It was never a good thing to find Sentou stuck in a loop of repetitive motion.
Ryuuga paused on the stairwell and squinted through the half-darkness. The CousCoussier was closed for business today. Chiyoko had cited "bad weather", "bank holiday", "spring cleaning", and "mental health day" all in the same breath. It must be nice, Ryuuga thought, to be able to declare a vacation whenever you wanted and just take off. But, as she had been quick to remind them, there was still plenty to do. Minor repairs, mopping, sweeping, polishing and shining tables - all sorts of necessary tasks that were difficult to accomplish when the place was full of hungry customers. And they were still getting paid for it, so why not?
The chairs were still flipped up on the tables where he had left them maybe half an hour ago. The emergency lights were on, but the only other light in the building was the dim, overcast grey that filtered in through the rain-streaked windows. Sentou had barely moved ten feet from where Ryuuga had last seen him. He stood staring off into the distance, seeing nothing, mindlessly running the vacuum over the same few squares of tile over and over again.
"Sentou," he called over the noise. Maybe another day he would have been amused by how hard Sentou jumped, hard enough to nearly lose his grip. But not today. "You're gonna wear a hole in the floor like that."
"That only happens in cartoons," Sentou huffed. He switched the vacuum off and folded his arms, glaring up into the stairwell. "You're the one who decided to go take a nap and leave the rest of the work to me. If you don't like how I'm cleaning, do it yourself."
"Maybe I will," Ryuuga retorted.
Sentou dropped the handle and let it clatter to the floor. Ryuuga rolled his eyes and descended the rest of the way down the stairs, taking explicit care to elbow Sentou in the ribs as he pushed past. Sentou took aim in retaliation, but Ryuuga flipped the handle expertly back up with his foot to block the strike. "Move it or lose it," he said, and switched it on, drowning out Sentou's protest under the drone of the vacuum and the sound of the rain against the roof.
Sentou heaved a pointedly loud sigh. Ryuuga listened to his footsteps as they retreated towards the stairs. They paused, lingering just before the first step. Then they turned towards the front doors instead. Ryuuga glanced over at Sentou's half-shadowed figure as he hooked his fingers around the door handles. He hovered there for another moment as though uncertain, his hands loose. Then he pushed the doors outward and stepped outside.
Ryuuga squinted in the wash of grey light. Sentou paused under the stone overhang as he came face to face with the torrent outside. He swayed forward on the balls of his feet, as though debating whether to take another step. Then he rocked back onto his heels, sighed, and sat down on the pavement, leaving the doors open behind him.
Ryuuga switched the vacuum off and propped it up against a table. He untied his flannel from his waist and took a moment to pull it on properly beneath his jacket. Then he followed Sentou out through the doors and sat down on the pavement beside him. The wooden gates out front were closed, blocking off the view of the street, but Ryuuga could still hear the sounds of the city beyond. Cars passing by. Footsteps. Voices. The noise ebbed and flowed beneath the drumming of the rain, as though reaching out through radio static from hundreds of miles away.
"I thought peace would feel different."
Sentou's eyes were turned upward towards the office buildings around them. Most of the windows were closed, shades drawn against the dreariness outside, but through some of them Ryuuga could see dim, filtered figures, washed out into barely visible shades of movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryuuga caught an equally washed-out shade of a smile tugging at the corners of Sentou's lips.
"It's kind of boring," he said with a laugh that rang hollow in Ryuuga's ears. "That sounds awful, doesn't it?"
Ryuuga pursed his lips and lowered his eyes to the gardens. With spring well on its way, Chiyoko been hard at work, weeding and replanting, clearing out dead stalks to make room for the living. Now the fruits of her labor were really beginning to show. Even through the rain turning everything around them into a monochrome oil painting, he could pick out spots of color. Reds and pinks and yellows. Oranges and whites. The buds were still small, just barely beginning to lift their heads, but even those faint pinpricks of color were too bright to be masked by the drab and dismal downpour.
Sentou stretched his arms high above his head and cracked his shoulders. "Nevermind," he said. "We should go back inside."
Ryuuga caught hold of his wrist. Sentou paused and gave him an incredulous look. Ryuuga said nothing, but he kept his fingers locked around Sentou's wrist, and the silence that stretched between them felt like an entire ocean. And then Sentou settled back down and crossed his legs, and the tension bled out of Ryuuga's shoulders. Sentou gave him a sidelong look, but he kept his focus on the garden, watching the bright new buds bend and sway under the relentless onslaught of the rain.
