Bent Horizon

by Mitsima

The biggest story ever and it was published under someone else's fucking name.

"Geeze man, you should have told the boss that you were covering it. Otherwise you would have gotten the story instead of Inoue," a coworker had exclaimed in between messy sandwich bites during their lunch break "Front page headlines. It could have been your big break, but nooooo..."

A piece of bread flew out of his mouth for emphasis.

"Somebody had to go all vigilante journalist on us. Now that's a story: 'Asanichi Reporter Pulls a Peter Parker.' Subheader: 'Sort of.' Shit, Ryouji, you should have said something."

So the man arrives too late…yet again. The story of my life.

"Then let's re-print. I've got the real story on it, not the chicken crap that the police were dishing out in front of the crime scene."

"No can do, buddy. That was last week's material. Dead as the month-old ramen sitting in my fridge."

"Nah," Takizawa said, smirking as he pulled out a cigarette. "That ramen's alive. More alive than I'm feeling right now."

Six hours later Takizawa Ryouji sat hunched over his computer pounding the life out of it, a trice-used ashtray off to one side and a thrice-warmed cup of tea on the other. By this time of day, the office usually calmed down enough for him to think without interruption. Less noise. Less of dear Harume, Inoue's she-devil of a wife, twisting the knife and seasoning his wounded pride with salt. Less people. Less phone calls. Beautiful. And that was as far as his morbid mind could go with its definition of beauty.

The ceiling fans stirred the heat, but in terms of function they served as tactless decoration. Day after day of being trapped within a huge room comprised of endless rows of cubicles made him feel as if he were in some catacomb specifically designed for the pseudo-living. The AC was busted and Takizawa had long since shed his un-ironed jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and put up his hair. Yet still he heated tea for himself.

This story was going to get written one way or another, regardless of the fact that it wouldn't get printed. Call it savoring his revenge before it lost its flavor. Because the satisfaction generated by revenge, once successfully consummated, cannot be reheated.

On the other hand, the aftermath of it all felt uncomfortably dissatisfying, and he now found himself trying to wring out the last drops of sadistic pleasure by typing up all the shit and grit of Fortune's Fang, hoping the mechanically projected memory of would light a new match to the anger he felt before. But it was a no go. The wood was soggy, the fire dying, and the best he could get from the entire setup was a half-baked sensation of waning pride.

His phone rang. "Purgatory for the disgruntled reporter, Takizawa speaking."

"So I take it you're not in the mood for a visitor?"

"You…"

"Yeah, me." Kubota responded. "And not a limb missing. I'm all here."

"Where's 'here'?" Takizawa had to ask, beating back his surprise. After all, he had given the boy his card not too long ago. Then again, he didn't put it past Kubota to disappear into thin air. He seemed like that type of guy, not the type who would call a bitter man up for company.

"Uh, well…I'm not so sure. I'm kinda lost, you see."

"The building's right in front of the park. Tell me where you are in terms of landmarks. Maybe I can go out and meet you or something."

"Let's see…" Kubota paused to think. "I'm right between the copying machine and the coffee maker. You anywhere around that area?"

You're kidding me. Takizawa peeked over the walls of his cubicle to see the top of Kubota's head floating aimlessly through the room.

"Not really. You're cold, kid. Totally wallowing in the arctic."

He made a right into the business section, walked straight towards sports, u-turned and found himself in fashion. Harume's delighted squeal alerted the twenty-eight year old that Kubota had hit a landmine. "Ryouji-san never told me he had such good looking friends. What's your name, sweetie?"

"His name's 'jailbait,' pervert!" Takizawa betrayed his location and yelled across the room. "Keep at it and you'll be my new story!"

"You wouldn't dare!"

"Eye for an eye," he countered before sitting down in a huff and muttering quietly to himself. "Bitch." So much for company harmony.

Takizawa went back to the computer, only getting four words typed out before Kubota found him. "You weren't kidding when you answered your phone."

"Suffered numerous injuries and left to rot on the battlefield called bureaucracy as my career comes to an amazingly breathtaking plateau." He smiled and leaned back, lighting up a cigarette and stretching out his arm parallel to the ground in a lazy pantomime of what he was saying. "Pull up a chair. Not much space in my cubicle, but since you're skinny we can deal. Tea?"

"It's hot, though."

"Never bothered me before. Besides, it'll equilibrate the temperature of your body and the room so the osmosis effect won't make you feel so hot. Trust me." he winked. "I'm a reporter. I know things."

Kubota raised an eyebrow, but didn't remark upon the previous statement. "I'd rather have coffee, if you don't mind."

"Sure."

When Takizawa returned to his desk, Kubota was scrolling through what he had finished of the story, no doubt checking for any mention of himself or Tokitoh which, if found, would promptly have to be erased. Thus the primary intention of his visit was made clear.

Kubota was the type of guy who would make his point at gunpoint and given that Takizawa was not a stupid man, he kept purely to the root of the story while intelligently omitting any mention of the little side shows that he and the other two had put on.

"So whatcha think?" he asked as he put down the drink and looked over Kubota's shoulder.

"Not bad, for an entertainment writer." The boy thanked him and returned to his seat. Kubota made a subtle gesture of smelling the steam before taking a tentative sip. He let it sit on his tongue for a moment before bringing the Styrofoam cup to his lips again for a bigger gulp.

"You don't trust anyone, do you?" He scratched his chin, eyes lighting up with a journalist's curiosity, yet with a sleekness that was purely his own. Kubota matched his stare and for a moment, Takizawa felt as if he were looking into a distorted mirror. And during that same moment, Kubota felt as if he were looking at someone else completely.

