye—“Nah, Senkuu’s going to outshine all of us one day.” Byakuya was pushing fifty when he left behind his Hundred Tales. He was an old man by the time he’d gathered enough platinum to revive humanity, though he didn’t know it at the time.
God, he misses his dad.
Senkuu is nineteen going on twenty when he whispers his legacy into a glass record.
His legacy starts like this: “I know how to save all of humanity. I’m leaving you with the most challenging invention of all…”
The train stops about a block away from Senkuu’s destination, but the weather makes it feel more like ten. There’s an old scrap shop just kitty corner to where Senkuu’s waiting for the cross light to turn green, and he’d be all over it if he felt he could restrain himself to buying only what he’s able to carry himself—tell yourself you’ll crack open that textbook in an hour, that you’ll only drink one cup of coffee a day. Whatever Senkuu lacks in impulse control, he likes to think he makes up for in self-awareness.
He huffs and watches his breath turn into fine clouds of mist before his eyes. That was one of the first questions he had asked Byakuya, he thinks: why can we see our breath when it gets cold? Senkuu smiles wryly to himself. He hasn’t asked his dad a science-related question in years, and it’s a bittersweet piece of affirmation—realizing you can stand toe-to-toe with the person who used to hand-feed you knowledge.
Senkuu’s toes are quickly growing cold. He does his best to awkwardly navigate around the grey slush on the sidewalk without disrupting the flow of traffic too much. The man in a suit and tie to his left sneezes, and Senkuu fiddles with the underwire of his face mask. He truly, deeply hates winter.
His phone buzzes, and Senkuu guesses who it is before he glances at his phone.
<<<Received:[13:06] Senkuu-chan~~ ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ
<<<Received:[13:06] What are you getting Mirai-chan for her birthday? I can’t think of anything!!! (๑ˊ▵ॢˋ̥๑) ((´д｀))
Senkuu snorts and smiles wryly behind his face mask. Removes his gloves and pins them between his arm and ribcage so that his hands are free, and the cold nips at his fingers. When Gen asked him for his number, Senkuu had mistakenly assumed it was strictly so that he could get updates on Senkuu’s research.
>>>To:[13:07] idiot~ aren’t you supposed to be a mentalist? don’t tell me you’re a fraud.
>>>To:[13:07] if that’s the case, there’s not even a millimeter’s chance that i’ll tell you how to de-petrify a swallow.
Senkuu bumps into a passing college student and mumbles a quick apology. He doesn’t bother looking up, not when the route’s ingrained into his muscle memory. Senkuu hasn’t made a bet since he lost to f*cking Kazuya all those months back, but he’d bet his left kidney that he’d be able to reach his destination even while blindfolded and walking backwards. The thought reminds Senkuu of Nobu’s mice and mazes.
>>>To:[13:08] besides, what’s the point in telling you what i’m planning on getting mirai if it just means you’re going to copy it?
Moreover, where does Gen get off thinking Senkuu’s gift could be bought anyway?
<<<Received:[13:08] How mean!!!!!! (ᗒᗩᗕ)՞(ᗒᗩᗕ)՞(ᗒᗩᗕ)՞
Asagiri Gen is older than Senkuu and the rest of his friends, already tiptoeing into adulthood. Senkuu doesn’t give much thought towards age or hierarchy, doesn’t even bother tacking on ‘senpai’ when addressing an upperclassman. But there’s no denying that there’s something inherently approachable about Gen despite the gap in age and celebrity status. And maybe that’s friendship—when you can throw the pomp and circ*mstance out the window, when you can text each other at odd hours in the middle of the night for no other reason than to hear each other talk.
Hell—for some people, that’s more than friendship.
<<<Received:[13:08] ( ≧Д≦) And I was planning on suggesting that we drive to Tsukasa-chan’s house together too!!
>>>To:[13:09] if the way you play mario kart is any indication for how you drive in real life, i think ill walk
There’s something to be said about the fact that Senkuu has witnessed firsthand how Gen plays Mario Kart. There’s something to be said about the fact that Senkuu was only being ten percent sarcastic when he sent that text.
<<<Received:[13:10] MEAN!!
<<<Received:[13:10] MEAN MEAN MEAN MEAN MEAN!!!
Senkuu bites back a smirk. Sometimes, Asagiri Gen is the existential equivalent of a trickle down your spine—other times, he’s just a pissed off housecat.
>>>To:[13:12] i gtg. gl figuring out a gift for mirai~~
<<<Received:[13:12] Coward. <(｀^´)> Fight me.
Senkuu steps through the automatic doors of Juntendo University’s hospital and makes his way towards check-in. The front desk know him on sight—practically watched him grow up at this point.
Still, he recites: “Appointment for Ishigami Senkuu.”
They bring him poppies and irises. Senkuu doesn’t know much about flower symbolism. He thinks he asks them what they represent, but he’s too focused on choking down a whimper to really internalize what they tell him.
Tsukasa’s little sister stands at the foot of his bed, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She’s clearly uncomfortable seeing him like this, which is understandable given her past. The girl with gold-rimmed glasses and lime green baseball cap has less reservations.
She rests her hand on his, little fingers so soft against his that Senkuu doesn’t even think she’s touching him. ‘Senkuu?’
He gently curls his fingers around hers. ‘Yeah, kiddo?’
‘The adults aren’t telling us what’s wrong,’ she says, blunt and frustrated. Knowing her, she’s probably already tried eavesdropping on the adults to get more information. Knowing the adults in question, they know better than to let her.
Mirai steps forward and gingerly grips his bedsheets. Her voice is soft and bell-like—so different and yet so similar to her brother who stands watching them from the entrance. ‘They say you’re getting better,’ Mirai states, ‘but you haven’t left your bed in a month now.’
The other girl asks, ‘Senkuu, why aren’t you getting better?’
At that Tsukasa straightens and steps forward. Hands outstretched to begin ushering them out. He’s good with kids, but his voice is tight when he says, ‘That’s enough. It’s time to go, Suika.’
Ah.
Who is Suika?
By the time Mirai’s birthday rolls around, Senkuu still hasn’t completely discounted the notion that Tsukasa and Gen are dating. Granted, they’re a bit dysfunctional compared to Yuzuriha and Taiju but then, most couples look dysfunctional once you pit them against Yuzuriha and Taiju.
Tsukasa’s apartment tends toward minimalistic and utilitarian, bare save for a couch that seats two people, a kotatsu, a half-filled bookshelf, and kitchen appliances. Pro wrestler or not, life is expensive when you’re a full-time student with a little sister. It’s a small apartment with only one bedroom; between the state of it and Tsukasa’s tightlipped attitude towards his parents, Senkuu can fill in the gaps just fine. Never let it be said that Senkuu doesn’t know to shut his mouth when it’s needed.
(Well, actually he can think of about seven people who would disagree with that statement.)
Today, the Shishio siblings’ apartment is gently showered in blues, yellows, and pinks. Gen and Yuzuriha spearhead the decorating process while Mirai gets herself ready, stringing fairy lights from one wall to the other and back again until the ceiling seems like nothing more than a spiderweb of stars. For color, they loop streamers and dangling balloons from the string lights. Senkuu’s never ridden in a hot air balloon, but something about the setup makes him nostalgic for one. There’s hardly even a millimeter’s chance of it ever happening, but if Gen ever gets tired of being a mentalist, he could make a killing in design. Senkuu tells him so.
“I do have a soft spot for Devil Wears Prada,” Gen confesses. Although, Senkuu was already aware of that—so maybe it’s not a confession. “I see bits of myself in Miranda Priestly.”
Senkuu considers pointing out that Gen’s wearing a cerulean pullover, but then that’d be admitting he’d actually watched the movie after Gen told him about it during one of their late-night talks. Write a book, watch a movie—hide the evidence and the things you enjoy like they’re a dirty little secret.
They finish decorating with about half an hour to spare before Mirai’s friends start trickling in, and Yuzuriha and Gen take the opportunity to braid store-bought flowers into Mirai’s hair. Tsukasa’s hands are large and scarred, Taiju’s are rough but steady; Yuzuriha and Gen’s are both nimble. Sometimes when it’s late at night, and Senkuu’s too tired to keep researching but not yet tired enough to sleep, he thinks about his own hands and wonders what they’re good for.
When Gen and Yuzuriha finish securing all of flowers, Tsukasa gently reaches out to touch one of them—a pink two-petaled flower that—Senkuu thinks—resembles a clam.
“You look really cute, Mirai,” says Taiju. And it’s an improvement from when Tsukasa first introduced them to his little sister. Taiju had always liked kids, but he had a tendency to treat them like they were some sort of exotic and endangered species.
“Thank you,” she says, shy, “you guys didn’t have to decorate—really—but the apartment looks pretty like this.” If souls came in color, Senkuu thinks Mirai’s would be that orange-pink tone the sky turns just before the sun sets.
“Why don’t we give you your presents now,” Tsukasa suggests, “so we’re not in the way when your friends arrive, Mirai.”
Gen shoots Senkuu a look, and he returns it with a lopsided smirk. Mirai and Yuzuriha take a seat on the couch, and everyone else picks a spot on the carpet, forming a semi-circle around them. It’s a bit reminiscent of kindergarten, Senkuu notes.
If it’s a little strange for a newly-turned twelve-year-old to invite her brother’s friends to her birthday party, no one says so. Story goes—Mirai was in the hospital for a few years and was only recently cleared to go home. There are some choices in life you don’t control. Senkuu didn’t ask any questions, and Tsukasa didn’t provide any more details. Really, it’s a fair trade; when Tsukasa found Senkuu’s medical bills underneath the letter from Kanto Gakuin all those weeks ago, he didn’t comment on it. They’re good at that, the two of them. Not asking unnecessary questions.
Twelve-year-old girls aren’t easy to shop for, not when their interests and hobbies are beginning to shift to something more in-line with being a teenager. When they’re starting to pack up their childhood memories and the stuffed animals that helped them through long, hard nights in favor of other things. The gifts land their mark though, because Mirai would be grateful for socks from Goodwill and—in spite of what Gen’s texts might’ve implied—none of them are actually that bad at brainstorming when it comes down to it.
When it’s Senkuu’s turn, he passes Mirai a box wrapped in blue paper. Mirai’s eyes gleam under the fairy lights, and she blinks rapidly. Senkuu frowns, leans forward—is she tearing up?—but then Mirai ducks her head and begins to peel off the wrapping paper.
Tsukasa takes the opportunity to pick up the paper scraps scattered on the floor, balling them up into one hand. He tosses it into the garbage before sitting back down next to Senkuu.
Even after it’s fully unwrapped, it takes a moment for them to realize what it is: a gold and teal box that fits in the palm of her hand. Mirai opens it and her face splits into a grin when she sees the golden figurine in the center, arms stretched out and face tilted upward like she’s looking into the light.
“A music box?” asks Yuzuriha.
It’s not the first time Senkuu’s made a music box, but it is the first time he’s actually put effort into making it look decent enough for a young girl to display in her room. He’s no craftsman, but he felt compelled to try to make it on his own. It took a bit of repurposing of wind up toy components and music boxes, as well as a couple of off-purchases from eBay, but Senkuu thinks he pulled it off all right.
Especially since the other half of the gift didn’t even come from him, technically.
Mirai touches the little figurine. “How did you know I liked the Little Mermaid?”
Senkuu opens his mouth to respond—
Hesitates. “You know, I’m not sure.”
Gen raises an eyebrow at him, nudges his shin with his own socked toe. “Didn’t take you as the type to like fairytales, Senkuu-chan,” he teases.
And yeah, that’s the thing, he really isn’t.
On his other side, Tsukasa encourages, “Wind it up, Mirai.”
She runs her fingers along the smooth surface of the music box until they catch on the little knob near the back. She twists it a few times until she starts to feel a bit of resistances and lets go. The mermaid figurine begins to spin in slow, smooth circles, and the song starts playing.
‘Nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide’—
Mirai’s mouth parts in surprise, and Senkuu feels Tsukasa stiffen at his side. Taiju and Yuzuriha stare at the box with wide eyes.
Gen asks, “Is that—”
“Lillian Weinberg,” Senkuu confirms.
They listen to a few more bars, and Senkuu can tell Mirai wracking her brain, trying to place the lyrics. ‘Between a rock and a hard place’—
She shakes her head, little flowers bobbing along with the movement. “I don’t recognize the song.”
