Disclaimer: I disclaim it. I disclaim it all. Including responsibility for my actions.
Chapter 1: Rhyme
"Where's Beat?" Neku asked, meeting his friend at the school gates.
How meaningless for there to be two highs schools just a few blocks away from each other. But that was the reality of the population density of the area. That was Shibuya.
Rhyme shook her head despondently. "Detention."
'Again' was left unsead between them, as Neku raised an eyebrow.
"I'll walk you home." He offered. That was supposed to be Beat's job, but the reality was that the three of them would walk each other home. Four of them on Wednesdays, when Shiki didn't have her club.
Well, the further reality was that Beat had detention every other day, as well.
"Thanks." Rhyme smiled, and it was a dazzling thing.
She was getting pretty, that Rhyme. She had always been cute, of course, Neku thought.
But now she was becoming beautiful and he didn't envy Beat's job of fending boys off of her.
…
Was that the reason for all the detentions? He'd have to ask.
Neku considered the date flashing on his watch briefly. "I have to swing by a place on the way back. Okay?"
Rhyme nodded, being seldom one to impose and never one to rush life.
She was chill like that.
The two companions walked in relative silence to downtown Shibuya, Neku projecting his patented 'leave me alone' aura ™ in order to carve a swath of avoidance through Shibuya's hectic downtown sidewalk.
Well, never be it said that being a recovering emo-kid didn't have its benefits.
"Is this the place?" Rhyme asked, blinking at the posh sign of the store they had stopped at.
"Yeah." Neku nodded. Seeing her curious look, he just shrugged. "It's a whole thing."
"You again?" The smartly dressed, busty clerk asked. She was a brunette, with both her done up hair and her designer suit screaming fashion and high maintenance. "I told you before, this isn't a place for window-shopping kids. Particularly ones as… unkept as you two."
"Then you should put a sign up." Neku deadpanned. "No window-shopping allowed: purchase by appointment only. Those wishing to purchase expensive items must already be wearing expensive items, in order to be served."
"Why you…" the clerk growled.
"Why are we here Neku?" Rhyme asked again, more confused than embarrassed.
She was chill like that.
"Looking and stuff. " Neku said evasively. "What about this one?" he tapped the glass above a particular watch.
"I don't know much about fashion, despite Shiki's best efforts." Rhyme smiled. "It's a bit of a sore spot between me and my other female friends, too."
"I think it's old." Neku told her. "I think it's durable. It feels like the artisan tried to imbue the soul of iron into the malleability of gold. It's sturdy like a mountain."
Rhyme blinked, face dropping. She recognized his analysis for what it was. He was reaching out with his soul. He was reading the 'engraved thoughts' and the 'image' – those things which gave an item power in the UG.
The stats.
"Is that what we're here for?" she asked sadly. "Neku, you said–"
"I know." Neku interrupted, catching Rhyme's eye through the reflective glass. "I said I'd let it go. I'm trying. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be prepared" he turned to face her in person. "We can't live forever, Rhyme."
She guessed that was true enough. Even by old age, one day they would be in the reaper game once more.
"When we passed into the UG, we carried the clothes on our back with us. In the RG it's just a well-crafted ornament, but a watch like this would be a serious edge there." Neku surmised. "It could buy you time to run and partner up."
Rhyme's reproachful gaze cut Neku, almost physically, and he felt the urge to explain himself further. "It's just something I do now and then. " He reasoned to her. "It's like… life insurance."
"It's death insurance, Neku." Rhyme corrected quietly, both in sombreness and in secrecy. "Down that path of thinking, there is and can be no light for the future. Have you thought about what equivalents you would sacrifice for the price of a new token to weigh you to your past?"
He had already been unsure of his doings, to be honest. But he feared the UG. That nightmare that… that…
Just.
Wouldn't.
Stop.
Waking up in the scramble crossing… Damn. He still walked around that area to get where he was going.
He knew it was wrong, on some level. He had worked hard for the cash. But he was worried that if he didn't buy these things, that he would die to regret it.
