lullaby for you
Neku Sakuraba is born a girl. Absolutely nothing changes, except for the things that do.
Being the Composer tends to imbue you with a certain amount of foresight.
Joshua—if he's thinking of himself as who he once was, which he's had to do on occasion—knows this as much as his parallel selves do. It had, admittedly, been something of a draw to the position, once he'd learned about it. Some might think of it as a curse. It has been far too useful to him on too many occasions to ever consider it as such, and this is exactly one such instance where it's played out to his benefit.
"I'm dead," Neku is howling at him in the Scramble Crossing, looking almost like she's ready to grab him by the collar and shake him. Her J of the M threads look the same as ever, loose short buttons and all, and idly he wonders if his parallels have cottoned on to the fact that their chosen proxy is, as always, far more than she has any clue about. Across every universe, in every life, Neku Sakuraba is the same Soul, and that is vanishingly, breathtakingly rare. Those icy blue eyes and bright orange hair really do make her strike quite a cutting image... not that he, or any of his other selves, would ever tell any Neku that. "How can I be on my period if I'm dead?!"
Beloved by Shibuya even when she's altering time by means that are beyond him. Surprising that she would want to relive something like this. It really is high time to get on that and figure out just how she's managing it, though it's getting funny to watch her squirm with every iterated loop.
He shrugs. "Honestly, Neku, I thought you'd know better than to ask questions you wouldn't get the answer to by now." Or to look for answers to problems you caused yourself.
"You bastard." There's half as much heat in it as there would have been had it really been the first day of their first week together. She runs off in the direction of the 104, presumably to beg supplies off of that one shopkeep she and her previous partner apparently befriended in last week's Game.
Joshua follows after at a more sedate pace. Cute of her to think that morality comes into play with anyone involved in the Reaper's Game.
Although... if she's seen the end of it, which he, as an instanced being, hasn't, she wouldn't be so starry-eyed as all that, would she?
He considers his proxy's personality.
Idealists will never truly be broken of their instincts, he decides, thinking also of Megumi, who loves Shibuya far, far more than it will ever love him.
Neku is crying.
From sheer pain, granted, but the sight makes Joshua feel... unpleasant, all the same. She's his proxy; she ought to be able to take it.
"S-sh-shut up," she grits out, hand clenched on a Peace Full pin, drawing out its psych with that innate power of hers. "Remember last time you got a direct hit to the—"
"Never happened," Joshua says casually. And he's right. It didn't happen this week. Which means he gets to preserve his dignity, and not relive that dreadful Progfox giving its Creator cheek.
She grins and there's blood in her teeth. The kangaroo had caught her on the mouth, too, with those powerful legs. "Who'd've thought you weren't a Ken doll down there?"
"Neku, you're not interested in what little old me has down there, as you put it, are you? I have to say, I thought ladies were supposed to be more refined." Plus, he's all-powerful and actually twenty-two. Unless she already knows that, which is possible, she has no clue, and this will only serve to force her to think about her life and her situation.
"Never seen a lady before? Don't need to be if they don't know," she grunts, entirely unaffected by his taunt. "None of their business."
Joshua hums and codes a few more lines to his next update of Reaper's Grimnir. "Does your previous partner even know?"
Neku is silent.
"My. Big words about trust earlier, from someone who didn't trust her partner enough to let her in on a simple fact."
"There wasn't time, dumbass," she snipes, standing from her agonized half-curl. "I'll tell her the second I get her back. When I win. Because I'm going to."
"Yes, yes, of course. Now are we going to look for the source of this signal or aren't we?" Walking in the direction of the Department Store is the easiest thing in the world.
"Aren't. We need more food, come on," she says, pulling him into the deplorable health foods store.
Joshua lets her. The way his proxy's personality is, she needs the small victories every once in a while to remain pliable, and whatever that strange ability of hers is, she seems to have all the time in the world.
If that means being force-fed cordyceps in the name of bravery, well. He's the Composer and he has a bet ongoing with his Conductor. It has nothing at all to do with the taunting gleam in her eyes as she eats two in a row despite her own disgust and dons that strange stuffed cat costume to fight in.
"What are you reading?" Joshua asks, peering over her shoulder. The glare of the sun over Shibuya makes it hard to see; he only catches the vague outline of text in her internet browser.