Senkuu leans forward, resting his elbows on his crisscrossed legs. “Because it hasn’t been released yet,” he clarifies. “Lillian’s a colleague of my dad, for lack of a better word, so I messaged her asking if she’d mind recording a voice template to overlay on—anyway, you get the picture.” He smiles, “Happy birthday, kid.”
Mirai wipes at her eyes furiously, and her voice warbles. “Thank you, Senkuu. This is seriously too much. You’re always—” Her eyes dart toward Tsukasa, and she drops whatever she was going to say next, replacing it with, “Thank you.”
“Well,” Gen sighs, eyes trailing toward the unwrapped dresses, stuffed animals, and backpack. “I suppose Senkuu wins this round.”
Taiju and Yuzuriha trade sidelong glances, no doubt recalling the number of homemade smartphones and decked-out laptops that Senkuu’s gifted them throughout the years. Senkuu’s always kind of been a sh*t consumer; never even once set foot in a Hallmark.
Senkuu hears Tsukasa shift. “It’s not as if he ever does anything by halves,” he states, clapping a large hand against Senkuu’s back. “How did you convince—”
Tsukasa’s hand brushes against the back of Senkuu’s neck—
Senkuu doesn’t remember moving.
He closes his eyes and opens them and suddenly he’s all the way across the room, half crumpled against the wall.
Yuzuriha’s half-risen from her perch on the couch, and Taiju’s hand is clamped firmly over Tsukasa’s shoulder—Tsukasa, who’s staring at Senkuu with eyes so wide, he can see the whites of them. Mirai is frozen, and Gen’s eyes dart between everyone else’s faces, brows furrowed as he tries to fill in the gaps he’s so clearly missing—
Well, f*ck, Senkuu's missing a few vital bits of information himself, isn’t he?
Gen shuffles towards him, still on his knees, and it’s a funny sight—Senkuu would laugh, if it didn’t feel like his was heart was beating against his ribcage like a battering ram. He makes a conscious effort to modulate his breathing because if he doesn’t—
“Senkuu-chan?”
Senkuu grips the front of his shirt. He thinks he smells nightshades.
Why does he know what nightshades smell like?
“You’re all right, Senkuu-chan. I promise.”
Senkuu coughs—hard. Hard enough to make his throat and chest hurt, and oh god—don’t tell him he’s—
Tsukasa’s voice is gentle, like he’s stroking a baby’s head. He rises and starts to take a step forward. “I didn’t mean to—” He shakes his head. Restarts, “I hadn’t realized—”
“Get the f*ck back,” Senkuu snaps. Pull the trigger, swing a baseball bat, say the first thing that comes to mind—it’s all just procedural memory and the sinking feeling Senkuu gets when his words catch up with him is a familiar one. It’s hard to retrace your steps when you’re already sliding downhill. “No, wait, you’re—that was—” Senkuu blinks, tongue feeling like lead and stumbling through his words. “I meant—I-I don’t why… I don’t know.”
Gen’s eyes linger on Senkuu’s neck, and his lips press into a thin line. Fill in enough gaps, and you don’t even need all of the puzzle pieces to get the picture. Senkuu feels like he’s missing half of the entire board.
Gen glances over his shoulder toward Mirai. Senkuu can’t see his expression, but he can hear the apology in his tone, “I think it’s best if Senkuu and I head out a little bit early, Mirai-chan. Your friends should be arriving any minute though.”
Mirai fiddles with the hem of her dress. “It’s fine, don’t even worry about it. Take care of”—she cuts herself off—“feel better soon, Senkuu. Thanks again. For the music box.”
Gen pulls Senkuu up so he’s fully on his feet and guides him toward the door by the elbow.
Pathetic, Senkuu thinks, feeling bile rise up into his throat, you’re so damn pathetic sometimes. Pathetic and illogical.
Why—?
Just before the door closes behind them, he hears Tsukasa's voice, filled to the brim with something that sounds a lot like remorse.
“I’m sorry, Senkuu.”
>>>2/5/2020, 16:20
>>>[emailprotected]
[INBOX] Quora Digest
>>>2/5/2020, 08:01
>>>From: [emailprotected]
[INBOX] How did the party go? Did she like the… see more
>>>2/5/2020, 21:23
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[COMPOSE EMAIL] It was fine. Party went off without a hitch—tell Lillian thanks for me. Everyone seemed to like the song.
So.
The highest concentration of Nital Etch that Senkuu can get his hands on is 15% nitric acid. It makes sense—anything more than that is redundant for its intended purpose. But then, that means that Senkuu’s going to have to make his own Nital Etch with a higher concentration because fifteen percent isn’t doing sh*t.
Maybe I’m going about this wrong—Senkuu’s traitorous mind supplies—maybe the reaction can’t be reversed, and he’s just been walking around with his head up his own ass this entire time. Maybe he’s making a bigger deal out of this than he should. Maybe he should’ve just stuck to researching Ebola.
It sounds like less and less of a ‘traitorous’ thought the more Senkuu considers it, examining it from different angles. Lend an ear to intrusive thoughts long enough, and you’ll get over the initial urge to recoil. Pick at it a little more, and when it unravels, you can see the logic behind it. So—Senkuu resolutely does not think about it.
He’s getting to be good at that, it’s a skill born from practice and experience.
Senkuu fiddles with the creases in his lab coat and ponders how best to go about acquiring alcohol when everyone he knows is underage, including Gen. It’d be so much easier if his dad was around.
Nagisa taps a chipped fingernail against the table to get his attention. “So where’s the rest of the Senkuu squad?”
He shoots her a half-disgusted look and ignores the way his stomach twists. It’s Friday afternoon—three days since Mirai’s birthday—and for once, the only ones in the lab are the ones who are actually authorized to be there. He’s taken to sending Yuzuriha and Taiju off on wild goose chases under the guise of running errands because they can’t stop hovering. Senkuu’s only glimpsed Tsukasa once as he was walking down the hall, and without even consciously deciding to do so, found himself ducking underneath the staircase and staying there until the other passed by.
Senkuu would like to think Tsukasa hadn’t seen him turn tail and run like a scared little kid, but that’s a bit too optimistic for him, given his sh*t track record of being able to present himself as a normal, functioning human being.
(A voice in his head that sounds a lot like Byakuya informs him that he’s being disproportionately mean to himself again; if it were Taiju or Yuzuriha, he wouldn’t think less of them for panicking—no matter how illogical the response appeared.)
Senkuu picks at the crevice surrounding his laptop’s trackpad, the spot where crumbs have a tendency of getting lodged. He asks, “The f*ck is a ‘Senkuu squad’?”
Nagisa wrinkles her nose at him. “Don’t act stupid—it’s a cute look on Taiju, but not you.”
A slow grin splits across Senkuu’s features—the sh*t-eating one that Nagisa says makes him look like a gremlin. “Oh? You think Taiju’s cute, Nagisa? Maybe you want to join this ‘Senkuu squad’ to spend more time with him?”
She purses her lips and comments, “You’re prickly today. Did something happen?”
Senkuu thinks of the sixteen unread text messages on his phone. He thinks of the fact that he almost panicked so badly he had an attack in front of his friends. He wonders if it’s really any of Nagisa’s business. Nagisa accidentally jostles his backpack with her foot when she crosses her legs. It takes a lot of facial control to not grimace at the telltale rattling it makes.
Bury all your insecurities and tell your parents and best friend that you’re feeling fine before pouring out your soul to the stranger sitting next to you on the bus. Trade numbers with the kid from camp you’ve never really spoken to but end up telling them your deepest, darkest secrets. Sometimes the best listeners in life are the ones who don’t give a single sh*t about you.
Senkuu looks back at his computer screen and begins to type. “I might have indirectly accused Tsukasa of trying to hurt me.” He adds, “He wasn’t though. I was just…” Just what? Senkuu rolls the end of his bangs between his thumb and forefinger. “…I don’t know.”
Nagisa doesn’t move for a bit, and the hair on Senkuu’s neck raises from how she scrutinizes him. But then, the line of her shoulders soften in his periphery, and she spins on her heel.
“All right,” she starts, bright and airy and unbothered, “I’m pulling rank as club president.” She raises an eyebrow in his direction, silencing any comments about how the only reason she was ever president in the first place was because Senkuu wanted to avoid the added paperwork that came with the position. “I’ll lock the doors for now. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that I’m working on something confidential—science club members only for today.”
He’s not sure how to formulate a response to that, so he says nothing at all. Senkuu hasn’t looked in a mirror recently, but if Nagisa is being kind to him, he figures he must look like awful.
His phone vibrates in his pocket. For a split second, he finds himself wavering.
Senkuu knows a thing or two about explaining difficult concepts to people. Knows the perfect recipe for watering down information so others can digest it. There’s no way to justify or explain to his friends that when Tsukasa touched his neck, Senkuu thought he was going to die.
Senkuu keeps typing.
<<<Received:[16:07] I have no idea if you’re reading any of these Senkuu-chan.
<<<Received:[16:08] But I assure you that no one’s upset with you over what happened at Mirai’s birthday party.
<<<Received:[16:10] I don’t know why you would think that in the first place.
<<<Received:[16:10] ^^That’s a lie actually, I know why you’d think that—even though I don’t agree with it.
<<<Received:[16:12] All right. I’m going to take your radio silence as a cue that you don’t feel like talking about it, and that’s fine!! I’ll stop.
<<<Received:[16:20] Are you working on the petrification case rn?
<<<Received:[16:21] I don’t have a show this weekend, lets meet at your place and play some videogames~~
<<<Received:[16:23] Does that work for you, Senkuu-chan?
<<<Received:[18:46] Well, see you Saturday evening hopefully.
Taiju is the one who steps forward to retrieve the birds. He plucks them out of their cage and passes them off to Senkuu for examination.
‘They don’t look any different,’ Yuzuriha says, hesitant.
Senkuu grins, smug, satisfied victory making him giddy enough to laugh. ‘They’re not. I guarantee they’re ten billion percent stronger than the others.’
‘You think it’s enough?’
‘Has to be,’ Senkuu says, inspecting the petrified swallows. ‘Anything more than this, and I don’t think any amount of nitric acid is going to reverse it.’
Come Saturday, Senkuu still hasn’t gotten around to reading through his texts. He’s on his way out to try his hand at shoulder-tapping people for liquor when Gen arrives. Asagiri Gen waits on his doormat wearing a smile and a black and white striped shirt, laptop bag looped over one shoulder and takeout hanging from the crook of his elbow. Senkuu sees the white carryout bags and notices the smell of takeout before he realizes that he’s standing practically nose-to-nose with the mentalist.
This close, Senkuu can really see Gen’s age. Not the guy who entered the entertainment industry at as a teen, not the product of professional stylists and makeup artists and excellent lighting—just someone whose last bits of baby fat are still visible without the help of an Anastasia contour stick. The kind of person who’s on their own financially but is still just figuring out how to be an adult.
Senkuu’s still got a year or so to go, but he figures that part of being an adult is recognizing when it’s your loss. He steps back and props the door open a little wider. Gen glides into his apartment like a stray alley cat and sets the food down on Senkuu’s kitchen table.
The apartment is quiet save for the low hum of the heating unit. Still like a scene from the old picture books his dad used to read to him. Senkuu’s seen enough TV shows to know that this is supposed to be the part where their previous encounter catches up to them, when the atmosphere is meant to grow tense and awkward. It’s not. If only because Gen is the physical embodiment of a social buffer, and he smooths over Senkuu’s social hiccups and false starts like they’re nothing.
It’s quiet in the way the long drive home is.
He watches Gen putter around his kitchen for a few seconds before informing him, “The Cola’s in the fridge—right side. It’s diet though, because that’s all my old man can drink, and I wasn’t thinking when I bought them.”
Gen breezes past Senkuu on his way to the fridge, and he catches of a whiff of his shampoo. He clicks his tongue. “As if I’m the one here who’s picky about food. Speaking of—have you eaten already? I haven’t so I’m going to now.” Gen cracks open a can of Cola and holds it like it’s a glass of champagne. “If you’re not hungry, that’s fine, but you should still sit with me.” He gives Senkuu a smile that’s equal parts impish and beatific, “Be a good host, Senkuu-chan.”
