"Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them." – Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls
Author's Note: This story is a rewrite of my original story, Exquisite Desire, that I reposted on Ao3 under the same name. I have noticed people are still reading the old one and I wanted to share the new version, which I feel is better. I hope you enjoy it.
The City That Never Sleeps.
It was the title made famous in song for the city of New York by a crooning melody. Those who heard it felt a sense of nostalgia for New York, even those who had never set foot in it. It gave New York City a sense of otherworldliness and, in a way, it did have an otherworldliness. But it wasn't the only city that didn't sleep. In fact, in a list of cities that didn't sleep, it was lower on his list. Then again, he knew the times when people spent safe in their beds better than most. He did like New York, but Tokyo was different. Not only did Tokyo not sleep, but it didn't rest. It didn't settle down when the sun set. The sunshine people didn't give way to the nighttime people as it did in New York. Tokyo simply never stopped.
He squatted down outside of a Family Mart with a group of men who he wasn't part of, but allowed him to stand near them as they ate their container of chicken and drank their cans of Strong Zero and smoked their cigarettes. He didn't like the smell, but didn't stop them. Japanese cigarettes had a menthol smell to them that other countries cigarettes lacked. It made it smell better than clove cigarettes at least.
He stood out badly, his skin pale, his hairs pale, his eyes pale. Not as much as he had many years ago when he had first come to visit this country. It had been impossible to not be noticed then, but now he was just another foreign tourist and, in Tokyo, most didn't give him a second glance. He watched a group of Salary Men walk up the street, already a little drunk from their first round and walking into an Izakaya with their bosses, laughing jovially with one another.
There was no growling in his stomach to indicate that he was hungry, but instead the dull ache of hunger began to grow. He would need to make a decision soon. A decision, or nothing at all. And he hated nothing.
Nothing had been what he had received when he stepped off the plane at Narita. He had chosen Narita because he liked to ride the train and watch the farms fly by and the little compact houses that all looked the same and completely unique at the same time. Small places where magic might linger. But he had received nothing when he arrived. And he should have. He had stepped out of customs into a bustling madness of foreigners bumbling around stupidly with no care that they were in the way and natives who dragged their belongings through them desperate to get out of the airport and into their own beds. Perhaps it was too early to have received a greeting, he had decided and descended out of the madness and into the bowels of the airport to the waiting express trains. It had not been too early when he had stepped off the train at the noisy maze of Shibuya Station and it had not been too early when he had walked the streets to the tall building that contained his mansion. It had not been too early when he walked nearly to Harajuku to stock his empty mansion with nourishment.
It had not been too early and he had received nothing.
A young man walked out of the convenience store with a small bag weighed down in his hand. It smelled of azuki beans and sugar and rice and seaweed and chicken. His expression was empty as he paused outside the door that swished shut behind him, but he stepped almost automatically to the side and out of the way of anyone who wanted to enter or leave. His expression was empty, but his eyes were deep and haunted by emotions. Finally, he moved forward like a robot and began to leave the store behind. Attention caught, the foreigner stood and followed after him.
He would not receive nothing. He deserved everything.
Itachi became suddenly aware of his breathing – or lack thereof – which caused him to inhale deeply and let it out slowly. The tightness in his chest seemed to ease a little, but also left behind a sense of loss as though his lack of deep breathing had been what was keeping the sadness away and he was now raw to it. The night was noisy, but it was so much a part of his life that it was more common than the rustle of wind in the trees to him and no more significant. He wasn't entirely sure where to go. For many years he had snuck out of the rooms he shared with others to the kitchen or back yard, but this year he had moved into a small apartment that stank of years of people living poorly in it that he wanted to find something beautiful that he liked.
It took him a long while to find it, though he hadn't really been looking. His feet had found it for him. A small park of green with a small bit of water running joyfully over rocks. He sat down on a stone bench in front of the water, then, changing his mind, slid off the bench onto the stone pathway that bordered the water. It was perfect.
Reaching into the conbini bag, he pulled out his purchase and laid them out like a little picnic. He opened the container of dango and turned the lid upside down on the ground, using it as a makeshift plate for the onigiri he carefully unwrapped and place there. He set a small carton of strawberry milk next to the onigiri and a bottle of green tea by the dango and set the chicken between the two places to share. Finally, he took from his pocket a small toy soccer ball keychain from a gatcha machine and set it down next to the onigiri. And then he began to speak.
Not out loud. No, that was a little too strange. Itachi had decided a long time ago that psychiatrists said a lot of pointless things, but also gave a few pieces of good advice. It still felt stupid, but, he would note to himself when he felt foolish, he had remained sane. Perhaps this had been a piece of good advice. He was nearly finished his dango and tea, the inner monologue about the events of the year so far had reached his acceptance into a high school, the events of that first year, and moving to a new place for his second year when he felt someone enter the park. He had his back to the rest of the park, but something in the air seemed to change. Something that made him turn around. The hair on the back of his neck had risen.
It was a foreigner. Just a teenager by the look of him, but it was after midnight and Itachi didn't know many foreigners, so perhaps he was older than he looked. His clothes were fresh and clean, but his jacket and boots and soft leather messenger bag seemed as though he had stepped into life wearing them. They looked more a part of the foreign teen than the rest of his clothes.
"Are you waiting for someone?" the foreign teenager asked, looking at the second and untouched meal laid out for another. His Japanese was perfect, but sounded a little strange. Itachi decided it was because it wasn't the type of speech used by young people, but of a generation of grandparents. As if he had learned Japanese from a group of elders.
"No," Itachi replied, and wished instantly that he had said yes. He didn't want the stranger to stay.
"Is someone waiting for you, un?"
It was a strange question, one that made the sadness in his heart both swell and something survival wished to push it aside. Sadness wouldn't help him in this dangerous situation, yet there was nothing dangerous about the situation at all. "Yes," the sadness and the survival.
The teenager looked down at the snack for a child. "Not in this world, though."
"No," murmured the sadness.
The teenager's face split into a grin that big and wild and dangerous. "Want to come have some fun with me?" he asked, rocking back on his heels so his toes lifted off the ground. "Maybe you'll meet them on the way, un."
And he knew that death had come for him.
It took him a little by surprise. He had often wondered how death would approach him. More often than not, he was sure that death would come as suicide when his desire to continually placing one foot in front of the other in his path through life was finally weighed down too heavily by loneliness and sadness that he wouldn't be able to take another step. He would never have guessed that death would come in the form of a foreign teenager with long blond hair and a grin that announced both fun and insanity. There was no mistaking death in his blue eyes though, hungry and wild with murder. Itachi could see that and stood up anyway, looking once more at the place set for a child he loved and said good bye before following death out of the park and back into the city.
"What is your name?" Itachi asked softly as they walked closer to Shibuya Station, to a high-rise apartment building to a lobby and to an elevator.
Death grinned at him, "Deidara," it replied.
