Author's Note: After binge-watching Death Parade in one night, I couldn't help but write a few stories for it. This fic is going to be a collection of short stories, mostly relating to Onna and Decim, maybe a few Ginti x Decim if I feel like it. Sometimes I'll follow the plot of the anime episodes, and other times it won't be related. Some of the short stories will be connected to the previous ones, some of them will be independent. This one deals with the first and second episodes, it's my take on their first meeting I suppose. Well, let me know what you think, and see you next chapter.
Chapter 1: The Threads of Observation
Darkness, like blood, was a slippery human phenomenon Onna had never given acute consideration to until she arrived at the Quindecim. According to Nona, that was three days ago, though she was unconscious during the entirety of that time, so Onna counted today as her first real day. As far as first days or first times for anything went, it overwhelmingly sucked. The lodgings, the bar, even Nona herself, were all pleasantly tolerable, but as with the humans they arbitrated, dark, disturbing things lurked beneath the fabric of Quindecim. Watching that white-haired bartender arbitrate for the dead honeymoon couple, it seemed to Onna that the man Nona cryptically referred to as "the spider" was a tangible manifestation of all the darkness surging beneath the skin of the concept of judgment. Though rather melodramatic, such a theory would logically explain why he had such an affinity in drawing, pulling, yanking, out a correspondingly unnerving darkness from the humans he observed. That was to say nothing of his "hobby," as Nona called it, but Onna doubted that mundane of a word applied to the. . .unique things the bartender did in his spare time. Eerie as both he and the general, amorphous concept of arbitration were, they were distractions not unwelcome, for those three days she spent unconscious weren't without event. Choosing the lesser of two evils was rapidly becoming a motif at the Quindecim.
"Well," said Nona, gliding toward the door and carrying her aura of authority with her, "now that the show is over, let us greet our host."
Onna stood more slowly and far less gracefully, the sheen of a cold sweat illuminated by the bizarre blue ambiance of the Quindecim. Why had the manager thought it necessary she see this? Not trusting her legs to remain steady enough to pull off the heels she was in, she took them off and padded out of the audience room with bare feet. "Actually, if you have no further work for me, I would like to lie down."
Though arbiters were supposed to be emotionless, Onna had no trouble in distinguishing a smirk in her voice. "I imagine you must be feeling queasy. Uneasy in your own skin. Filthy at being a part of the humanity that until moments ago included those monstrosities."
"Stop, please." Onna grabbed onto the lavender jellyfish tank as she swayed.
The arbiter's purple eyes narrowed, and with that cross watching her she could not help but feel as if she was now being judged. Likely she was. As professionally kind as she had been to Onna, her scorn for humanity still seeped through every word, every glance, every action. "If you were my assistant, I would tell you to suck up your disgust and keep working. That arbiters can't simply 'go lie down,' so neither can you. But you aren't my assistant."
Nona turned away from her and called out for the bartender, just returning from the elevators. "Make yourself useful to him. The second I hear you have become worthless, your presence will no longer be tolerated here."
Where else was there for her to go? Reincarnation or the void for humans, but was she human? Either way, as uncomfortable as the Quindecim was for her, there was no doubt that there were far worse places to be stranded, with far more terrifying people. Humans. She hated herself for thinking it.
"Goodbye, Onna. Have fun babysitting, Decim."
Clavis arrived with the elevator, and Nona left the two of them alone in the strange blue light. He stood impassively at the bar counter, she still several feet away from it. Are we just going to stare at each other for the remainder of eternity? It was easy to tell this man was radically different from Nona, but hard to determine whether that disparity was good or bad. Not to say that the manager was an open book, but he was less easily read than even she.
"Welcome. I am given to understand that you will be my assistant here at Quindecim."
The pure, perfect monotony of his voice startled Onna. Its level of detachment defied human possibility, and perhaps it was that fact that awoke her to the true reality of her situation. These constructs were not humans, were not gods, but were unnatural outsiders interposing themselves as the arbiters of that which they could never be. It was objectivity to the highest degree, the undiluted impartiality humans strived for but could never achieve. And because they had not achieved it, because humans could not eradicate their subjectivity, all judgments held here were doomed from the start to be an unfair trial.
However, knowing little about "the spider," Onna prudently kept her mouth shut on that matter. "Yes, though I was unaware of that until moments ago."
"Please make yourself comfortable."
She would be most comfortable as far away from him as possible, but as that was not an option, she sat on one of the bar stools, dropping her shoes beneath her. "I really appreciate it. Nona hasn't been quite so hospitable these past few days."
His face did not so much as twitch at the joke. As if he hadn't even heard her comment, he said, "Can I get you something to drink?"
"Just water, thanks."
She thought that maybe he raised an eyebrow, but his hair was so long that she couldn't tell exactly. "You are the only one I have ever encountered to request water at a bar. Interesting."