Neku just about jumps out of her skin. She claps her phone shut with enough force to damage it—that won't do, he'd have to ensure it was working again before the next day and that would involve showing off powers he doesn't feel like letting anyone get wind of—and glares at him. "Fanfiction."
"Fan... fiction." He stares. She's lying. Why? "I see."
"Don't you have more shopping to do, anyways?" she grouches, eyeing the interior of the Pegaso outlet through the storefront with unease. The store clerk was looking at them like they each had two heads and is still staring now, looking for them, even though she can't see them. Neku hates attention, except when she doesn't.
In response, he holds up a brand-new Darling Lock bag. "All done, dear. Now we return to the outside."
"Great. Can't wait to burn to a crisp."
"You can't do that," he reminds her. "You're dead."
"Whose fault is that?" is the muttered response, so low under her breath that he probably wasn't meant to hear it. This girl is more trouble than she has any right to be. It's been a long time since someone has genuinely managed to invoke any kind of emotion in him; even if it's vague annoyance, that Neku has achieved it three times in the same iterated day must be some kind of world record. One that Sanae would surely rib him for.
"Say, Neku."
Two words in and she's already glaring. That's his own personal record. "What."
"You keep coming back. Am I that irresistible? Now, don't take this the wrong way. I'm flattered, but—"
"What are you talking about? Weirdo." Unease in her eyes. Still lying.
He doesn't care for this. "Enough of this. Dishonesty doesn't suit you, dear. You're absurdly powerful for a Player at this stage of the Game and you keep insisting on clearing every area of Shibuya of Noise. I've watched you down more of those dreadful supplements than I care to count in the pursuit of more power. You've somehow acquired poor Minamimoto's cap and coat—did you defrock him?—and even the Taboo Noise are starting to avoid you, because they can sense your strength. And, partner, you keep giving me these looks—"
"You won," she says. Her fists are clenched and her face is buried in her scarf. There's something radiating off of her in waves, dark and upset and ready to blow, and while that wouldn't normally phase him the sheer intensity of it has leaked into her voice and he gets the sense that this goes far beyond just him. He shuts up.
But she doesn't seem intent on saying more. "And?"
"What do you mean and?" Neku gives him an incredulous look through her fringe. Then she turns away from him, one hand loosening enough to reach for her opposite shoulder and hold it so tight it looks like it just might bruise. "You won. That's that."
Joshua opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, processing this information. Megumi loses, then. "...Well. I would be lying if I said I were surprised."
"Whatever."
"That doesn't answer my question, though."
Neku scoffs. "Try asking one first."
Apparently, do you miss me is not a real question in Neku Sakuraba's book.
That he is not at all inclined to try repeating it a second time is probably some vestigial mark of the boy he used to be.
"Will you tell me if I do?"
"I don't know. You're irritating." But her shoulders are stiff and her head tilts toward the sound of his voice, the way it's been for the past few loops, and Joshua is confident that if he plays his cards right he'll figure out what his proxy is even doing.
So he smiles, even if it's empty and useless because nobody's going to look and see it. "I thought you had to win at any cost. You keep telling me that, all throughout this week. Winning generally implies that you stop playing a Game because it's over, you know."
"Still not a question, Josh."
"Oh? So it isn't." Feigned surprise is one of the easiest things he's ever had to muster. "I can't think of a reason you'd want to come back and... visit. Your entire goal is to get out of this. So... you have some reason to keep doing it, aside from that. Whatever you're doing doesn't seem to impact fixed points—only these free moments. Don't you ever get tired of playing your role and saying your lines?"
"Maybe." Strange to have his own shadowy inclinations turned back on him. He can't say he's fond of it.
Joshua waits. "This is quite childish, Neku, and you know it. Really, let it go and tell me—"
"You're such an idiot." Again that strange, intense, deeply upset emotion, something he thinks he could place in anyone else's voice. "We have a Game Master to go defeat. C'mon."
The flow of time pulls him forward. If he were truly in his own form, not downtuning his own frequency, he wouldn't be having these issues; the Composer is beyond time, and in a sense beyond space as well. She still syncs with him despite whatever it is she's feeling—better than ever, in fact—and only when he readies his frequency for transportation to a parallel world and pushes her off the roof of Pork City does he get a good look into her eyes, and by extension her Soul.