Senkuu hasn’t eaten so he takes the seat opposite from Gen and starts laying out the contents of the takeout bag. “Can it really be called hosting if the other person wasn’t invited to begin with?”
“How mean! I even messaged you to let you know I’d be coming.”
Enter Asagiri Gen: a compulsive liar who’s honest about his vices, soaks up attention like a sponge, but shies away from praise. The kind of face that makes people want to dress him in diamonds and light his cigarettes for him instead of listen to his jokes. Drinks Cola like its fine wine because he wouldn’t touch the real stuff even if he was old enough to, and somehow speaks up to eighty words a minute without sounding as if he’s rambling.
They blow through the takeout, and Gen tells him he wants to play videogames. The logical part of his brain can’t help but note that Gen made sure to ask only after Senkuu finished his meal. He starts to calculate the probability of whether he’s being played, before deciding that he doesn’t have the stamina or mental fortitude to outlast Gen’s wheedling even on a good day.
“Fine,” Senkuu gives in, “but if you pick Teemo again, I’m leaving you to rot.”
They plug in their laptops and queue up in the PVP.
His phone’s been silent since Gen arrived.
Either he was the only one messaging Senkuu, or the rest of his friends were aware that Gen was planning on coming over.
Senkuu thinks about that.
Playing with Gen is enjoyable until he gets the bright idea of camping the other team’s fountain at twenty-four minutes. The dumbass. But maybe that’s part of the beauty of videogames—making bad choices with zero real-life consequences.
They both grey-screen, and they’re far enough into the match that they’ve got some time before they respawn. Gen fills in the silence because that’s what comes naturally to him. “Senkuu-chan, what would you do if the world ended tomorrow?”
“Ehhh,” Senkuu’s eyes slide toward him. He wets his lips, gets an aftertaste of the takeout. His hand is sweaty from gripping the computer mouse for so long, and he wipes his palm on his jeans. “That’s a pretty sh*tty thing to ask someone.”
Gen has a preference for sitting on his knees instead crisscrossing his legs. Senkuu wonders how his legs don’t fall asleep. “Because you don’t know?”
“Because there’s ten billion and one things I haven’t done yet. I’ve a got a train ticket to Yokohama, and the petrified swallows project, and a bunch of leftovers I need to finish before Monday.” Senkuu sits back and adjusts his sock so at least his big toe isn’t poking through the hole. If the world ended tomorrow, it’d be game over—case closed, final exam turned in before you’ve filled in all the answers. Those trivial things Senkuu’s been keeping on his back burner would be nothing but loose ends. He shrugs. “I guess I’d have to figure out a way to stop the world from ending. There’s really no other option. What would you do?”
Gen has a way of smiling that always makes you wonder whether he needs to be comforted. “No idea,” he muses. “If the world ended tomorrow, I’d have 250,000 yen in my back account that I never got around to spending, and my manager would never get to open his birthday present, and…” Gen trails off, face softening. He matches Senkuu’s pose and leans back until their forearms are touching.
The game is still going. They’ve both respawned, but neither have left the base. If Senkuu dared to check their team chat, he’s certain it’d be filled with asterisks and requests for the opposing team to report their AFK asses. They’ll probably get banned for a weekend or so.
Joke’s on them—Senkuu’s never liked this toxic hellhole of a PVP platform to begin with.
“And what?” Senkuu prompts.
“Another question for you, Senkuu-chan,” he says, still smiling but it’s happier now. Mirthful. “What would you do if I kissed you? Right now?”
Ah, Senkuu thinks then, I guess Tsukasa and Gen aren’t dating.
He considers his response, as well as this new piece of information.
He goes for the honest answer: “Die. Because you have a bit of peanut sauce on your lips from dinner, and I’m allergic to that sh*t. It’d cause quite the scandal if you murdered some poor, innocent high school student.”
Gen licks his lips. “Noted.”
“Otherwise,” Senkuu says, before Gen can get the chance to deftly switch topics like how he switches through TV channels, “I mean, I wouldn’t be mad about it.” Senkuu shifts, suddenly aware that his hair’s a wreck and he’s got holes in his socks. “Make sense?”
“Completely.”
They lose the match. They don’t bother queueing up for another, but they also don’t logout. Senkuu sets his laptop off to the side, leans back until his head hits the carpet floor, and studies the other. Gen’s fringe has grown to the point where it gets in his eyes if he doesn’t keep brushing it off to the side.
“You mentioned you’re visiting Yokohama?” Gen asks, swirling the Cola around in its can. Senkuu can hear it fizzle.
The floor is carpeted but not necessarily comfortable. Senkuu thinks about migrating over to the couch, but Gen is warm beside him. He stays on the floor. “Yeah,” Senkuu starts, “just touring Kanto Gakuin and talking to a some of the faculty members. Why?”
“‘Just touring,’” Gen parrots, shaking his head. “You’re not even a third-year yet and universities have their eye on you. In America, you could’ve graduated early and started college already.”
“That was a possibility,” Senkuu admits. He thinks of the letters and emails that began pouring in after he was hand-selected to present at IAU for building a rocket prototype that relied water for fuel. “I talked about it with my old man, but we decided against it. The prospects were good, but not good enough to warrant packing everything up and moving overseas.”
“I’m glad,” Gen says, voice earnest in contrast to the serious look on his face. No makeup, no lights, no pretty smile for the camera. “I’m glad you stayed, Senkuu-chan.”
Senkuu gets the conversation back on track, “You were asking if I was going to Yokohama.”
“Right. Yuzuriha and Taiju mentioned that you need some alcohol for your research—”
Senkuu snorts. “Sure do.”
“Yes, I know, that came out wrong—anyways, I’ve got a friend in who goes to college there who wouldn’t mind helping a minor purchase a few bottles of wine or something. A mutual friend of mine and Tusakasa-chan’s actually.” Gen raps his knuckles on the floor like he’s gearing himself up. The carpet muffles the sound. “And…speaking of Tsukasa-chan—”
Senkuu pulls himself upright, vision getting spotty from the sudden change in blood flow. “Hang on—my turn, you’ve been asking all the questions so far,” Senkuu points out. When Gen doesn’t protest, he says, “You’re a mentalist, right? You’re all about the human psyche and whatever. What does it mean if you get frightened for no reason? Like not just startled or unsettled, I mean honest to God terrified.”
Gen presses his lips into a thin, tense line. Everyone’s got a monster under their bed, but fear is relative and difficult to qualify. Gen props his head up with his palm and answers, “I'm sorry, I don’t know, Senkuu-chan. Even when things got grim, I’ve always felt like I’d come out in one piece.”
Senkuu doesn’t get a chance to respond. His phone alarm goes off, loud in comparison the stillness of the rest of the apartment. Gen nearly jumps out of his skin, and Senkuu's quick to silence it.
8:00pm.
Even after all these years, he still sets an alarm—just in case of situations like these. Senkuu gets to his feet, shoulder muscles aching from the way he’d been holding himself. “Hang on,” he tells Gen, “I’m going to go grab something from my room.”
Senkuu slips his phone into the pocket of his hoodie. Heads down the hall toward his bedroom after making a quick stop in the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He fills the cup too high, and liquid sloshes over the edge, wetting the knuckles of his fingers. Senkuu silently shuts his door behind him and finds his school bag lying on the foot of his bed. He eyes the fraying seams and makes a mental note to buy a new one. Sets his glass on his desk before beginning to rummage through his bag. The plastic bottles rattle against each other, and Senkuu sets them on his desk one by one.
He used to keep a pillbox instead, but he lost it at some point, and it was never useful enough to warrant purchasing a new one. Senkuu places the six pills in his hand and swallows them down in one go, ignoring the weird aftertaste that always comes with the orange tablet.
Human eyes are trained to respond to sudden movement, and looking in the reflection of his window, Senkuu can’t help but zero in on his bedroom door swinging open.
“I went ahead and cleaned the dishes, Senkuu-chan. Where do you— Oh.”
Gen stills, looking between Senkuu and the numerous orange bottles in front of him. Senkuu calmly zips open his backpack and deposits the bottles back inside his bag in a single sweep. Glances at Gen over his shoulder and ponders the likelihood of getting out of there without any questions.
“Are you sick, Senkuu-chan?”
He almost feels like laughing. With the way the question’s worded, it almost sounds as if Senkuu taking all of these meds for sh*ts and giggles is an option that’s on the table. Senkuu doesn’t waste brain power even thinking about denying it. “Yeah,” Senkuu shrugs, “but that’s nothing new.”
Gen’s looks at Senkuu. Looks at the bottles. He steps forward until he’s standing beside Senkuu, shoulder to shoulder.
“You’re not going to ask what’s wrong with me?”
Gen shakes his head and plays with the callouses on Senkuu’s writing hand. “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets.”
He wonders why it feels like Gen is saying that for his own benefit.
>>>To:[01:24] i’m sorry
<<<Received:[01:28] Don’t be. I’m not upset. Neither is Mirai.
<<<Received:[01:29] If anything, I think I should be the one apologizing.
>>>To:[1:29] youre kidding
>>>To:[01:31] what would you even be sorry for ?
>>>To:[01:44] you’ve been typing on and off for the past 10 minutes
<<<Received:[01:44] Are you afraid of me, Senkuu?
>>>To:[01:47] idiot
>>>To:[01:48] what moron is afraid of their friend?
<<<Received:[01:55] I see.
>>>To:[02:00] you’ve got a match tomorrow, don’t you?
>>>To:[02:00] go to bed. you’re worse than taiju
<<<Received:[02:01] You too, Senkuu. Goodnight.
>>>To:[02:01] night.
“Contrary to popular belief—and according to Google,” Senkuu starts, “co*ckroaches aren’t actually immortal.”
His socked feet dangle inches above the floor and the cool, stale air makes goose bumps raise on his arms and back. The socks aren’t new, and Senkuu can’t even begin to guess how many other pairs of feet have worn them—but they’re warm.
The man tilts his head in a way that lets Senkuu know that he’s genuinely interested in what he has to say. “Really? They seem pretty indestructible to me.”
“They’re not easy to kill,” Senkuu admits, picking at the red paper shell on his crayon. Yuzuriha can’t stand it when he does that, but she’s also not around to complain. “But nearly indestructible is different from living forever.”
He hums in agreement, eyes flicking between Senkuu and his monitor. “You aren’t wrong,” he muses, tugging out a slip of paper and jotting down a string of numbers and words in the world’s most fluid chicken scratch.
Senkuu is seven years old, but he’s noticed a pattern. Finish high school, and you can land a decent job if you know where to look. Go to school for more than half of your life and you can publish research papers about why the sky is blue. Stick with it a bit longer, and you might know enough to save someone’s life, but you won’t be able to write worth sh*t.
The man continues, when he’s no longer focused on jotting down Senkuu’s vitals. “There’re some species of jellyfish that can live forever though. One of my kids made a presentation about it—Turriptosis dohrnii, I think?”
Senkuu crumples up the paper shell of the crayon and picks up the Ninja Turtle’s coloring sheet that one of his previous nurses slipped him. He hasn’t colored much of it in beyond giving Donatello glasses and a mustache. This is partially due to the fact that Senkuu isn’t much for coloring pages but mostly because he also only has one crayon anyways.
“How do you spell that?” he asks the nurse.
The man can only estimate the spelling, but Senkuu figures that Google will understand what he means. Google always does. He carefully scrawls out ‘Turitopsis dornie(?)’ in red crayon just below the turtles’ feet.
“So I can tell my dad about it later,” he explains to the nurse. Senkuu folds up the piece of paper in slides it into the pocket of his gown. “Do you know if I’m going home today?”
There are soft creases between the nurse’s eyebrows when he tries to smile. “I haven’t heard anything yet,” he says, voice soft as the blanket Taiju (well, Taiju’s mom technically) left with him. “I’ll double-check with the doctor and social work, all right, Senkuu-kun?”
The nurse is kind, but it’s really more of a rhetorical question. Senkuu nods with a shrug and picks at the tip of the crayon, red wax gathering underneath his thumbnail.
Being a patient, Senkuu is quickly realizing, is a bit like being just a beloved patchwork of anatomy. At some point or other, they’ve put tubes down his throat, in his bladder, his nose, and in his veins all for the sake of keeping him alive. The thing about all those tubes though—Senkuu might be breathing, but he doesn’t feel particularly alive. He doesn’t know for sure if he really feels like much of a person either. He feels a bit more like a toy doll who lost a fight with the family dog, and the only way to fix him now is by cramming the stuffing back in and taping the tears closed.