"I'm just not feeling well right now. Don't get used to it."
"Your response has been noted."
A tall glass of ice water slide across the counter into her view, the blocks of ice clinking loudly in the subtly awkward silence. His back was to her as he absentmindedly wiped glasses, as though he were giving her a grace period to compose herself. Instead, she used the reprieve to observe him without being observed. He was tall, the tallest arbiter or human she had seen here, but then again, she hadn't been here long. The undercut on the back of his head surprised her. It seemed too informal for him, suggested that he was perhaps neither quite so robotic nor as stoic as he seemed. The suit and vest fit him well, though not so tightly that she could see any muscle definition beneath the cloth. As seemed to be a pattern with him, it was perfectly ambiguous. Still, to find out what she wanted, it wasn't his body that he was interested in but his mind. And to have insight into that, she needed to see his eyes.
"What are your opinions on my arbitration?"
Onna sighed, resting her chin on her hand. This was what she hadn't wanted to talk about. "Well, I suppose now is a good time to get this out of the way. Do you want a candid assistant, or an ego-licking sycophant?"
His shoulders tensed as he turned to face her, his eyes a hair narrower than before. She wondered if she'd upset him, if that was even possible. "Why ask?"
The woman watched his distorted reflection in the glass of the counter. "Because when I speak my mind, people tend to not want to listen."
"I will listen. Always."
Even in the reflection of the counter, those algid blue eyes submitted her body to a cycle of scalding and freezing. The emotion behind the eyes could not be called intense, for there was no emotion there at all, but the lenses themselves certainly could be.
"Then I think you made the wrong decision."
Onna tensed herself for some outburst, a recoil or a shout, but neither occurred. There was no change in his outward appearance save for the deepening of his already prominent frown.
"Please elucidate," he said.
"If we're are operating under the principle of choosing the lesser of two evils, then the man should have been the one sent to the void, not the woman."
"Why is that?"
"Tell me, why did you arbitrate the way you did?" Onna stared down into her glass, swirling around blocks of melting ice with her finger to avoid having to look at him.
"The woman was unfaithful to the man and displayed greed in marrying him for his money. The man was devoted to his wife and child, though not his own, and was justified in his anger regarding the affair."
She pointed her index finger at him, droplets of water splattering onto the countertop. She tried not to think of the blood that had been splattered here not an hour ago. "There, you see, I saw a different picture. I think the woman's child really was the man's. If there was an affair, then I don't think it was sustained. She cared so much about her husband that she lied about the child's father to protect him from the grief of having killed his own child. The man clearly had self-confidence issues that he projected onto their marriage in the form of poisonous jealousy. Therefore, I think that, if operating under the principle as stated, the end decision should have been the reverse. However, if there is no lesser of two evils principle, then I believe they both should have been reincarnated. This tragedy was a result of mistakes and miscommunication, and they shouldn't have lost their souls over it."
Decim's eyes were as wide as she had ever seen them, and he leaned forward across the counter as though he were entranced. "I must admit I am fascinated by your arguments, but I fail to understand how you came to that conclusion given we saw the same evidence."
Onna smiled for the first time since waking up at the Quindecim. "Do you know why human trials typically have juries instead of a single judge decide the verdict?"
"I do not."
"Because as objective as humans claim to be, the same observations can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways. By having a group of biased people analyze the same information, one is able to account for more interpretations and thereby, in choosing the average of the opinions, reach a more accurate decision than if a single biased party had decided. Your decision in this case was based upon your interpretation alone, so there was a greater room for error, that is, a misinterpretation of the evidence."
"My analysis was incorrect?"
Onna shook her head quickly, afraid she would somehow offend the sentiments he did not possess. "Not necessarily. I'm saying that your analysis is one possible explanation of the facts, and mine is another. In combining them, we add pieces to the bigger picture and draw ourselves closer to the truth."
"I see." When he shifted away from her, only slightly, she began to worry all her abstract theories were losing his attention. Of course they were. He was used to watching and interpreting actions, not ideas. How could she more actively explain her point to him?
"How about this. Let's make this conversation more concrete: you analyze me, I analyze you, and at the end we share our results and compare how close to the truth we were."
The sharp lines around his mouth softened, and his voice had less of a serious edge to it when he spoke again. "Seeing into the motivations of humans requires an extreme condition."
Onna's eyes watered, not from any form of sadness but from surprise and revulsion at his implication. Her voice shook, thick with rising terror, the memories of the honeymoon couple splattering awfully across her mind's eye like their blood. "I am not letting you subject me to what those two—"
His icy eyes held onto her, unwavering and stolid as though he were attempting to reassure her. "Do not despair, as that was not my intention. I merely meant we play a 'normal' human game. Chess, if you are not averse?"
She put her hand over her pumping heart. "No pain, no stakes, none of . . . that?"
