"Fushimi."
Saruhiko breathes out; the bastard child of the exhaust of life and the intestines of a cigarette. The paper is white haze for a second.
Shoves the back of the first key down.
D-
E-
Dear.
His mind goes on overdrive like always. Dear, a term of endearment, a word which in English—of course the language he is writing in, typewriters are Western by nature and not conducive to his mother tongue—itself contains the word "dear"; dear, a homonym for deer, an animal, mammal, four-legged; in the Shinto religion, thought to be messengers to the gods, a symbol for the city of Nara; dear can also mean bought at a high cost—
He hasn't slept in thirty-six hours.
Two knocks.
Another key kneels.
Misaki.
Dear Misaki. Costly, beloved, angelic, sacrificed for Misaki. Yes.
Enter.
Clack. The carriage release lever springs up.
"Fushimi."
Click. The return lever yanks the straining carriage right back to the start.
Three knocks, tightly spaced as the holes in brass knuckles.
Dear, Misaki. Dear Misaki. Should he have put a comma? But you can't backspace with typewriters. This might be symbolic of something if his life were a book. He's always detested the analysis of literature. Among other things.
"I can hear you in there."
Beyond that lies a wasteland of white paper. It's so bright to look at in this dark room. Almost hurts his eyes.
More knocking. If she knocks again, he should knock her skull in—
"Just a minute."
Is it ever a minute with Awashima, though?
No.
"Don't make me bring in Sceptre 4 to drag you out of there."
Jesus Christ.
For a moment he's consumed with the idea of his knife in her skull. Vividly. He can taste the red. The grey of brain matter, the gelatinous material that oozes out of her eye socket—
"Fushimi-kun."
He can't think with those two words sitting there like a wall. He tears the paper out, too fast. Small bits of its skin catch in the teeth of the typewriter, fluttering to the floor jaggedly wounded. Impatiently he plucks the shreds out, the tall steel molars picking at his fingers like vultures.
Knocking, turning to pounding.
Shoves in a fresh sheet.
"Fushimi."
Dear Misaki—
Enter. Click. Clack.
His fingers fly at the keys. First, a black egg marring the wasteland. Then it births a worm, wriggling across the landscape, eating away like a caterpillar.
These words would be monstrous to an ant.
This is how the end of the world begins. A black egg, marring the wasteland.
Dumbass Saru-monkey—
Dear Misaki—
"Fushimi."
I hate you.
Swiftly he rips the paper out, crumples it, throws it the floor, crosses the room, opens the door.
"What already?"
Awashima just looks at him.
()
Munakata looks at it.
"I can't believe you took that out of his room."
"It was right there."
Together, they contemplate the spirals.
How, thinks Awashima, can a line drawn in circling, widening increments seem to mean so much? A toddler could do as much.
When Munakata touches the paper, it is with the very tips of his fingers.
The back is the same.
The paper is slightly ridged; he pressed that hard.
"This wasn't the only one. There were whole sheets of them in there."
"A spiral," Munakata says slowly, "is not necessarily a sign of madness."
"It is a sign of something," replies Awashima.
()
Being alone and lonely are not the same thing. Saru has always been alone. Only recently has he become lonely.
You catch yourself slipping in bits.
When looking up from your laptop becomes not the usual seamless transition from screen to life but is accompanied by a jolt, a miniature jump. The sense of the crack in the sidewalk stretching half an inch.
Conversely, when he slips into dreams as easily as one opens a door.
When his alarm goes off he opens his eyes and still sees Misaki standing in his doorway, feels Misaki's heat by his side. Vividly.
In his more aware instants, he knows Misaki is not there.
Misaki is sitting on his bed.
()
He spends a lot of time on the internet. The internet is bottomless, the internet is chaos at heart, the trash dump of the world.
He scrolls.
Forums. Videos. News sites. Blogs. Corporations. Flash games. Advertisements. Scams. Startups. Dating sites. Conspiracy theories. Endless mindless bickering between faceless nameless individuals. So fucking stupid. Nobody cares about your opinion. Still, his mind plagues him with possibilities. What if all of these people were the same person. If someone was lonely enough, would they argue with themselves online?
Endlessly Saruhiko observes; he's seen people pretending to talk on their cell phones. This is just a milder form of madness.
Lately his mind plagues him. Grows overlarge, gnaws hungrily on the little stock of comfortable numbness that every human being needs to function. The brain of a philosopher without organization, or of a scientist bereft of numbers, letters, the tools of communication through which to channel the swirling bulging thing wriggling in his skull. A horizontal library of books lying on the floor, white thighs spread.