He wants to go home.
God, he wants to go home.
“You’re really traveling all the way over to Yokohama to buy alcohol, Senkuu?”
“Idiot,” Senkuu drawls, keeping his voice low for the sake of the other train passengers. He pins his phone to his ear with his shoulder so he can use both hands to retie his shoelaces. “I’m also here for Kanto Gakuin. Why the hell would I waste my time like this if I could just as easily ask Gen’s manager to get alcohol for me?” He double-knots his shoelaces and eyes the passing scenery. “The fact that Gen and Tsukasa know someone from the university who’d be able to help out is just a bonus.”
“Tsukasa-kun mentioned that you messaged back and forth about what happened during Mirai’s birthday party,” he hears Yuzuriha say. Her voice quieter than Taiju’s, Senkuu can’t tell if it’s because she’s further away from the speaker phone or if it’s just the natural discrepancy in volume between the two of them. “I’m not going to pry and ask if everything’s okay between you two, but—are you sure you’re feeling all right, Senkuu-kun?” There’s a short pause, and Senkuu can almost envision his friends sharing a look. “It almost looked like the beginning of an attack.”
Senkuu leans his head back against his headrest. Certain memories are more prevalent than others. Wake up in the middle of the night remembering that time you wet the bed during a sleepover, let your mind wander and it’ll bring up that time you stuttered your way through a class presentation. When Senkuu was ten, he went into full-blown cardiac arrest while playing cops and robbers with Yuzuriha, Taiju, and a couple other kids from around the neighborhood. Senkuu wasn’t aware enough to remember much, but his friends got front row seats. The sh*tty memories are the ones that get highlighted.
“I’m seeing Sawamura-sensei regularly.” He kicks his legs over his duffle bag. It’s mostly empty save for a couple jeans so it winds up making for a pathetic footrest. “That’s pretty much all I can do right now anyways.”
There’s a bit of shuffling on the other end before Yuzuriha speaks up again. “I guess so. Well—Oh, hi, Tsukasa-kun! It’s Senkuu-kun. He’s on his way to meet your friend in Yokohama.”
“I use the term ‘friend’ loosely,” he hears Tsukasa intone. His voice gets clearer the closer he gets to the phone. “Senkuu, be sure to hide the wine in your carry-on. Use the jeans to hide them too.”
Things are still a little awkward on Senkuu’s end, but it’s getting better. It’s easy to hide it over the phone at any rate. Senkuu nudges the bag, which is more empty air than actual clothes. It’s a little hard to remain inconspicuous when you’re a minor transporting bottles of alcohol from Yokohama to Tokyo—so. Tsukasa’s old duffle bag to the rescue.
It smells of sweat and Icy Hot spray.
Senkuu snickers, “Tsukasa, should I be worried about the fact that you know so much about smuggling liquor?”
“You could get in serious trouble if you’re caught!” Taiju exclaims, and Senkuu nearly has to take the phone away from his ear due to the sudden jump in volume. Between all of them, Taiju wound up being the most resistant to the idea of Senkuu illegally acquiring alcohol.
Senkuu rolls his eyes. “Obviously—oh, hang on.” There’s a brief flicker of static before the arrival announcement starts playing over the speakers, and Senkuu sits up, tugging his jacket back on as best as he can with only one available hand. He says, “All right, I’m going to hang up—I’m pulling in now, and the guy I’m meeting—what was his name?” He taps his finger on the neighboring empty seat. “Ryosuke? Rui?”
Yuzuriha sighs heavily through the phone. “Please figure out his name before you actually meet him.”
“His name’s Ryusui,” Tsukasa supplies, mirroring Yuzuriha’s tone. “Please try to remember.”
Senkuu waves them off even though no one can see him. “I make no promises—anyway, I’m finding him after the tour and faculty meet and greet. Don’t know how lugging alcohol around campus would make for a first impression and don’t want to find out. I’ll let you know how it goes, I need to get a move on.”
“Got it,” Taiju says. “See you soon, Senkuu!”
“Yeah,” Senkuu says, scooping Tsukasa’s hand-me-down duffle off the floor as the rest of the passengers begin to move, “see you.”
So.
Ryusui.
That’s a real person who exists.
Senkuu waits kitty corner to the wine and spirits that’s located along the outer border of Kanto Gakuin and watches as his new accomplice/maybe mutual friend ducks into the store. The stoplights cycle between green, yellow, and red and reflect off the icy patches along the sidewalk. Senkuu breathes into his closed palms to warm his hands and wishes he’d remembered to pack a scarf. Yokohama winter has a bite.
He opens up the #swallowacquired tag on his phone and scrolls through it, scanning the dates and locations of the petrified swallow sightings. International reports of petrification are completely non-existent now—haven’t happened since June, save for maybe three one-off sightings in neighboring countries like Korea and the Philippines. The only petrification sightings reported within the last several months are in Japan with a slight concentration to the larger cities like Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka. It makes Senkuu’s data look a little ugly, but he tells himself it’s not unexpected given the fact that both Gen and Tsukasa’s reach are limited to their home country.
Senkuu snorts at himself. Here he is at one of the top private universities in Yokohama, and he’s thinking about petrified birds.
A tall, blond figure kicks open the door of the wine and spirits, and Senkuu puts his phone away. Ryusui lugs a case of liquor across the street to where Senkuu’s waiting and—fit as he seems to be—is already lightly wheezing by the time he reaches him. After he sets the crate down on the salt-speckled concrete, he spends the next minute or so just shaking out his arms in attempt to get his blood circulation back on track.
More than a dozen Pinot Noir bottles rattle against each other, and Senkuu thinks—retroactively—that maybe he should’ve specified his budget before letting this dude loose in a wine and spirits. “sh*t,” Senkuu grimaces. “I don’t think I brought enough money with me to pay you off—do you have PayPal?”
Ryusui laughs and slaps him hard on the back. “Don’t worry about that for now—let’s just get these packed away before anyone realizes I just bought alcohol for a minor.”
“About that”—Senkuu eyes the twenty bottles of wine and Tsukasa’s comparatively tiny-ass duffle bag—“unless you happen to be some sort of god at Tetris, I don’t think I’ll be able to take everything. Maybe like…seventeen or eighteen bottles tops.”
“I’ve got this,” Ryusui reassures him, snapping his fingers. For a second, Senkuu thinks: Oh, maybe he is a Tetris god. But then Ryusui just cracks open two bottles of wine and chugs them straight. Senkuu watches his Adam’s apple bob. “Okay,” Ryusui continues, setting the now-empty bottles back down, “now let’s see if we can jam the rest in that duffle of yours.”
They nearly do. They manage to manhandle fifteen of the bottles into the bag so now Senkuu just has to carry three of them in his hands like a minor with a major drinking problem. You know. Casual. This would all be much less conspicuous if Senkuu wasn’t required to wear his school uniform to the Kanto Gakuin meet and greet.
Senkuu almost dislocates his arm while attempting to shoulder the duffle bag, which is already a less than auspicious beginning. He’s going to have to figure out a way to hide the remaining three bottles by the time he gets on his train.
“Thanks,” Senkuu grits out, straining against the weight. He readjusts his hold around the neck of the bottles so they don’t slip through his fingers. “I know it’s probably hard to tell from the tone of my voice, but I’m actually kind of grateful.”
“You’re welcome,” Ryusui says, and there’s a softer quality in his voice that Senkuu can’t place. “It’s the least I could do.” He snaps his fingers. “No giving up until you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to do, yeah?”
He doesn’t say any more than that so Senkuu just nods his head slowly and says his goodbyes. Starts making his way to the train station. By the time he turns the corner, Ryusui is still in the same spot with his hands in pockets and a wry smile on his face. Senkuu faces forward again.
Either the sucker lost a bet with Gen or owed Tsukasa a favor.
The sky’s a periwinkle blue, and it’ll probably be completely dark by the time Senkuu makes it back to Tokyo. The strap of the duffle bag digs painfully digs into his shoulder, weighed down by a dozen and a half wine bottles. It makes walking upright a challenge. His shoes grind into the salt-speckled ground as he passes by a long line of convenience stores, ramen shops, cafes. There’s a post office at the end of the street where Senkuu needs to turn off, and he stops to unbutton his coat, already beginning to sweat through his undershirt. Thinks, God, what I would give to have Taiju or—
His steps falter. He blinks at the thin air and tries to hold onto the tail-end of that thought even as it slips through his fingers. Like trying to catch water with a net or like waking up from a dream and already feeling the details of it fade from your memory.
Senkuu stops in the middle of a sidewalk and tries to remember.
(Who was he thinking of just then?)
Three stores down, the door to the post office opens with a jingle and a bang. The man exiting is taller than Senkuu, with hair nearly as gravity-defying as his own, and he brandishes a scowl and a yellow envelope. He steps further out into the sidewalk, into the streetlights, and Senkuu nearly jumps out of his skin.
“sh*t,” Senkuu hisses to himself, hands wrapped around three bottles of wine with fifteen more in his duffle bag and in his high school uniform for the world to see.
The man’s a police officer.
Senkuu backtracks, turning quickly on his heel and ducking into the narrow alleyway between the 7-eleven and Mos Burger before the officer spots him. He squats, heart racing, and warily eyes the cop through the reflection of Yoshinoya’s windows from across the street. Bites back a curse when the officer starts walking toward Senkuu’s location, and he’s about two seconds away from throwing the bottles into the nearby dumpster to try and hide the evidence—when the cop suddenly stops.
The man glances down at his hands, mutters indiscernibly to himself, and tosses something into the evergreen shrub just outside of Mos Burger.
Senkuu blinks, brows furrowing as the cop turns to he’s facing the other side of the street. Reaches into his opened package again before winding up his arm and launching the contents of the envelope across the street. There’s a clang as whatever it is bounces off the rim of a trash can and then skitters underneath a nearby bench. The cop cracks his neck, and Senkuu’s close enough to hear him mumble, “Eh, good enough. The f*cking bat isn’t doing any footwork here, so he can’t complain.”
The cop crumples the yellow packaging up into a ball and starts walking down the street, opposite of where Senkuu’s half-crouched and trying to piece together what he’s just witnessed. The officer dumps the envelope into the nearest trashcan and turns a corner.
Senkuu counts to one hundred before moving.
He clambers to his feet, graceless from the weight of his cargo and pops his head outside the alleyway to double-check that the officer is gone. His shoulders relax, releasing pent-up tension that he hadn’t realized he was carrying. The streets are quiet given that it’s a Thursday night, but Senkuu takes a few minutes anyways to try and forcibly cram the three other bottles into the bag so he won’t have to deal with any repeat mishaps.
He steps back onto the street, simultaneously mulling over the cop’s odd behavior and trying to figure out if he’s going to miss his train. Casts a brief, curious glance toward the evergreen shrub that the cop dropped something into and—
Inhale.
Step back.
Check again.
Pick it up.
The weight and coolness of it in Senkuu’s hand makes the hairs on the back of his neck raise.
A petrified swallow.
His heart starts to race, and he reminds himself that panic is illogical.
Start with the facts; what happened and what did you see? He replays the officer’s actions in his head, knuckles white from how tightly he holds the bird.
He jerks his head up, eyes narrowing in on the trash bin outside the post office. Senkuu crosses the distance in twenty steps and sticks his hand into the garbage can. Grips the corner of the yellow envelope and pulls it back out, shaking it for good measure. Senkuu flips it over, eyes scanning for the return address. Holds it up to eye-level after ripping it off, streetlights illuminating the paper and highlighting the printed ink.
The earth spins 1,000 miles per hour, and Senkuu feels it come to a stop while standing on the sidewalk outside a post office.
Asagiri Gen
8-1-4 Ginza, Chuoku
Tokyo 170-3293
Static. Nothing but white noise in his ears as his mind races, analyzes each of the possibilities one by one until—
Oh.
f*cking Gen.
Senkuu thinks of all the evidence that had been hiding in plain sight, right in front him and thinks, I’m a such an idiot.
Senkuu runs and doesn’t stop running until he’s barreling past the doors of his train. Crumples to his knees from the effort, lungs burning and shoulder aching from the weight of the duffle bag. Someone asks him if he’s all right, but Senkuu doesn’t answer, just pulls himself to his feet and staggers over to the nearest empty seat.