Neku Sakuraba is grieving.
To say Joshua is gobsmacked by this revelation is an understatement. He lands in the alternate world's Udagawa, his own frequency vibrating spastically for a moment as this Shibuya recognizes him and engulfs him, and he sits down in the exact spot where her body was laid out cold beneath Sanae's mural, silent and... confused, he realizes. Confused.
Joshua laughs. It's far from happy, and he wouldn't bother if anyone was anywhere near the vicinity of the back streets, but the only Souls around are keeping to the stores. Must be summertime. He scoots back and lets his head hit the wall with a thunk and doesn't think about how he doesn't feel anything from the impact.
Only Neku could do this to him. What a joke.
"I got nothin', Josh." It's not the answer he wants to hear, and Sanae seems to recognize as much, because he sighs and pours Joshua a cup of tea. "Well, alright. I have guesses, knowing her and knowing you. But unless you hear it straight from her, somehow, you aren't gonna know for sure."
"Theories are better than nothing," Joshua points out, frowning.
Sanae hums. "Maybe she's in love with you."
"We both know that isn't true." The response is immediate and comes from somewhere within him. If she were a different girl, not his proxy, somehow involved in the Game, and not half as sour and surly as the Neku he knows, he might think otherwise, but he feels that's one thing he can be relatively certain of. Neku isn't exactly the type to develop meaningless crushes.
"See what I mean?" Coffee burbles in the dreadful little machine Sanae favors for his own personal consumption. "I know I don't need to lecture you about opening up your world to others."
Joshua snorts. One and done, thank you very much. His job necessitates isolation. Besides, he's always had Sanae and Megumi, as long as he's had the job. "You'd be right."
"So ask next time you see her."
He stares at Sanae, who's entirely serious despite the easygoing smile and the half-lidded eyes. This is a lecture, just one that takes a different form. "I tried asking. She didn't seem to feel like cooperating."
"Because you've always let that stop you before." Sanae waits for a moment. Joshua says nothing. "Then let me ask you something, Josh. Why's this got you so concerned? She's on track to do what you need her to do as your proxy."
Indeed. She's running around somewhere out there with Beat, kept busy by Megumi's machinations, and hasn't had a spare moment to visit WildKat since the third week began.
"I'm... curious, I suppose." Sanae raises a brow. Josh crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat. "By my reckoning, she replayed the loop about four times. Obviously she's looking for something—she made us do several strange things on the freer days, finding boxes of clothing in the process, but she kept asking questions. Until I asked her questions, at which point she said very little. What is she playing at, I wonder..."
"It's Neku. She doesn't hold that much regard for the Game," his Producer points out.
A hum. "You think it's more personal?"
"Boss, what isn't personal with the kid?"
"This whole proxy business is quite bothersome," Joshua decides, the image of Neku's pained eyes popping into his mind. He frowns and downs the rest of his tea. "Still. That's the constraints of the bet Megumi and I made."
Sanae nods, washing up the dishes he'd had out earlier. "You really should pay your tab sometime, you know."
"Maybe tomorrow."
"Brat," Sanae says with absolutely no heat in his voice.
In the end, Neku refuses to shoot him.
He pulls the trigger. And he understands.
That doesn't stop the creeping feeling in the pit of his dead stomach when he visits Neku the night he returns her and her friends to life, his frequency firmly in the UG, and finds her crying bitter, silent tears as she stares somewhere beyond her bedroom window—beyond anything any of the planes might permit her to view, alive or dead or undead.
"I won't forget," she whispers, one hand drifting over the place where he'd shot her. Twice, because he'd aimed for the same spot. "Maybe I can't forgive you yet, but I won't forget you, Joshua. You can't make me. I know you tried."
Joshua stares.
Weeks later, he identifies what he's feeling: guilt. Guilt down to the bone.
(So maybe he keeps track of her after that, and if he taunts her a little here and there, lets her see whispers of his presence and fragments of the music of Shibuya, well, Sanae has always told him that he needs a hobby. There are rules he has to play by for a while, and focusing his attention on her will only bring her more trouble in the end, and he has a job, but he doesn't need her any more. She doesn't need to be his proxy any more. And that means keeping tabs on her will only raise an eyebrow or two—maybe only Sanae's, if he's lucky.)
(He knows better than to hope.)