Is it thirty-six? Or forty hours?
There's probably something he should be taking for this.
Nonstop thought is probably the most tiring thing in the world. In his head (where else? Out of it?) he calls it "cycling." It's a person pedaling a stationary bike; moving fast and going nowhere. Thoughts feed on themselves in interlocking rings, like one of those puzzles Munakata is so fond of. A wheel bolted to the floor; a tire sinking in the ocean.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Poetry. American. He hates poetry at a level beyond his usual plateau of disdain. Meaningless strings of words thrown together. Self-conscious, self-important. No one gave a damn about your thoughts. You know why people buy your books? Because they think that it'll make other people think better of them. In reading, as in conversation, people only seek the chance to say, "I agree," and switch the topic to themselves.
The human eye seeks a mirror fastest.
Still, a pair of ragged claws, he doesn't mind so much.
Saruhiko eats crab. Sometimes the claws are ragged and sometimes they aren't, but they're all mangled by the time he's through with them. He doesn't eat for the taste—he eats very little nowadays, which fucking Awashima never fails to remind him of. He eats for the color. A brilliant fiery shade of orange-red, especially when caught in the last dregs of proper light before that romanticized moment called sunset (he hates sunset) starts; best observed between 4 and 5 in the summer. The color fills him up more than anything.
Sometimes in a moment of extreme sentimentality he saves a shard of shell.
He catches himself slipping. His desk drawer stinks of crab. The bottom is a centimeter deep with little orange chips.
Saru looks at the drawer, and shoves it gently shut.
()
"As long as his work doesn't slip."
"With all due respect, don't you think that's a bit cold-hearted."
"You don't make it sound like a question."
Seri bites her lip. To go against her superior, her King and her captain, goes against all her values. Yet this—
"I understand your concern, Awashima-kun—"
"But I don't think you do. Sir.."
Slowly, he sets his cup of tea on the table.
"Seri. What are you asking me to do?"
His eyes across the table are painfully honest. She knows if she asks, he will do it. There is very little a King cannot achieve.
"I—I don't know."
Still, there are some things.
()
"You should eat."
"Thanks, but I'm not hungry."
"Fushimi-kun. Come on."
Saru looks at the plate of egg noodles in her hand. The smell makes him feel vaguely nauseous. At least it doesn't have that damn red bean paste all over it. He wonders if there are limits to what Awashima will eat with it. Cocktails, certainly, which is disgusting enough already. He imagines a course.
Scrambled eggs and red bean paste.
Grilled octopus with red bean paste.
Fish ramen with red bean paste.
After-dinner oranges with red bean paste.
Tuna sushi with red bean—
She shakes the plate under his nose. He blinks. There it is again, the little jolt between the reality inside his mind, which may not be any sort of reality at all, and the reality outside, which everyone seems to keep insisting is the genuine article.
"If you faint on me or something, your unit will run around like a bunch of headless chickens."
"I'm not going to faint."
"I've dealt with five year olds less picky than you."
"You've dealt with five year olds?"
She smiles a hard smile. "There are still some things that women are expected to do."
"Do you like children?"
"As a matter of fact, no. They're messy and not at all cute."
"Do you have—"
"No. Stop trying to distract me."
"Then you're one of those women who never wants to get married."
"And so what if I was?"
He just looks at her, waiting.
"Anyway, I never said I didn't want to get married."
"What about that barkeeper."
"Insolence from a subordinate is on my top-ten list of unbearable things."
"Is lack of red bean paste another?"
"But insolence from you is to be expected, I think."
"Then it's by an act of God that I still have this job."
"That or Munakata."
"Really?"
"I'm joking. I'm sure Munakata thinks the same of you as I do."
"Thinking for your superior; isn't that on your treasonous list?"
"I don't have a—what did you say? Treasonous list. Why, do you?"
After a beat, Fushimi looks away, the tip of his chin falling back into his hand. Seri breathes out the tiniest sigh. She's lost him again.
She feels ridiculous, leaning over Fushimi in the mostly-abandoned dining common like some sort of mother hen. The plate of egg noodles is beginning to congeal. Too much oil disgusts her; she'll have to go talk to the cook again. Healthy Clansmen makes an efficient organization.
Which brings her back to Fushimi.
"Honestly, Fukukaicho, it's starting to congeal. Even if I was hungry before, I wouldn't be now."