He closes his eyes and reviews what he knows: he asked Gen for help back in September, after which petrified swallows began reappearing on his radar. But internationally, everything’s been quiet. The cop was planting them in areas where people would be sure to find them, so—this isn’t something that’s occurring naturally, and if that’s the case—
Senkuu searches for the answers like a drowning man looks for a raft or a thief looks for an exit. Once, back in junior high, a former senpai of his showed him a magic trick. She fanned out her standard 52-deck and grinned at him, pink and orange braces catching Senkuu’s attention more than the red Bicycle cards shoved in his face. Pick a card—any card, she’d told him, but see, Senkuu couldn’t help but pick the card she intended for him to pick. Senkuu was never one for philosophical bullsh*t, but if there was ever a physical incarnation of fate, then he figures it’d be a fourteen-year-old girl with braces who spent more time practicing magic tricks than studying for her algebra test.
Fact: Senkuu always found the Three of Spades.
First hypothesis: Asagiri Gen is tampering with the petrification case.
Second hypothesis: Asagiri Gen is the one behind the petrification case.
And well—
Senkuu can work with a hypothesis.
His fingers are cool against his forehead. Senkuu’s almost tempted to fall asleep.
‘Secrets and promises,’ the other muses. His voice sounds wet. ‘Where are you going with this, Senkuu-chan?’
Senkuu’s lips are cracked. ‘I’m leaving everything to you.’
There are lines underneath Gen’s eyes that hadn’t been there when he first met him. ‘We found your recording you know. You said you’d save everyone—does that include yourself?’
Senkuu laughs. Tries to. ‘That’s your first question after hearing the secret to building that?’
‘I won’t forgive you if you don’t save yourself too.’ Silence. Senkuu can hear the cicadas outside. Mirai’s sunflowers are wilting in their vase at Senkuu’s bedside. ‘How much longer can you hold on, Senkuu-chan?’
Breathe in. Breathe out. In. ‘Not much longer now.’ Out. In. ‘Will you look for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Even if I’m not the same?’ he presses. Because that’s a possibility isn’t it? That the person that Senkuu is now is going to— He swallows. 'Even if—’
‘Silly,’ Gen hushes. ‘You’re Senkuu-chan, first and always.’
There are three phases to every experiment, and the third goes like this.
There’s something viscerally satisfying about Gen’s surprised face when he opens the door. Like biting off the spiral of a soft-serve ice cream cone or poking holes into bubble wrap—human nature is just the tiniest bit sick in that sense. All about taking pretty things and mangling them.
Gen looks between the bags under Senkuu’s eyes, the four bottles of Pinot Noir, and the boxes of petrified swallows—the latter two which are nestled in a fire engine red wagon that Senkuu borrowed from Nobu. His arms are still sore from carrying a crate’s worth of wine around Yokohama, and Senkuu has other things to worry about than whether he looks like an idiot dragging a kid’s wagon behind him. Do a onceover in the mirror before you leave the house, go over your flashcards for your speech—rehearsal and self-consciousness get pushed off to the side when your veins are simmering with an anger you’re not sure how to unleash.
(“In order for a lie to be believable, it needs to have roots in a real emotion.” [Asagiri, 2017, pg. 17].)
Senkuu nods in greeting, “Hey, pardon the intrusion and sh*t.” He drops the wagon handle, and it hits the tile floor outside Gen’s apartment with a sharp clang.
Gen grimaces at the sound and gestures towards it. “Ah,” he starts, normally airy voice just the slightest bit wary. “What’s all of this?”
“Stuff for the petrification project.” Senkuu picks up a bottle of wine. There’s a millisecond in which he thinks long and hard about chucking the thing at Gen’s head. They say that anger is illogical, but Senkuu’s head feels remarkably clear.
“Well, yes, I can see that,” Gen tells him, still unmoved from his position in the doorway. “I mean, why are you bringing it here?” He tilts his head to the side, blinks. Wonders, “How did you know where I live?”
He hadn’t. In the six months they’ve known each other, Senkuu’s never set foot in Gen’s apartment. Likely would never even know where it was if wasn’t for the return address he’d snagged off of the cop—Officer Yo was what it said on the shipping label.
Senkuu ignores his second question in favor of addressing the one that’s more easily answered. The fib rolls easily off his tongue, and Senkuu hasn’t always been such a skilled liar—maybe he’s caught it from Gen. Osmosis. “I’m working with alcohol now, Gen. I’m not taking this stuff back to my house.” He grabs the other three bottles, holding them between his fingers. “Even if you’re not old enough to drink, you’re an adult, so it’s best if everything just stays with you.”
“I…that’s fair I suppose,” Gen admits, rubbing the back of his neck. He wavers in the doorway, shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other. “Still, you couldn’t have let me know ahead of time?”
Senkuu tries to smirk, but it winds up feeling more like he’s baring his teeth. “Consider it payback for that Saturday.”
Gen laughs hesitantly. “I don’t—”
For once, Senkuu thinks he sympathizes with Nagisa’s inability to wait for things. The first time he met Gen, he thought he was pretty in the way a stained-glass window is. It’s still true, but Senkuu’s remembered the caveat with stained glass—it looks nice, but it’s f*cking useless if you’re actually trying to see what the world looks like outside. Low-grade transparency.
“Hey, can you take this?” Senkuu shoves the four bottles of Pinot Noir into Gen’s hands. “My arms are getting tired.” Senkuu shoulders his way past him, and Gen does his best to grasp the wine bottles before they fall and break against his hardwood floor.
He lives in a studio style apartment. More furnished than Tsukasa’s place but less flamboyant than Senkuu had been expecting. There’s a daybed pushed up against the window that looks over the city and a Western-style kitchen table on the other side of the room. Good. It makes Senkuu’s job a little easier. He shamelessly strolls into his apartment, eyes naturally getting drawn toward the three purple-colored doors lining each wall. He’s willing to bet that the one in the kitchen is just a pantry, but the other two—
He calls over his shoulder, “Got a closet or mudroom around here? I’m assuming you’re not going to want all my crap lying around.” He makes his way towards the first door on his left. “What’s back here?”
He opens it and is met with an eyeful of Gen’s shirts, pants, shoes, a drawer that looks to be for his nightclothes. Senkuu doesn’t waste time picking around in it. He shuts it and makes his way to the door that’s directly across the entrance to Gen’s apartment. Twists the knob, peers in—just a white and mint-colored bathroom. He closes it and glances over the studio again. Dresser, bookshelf, sofa, TV…
“Senkuu-chan?” he hears Gen wonder, mystified. “Are you all right?”
Why would he keep another dresser at his bedside if he already had one in his closet? What was it that Gen told him about hiding things? The best spot was in plain sight? Senkuu makes a beeline towards the bureau and grabs the handle to the top drawer.
There’s the sound of glass bottles being dropped carelessly against granite countertop, and Gen’s bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor. “Wait, hold up! That’s—”
The drawer slides open smoothly, and Senkuu spends a moment just taking in the sight. It’s nearly empty now, only nineteen or so petrified swallows left. He picks one up and admires it. In a sense, he almost wishes it was just a piece of art, like he’d first assumed it was nearly a year ago. Senkuu sets the bird back inside the drawer and opens the one below it. Packing tape, bubble wrap, and gold envelopes.
Well, f*ck me, Senkuu thinks. He tugs out the mailing labels and finds that they’ve already been prefilled. Skims over the cities and mentally matches them to the areas that yielded the most data points with regards to petrified swallow sightings.
Gen is quiet from where he stands behind him. Senkuu drops the shipping labels back inside the drawer and calmly slides it shut. He gets to his feet and passes by Gen as he wanders into the kitchen area. “Do you have any energy drinks? I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Fridge,” Gen says, voice faded like Senkuu’s favorite pair of jeans.
His fridge has nothing but takeout. Gen tried cooking for Senkuu once. He nearly died after the first bite. Senkuu finds a lone can of Monster on the top shelf and grabs it. Yanks back the tab and leans against the fridge.
He finds Gen’s eyes. “I’m assuming you have questions,” Gen starts.
“Not really,” Senkuu says honestly, “I think I get it. Most of it.” On the kitchen countertop, one of the wine bottles is tipped over on its side from when Gen must’ve rushed over to stop him. Senkuu reaches to set it upright.
“Senkuu-chan?”
Senkuu takes a couple sips of his energy drink, swallows it down in spite of the bile that’s been slowly rising in his throat. “You know, I was honestly content with just believing the reason I wasn’t getting any international data points for petrification sightings was just because your following is localized to Japan,” he confesses. “Probably would still be on that bandwagon if hadn’t run into—what was his name? Yo? Never would’ve guessed what I found him leaving around campus for college students to find.” He slaps the return label down on the counter top. Gen’s eyes flick down to it and then back to Senkuu’s face. Senkuu wonders aloud, “Why would you keep mailing out these things if you’re just offering discounted tickets to people to get them back?”
Gen’s voice is placating even when his face belies just how tense he is. “Senkuu-chan—”
Senkuu’s not finished though. “Last night, I took another look at the cellular and mineral composition of the birds. Compared the swallows I gathered myself to the ones that I got after meeting you.” Senkuu rests his elbows on the countertop. “They’re different. The ones that I got from you are denser—maybe some variation between every few swallows or so, f*ck if I know why. Overall though, they’re significantly stronger than the ones I gathered myself. Makes it harder for the Nital Etch to do its work, I think. Why would they be different though?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Gen doesn’t bother trying to answer. Senkuu continues, “They’re different because they’re from a different source. Last year, before June, petrified swallows were appearing all over the world indiscriminately, which made me think that it was a naturally occurring phenomenon. But looking at the data post-June, everything’s dead, like whatever the petrification source was had disappeared—until we get you onboard, and then birds with new, denser compositions start showing up in Japan and only in Japan.”
Gen watches him, a crease between his brows and lips pressed into a thin line.
Senkuu asks, “How does it work?”
Gen blinks slowly, which translates to a full-body flinch on anyone else. Senkuu appreciates that he doesn’t bother asking him for clarification. “I don’t know,” Gen confesses, tone dull, almost as if he’s no longer fully invested in this conversation, but Senkuu knows better. “There was only ever one person I knew who understood the mechanics.”
Senkuu resists the urge to slam his hands against the counter. “You don’t understand how the petrification process works, but you’re still somehow doing it?” he snaps, bewildered.
Gen does flinch at that, although it’s minute. “What? No, I’m not—these swallows are hold-overs from when you were modifying the M—” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head, lips pursed.
“From when I was what?” Senkuu frowns. “Modifying what?”
He waves him off, pulls out a chair at the kitchen table, and takes a seat. Senkuu wonders if maybe those American TV shows were right about that old cliché of people always arguing in the kitchen. “No, not you—” Gen says warily, eyes tight, “I was thinking of someone else.”
Liar, Senkuu thinks. Gen’s a master at hiding his emotions, but even then, Senkuu can see the tenseness in his shoulders, hear the way his voice catches as he talks. It’s too late—it’s too late for Gen; Senkuu’s gotten too close, and now he’s nothing but a sh*tty open book.
The entire ride back from Yokohama, it felt as if someone had reached into Senkuu’s head and shaken his thoughts around like a snow globe. Facts and theories and wild guesses drifting around like white static until he felt like banging his head against the train’s window. Senkuu’s never understood the appeal of snow globes, but he understands this: Gen’s been leading Senkuu around by the nose for as long as he’s known him.
Here's the catch though—Gen might be a master manipulator, but he penned down his secrets and published them for a quick and easy dime. It’s not a real game unless two people play, and Senkuu’s always been a sore f*cking loser.
“I’m fine not knowing why,” Senkuu tells both himself and Gen. “But I also don’t have a millimeter of interest in researching this anymore. You’re going to have to cancel that lifetime supply of Cola.”
Senkuu tosses his half-finished can into the garbage and proceeds to show himself out. He’s not completely heartless though—he leaves the four bottles of wine on the counter. Gen’s hand darts out and grips his forearm tightly. Senkuu can feel each individual finger pressing into his skin through the coat that he never bothered taking off.
“Senkuu,” he says, voice hard and unyielding. His face has gone pale, like someone’s siphoned all the color out of him. Senkuu can’t remember if Gen’s ever called him by his given name without the honorifics. “You can’t quit. Trust me when I say you’re going to regret it if you do.”
