The Sakurazukamori remembers The Shop. He remembers its shabby exterior and its stifling, incongruous aura of too many different sorts of power carelessly jumbled making him dizzy and uncomfortable with their cacophony of energies. He remembers clutching tightly to his sister's hand, because they have been sternly warned not to touch anything here, and he has to remind her as her gaze darts from one resting place to the next and he can feel her excitement bubbling over into frustration because here there is a jeweled headdress, and here some sort of doll, and here a pink wand, and how cruel it is to have to be polite and stand still! He remembers his gloves, how conscious he was of them, because they were a new barrier that separated them, separating skin from skin so that sometimes when they wore short sleeves she would link her arm through his and press their cheeks together in defiance of it. He thinks he remembers a vague idea that the gloves mark a separation more significant than brushing fingertips and shared baths, but he isn't sure that he isn't projecting knowledge that came later…but maybe she knew.
Maybe that was why she continued sneaking into his bed long past the age when such things were meant to be outgrown. He remembers how it had never occurred to them to stop, even when bodies had begun to grow and change and fit together in subtly different ways and he no longer would have dreamed of bathing naked with her…because he and she had always been and snuggling together in the comfort of each others' presence was where they fit and always had. She had claimed that they were divided into two and together they would make up one whole person, and when her knowledge grew more sophisticated she said that she was the id and he the super ego. He had pointed out that that was biologically impossible; that male and female twins were the product of two eggs released and fertilized at the same time and not a cellular division like identical twins, and she had told him that he had no sense of romance. He hadn't had anything to say to that. He wonders if she really was half of his soul, or if it was just the suggestion that she was that had left him so crippled when she was gone. He wonders how different they would have looked from one another by now, on a full scale of adult male and female past the burgeoning differences of puberty.
He remembers The Shop. He remembers clutching his sister's hand through his glove and her squeezing back in excitement. Looking back, there was no real reason for her to be there, but once he had started wearing the gloves, their elders no longer tried to separate them as they had for that fateful trip to Tokyo. He remembers staring at the woman's stomach, because it was level with his eyes and extraordinarily naked. He didn't think he'd ever seen so much of a girl's middle, besides his sister's, and hers was soft and rounded like his own and not at all like this flat, naked expanse of taut muscle under white skin, so unlike the grown-up women at home in Kyoto who dressed in shapeless layers of traditional kimonos, and he had been hard pressed to quell the urge to poke her in the belly button. His sister had stared too, just as awestruck, not at the naked bits but the way the rest was clothed; at the folds of silk brocade that fell bell like and familiar down her arms while crossing lasciviously over her breasts and stopping short of her navel in an audacious mockery of a traditional kimono, only to reinstate at the jut of her hip bones in a tight swath of skirt that left a few inches of knee before glossy black boots began. He wonders if the woman inspired his sister that day and wonders if it's at all significant that HE remembers how she was dressed.
He didn't know the woman, but that didn't stop her from addressing him familiarly, which was not something he was unused to. Family members always knew who HE was, even if he hadn't seen them since he was a toddler, and they invariably acted towards him with a mixture of deference and entitlement, and more of the latter the higher in the family they ranked. No, what was different about HER was that she knew THEM, and spoke in an encompassing way that extended to his sister who still squeezed at his hand rhythmically in excitement, while others were quick to brush her to the side as the untalented sibling whose standing in the family was due solely to his unrelenting attachment to her. No, the woman made no mention of his ascension to clan head, nor any mention of their field at all, despite the fact that her shop was a cesspool of magic, but instead treated them, both of them, as a woman might a favorite niece and nephew that it was a happy occasion to see. He remembers that when she leaned down to speak to them he could see down the crevice between her breasts, and that a flat, gold medallion swung forward from her neck like a hypnotist's token. He remembers that she laughed when she saw him looking at his own distorted reflection on her boots, and that he didn't feel shamed by her laughter. He remembers that she adorned his sister in costume jewelry, and while their grandmother was tight-lipped and severe, she did not protest. He wonders if the woman ever gives gifts, or if his sister left something behind that day for her baubles.
The Shop today is not much different from how it was then, though his sensibilities have matured and the clashing medley of energies does not overwhelm him as it did when he was a child, though the incongruity of it still grates his ingrained penchant for order. He expected, without realizing he expected, that it would seem smaller to him than his memories, since that is the natural way of childhood awareness, and the perceived vastness of the place unsettles him. It is not enough to make him leave. The Kamui of Earth had told him he no longer had a wish. A month ago he had no doubts. But today he is here to find out if perhaps it doesn't have to be true, because a week ago, he met the traveler, and everything changed.
His mismatched gaze frightens a boy in glasses, and he feels a flutter of perverse pleasure he never would have thought himself capable of at watching him startle. He doesn't speak and barely listens: he doesn't care what the woman's interest in the boy is. He cares about the woman, and presently she appears. He is no longer a nephew she is happy to see. Her confident features are reserved and cautious as she approaches, and he notices the faint way her eyebrows furrow in barely perceptible surprise as she realizes the duality of his gaze, and then smooth back in resigned understanding, and he has one of his answers.