Half-desperate, she says, "I could order you too."
"You could."
He picks a single fat white noodle, glistening wetly with oily sauce, off the plate with his fingers. Chews slowly. Swallows.
"Does that suffice."
"Not nearly."
As he flaps his hand at her in defeat, his wrist turns. The globe of bone at the base of his hand bulges so obscenely outwards that she almost cries out for fear of its breaking skin. Then his shirt cuff rides back up and it's gone.
"What do you like?" she asks, knowing it's a futile question.
"Nothing. Or—crab."
"Crab? I thought you hated seafood."
"I do. It's—the color."
"What?"
He doesn't reply.
After a second, she say, "But you can't eat color, you know."
"Obviously," he replies. His tone informs her that the conversation is over.
()
What Saru doesn't tell Awashima:
He has licked ink before.
He's not crazy. He swears. He also drinks—coffee. And water, and other ordinary things.
But once there was this tiny little bottle. So small and adorable. Fits tamely into his palm. (If only Misaki…)
He buys it for the pleasure of trapping it in his pocket. Squeezing its smooth neck gently in his hand. He's never owned a fountain pen in his life and never plans to. Instead it's the tip of his pinky that disturbs the virgin ink surface, so silk-smooth and unmarred.
His finger is bleeding orange.
He puts it in his mouth.
It tastes cutting dark. A line of soot burning down his throat.
The name of the color: bittersweet.
Saru cannot stop laughing for five minutes. A drip of bittersweet on his chin.
The worst of it is the day someone at work leaves, bizzarely, a box of crayons in the reception hall.
Half a stick of vermillion later Saru is throwing up in the bathroom. Flakes of bright wax in the gooey mess of him in the toilet bowl. Brilliant, thinks Saru, gagging, as—embers.
He sucks in air, kneels a little straighter, and drawls, "Don't you have work to be doing?"
The footsteps outside the stall door shuffle and straighten like a man rearranging cards.
"Awashima's orders, sir."
Fucking Enemoto, is it?
He glances up. Misaki is perched on the toilet bowl.
"Go away."
"I'm sorry, sir."
Misaki just eyes him, expressionless.
()
She deposits half a crayon on his desk like it's a rat.
"This is?"
"He ate it," she says.
()
Long hand drops a decapitated crayon on his desk.
Saruhiko closes his eyes and sighs as insolently as he dares.
"You're not going to ask me if I'm pregnant?"
When Munakata just stares blankly at him, Saru adds, "You know. Cravings. The whole of Sceper 4 must be dying to know by now."
"Fushimi-kun."
"I know, I know. I've given Fukukaicho another white hair. I'll buy her a box of hair dye or something. Sorry."
"If you were sorry, you'd stop."
"Tell her that. I'm just minding my own business."
"Fushimi-kun, you ate a crayon."
He looks away.
"Why?"
"I felt like it."
"Such a flippant response could be viewed as insolence."
"I don't know. Hasn't the Captain ever just felt like doing anything in his life?"
"My impulses don't extend so far."
Saruhiko laughs. A despairing sound, if Munakata's ever heard one.
"Of course. My Captain doesn't harbor impulses, or any other such poisons. Teach me to purge them?"
"Self-control, Fushimi."
"I've never known a moment of it."
"It can be learned."
"I'm an old dog. Don't let it bother you, Captain. I've turned out all right, after all."
"That's arguable."
"And you're making the argument? I don't argue with you. I take orders."
"Please. I don't believe a single one of us here have managed to bow you."
"Here…"
But of course. Out there: the little redhead, the vanguard of HOMRA—former, now.
He'd ended up in a file on Munakata's desk, as so many of the humans in Ashinaka did. The photograph of the stain on the pavement was uncensored. Munakata had sipped his tea, unperturbed. Such a thing wasn't even enough to turn his stomach, nowadays. Black type, white paper, red, red, red. There was a balance to it. Out there, HOMRA mourned and stormed. But inside: the scent of tea, the passive shine of light on the sheath of his sword. The illusion of calm; as it should be.
Almost lazily, he'd fished his PDA from his pocket and typed in Fushimi's name.
Suddenly, Munakata feels tired, as he almost never does. Talking with Fushimi had used to be a veneer of fun over a ball of irritation. Now even that thin sugar is gone, and it is all bitterness straight to the core. Talking in circles like an unraveled skein of yarn, nothing but mess and knots and bored elocution, and eyes half-blind with unshed tears in a miasma like oil.