Do you like dogs? And people?

"Comes hand in hand with being alive, I guess."

Uncharacteristically, the reporter decided not to ask questions. He instead turned his attention back to the computer. "It's not getting published or anything, but I couldn't help myself. My head would have combusted if I didn't write it out and I'd be totally gone." Takizawa rapped a knuckle on his own temple. "Gotta empty the trash before it starts to fester, understand?"

"Sure."

From that answer and the lack of hesitation that came before it, he was sure that Kubota didn't understand at all.

Kubota lived in a gray world where he stood as the paradigm of a turning point, a brink. He was at the spot- the mental state- where all things converged and disappeared, and at the same time reflected off. 100% no absorbency. Nothing held or festered. Everything just was and the only grounding his nothingness of an existence had was that kid with the weird hand.

For Takizawa it was the other way around. He took in anything and everything, and held them close until it burned. But nothing grounded him, mostly due to preference and his personal choice as a reporter. His job was to hold down the world and ground it to paper while he himself floated around the chaos, trying to make sense out of an ambiguous cloud of events in order to synthesize it in such a way that the general populace would be able to chew and swallow reality without choking.

I'm a bloody martyr. "Never mind, kid. That's just the rant of a creaky, ancient nut with nothing better to do than reminisce about the past."

"Takizawa-san." Kubota swirled the coffee and stared into it.

"Yeah?"

"You're only thinking about last week," he said, finally looking up. "That doesn't make you old."

"So I'm young and foolish?"

"Not that, either. Or maybe both. You just are, I guess." He returned to swirling.

The coffee must taste like shit, Takizawa observed. "The story of my life."

"I'll drink to that."

Then he got an idea: "Why not? I never got to properly celebrate my little victory anyway. The night after, all I did was empty a bottle of cheap wine I got for New Years while eating the rest of my mandarin oranges before they went bad. Alone. How pitiful is that, anyway?"

Kubota raised his cup in a gesture of jovial empathy, but before the cup reached his mouth, Takizawa had snatched it away.

"That's no way to toast. Let's have a beer, shall we? Hush hush about your age," Takizawa said mischievously as he opened the mini fridge under his desk and pulled out two bottles and an opener. The tops popped off noisily and the coolness that waited inside them felt inviting. He raised his bottle.

"To delicious ambiguity and the never ending limbo between this and that, flatlining prospects for career advancement, the shutdown of Fortune's Fang and to…uh…"

"World peace!" Kubota chimed in with exaggerated elation, suddenly making Takizawa feel like he had just slammed himself into a table, attempting to do a one-man Heimlich.

Kid, uh. No.

"You've got to be fucking insane..." Takizawa gaped and brought down his beer. "Think of something better to celebrate than glittering futures where we don't exist."

Kubota cooled his face with the side of the bottle as he thought. "Okay, so how about questionable sanity?"

"Questionable sanity, it is! To questionable sanity and then some."

Glass clinked with glass, fans uselessly stirred the air, and they left the building just as the late summer sun started to fade with the transience of an electric guitar's last whining chord. Takizawa hummed to a song Kubota didn't know, accompanied by the sound of cicadas getting crushed beneath their feet.

It was still hot. Sweat beaded on Takizawa's nose and he took out his handkerchief to wipe it off. He stuffed it back into his pocket without bothering to fold it again. They parted at an intersection, Kubota crossing this way while Takizawa waited until the traffic stopped so he could cross that way.

"Keep in touch, kid. I still have to pay you back for what you did last week. Sucks though. I got what I wanted and you got jack."

"Doesn't matter." Kubota was half-lost in the crowd at that point. "I never wanted anything in the first place. But yeah, you might be a help sometime in the future." He lifted his phone and Takizawa saw his name in the phonebook. Then the boy was off and at the corner of his eye, he caught two men in suits pushing through the crowd towards him.

Takizawa's heart jumped up his throat, but they brusquely whisked past and started weaving their way in Kubota's direction. They hadn't even looked at him. "So it's true. A mad dog only sees straight paths," he quoted with nobody to hear him in the bothersome summer heat but himself.

Oh, but I looked at you. Takizawa pocketed his digital camera (flash off this time around) and moved on across the street.

Instead of heading home, he bought some ice cream, took a seat at a park bench, and stared straight ahead where a few children still lingered on the swing set and in the sand box. He took out his handkerchief again and wiped the back of his neck.

Now Takizawa found himself basking within the space of time allotted to be brink of nighttime, easily mistaken to be the brink of day. He had never really considered it before, but now after emptying his mind enough for other trains of thought, he could see that they both looked the same.

In this nowhenness when the horizon line twisted around, forming a circle and creating an isolated moment, the nature of things changed for a fleeting instance. The invisible layer of society's rigid concept of time melted away, leaving the world less guarded, more fragile.

Takizawa fell into this loophole and as the darkness and nighttime coolness crept over the city, time once again congealed. And he was trapped inside, with the warmth of minutes ago still clinging to his skin and his sweat and the wrinkled handkerchief in his pocket.

But the wail of police sirens ripped through the soft membrane and cast him out back into reality. It had gotten dark and the children were gone, their presence completely erased save for the squeaking of the swings moving back and forth in faithful mockery of a grandfather clock's pendulum.

Takizawa made his way home through the neon-pierced dark just as he had every night. Only it was different tonight, because in that moment of nowheness he had finally cast off the past's acrid memories, which for so long had been his skin. He buried it there and walked home a free man.

Sort of, but that was life for you.