"Simply a harmless match to emulate a far less extreme sense of tension that Quindecim's games create. I promise."
"You promised several things to that couple, all of which I recall were half-truths or flat out lies."
He dipped his head. "I am not arbitrating you, so I have no use for manipulation."
Onna looked at him deeply, searching for any signs of deception. Not that she would have been able to find them if there were any. He would definitely have her at a disadvantage with that apathetic demeanor of his. "Very well."
Decim glided smoothly from behind the counter, politely offered her his hand, and said, "Follow me, please."
The Spider led her to what she supposed was a small library or sitting room, lit by, like the rest of Quindecim, bluish lavender light. They sat across from each other in a booth, separated by a chess board. Of course, he took the white pieces.
"So, why does Nona call you 'the spider'?" The game was still moving slowly, as they'd just begun, so she passed the time in between turns with small talk.
His lips stretched into a nearly imperceptible, mischievous smirk.
Onna narrowed her eyes at him, not at all liking what this could bode for her. "What's with that face?"
His eyes darted conveniently up to the ceiling, scanning the corners of the room. The odd smirk remained.
"Aren't you going to answer?"
Those eyes, ponderous as an iron scale, dropped back to her, impassive as ever. "I leave you to your analysis."
Oh, so that was how it was going to be. Two could play at that game. Onna yawned as she took one of his rooks, hiding a smirk of her own behind her hand. Conversation slowed, and then died altogether, as the game intensified. Onna currently held the upper hand in sheer number of pieces stolen, but Decim pursued her lead relentlessly. He stalked her as much as her movements on the board, and she wondered what it was he saw in her. Thinking about being beneath the avenging blade of those eyes was almost enough to shake her confidence and throw the remainder of the game. As for herself, since she could not penetrate the mask of her opponent, she turned her observations to his movements on the board. He spent his turns leisurely, unabashedly squeezing out as much time as he needed to act at the expense of his opponent. Because he knew she had no choice but to wait, because it seemed he knew, or thought, that with his stoic advantage he had her twisting under his thumb, he extended his turns to unnecessary lengths. Intuition told her that by the time his turn rolled around, he already knew precisely what he wanted to do, but he delayed doing it until the last possible second to make her sweat. She knew with considerable certainty that that was his plan, and so she intentionally foiled it. Unlike him, she reclined comfortably in her seat. She regarded the board with level-headed indifference, appearing not to care as, piece by piece, her numerical advantage dwindled. Sometimes she yawned, or wiped her eyes, or looked up at the ceiling, all to deceive him into thinking she was bored by his performance. Once, as the game drew closer to an end, she noticed a small cobweb dangling in the corner behind her.
"Look, Decim, maybe you have a strange kinship with spiders or something, but you really should clean up these webs. Maintain professional sanitation and all that."
He looked like he was going to laugh. Onna was so shocked by his sudden emotiveness that she missed his reply.
An hour after she had called check on him, they were still playing, vacillating back and forth between checks with no one yet achieving checkmate. When, in the middle of moving a piece, she felt something cold, stringy, and sticky brush across her neck, she squeaked and jumped so violently she banged her knee against the underside of the table.
"Decim, as soon as we finish this game, get someone to clean these damn cobwebs!"
"My apologies."
She tore the thread off of her and tried to refocus her attention on the game, but by that time it was too late.
"Checkmate," Decim said, without emotion, without triumph, as he captured her black king in a web of white pieces.
Unfortunately for Onna, her king was not the only thing trapped in that web.
She screamed as she felt dozens of fine, strong threads snake around her hands, arms, and torso and pull her up into the air as if she were one of his eerie dummies. Panic, the cousin of man's most primitive emotion, submerged her, drowned her rationality, and she writhed and squirmed against the force of the web, her curses against the man devolving into senseless, angry shouts. Seeing that such a strategy was useless against the sheer binding power of the web, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose. Surely Nona did not detest her so much so that she would leave her with someone dangerous, and indeed thus far he had not proven himself to be a threat. If he had not strung her up to harm her, then, what else had he in mind?
"No injury will come to you," he said quietly, impassively watching her thrash about above him and slowly fall still.
"Yes, I did come to that conclusion. I believe I have passed the trust exercise, so you can put me down now."
Now that he saw she was calm again, his mischievous expression reappeared. The game was back on. "This was not a trust exercise, which for the record you would have failed, but an argument to support my analysis."
Onna froze. "Well, seeing as the self-righteous spider has me at a crippling disadvantage in its web, I suppose I have no choice but to listen."
Decim grinned darkly, his lips drawing back ever so slightly to expose hints of teeth. He stood up from his seat and strode slowly towards her, until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. He did not, though. "Of course I intend no offense, but as you ruthlessly tore through my arbitration earlier this evening, I am obligated to return the favor."