And, after all, what use to him is a mind crippled by madness, or a body so heavy with pain that it ravages itself like a feral dog? There is some saying, isn't there: one rotten apple spoils the bunch. To be honest, he should have cut Fushimi from Sceptre 4 weeks ago.
Yet—
Perhaps he is still sentimental. An area to be improved upon. The Lieutenant's eyes seem to rest heavy on his neck. He can afford to lose a little more time.
"Take a week off," he says to Fushimi. "Rest. You look a wreck."
And where once Munakata would have been almost assured of some sarcastic comeback—silence. His Clansman has lost the thread of the conversation; his gaze wanders off, blundering like a child through a snowstorm.
He leaves the crayon on the table.
()
Saruhiko raises the bottle to his mouth.
Munakata's order is laughable.
Take a week off? Off what? He does next to no work at Sceptre 4. Never has, it seems.
And recently been confined to his office like a toddler to a playpen. Fed soft foods and soft words. That they haven't padded his walls yet is half a miracle.
What, do they think field duty will destroy him? That he'll fall apart the first time he sees one of the men he used to call (half-heartedly) brother?
He's going stir-crazy, and cabin fever spreads in a red flush like a hand around his throat. Or maybe that's just the alcohol.
More vodka, today. Does he have enough empty bottles for glass-pin bowling? How unprofessional, drinking at the office—
No. He's at home. Or not—he spends so much time at the office that it's home. This place, this apartment is just a sinkhole. A landfill; a place to dispose of the refuse of his mind, cover it over with new soil, new shit. He stagnates. Tips the bottle back again. Dry, already? No matter. The next one lies at hand, a lapdog that bites the mouth that feeds. He misses by several inches when he reaches. Enough. But he could keep going—easily, he could continue.
How about it, Misaki? Should we go on?
Cracks open the new bottle one-handed.
Never could hold your liquor.
Lean. Take it down the throat. Easy—easier when you haven't eaten. Goes down like air, and so warming, so nice.
Don't look at me like that. I'll just have to drink enough for both of us. You're not exactly helping, you know.
Misaki's eyes are so accusatory. Saruhiko doesn't like him when he's like this. Silent and staring. (the real) Misaki could never keep his mouth shut.
Not quite there yet. He has the shoebox for this. Cardboard beast lurking beneath the bed. He gropes around until he feels it, fumbles the lid off and looks at the little needle, lusting as eagerly for the thin skin of his wrist as a knife. Flesh and blood. The needle is fun times, the needle is desperation, and it tears him apart every time, minute by minute with his head on the mattress and his back against the bedframe, too far away to feel the cold.
And with the vodka it's twice as fun, twice the party. Actually the effect is probably exponential. One clear fluid raised to the power of the other, and his head would float and swell to the size of the sun, swell and swell until maybe he collapses in on himself and blinks out of existence altogether. Negative energy.
"How about it? Should we go—on?"
He probably won't remember any of this tomorrow. He barely remembers any of it right now. He's exhausted; needs to go farther.
He ties the strap around his arm. Taking so damn long. Coordination fucked.
Help me out already, Misaki. I'm almost dead. Help me out.
He sits cross-legged on the floor in front of him. His eyes are sad and he shakes his head a little, mouth carved in a frown like the thinnest crescent slice of the moon.
Don't, he says.
Saru stills. He hasn't heard his voice in so long.
"Why not?"
He can feel his pulse in his toes, his arm right beneath the sloppy knot, veins ticking like a bomb and ready to explode at the touch of the needle. His muscles feel like cake. Porous, weak.
Why do you get to have all the fun?
His cheeks sting with one clear fluid or another, and the misery is exponential.
Misaki just looks at him.
Some of us, this is the best we can get.
You won't even let me have this?
When'd you get so mean?
We used to have fun, but now I don't see you any more.
Munakata's been saying some stupid shit about you.
Is HOMRA keeping you locked up, Misaki?
You under house arrest?
Did you fuck up again?
They afraid what'll happen if you see me?
Would you explode, Misaki?
Kick me, bite me, fuck me, kiss me, like you used to?
Would you look only at me, Misaki?
Would you run at me so I could pretend?
Would you come back?
When're you coming back, huh? You never said.
Misaki?
Hey, Misaki.
Misaki.
Misaki is gone.
But that's fine. That's just fine.
He throws aside the needle.
Tired, now.
Try again tomorrow.
Paw aside the bottles like an animal, make a nest of glass on the floor.
Asleep, with his arm tied.