“Why would I regret it?” Senkuu says, tone carefully neutral.
There it is, that moment you get before finalizing a decision that’ll shape the rest of your life—that ‘will you, won’t you’ feeling you get just before you hop a train without knowing where you’re going. Senkuu could brush him off, but instead he waits. Waits because he’s just a dirty liar too, and he does want to know what the purpose of all of this was. If the word “pathetic” had a picture definition, it’d be two liars in a kitchen playing chicken with each other.
The fingers on his arm tense and untense. Do it, Senkuu thinks, take the bait, you sh*tty asshole.
Gen opens and closes his mouth twice before settling on the weakest, most illogical argument, he could’ve made, “You don’t remember it, but you made a promise.”
The thing about hypotheses—you got to test them first.
He looks Gen in the eye and tells him, “If I can’t remember it, then it wasn’t important to begin with.”
Gen’s face starts to crumple at that, like he’s going to cry. Senkuu shakes off his guilt and Gen’s hand. As he walks toward the exit, he can’t hear his own footsteps past the pounding of own his heart. It takes twenty paces to get to Gen’s front door from the kitchen, and it feels like it’s not enough. Curiosity killed the cat, and maybe there’s some truth to that statement. Perhaps there’s a reason why the proverb is so prevalent even today and for why Gen’s keeping secrets; but cats have nine lives and Senkuu’s a man of science.
The chair grates against the floor as Gen pushes himself to his feet. “Senkuu-chan. Wait.”
Senkuu’s steps slow, and he pauses and watches Gen as he kneels in front of the bookshelf that’s just adjacent to his closet. Slender fingers trail over colorful book spines, before settling on a thin paperback. Senkuu waits as Gen quietly skims through the book before tugging a note out from between the pages. Rises to his feet and holds it out to Senkuu. Senkuu moves the take it, hands burning with anticipation and itching to uncover the secret behind the petrification process.
Distantly, he hears Gen’s soft murmur of, “Something Minami-chan managed to smuggle away.”
Senkuu’s fingers close around the note, and it's not the texture Senkuu expected it to be—smooth and inflexible where he had expected paper. His brows furrow, and he flips it over.
There are no formulas, no equations, no words. Senkuu comes to four realizations all within the span of single second.
First realization: It isn’t a note, it’s a Daguerrotype plate.
Second realization: There are twelve people in the picture, and five of them are Gen, Yuzuriha, and Taiju, Ryusui, and—the Yokohama officer?
“Do you remember, Senkuu-chan?”
Third realization: Senkuu doesn’t remember the other eight.
Fourth realization: But he recognizes them.
Senkuu tells Gen, “I don’t.”
>>>2/26/2020, 03:23
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[COMPOSE EMAIL] Nagisa, can I have the keys for the weekend? I moved all of my equipment over to a friend’s house for the time being, and I need my stuff from the lab.
‘Mirai and the rest of the children are asking when you’re going to recover.’ He sits with his back perfectly straight and hands resting on crisscrossed legs. ‘What do we tell them?’
Senkuu leans his back against the wall and plays with the edge of his blanket. He’s practically sweltering underneath it, but it’s effective in hiding his swollen legs and ankles from younger visitors like Mirai.
‘The truth.’ Senkuu peers at him, gauging his reaction. ‘If you keep assuming that kids won’t be able to handle that much, then they’ll just grow up into adults who can’t handle the harder facts of life.’
The poppies and irises are beginning to wilt.
The other boy nods. Readjusts his glasses. ‘Understood.’
>>>2/26/2020, 03:35
>>>From: [emailprotected]
[INBOX] Idiot. Why would you leave your stuff at a friend’s house if you still needed it? I need to get the keys back by Monday, but I’ll drop them off in your… see more
Senkuu sets down his pen, fingers cramping from holding it for so long. A boy wearing a white visor and a deep blue tracksuit stares at his blueprints long and hard, already shaking his head before he’s halfway through it. The girl frowns at it, picking at the ends of her ponytail.
She looks remarkably like Lillian Weinberg.
The boy speaks first, ‘You’re insane.’
Senkuu needs to take a deep breath before responding, chest tight. ‘Thank you.’
‘This is insane.’
He nods tersely. Breathes in. ‘Thank you.’
The girl-who-isn’t-Lillian-Weinberg looks at him, exasperated. ‘That isn’t a compliment, Senkuu!’
Senkuu wets his lips and taps the blueprint with the butt of his pen—
Pen?
No, that’s not—
He clears his throat in an attempt to distract from the tightness in his chest. ‘No one ever said saving the world was going to be easy, you know.’
The other boy grimaces, and Senkuu realizes he has no idea what their names are. ‘Well, no, of course not. But…but still—is this really the only way?’
‘If we’re going to save everyone? Yeah. Our one option is this.’
‘It’s risky,’ says the girl, because even without a deep understanding of science, that much is clear. ‘In more ways than one.’
‘Hey. I meant it you know, when—’ Senkuu’s vision blurs, and for a split second, he swears the other boy is wearing headband made of knotted rope instead of a visor. Not a tracksuit but a blue tunic and linen pants. He coughs, wheezes, and tries to suck in another breath. ‘When I said’—he suppresses the next cough, inhale, exhale. ‘S-said I wouldn’t—’
He can’t suppress the next cough. Senkuu crumples in on himself. Coughs and coughs until even those turn into wheezes because he can’t—
He needs to breathe in—
Senkuu desperately sucks in a breath and chokes on it.
He tastes iron and feels the boy press his hand into his back.
The girl’s head whips toward the door to Senkuu’s apartment—
No. Not an apartment, it’s a—
She yells, ‘Kinrou, Taiju! Someone get Jasper! Senkuu is—’
His final thought before his eyes open: Oh. Right.
They were named after amber and chromite.
>>>2/27/2020, 04:16
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[COMPOSE EMAIL] Thanks.
>>>2/27/2020, 04:27
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[INBOX] What the heck? Put the phone away and go to sleep already, Senkuu.
Senkuu takes the calloused, wrinkled hand that’s resting on his as an indicator for who’s standing vigil tonight.
They leave the room dark, save for a single lamp that casts shadows against the other’s face, making him look drawn out and even older than he already is.
‘Hey,’ Senkuu breathes out, ragged and nearly indiscernible—the others keep telling him to save his breath, but these days, he feels short of breath even just lying down—'old man, is everyone else asleep?’
He starts, evidently not having realized that Senkuu was still awake and casts a glance toward the hut’s other two occupants. The ones who will take Kaseki’s place when it’s his turn to rest.
Fossil—that’s what he was named for: Kaseki.
‘They’re asleep,’ Kaseki confirms, voice low and rumbling. ‘Did you need me to wake them?’
‘No,’ Senkuu’s quick to answer. He wets his lips. ‘I have a favor to ask. From you.’
Kaseki straightens, broad shoulder’s set as if to prepare himself for whatever Senkuu throws at him. ‘Tell me what you need.’
Senkuu’s eyelids are heavy, and it’s a fight to keep them open. He wonders how everyone else can stand to stay awake at his bedside like this.
‘A record. Like the one my old man left behind.’
I need it for my will, is what Senkuu doesn’t say. Doesn’t need to say.
Silence settles over them like freshly fallen snow, and Kaseki looks at Senkuu as if he’s the one in pain.
Maybe he is in pain, being an old man himself and having to witness the death of someone who isn’t even old enough to legally drink by the modern age’s standards.
Well. There’s a reason Senkuu checked to make sure the others were asleep.
Kaseki nods, a slow, shallow movement. He blinks, and Senkuu can see his throat bob with the effort it takes to swallow. “I’ll have it for you by tomorrow,” he says, voice thick and heavy like he’s speaking around a lump in his throat.
When sleep comes to pull him under, Senkuu doesn’t fight it.
This is the lab on a Saturday: empty, save for Senkuu, a box of petrified birds, and fourteen bottles of wine that he's transferred into less incriminating containers. Dead without Nagisa and Nobu’s idle chatter or Kazuya’s music. It should be blessing, instead, the stillness of it all leaves nothing for Senkuu to focus besides the numbness in his fingertips and the way every tick of the analog clock echoes throughout the room. The air tastes stale.
In the days following his confrontation with Gen, Senkuu takes to skipping his morning doses in favor of dry swallowing ibuprofen tablets. It partially alleviates the headaches. It doesn’t do sh*t to calm his nerves.
He sets one petrified swallow aside in favor of another and draws a line through the words: 85% nitric acid:15% alcohol.
Tick, tock, tick…
Senkuu brings the beaker up to eye-level to check the remaining volume of solution and re-calculates. The bottle of Welch’s grape juice clearly smells of wine and the coloring is off, but so long as whichever school faculty members that happen to be working on the weekend don’t stop by to check in on him, no one will notice know the difference. Senkuu uncaps the bottle and adds 1.25 ml of wine and 3 ml of nitric acid to the already half-filled beaker.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
The swallows’ wings scrape against each other whenever he pulls them out of the box. Senkuu doesn’t have misophonia—can’t given the fact that he’s friends with Taiju and regularly shares a workspace with Kazuya after school—but he can’t help but grit his teeth at the sound.
Tick, tock, tick…
He sets the bird down on the desk with a little more force than necessary and pours the 86% concentration over it.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…
No. Next.
His fingers feel numb. His hands move like he’s just spectator of his own body. Senkuu opens and closes them to try to relax the muscles. Rubs at old scar tissue on his chest even though he knows it won’t do anything to reduce the tightness.
Tick, tock…
He goes through the ritual of checking how much solution he has left and calculating how much nitric acid to add. Three and five-tenths ml for an 87:13 ratio of nitric acid and alcohol. He grabs a bird quickly in hopes that it’ll make the noise a little less grating.
It doesn’t.
He pours the modified solution onto the next swallow. Observe, hypothesize, test.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…
Repeat.
Four ml of nitric acid to increase the concentration to 88%. Take another swallow. Pour. Watch.
Cross out the ratio. Next—
‘So that’s what it feels like to be petrified!’
He lashes out. The beaker shatters against the wall, wine and nitric acid splattering everywhere and leaving a mess on the floor. Senkuu buries his fingers in his hair and swallows down the bile. Digs the heel of his palms into his eyes to shut out the onslaught of images—images of hot air balloons and ships and bats and little girls wearing green melons on their heads—
A strained, sputtered sound that’s halfway between a laugh and sob bubbles out of his throat at that last image. His breath hitches.
Tells himself: In through your nose, out through your mouth.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…
You’re being illogical, he recites. Try again. Senkuu straightens his shoulders and breaths in slow, focusing on the feeling of his lungs expanding. He suppresses the urge to cough and wipes away the sweat that’s been beading at his forehead for the past few hours.
The ibuprofen isn’t doing sh*t for his head.
‘Suffering? No, not at all! I was completely relaxed and at ease. Because I knew that you definitely would bring us all back with science.’
Senkuu has to swallow his breakfast down again.
He grabs a new beaker and starts from scratch. Mixes wine and nitric acid to get an 89% concentration and pours it over the next bird. He coughs to try and alleviate the tightness in his chest.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—
The stone cracks.
‘97,470,326,870...97,470,326,871...97,470,326,872...97,470,326,873...’
Pain blooms in his chest—sudden, throbbing, and demanding all at once. The container of nitric acid tumbles out of Senkuu’s grip and his knees buckle. Leans over until his sweat-slicked forehead is pressed up against the table. His chest— Senkuu digs his blunt nails into the skin of his chest through his shirt. He opens his mouth, greedily gasping for air, and forces himself to breathe in—
‘115,201,439,023...115,201,439,024...115,201,439,025...115,201,439,026...'
Senkuu chokes on his breath and regrets it immediately. He keens and something catches in his throat—warm and wet. He gags before he coughs, pink-colored phlegm spilling past his lips. Coughs again after another failed attempt to suck in air. His eyes burn, and the distant, logical part of his brain recognizes this for what it is.
The edges of his vision begin to grow hazy. He fights to suppress the coughing—tries to hold it off just long enough to draw in a breath and his shoulders shake from the effort, but it doesn’t—
“We thought you’d be h—Senkuu!”