But Rhyme…
Only because it was Rhyme…
"Okay." Neku said, giving in.
Her wisdom… he respected it deeply.
"But a little is okay." He said to her. "Let today be the last for this shop and I'll keep my hobby under cost control. The customer service here has really gone downhill, anyways."
Rhyme nodded happily. "That's good. You shouldn't be so avaricious towards the high-stat world. You need to move onwards, towards the tomorrow that we've earned. Those that try to move forwards, should be looking forwards."
Neku considered those words.
"Is that Chinese?" he asked
"That one's sort of original." Rhyme smiled.
Ah.
Neku turned to the clerk, who had just finished beaming to and bowing out a well-dressed couple of window shoppers. "Hey clerk," Neku addressed, "get the proprietor."
"You could say that Nicer, Neku." Rhyme quietly reprimanded. "You don't have to pick a fight."
"I'm enjoying life." Neku muttered back, under his breath. "The life of the tomorrow that I've earned."
The clerk fumed towards his presumptuous attitude and gave him a long suffering look, willing him to retract the request through shear bitchery aura.
But emo-aura is invincible to all but Shiki-level persistance.
Finally, the clerk relented. "Sir," she said, bitterly, poking her head into the backroom, "there's a kid here to see you."
Whatever response the clerk was expecting, jubilous joy was not it.
"Aaah, Mister Neku!" The proprietor – a slim and well cut man in a tuxedo – exclaimed happily as he burst directly into the store main.
Neku was a regular customer.
There was a huge market for rare pins, and Neku never knew if Joshua had been driving that market.
And Neku had accumulated a lot in 'the game'. They were a collection of pins both rare and mysterious, and he had sold all but his most used.
He wanted to split the cash with his partners. It seemed sensible to him.
In truth, he hadn't earned those pins alone.
But no one would take it. Neku had always held the pins – only he could use them. And he had made the pin and buying decisions, and he had fought the hardest, and a bunch of other reasons that Neku thought amounted to so much bullshit.
The least he could do was use it on them. He had enough.
The proprietor gleamed at his favoured customer. "How good to see you again! You brought a different lady friend today?" He asked, pleasantly, before rolling over his own question. "Why have you been so absent lately? Is something not to your liking?"
"Customer service." Neku blurted, ignoring Rhyme's quiet reprimand. "There's been a volatile aura around my window shopping lately."
Now there were a few things that were simply unforgivable in the Proprietor's books. Most of those had to do with business.
Then there were things that were just unthinkable, and so he had never even considered…
Never even dreamed that in his shop-!
The proprietor paled, turning mechanically and shooting an almost betrayed look at his clerk. "You're fired." He said in a hollow, shell-shocked voice. "You're absolutely fired."
Feeling a sneaker impact sharply with his knee, Neku winced.
Meh.
Worth it.
"Just kidding." Neku deadpanned to the proprietor. "I've been getting into the art nouveau movement."
The proprietor hissed. Yes. The collector market was shifting again, he knew. Damn. "Ahm. About art, you could even say that your order was a fine work of art itself." He said, shuffling behind the counter for a black lacquerware box with an emerald butterfly engravement upon it. "Art is in jewellery as well, of course. And we're quite lasting." He lilted hopefully, trying his best to retain one of his core customers. "I'm positive that Miss Shiki will be ecstatic with your purchase. It's guaranteed to win any girl's heart under the sun – I'll even make that a store guarantee for you." He smiled.
"Oh." Neku raised his eyebrow. "You said it. Let's test it. Rhyme, you are very important to me." He monotoned, fixing her with a look that wasn't totally a lie. For she was dear to him. "Please take this, and go out with me."
Rhyme didn't even bat an eye, taking the lacquerware box and opening it.
Inside was a frail and beautiful intertwined string of gold and silver. From the crest of this delicate work of richness, fell a single tear-shaped diamond which could have been mistaken for a drop of the purest dew –frozen in time. Framing the diamond was a crest that, quite frankly, seemed like a three dimensional piece of art all on its own. Rhyme blinked. "Thank you." She said, using her general-purpose tone.