Onna wanted to close her eyes. Having those judgmental orbs scrutinizing her was too much to bear, but they would not let her escape until justice had been exacted, for such was the nature of arbitration. Good god, he was going to flagellate her with the enthusiasm of a Franciscan monk, and all she could so was dangle here in his web, in his domain, at his mercy.
"Do I detect a shiver?" There was a certain knowing irony in his voice that made the rhetorical question all the more lacerating.
"Get on with it." The only thing that kept her from utter humiliation was the thought of cutting back at him with vengeful analysis of her own.
"While I admit you excel at delving into the depths of others, your awareness of your own situation is paradoxically shallow. Such is how you have arrived in this position. As you failed all but once to notice, throughout our match I was spinning webs. I left you hints—the cobweb in the corner, the thread at your back—but you were either incapable or unwilling to connect it to any immediate effect upon yourself. Why is that, I wonder?"
Onna retreated into the darkness of closed eyes, the onslaught of external stimuli too overwhelming. Her heart beat so thickly she did not doubt Decim could hear it, close to her as he was.
"Do the things I have dredged from inside you intimidate you so?"
She dropped her head, in exhaustion, in self-deprecation, in shame.
"If you are to watch me fish the sludge out of others, then you must as well be capable of looking upon your own black tar. Open your eyes."
She told herself that she didn't know why she listened to his request.
"You are strong for others, but weak for yourself."
"That's enough! Now put me down." Onna flexed against the thread, but it gave no sign of loosening.
She heard the words she had never wanted to hear directed toward her. "You cannot leave until you complete the game."
"You want me to tear you down now? Fine. Fine!" She spoke quickly, those awful words flowing, splattering, out of her mouth. "Like a true arbiter, I originally thought you emotionless, but I was wrong. You find amusement at the discomfort of others. The only time you smiled was when you had me in your chains in chess. You have to be control of everything, everyone, all the time. You're manipulating people behind the scenes, stringing them up like those stupid dummies, but you think you're so high above them that they can't even tell. The only thing you're good at is bringing out the worst in people, and you love it!"
Perhaps her words had cut him so deeply that they had been able to slice through the threads. Regardless of how it happened, she was falling, no longer restrained by the web, and as soon as she touched the ground she ran for her room.
How could we both have said those evil things?
It was like there was a curse on Quindecim, all who entered doom to turn inside out, baring their black souls against the world with only intentions of malice. Once one stepped into this bar, goodness became evil, truth became lie, love became hate, friends became enemies. The further she ran from the bar, the more the dark hazy fog seemed to dissipate, the more she felt ashamed of what she had done and said. Games were never really just games here. The stakes escalated against anyone's volition. It was not that arbiter that manipulated the darkness in humans, but the darkness that manipulated the goodness in them all.
She had not yet even made it to her room when she resolved to turn around and apologize to Decim. As expected, she found him standing at the bar, as much a piece of the interior decoration as anything else there. She didn't, however, expect to find him staring forlornly down into a full martini glass. Altogether she skipped sitting at the bar and went behind it, straight to him.
"Look, I don't think that turned out the way either of us planned. I didn't mean what I said, and though I know little of you, I know you well enough to know that you did not mean those words either."
That wasn't to say that at least a fraction, if only a hair, of what they'd said was untrue.
He pointedly refused her gaze, continuing to stare into the orange drink sloshing in his glass. "Then why did we say them?"
Onna sighed. "Sometimes things get blown out of proportion, beyond either party's control to fix it. I believe this is exactly what happened with the couple you arbitrated. I do not agree with your policy of pulling darkness out of people. You arbiters believe you act as a catalyst, but there are some chemical reactions that occur so slowly without a catalyst that they can be considered not to even occur at all. There is darkness in all hearts, but that amount is so minuscule in most that it does not rule their lives. When you pull that out of them, you are not studying that person's sins, but the sins passed down from Adam and Eve through now that they can do nothing about. And that isn't fair."
Onna held out her hand. "Please, let's just leave our darknesses where they belong and start over."
Decim's hand, almost twice the size of hers, closed around her. His skin, like his eyes, was extremely cool.
"I look forward to working with you. You will make for a fascinating assistant, Onna."
"Now let's see if I can say the same of your bar-tending abilities."
The sound of Onna's gently teasing laughter rose above the strange blueish lavender light, above the darkness, above the peculiar place that was Quindecim.
"How many of those do you intend to imbibe?" Decim asked at some point, after more than a few glasses. "As your bartender, I am in part responsible for the state of your inebriation."
Onna rolled her eyes. "I'm not drunk, nor do I plan on getting drunk. I'm just making up for missing out on this earlier."
"You are a truly astounding woman."
She sighed, resting her head on the counter and closing her eyes. "I suppose we all have to be, to end up in a nightmare like this."