Hands grip his shoulders and manhandle him so Senkuu’s no longer keeling against the table but resting against the lab’s supply cabinet. The metal is cool against his back, and the change in position makes Senkuu’s chest throb and burn. He hadn’t heard the door open.
‘I’m going to use the power of science to rescue every single person.’
‘We’re going to build our kingdom of science.’
Tsukasa is a little more than a blur in Senkuu’s field of vision. He wheezes, no longer having enough air in his lungs to cough. He reaches one shaky hand up to grip Tsukasa’s wrist and clamps his mouth closed to try and breathe through his nose. It’s only marginally better.
The corner of his brain that is still able to focus on anything beyond the need to breathe distantly recognizes the panicked voices and rush of footsteps as Tsukasa looks over his shoulder and yells for help. “—uriha, call for an ambulance!”
Senkuu hacks up even more phlegm and the force of his coughing makes his eyes water to the point that he can no longer make out Tsukasa’s features. Someone—Taiju—Senkuu confirms, when his vision clears slightly—drops to his knees in front of him. Fingers press into his neck, and Senkuu’s eyes begin to droop in spite of Tsukasa’s and Taiju’s best attempts to keep him alert.
Senkuu draws in one thready breath after another as the corners of his vision begin to turn black. Someone pulls him forward, jerking him into a more upright position, and it jars him enough that a whimper escapes past his lips.
‘I know how to save all of humanity. I’m leaving you with the most challenging invention of all.’
His friends are trying to tell him something, but Senkuu’s too far gone to catch it now.
Before his eyes finally shut, he meets Taiju and Yuzuriha’s horrified gazes and realizes—eight months too late: Ah. That’s why you two were crying.
'It's not going to be easy, but if you guys can pull it off, we'll save everyone—ten billion percent.'
If someone wanted to, they could measure the first few years of Senkuu’s life in empty pill bottles and doctor’s appointments. Senkuu was seven when he learned that hospitals aren’t nearly as cold or odorous as fiction makes them out to be, and heart monitors don’t beep unless your BPM either gets too high or too low. He’s no stranger to the ICU but waking up in a different change of clothes with your vitals displayed on a monitor will always be disorienting. Even more so now that Senkuu remembers living in a world where he had to reinvent doxycycline.
The cannula wraps uncomfortably below his chin, and Senkuu reaches up to adjust it, careful not to displace the pulse oximeter on his index finger.
The figure who’d been curled up and so still in the corner armchair shifts. “Senkuu-chan?”
Senkuu turns, blinking lethargically. “Gen,” he begins—then stops because his voice is both raspy from how much he had been coughing and wet from leftover phlegm still sitting in his throat. He coughs lightly, and some of the congestion clears. Senkuu doesn’t bother asking for water—they won’t be able to give him anything before his bedside swallow exam, so he makes do with swallowing down his own saliva. The probability of never having to set foot in a hospital again is zero, but somedays, even Senkuu likes to imagine it. “How did we get here?”
Gen’s rolled his chair closer, knees drawn up. His clothes are rumpled, and his hair is greasy like he didn’t get the chance to shower before rushing over. He looks drained, and when he speaks, there’s no hiding the weary note to his voice. “I mentioned our fight to Taiju, Yuzuriha, and Tsukasa,” Gen starts, lips set in an unhappy smile. “It appears they’d been planning on staging some sort of intervention for the both us. They tried your house, but you weren’t there.” Gen taps his fingers against the armchair, hesitating. “They didn’t think to check the school lab until later because I’d told them you’d given up on the petrification project. When they did find you, you were in the middle of an attack, and Yuzuriha-chan had to call an ambulance—”
Senkuu waves Gen off before he can go even further down that tangent. “No,” he clarifies, “I mean, how did we get back to the modern age?”
Gen gazes at him with wide eyes, knees still drawn up to his chin. “You remember,” he breathes.
Senkuu reaches out blindly for the bed’s control panel and raises the head of it up so that he’s semi-reclined. His head feels like an over-stuffed suitcase. “I remember counting,” he hears himself say, looking down at the pulse oximeter with glazed eyes. “I remember when Tsukasa wasn’t my friend. I remember Ishigami village. I remember Chrome, Ryusui, Ukyo”—His eyes refocus, and he looks at Gen—“I remember you. I don’t remember how we got here.”
“You got us here,” Gen supplies, voice frank and without a millimeter of deceit.
He stares unblinkingly at Senkuu like he’s afraid this is all just a dream or some sick, desperate trick of the mind. It takes a single second for Senkuu’s brain to fill in the gaps. He watches as the numbers on his heart monitor slowly begin to climb.
“You’re joking.” Senkuu’s head swims, feeling too light and too heavy all at once. Because really, there’s only one explanation for how they’ve fully rewound 3,700 years.
They built a time machine.
Unbidden, the faces of Chrome, Kohaku, Kaseki, Suika, Kinrou, and Ginrou come to mind, and now the heart monitor is beeping—informing his attending nurse or whoever happens to be at the nurse’s station that his heart rate is getting too high. “And you used it? Why? Why would you—Why would I—”
Gen touches his wrist and speaks urgently, “Senkuu-chan. The nurse will kick me out if she thinks there's a risk of me accidentally triggering another attack.” He tightens his hold. “I know it’s difficult—even for some as normally composed as you—but you need to calm down and breathe.”
He does. Senkuu breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. Forces a calm onto himself that doesn’t feel real. Thinks about Ishigami village and the generations that won’t exist now that—
“Senkuu-chan,” Gen warns.
Senkuu rests his head back against the pillows and counts the duration of each inhale and exhale. Does it until the heart monitor goes quiet again.
He hates this.
Senkuu swallows, stomach leaden. He thinks of Ryusui, Tsukasa, Yuzuriha, Taiju—even f*cking Yo of all people—and demands, “Why am I the only one who didn’t remember anything?”
He glances over at Gen, but he isn’t looking at him. Not really. The mentalist’s eyes are directed toward Senkuu, but there’s a far-away sheen to them. For a second, Senkuu wonders if Gen hadn’t heard him.
He’s about to repeat the question again when Gen finally responds: “Because you died, Senkuu-chan.”
Time trickles to a halt. Gen wraps his cardigan more tightly around himself even though the room isn’t the slightest bit cold. “Four years,” he starts, barely more than a whisper. “For four years, you were dying right in front of us, and it took us about three to realize it.”
If Senkuu hadn’t already been modulating his breathing, the heart monitor would’ve begun beeping again. His ears feel as if they’ve been clogged up with cotton.
“The day we found out was the day you couldn’t leave your bed anymore,” Gen says, talking as if he’s relaying the weather, and in a way, maybe it makes everything easier to take in. “We tried a lot of different things—Minami-chan traveled by foot around Japan searching for a doctor who could help. We tried duplicating the medications you were taking, but either they weren’t strong enough or you needed surgery.” Something bitter flickers across Gen’s face. “We tried petrifying you too, but even that was ineffective—there’s no changing your genetic code evidently.”
Senkuu thinks of the day Tsukasa killed him. Thinks of Taiju and Yuzuriha bringing him back to life after that and the first flickers of hope at the thought that the petrification had maybe healed even more than a snapped vertebra. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth.
Senkuu would kill for a glass of water.
Gen continues, still with that far-off look and unaware of the thoughts racing through Senkuu’s head. “Through it all, you were still so set on saving humanity, and you decided that we’d all work together to create the most ambitious invention of all.” Gen tilts his head to the side and a small, private smile softens his face. Gen’s eyes refocus on the present, and his shoulders drop with released tension that Senkuu hadn’t noticed before. “You did it, you know. You saved everyone like you said you would, Senkuu-chan.”
Senku’s pissed but he grins anyway, and maybe that’s real reason why his old math teacher hated his smile so much—always grinning at the wrong time. “At the cost of Ishigami village?” he asks, incredulous. Bitter. The words taste bitter. “That statement in itself is illogical. The fact that Chrome, Kohaku, Kaseki, Ruri, Suika—the fact that they’re all dead is proof in and of itself that I didn’t save everyone—”
“They’re here, Senkuu-chan.”
Senkuu barks out a laugh, disbelieving. His lips pull into a frustrated grimace. “If they were,” he says, forcing the words out around the lump in his throat, “I’m ten billion percent sure they’d be here in this room right now.”
“You were angry at me before—you thought that I was the one petrifying the swallows, but it wasn’t me.” Gen purses his lips and gives Senkuu a considering look. “You were the one who petrified them—3,700 or so years in the future.”
Senkuu’s breath hitches.
Wait.
Hang on.
He clasps the bed’s handrailing, neurons firing. “The swallows you had were more durable,” he mumbles to himself. “The miracle fluid that we were using, 70% nitric acid, 30% alcohol, it wasn’t strong enough to revive them”—he huffs out a laugh—“I already tried that ratio weeks ago.” The grin threatens the split his face. He presses a hand to his forehead, memories trickling back like a dam on the verge of breaking. “I was experimenting with petrification. I made it so that the stone wouldn’t erode as easily. I did that on purpose.”
The puzzle pieces are finally starting to slot into place.
‘Will it be scary, Senkuu?’
‘…No. But it’ll be dark.’
Gen nods. “The way the time machine worked—it had a bit of a kickback.” He gives Senkuu a look that’s both a little fond and a bit irritated. Come to think of it, he looks at Senkuu like that a lot. “You explained it a bit like this: we weren’t traveling through time as separate entities of ourselves, we were merging with the timeline from the day the petrification occurred—”
“June 3rd.”
‘Will it hurt, Senkuu-kun?’
‘Like a bitch, but it’ll be worth it.’
Gen grins, the victorious glimmer in his eyes matching Senkuu’s own. Senkuu’s mind races, pulling up every scrap of information he’s ever read or heard about related to time travel and—
“Your cellular integrity would break down though, once the merge started,” Senkuu states, realization dawning, “and you’d all be reintegrated into your bodies from this timeline. But the latent action potentials of your heart and brain, the electric activity your own body produces naturally—that stuff would carry over.” Senkuu looks at Gen’s features, taking in the lack of a scar and white hair. “It's why this timeline's Mirai is all right. It’s why there’s only one of you here instead of two, but you still remember the stone age. I’ll bet anything the rest of the modern-day people who we revived are all in the same boat.” His breath hitches, and he wonders if the Senkuu from 5738 AD was a madman. “Of course, then—there’s no way the Ishigami villagers would survive the kickback.”
Hope rises in his chest, and Senkuu feels the moment the final piece slides into place. Eight months is a long time to be wandering around blind, but it’s got nothing on the 116,680,000,000 seconds of darkness that Senkuu survived through.
Senkuu breathes, “So we petrified them.”
The look Gen’s giving him now makes Senkuu think of the day the village gifted him an observatory. Reminds him of the night Gen confessed that he’d been on Senkuu’s side before he had ever even met him. That bottomless well of faith that always seem to be directed toward Senkuu.
“Exactly,” Gen softly affirms—even though it’s not needed because after eight long months, Senkuu’s finally completed the puzzle. The resulting picture is beautiful. “You modified the Medusa, but you weren’t able to finish the cure before—” He stops, restarts. “It’s why I brought the petrified swallows back with me.”
“So I could experiment on them,” Senkuu’s brain supplies. “So I’d find the cure in this life even if I didn’t remember anything from stone world.” He laughs, equal parts impressed by Gen’s schemes and irritated that it worked so well. “And I played right into it!”
Damn. He has to hand it to Gen—the mentalist wasn’t lying when he told him that he could keep a secret.
Senkuu grins, ignoring the way the cannula presses against his cheeks. For once, his chest swells with something other than pain. He tells Gen the words he must have waiting to hear for the past eight months:
“Eighty-nine percent nitric acid. Eleven percent alcohol.”
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist – 2h
Thank you to everyone who participated in the stoned bird challenge! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ Unfortunately the challenge has come to a close, but @real-shishiotsukasa and I both enjoyed meeting you all~~ ( ˘ ³˘)♥
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 2h
@real-mentalist So it’s done then?
Butterfeet @ butterfeet1 – 1h
@captain-of-this-ship wtf do you think dumbass?
Miyuki Hana @ tea-addict – 45m
@butterfeet1 Dude cant read
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 39m
@real-mentalist I hope you realize just how f*cking toxic your fandom is.
