I. Black
The streets were warm with the light of the sun, cicadas singing in chirping whispers from behind worn fences of chain-link and the sparse trees that lined the sidewalk. Above several stone steps, a wooden bench sat, abandoned and forlorn in the brooding warmth of early autumn, branches hanging low from neighbouring trees and chips of wood and dirt spread out on the horizon before it.
Beneath the bench, beneath the steps, was a road, infrequently visited by traffic and disowned by pedestrians.
Upon the street, innocuous and uncared for, stood a quaint little photography studio; its manner often lending those faithful few that passed down said street to mistake it for a coffee shop. Everyone who passed commented on the Hikari Studio's likeness in appearance to a very similar coffee shop that used to stand in the same place. Some speculated that the owner, an eccentric gentleman by the name of Hikari Eijiro had been too lazy to refurbish the grounds when he picked up the lease, others maintained that secretly he actually preferred the idea of running a coffee shop but could not admit this to his abrasive granddaughter.
In the midst of such speculation, no one stopped to realise that the day before, Hikari Studio had not stood on the premises it now occupied, and that each person that passed, each person that made comment on the quaint little studio or drew breath from the rich air of the city around them, had possessed a marginally different surname and past.
Standing on the street before the studio, Kadoya Tsukasa looked out dispassionately as a single blue car passed, driver hunched over the wheel and child slumbering in the back.
His hands dug deep into the pockets of his short trench-coat, his hair moving with the faint breeze; short enough to be respectable yet just long enough to cause irritation each time the wind moved and obscure his sight.
"Black," he murmured, feeling the weight of the autumn heat upon his shoulders and sensing that perhaps his coat was not the most seasonal of choices.
He looked down at the coat and nodded slowly.
The coat was his own, his clothes had not changed.
"Black," he muttered again.
There was no role for him in this world.
On the pavement behind him, he heard the pressure of Natsumi's heels on the paving slabs that led from the studio to the street.
A knowing smile touched his lips.
He didn't need to turn to see her worried expression, it was already evident in the cautious way she approached him.
"Black," he said again with a sigh and turned despite himself, confronted by the familiar round face and defined fringe and, most importantly, the expected expression of concern and nervousness.
She looked up and down at his clothes, her expression shifting to one of mistrust.
"What's black?" she asked defensively.
He smirked again and reached out to tap her head with his knuckles, a move she swiftly avoided by taking a single step back and glaring fiercely at him.
"The portrait, Natsumikan," he sighed impatiently, "the portrait was black."
She blinked and then gestured back towards the door.
"You mean the blind? Is that what you're sulking about?"
At the door, Onodera Yuusuke appeared, his own youthful expression grave and foreboding as he hurried towards them in his well worn white trainers, laces trailing in the dirt behind him.
"I spoke to Eijiro," he said, gesturing, like Natsumi before him, at the door, "he tried to pull the blind up again, but it won't move. It's just…just…"
"Black," Tsukasa completed for him.
He took a moment to take in the facets of the other boy's appearance, the baggy jeans and garish baseball jacket, both of which he was convinced had gone out of fashion sometime in 1991. If he hadn't seen the other people of Yuusuke's Earth he would have been tempted to assume that the other boy was simply a product of retroactive culture, perpetually fixed at the dividing line between the 1980s and the 1990s, yet no one else on that world had possessed as awful dress sense as Yuusuke.
"What do you think it means?" the other boy asked at last, uncomfortable with his companion's gaze.
Tsukasa sighed once more and shrugged, turning away to face the street again, just in time to catch sight of a second car pass by, its passenger an equally bored child and its driver yet another harassed parent.
"It means we're outside of the nine worlds," he said softly, "that somehow we've fallen through a gap in the universe."
He paused, a smile again catching his lips and lifting them up.
"In astronomy, scientists divide up the lifespan of the universe into a system called Cosmological Ðecades; a series of epochs stretching out from the Big Bang to the far future."
He turned back towards them, the smile now poisoned with the smugness of his explanation.
"If you can accept that then you can accept that, outside of the nine worlds we know to exist in relation to our own, there must be other Ðecades."
Natsumi scowled at him for a moment and then abruptly lunged forward and jabbed him in the neck with her thumb, eliciting a howl of laughter from the surprised Tsukasa and worry from Yuusuke as he tried vainly to place himself between them and prevent further damage.
On the bench above the steps, watching with glowing oval eyes, a lone figure stood stoic and alone, a red scarf moving in the breeze.
At his side, his gloved hands tightened into fists and behind his masque, his face set in determination.
Leaves moved at his feet, the sound of the voices below echoing in his ear and then, in an instant, he was gone, the bench once more forlorn and abandoned.
Beneath the bench, beneath the steps, was a road, infrequently visited by traffic and disowned by pedestrians.
Upon the street, innocuous and uncared for, stood a quaint little photography studio, home to three young friends, each one a polarity point for a different timeline, a different Ðecade.
Lazily, the clouds moved across the autumn sky.