The watching clerk almost facefaulted into the display case glass at that flat reaction, and the proprietor looked horrendously insulted.
"Was it expensive?" Rhyme inquired, accusingly.
Neku would have had to be a fool to expect to take Rhyme's breath away with any kind of material object.
She was chill like that.
And so in truth he was just joshing her. Okay, and so he had a strange sense of humour.
"It was the last work of a great artist." Neku sighed, leaning easily back on the display case glass behind him. "The materials are pretty expensive, and the art put a huge premium on it. Couldn't be helped."
"Does being the last work make it better?" Rhyme asked, considering the necklace again.
"It can." Neku replied. "It depends on the emotion behind it. This man was making this necklace on his deathbed, desperately. Read it" Neku suggested.
"It has a strange feeling."
"Caution." Neku clarified, for he had always been the best of them at 'reading' the stats. "Fear." He explained. "He wanted to end his life on a high point. He wanted, in his last attempt, to brush the surface of the divine."
Rhyme turned the necklace in her hands. "The simple beauty of perfection." She assessed, for she could evaluate easily the more ephemeral beauty of the world. "To reach for something so lofty, he certainly used a needlessly complicated design."
"It's a leaf." Neku explained. "That crest, it's a leaf, but it includes every vain and every spine, as faithfully as he could bear."
Rhyme blinked, understanding. "He wanted it to be ideal, but he wanted it to be real as well. And what could be as simple as a leaf? Yet the truth of the leaf is far deeper than first glance, as is the truth of the world." She looked at Neku. "It's a wonderful work. I can't accept it."
"Take it." Neku shushed her. "The perfection itself is not important, but how it was achieved. The necklace itself is full of concern and caution, for even with his time ticking away the man swore not to make even one wrong move in this. In a fight this necklace would actually force you into a bounce when things get too messed up. Let's call it autobounce."
Rhyme blinked at him. And then stared at the necklace.
And then, overcome, she hugged him tightly. "Oh Neku, it wasn't your fault."
That you had died? Neku wanted to clarify. Does it matter at all, really, who's fault it is when the deed is so horrible?
You were taken from us, and it was a needless thing. It was a careless and a caution-less thing. The hands of time can't be turned back but…
"Just take it." Neku insisted through the hug. "Oh, and go out with me too."
Rhyme released him and wiped a tear from her eye. "Rejected, sorry."
Neku shrugged. "It was worth a shot."
"Do you still want me to keep this?" Rhyme asked, for she could not refuse his sentiment.
"Please never take it off." He replied honestly.
As the strange patron and his demure compatriot left the store, the girl tucking her newly found necklace underneath her sweater to hide it, those inside continued to stare in awe.
"What kind of brat buys a niche, high-end product like that… for just friendship?" The clerk blurted in shock. "That window-shopping brat was loaded?"
"What kind of customer?" Her boss echoed, turning to her slowly. "My ideal kind of customer!" He blurted, grasping his employee by the lapels. "That's the kind of customer that does that! Did you insult him?" He demanded, thinking back to Neku's earlier comments. "Did you insult his ladyfriend?" He demanded in yet further horror. "Did you…" he paled to sheet white, forcing himself to imagine the horror, "did you insult him… in frontof his lady friend?"
The clerk panicked because, in truth, she had done all three. "H-He said it was a joke remember? Blame art nouveau."
The proprietor grit his teeth. "Damn you, art nouveau!" He growled.
A/N:Yeah. Been a while since I played TWEWY. I don't have access to the game now, either (given to my brother).So I might be a bit off on things.
I believed that there should be a ton of TWEWY fanfics, as the story was truly wonderful. But then I considered again, and really the story closed with such catharsis and beuty already that there is perhaps not much dissatsfaction to drive the 'what if's. So I wondered what it was that the story had left me hungering for, and this was it. Friendship haning out stuff.