Asagiri Gen @ real-mentalist – 37m
@captain-of-this-ship Awww lol! Let me make it up to you Ryusui-chan<3 6pm Friday, I’ve got enough wine for 40+~~~
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 32m
@real-mentalist HA! You’re on! I’ll make sure to bring our old friends!!
Miyuki Hana @ tea-addict – 27m
@real-mentalist I really hope that was a typo???
Nanananananami @ captain-of-this-ship – 16m
@tea-addict HAAA!!!! NoW loOK wHO CANt f*ckING REaD?!!??
>>>3/3/2020, 13:20
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[COMPOSE EMAIL] Not dead yet. I had an attack, but the MDs think I’ll be all right so long as I stay on track with my meds. There’s a slight possibility of needing heart surgery again in the future though, so cardio and pulm are going to f/u with me in a few months
>>>3/3/2020, 13:21
>>>To: [emailprotected]
[COMPOSE EMAIL] When can you skype? I feel like it’s a been while since I saw that sh*tty beard of yours.
The days following discharge are always a little turbulent. Senkuu walks out of the hospital feeling exposed and hollowed out each and every time, and even though he’s spent days doing nothing but rest, all he wants is to go home and crawl into his bed. This coupled with the fact that Senkuu’s head is still reeling a bit from trying to suddenly accommodate 3,700 years’ worth of memories are why he draws up short when he spots Gen’s Camry pulled up outside the hospital. Senkuu picks out Tsukasa’s profile in the passenger window.
The probability of resting drops to zero.
Taiju opens the back door and stands up. “Senkuu!” he calls, waving as if Senkuu could possibly miss him. “Senkuu! Get in, Gen’s driving!”
Senkuu raises an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be an incentive?”
Even with the front window rolled up, he hears Gen’s muffled whine. “So mean, Senkuu-chan!”
Taiju steps to the side and opens the door wider for Senkuu as he approaches. Yuzuriha’s already seated on the left side of the car so Senkuu clambers into the middle seat, and Taiju slides in after him. Gen’s car is tiny because he’s too chicken to upgrade to a bigger one, and Yuzuriha’s and Taiju’s legs press into his on either side. Even positioned in the passenger’s seat, Tsukasa looks cramped.
It’s not the first time Senkuu’s seen all of them since he’d gotten his memories back. They’d all frequented his hospital room to see how he was doing, as well as to drop off a spare change of clothes so he wouldn’t have to discharge in his previously worn sweatshirt and jeans. It’s different though—almost like Senkuu had been looking at all of them through a grimy window until now.
There’s a pang in his chest.
The stone world—
From the day of he had an attack all the way up to the day of his discharge, Senkuu’s mind couldn’t stop racing with images of the stone world. Of Ishigami village. Of his observatory. Of the kingdom of science. He didn’t attempt to suppress them either. Simply let them play out in his mind’s eye even when the weight of it all threatened to shatter his mind beyond repair. Stayed awake staring at the ceiling and savoring the memories as if they’d evaporate into mist the moment he stopped focusing on them. Clung to them the way he held onto his consciousness for nearly four millennia.
Well.
Maybe that’s why he’s so damn tired.
Senkuu buckles in and can’t hide the tired lilt to his voice when he asks, “All right. So where are you people taking me?”
The look on Gen’s face makes Senkuu think of the day they blindfolded him and lead him into believing that they were surrendering him up into Tsukasa, only to turn around and gift him with an entire observatory.
Gen turns the key and starts the engine, singsongs, “You’ll find out when we get there, won’t you?”
“If we all make it there in one piece,” Tsukasa blandly notes. He’s got one hand wrapped around the seatbelt like a lifeline, and Senkuu deduces that wherever they’re going must be far enough of a journey for Tsukasa to resort to hopping in a car with Gen instead of going by foot, which may or may not be the safer option between the two.
“Senkuu-kun just got out the hospital, Gen-kun,” smiles Yuzuriha—all rosy cheeks and round, terrifying eyes. “Please don’t make it a repeat admission.”
Gen wrinkles his nose at them, evidently only just realizing that he’s trapped himself in a car with four other people who have nothing better to do than mess with him. “I should kick you all out right now,” he grouses.
He doesn’t. They pull out of the hospital parking lot, and Senkuu watches as the scenery shifts from skyscrapers and brick and mortar buildings to grassy fields. For all their ribbing, Gen smoothly navigates the roads even as they become less maintained, hands steady on the wheel. Radio music and easy chatter fill the car, a pleasant sort of chaotic that makes Senkuu think of the science club on a Friday, but no matter how hard he tries, Senkuu’s eyelids keep drifting shut.
He forces his eyes open for the ninth time, catches himself almost lolling against Taiju, and Gen’s eyes meet his in the review mirror. “Take a nap, Senkuu-chan,” he suggests. “We’ve got about an hour more to go.”
Senkuu spent 3,700 years resisting the pull of sleep. Resisting the dark, the oblivion. Staying awake one more hour is child’s play in comparison. He mentions this to Gen, blinking blearily, and missing the sad smiles that cross his friends’ faces.
Taiju firmly but gently shuts him down. “There’s nothing to gain from forcing yourself to stay awake here,” he says.
Senkuu rubs the sleep out of his eyes and explains, “Might forget if I do.”
Taiju’s brows wrinkle in confusion, and he frowns down at Senkuu. “Forget—oh.”
“You won’t forget, Senkuu-kun,” Yuzuriha is quick to say.
He swallows, shakes the cobwebs out of his head. “You can’t know that for sure though,” Senkuu argues. Tsukasa watches him out of the corner of his eye, and exhaustion picks at Senkuu’s already fraying mental state. “I’ll forget, and you’ll leave when you realize how pointless it is to stick around me when I can’t remember—”
“Senkuu-chan,” Gen calmly, patiently cuts in, easy tone contrasting the way his knuckles turn white from how he grips the steering wheel. From the backseat, Senkuu can pick out the way his jaw sets. “You’re not the type to make such bold statements without any evidence.”
The music station switches to a commercial, and Tsukasa turns it off. The ensuing quiet only makes sleep even more appealing. Senkuu pinches his own thigh to force himself awake. “It’s illogical to stick around for someone who can’t reme—”
Gen is determined to keep him from finishing his sentences today. “We’ve been chasing after you for the past four and a half years, you know,” he says. “We each promised you—at one point or another—that we wouldn’t let you die.” The air in the car turns stifling, and it’s only then that Senkuu realizes that Taiju and Yuzuriha are trying—unsuccessfully—to blink back tears. “So,” Gen quietly continues. “In payment for making us break our promise—you need to accept that you’re stuck with us now.”
Senkuu stares at the passing scenery and thinks of poppies and irises. Thinks of the bags that grew under Chrome’s eyes from too many sleepless nights trying to develop a cure for him. Thinks of the defeated slope of Minami’s shoulders when she found a top-tier heart surgeon who had already corroded too much to be saved.
Even if the memories are bitter, Senkuu doesn’t want to lose them. Even if they trick him into thinking his friends are going to kill him, and the memories of dying—twice—make his heart pound faster, he doesn’t want to lose them.
So illogical.
Yuzuriha touches back, a consoling presence. Senkuu blinks and realizes he’d nearly fallen asleep slumped forward against his knees.
“We’ll wake you up when we get there,” Tsukasa promises. “Go to sleep.”
Yuzuriha and Taiju are warm beside him.
Falling asleep is a smooth, gradual process. Tendrils of sleep pulling at his consciousness so softly, he hardly notices them. Senkuu doesn’t feel the moment he falls asleep, but he does feel gentle hands guiding him to rest against someone’s shoulder.
“Rest well,” he hears someone murmur, voice wet and ragged with emotion that Senkuu’s too tired to identify. “You’ve worked hard.”
‘Is it enough? Am I leaving behind enough? Chrome—where is he? I need to—'
Hand on his forehead, a gentle voice quieting him. ‘It is, I promise. We’ll take it from here. Chrome, Tsukasa, Ryusui, and everyone else—we’ll finish what you’ve started...
...
The things you’ve done here weren’t a waste.’
They weren’t moving anymore. It takes a second to place the significance of that. The radio’s turned off, but it still takes a few moments for Senkuu’s ears to wake up and recognize that people are speaking.
“…discharged just this morning.”
“Maybe let’s let him sleep a bit longer?” Yuzuriha, his subconscious supplies.
“I don’t have a problem with waiting around a bit,” someone says. It takes a beat for Senkuu to place the voice. “We have guestrooms though—that might be more comfortable for Senkuu.”
“I can carry him,” Tsukasa offers.
Like hell you will, Senkuu thinks. He inhales deeply through his nose, taking the sudden turn in conversation as a cue to start moving. His cheek is still pressed against Taiju’s shoulder, and he straightens. Cracks open one eye and has to squint against the last bits of sunlight filtering through the car window. “No one’s carrying anyone here,” Senkuu slurs slightly, lips pulled down into a lethargic frown.
He takes in the view through the opened door. They’re parked on a long, winding driveway leading to a Western-inspired manor. Arched windows line the façade of the home, and Nanami Ryusui leans against the opened car door on Taiju’s side, hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks. Senkuu rubs the corner of his eyes.
Modern-day Ryusui dresses like an extra on Devil Wears Prada, he notes absent-mindedly.
“Figures you’d wake up to that,” Ryusui drawls. He extends a hand, and Senkuu reaches to clasp it. Ryusui’s grin can only be described as sh*t-eating. “Good to see you managed to smuggle the wine back to Tokyo all right.”
Yuzuriha huffs a laugh. She unbuckles her seatbelt and clambers out of the car. Tsukasa follows suit, stretching out his arms and legs. Senkuu can hear his knees pop. Tsukasa wasn’t designed to fit in a Toyota Camry.
Senkuu scowls, dropping Ryusui’s hand and making a point to wipe his palm on his jeans. “You ass. You seriously dropped 40,000 yen just to make things difficult.”
“I’ll be honest,” Ryusui muses, scratching his neck, “as I was watching you leave, I thought you were going to keel over. Though speaking of wine—” He looks to Gen who’s been leaning forward, arms draped on top the of the steering wheel, listening to their bickering with his own Cheshire cat smile. “You guys have the modified miracle fluid, right?”
At that, Senkuu’s head jerks toward Gen, heart stuttering. So, Senkuu thinks, that’s where they’ve been placed for safekeeping. Between his hospitalization and trying to organize all the fragments of his memory (with only marginal success), Senkuu hadn’t gotten the chance to ponder where they’d been stowed away all this time. A grin fights its way onto his face—Senkuu couldn’t suppress it even if he wanted to.
Gen reaches down to pop the lever to the trunk, and Taiju slips out of the car to open it all the way.
“A hiding spot no one would question,” Senkuu cackles. “No one would think twice about Nanami Ryusui suddenly acquiring a bunch of stone statues, would they?”
Taiju balances four stainless steel containers in his arms, and Tsukasa grabs the remaining four. Senkuu slides out and walks over to them on legs that are still stiff from sleep. He opens one of the pots and stares.
“Eighty-nine percent nitric acid to eleven percent alcohol,” Tsukasa recites.
It’s the last batch of miracle fluid that they’ll ever need to make. It’s a milestone, and the only ones who’ll ever know just how significant of a milestone it is are the one hundred and forty individuals who remember the stone age. Mourning the loss of something you spent years trying to surmount is illogical, but then, maybe that’s part of reaching the journey’s end.
(Maybe it’s okay to mourn it, just a little.)
Senkuu thinks of the treehouse that he’d built with his own hands.
Thinks of flower fields he’d taken Suika to after making her glasses.
Thinks of the billions of seconds he spent in the dark, counting.
Enter Ishigami village: the home that Byakuya left behind for Senkuu 3,700 years in the future.
Ryusui nods toward the estate. “They’re all in there,” he promises, eyes bright. “We’ve been waiting on you.”
Senkuu stares up the Nanami manor. The words echo in his head, and he repeats to himself, They’re in there. He does the math.
“Senkuu-chan?” Gen says, stepping up beside him. “Do you need to rest first?”
Senkuu’s shoulders relax, and he takes in the sight of estate. The final stretch. “No. They’ve been waiting patiently in the dark for the past 24,019,349 seconds,” Senkuu determines. “It’s time to welcome them to the modern age. I made a promise after all.”
Senkuu remembers the stars from 5738 AD and thinks: I’ll see them again soon.
‘I'll wake you all up, I promise. I won't leave you guys to die alone.’