"I thought it was for himself." She doesn't bother with pleasantries, and he is glad for that. He remembers her voice laced with conspiratorial cheerfulness, but that is gone. She speaks with gentle firmness. It is not an apology. Despite the answer being what he hoped for, he is unexpectedly wrenched by the knowledge that he has fallen victim to another lie, and that he has no more of his special person than he ever had. He imagines he can feel the golden eye burning at the force of his misguided devotion, but he knows that is physiologically impossible. When he doesn't speak, she continues.
"The Sumeragi tolerate my existence…they do not make use of my services." She thinks she knows his mind and her gall tempts his fury to a lethargic rise, but he cannot sustain it. She is probably right. He thinks, perhaps, she sounds a little bit sad.
"I've done a great many things the Sumeragi don't do." He informs her dully, and this time the shadow of sorrow passes over her more visibly.
"I know." And he knows that she knows, in the same way that he knew that she would be no older now than she had when his grandmother had brought him and his sister to present to her when he was a child. Today, though, her dress is somber and despite the closeness of the fit, it is reasonably demure. It would not be too ostentatious for a funeral. He wonders if she knew he was coming, but he is at least sure that she didn't know about his eye.
"Tell me what he gave up in trade." He genuinely doesn't know, in part because he doesn't dare guess, because guessing at the motives or intentions of the man have never led to anything but more pain, no matter if he thought he had no further capacity to feel it. He fears the answer, because it will define the value of the eye and by proxy his own worth. He fears the answer because despite his refusal to guess, he has never learned how to wholly squelch the ghosts of hopefulness that were one the basis of his character. He fears the answer…because, no matter which way it goes, it is too late for him to benefit from it. The woman understands this and is reluctant to answer. He is tired. Too tired to demand or plead and he knows as well as she does that he is here to torture himself further. The difference is that she pities him for it.
"The thing he loved best." She says finally, because she has no comfort to offer him. "People and things…he made no real distinction. But he wasn't incapable of love. And the urgency of his Wish demanded high payment."
The Sakurazukamori surprises himself again as a sound of anguish tears itself from his chest unbidden and a familiar heat burns at his eyes. His view of the room changes and blurs and he knows he is shaking. He had thought himself too hollow to react this way. But now he knows the truth of a dead man's last words and the knife is twisted again, forcing his pain to heights more inconceivable than before. The woman's pity is unguarded now and he can see it in her features even with his sloppy vision.
"What about the cost to me!" he accuses her, though he knows she has no obligation to anyone other than whom she made the contract with, and his voice sounds raw and unfamiliar to his own ears.
"That's why I gave you to information you sought." She says, patiently, and it is the closest to an apology he will receive. To his mind it is an unworthy trade. "It cannot be undone," she adds, "in owning it you've changed it's value."
Though not her intent, or perhaps it was, her words give him pause. A contract cannot be unmade if the one who entered into it is not alive to unmake it, so the comment seems out of place. As his expression changes she looks dismayed.
"Don't ask me," and in her controlled way she is pleading with him, "A Wish to undo his will cost too much, and it won't be what you want." Be careful what you wish for. He already knows that. He doesn't care. He can think of nothing else that can hurt him further. He's already forgotten that he has felt that way for all of his adult life and has never been right. If he is special to his special person…it is too late to unmake his Wish.
It is a feeling of nakedness he can't get used to. He twitches, turning his head as if there were something he isn't hearing, and he knows people give him odd looks. His magic was so much a part of him that he hadn't realized how muffled he would feel without it. He will get used to it, he assures himself, because it is gone forever and he will never set foot in The Shop again. People live their entire lives without such senses and really, hasn't it been more a burden to his life than not? The world around him is silent and barren. He is neither Sumeragi nor Sakurazukamori. The balance is out of his hands. The only thing that matters is the room number scrawled on the business card that he clutches as if it were a protective talisman. He needs it to fight the nakedness and the panic that threatens at his helplessness. He tells himself he is being foolish, there is nothing now that he needs protection from. Still he jerks his head at imaginings.
He had thought it was an apartment number, but the address is a hospital. That frightens him, but doesn't deter him. The man suffered a terrible wound and he can barely wrap his mind around his survival. There is no name on the door, and a nurse tells him that the man inside has no identification, he is an unidentified victim of last winter's earthquakes. His family hasn't found him, poor fellow. He was wounded terribly, she tells him, as he stands at the bedside, staring at the robust man of his memory deteriorated into the unfamiliar and attached to tubes and wires that drip and beep. It's a miracle that he survived at all, but after three surgeries his heart is going strong…the doctors don't know why he hasn't regained consciousness yet. He barely listens, torn between sorrow and elation. He can go Within and draw him out, certainly, after coming so far the risk is meaningless. If he should be sucked into the man's coma it will not matter. Only…the truth comes crashing over him with a force that brings him to his knees. He can taste bile in his throat and his lungs refuse to work, because he is so close, and he can't…all he can hear are the woman's words, weighted by sorrow and pity, "it won't be what you want..."