"I don't get it either," Ryuuga finally said. "I don't get why it feels like...like nothing. Like it didn't matter." His grip tightened on Sentou's wrist. "It did matter. People are alive. Nobody even remembers dying. Nobody remembers being in pain to begin with. That's probably the best thing that could've happened."
"I know." Sentou pulled his knees up to his chest and looped his free arm around them. He stared out into the rain once more, eyes half-lidded, an unreadable expression on his face. "I know. I just keep thinking. Genius made it so that everyone else forgot-that has to be because it would be better than remembering the terrible things that happened. But I spent two years fighting for my life, and you spent one year in jail and another year after that also fighting for your life. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make us forget, too? What's the point of just the two of us remembering when everyone else forgets?"
Ryuuga shrugged with one shoulder. "You're the inventor, here. You made the damn thing. Shouldn't you understand how it works?"
Sentou shot him an irritated glare. "The Genius bottle defies all known laws of the universe. And besides, I don't know everything."
"What?" Ryuuga clutched dramatically at his chest, a patently offended tone flooding his voice. "You mean you've just been a normal, imperfect person with a stupidly big brain this whole time? I had no idea!"
Sentou rolled his eyes and dug his elbow into Ryuuga's side. "Even you're not that much of an idiot."
"I dunno, man." Ryuuga elbowed him in return, hard enough to nearly push him over onto his side. "I'm just the muscle-brained monkey, remember? I don't know anything about anything."
"I mean, that's true." Sentou dodged a second assault and shoved at Ryuuga's shoulder, and a brighter smile broke over his face. "Hey, look on the bright side. At least you're an important idiot."
"Yeah, okay, mister definitely-not-fishing-for-compliments." Ryuuga could feel his own face threatening to break into a grin. "And you're an important, amazing, awesome genius who saved the world. Blah blah blah. Here's your medal. Have a nice life."
"I will push you off the roof and it will look like an accident."
Ryuuga laughed. They half-wrestled for another few seconds, each trying to push each other closer to the edge of the awning. Then Sentou extricated himself and rested his chin in his hand. His eyes went distant, and Ryuuga's brows knitted, but when he spoke, his voice held much less of the indistinct, hazy sadness he'd heard in it before.
"It just doesn't make any sense," he said. "I knew what kind of world I wanted, but that's where it ended. I had no control over what actually happened. The Genius bottle didn't have to listen to me. It could've only let one of us in, or locked both of us out forever. Or it could've let us live without remembering anything, just like everyone else. But it didn't. And I still don't know how I feel about it. But even more than that, I hate not knowing why."
"Maybe we're not supposed to know," Ryuuga said with a shrug.
Sentou's eyes tightened around the corners. Ryuuga sighed and, more deliberately this time, curled his fingers around Sentou's wrist. "Look," he said. "I don't have any answers, either. I don't know if there's some lesson we're supposed to get from this. But it's like you told me. Digging yourself into a hole looking for an answer you might never find won't help." He let out a short, dark laugh. "I don't know about you, but I'm so fucking tired of searching for some grand purpose to justify why I exist. I just do. I'm alive, and I'm still me, and I remember everything, and you know what? I don't care why. If there is some reason we're still alive when we have no right to be, I'm willing to wait for it."
Silence, except for the rain. The storm was beginning to lessen. Occasional bursts of wind whipped the droplets into a furor, but the incessant roar had softened to a rumble. The sound threatened to lull him back into slumber. Sentou's posture was relaxed now, and the expression on his face was more thoughtful, and as far as Ryuuga was concerned, that was a victory.
He squeezed Sentou's wrist and drew away, cracking his knuckles. "C'mon. Let's go finish up. For real this time."
"I'm actually going to stay out here, I think." Sentou shot him a sly smirk. "You already got to take a break. It's my turn."
Ryuuga rolled his eyes and stood. "Be that way," he said, brushing his hands off on his jeans. "You were doing a shitty job anyway. I'm gonna have to do twice the work to fix it."
"Hey, Ryuuga?"
He paused. It still felt odd to hear Sentou call him by his first name. And though it happened more frequently these days, it was still a rare enough occurrence that worry crackled through his ribs all over again.
"Yeah?" he said cautiously.
"Thanks."
"For what?"
"For keeping your promise." Sentou's voice was barely audible under the rain. "Or for existing in general. Take your pick." He drew his knees up under his chin again and smiled faintly. "I still don't like not knowing. But waiting sucks a lot less when you're not waiting alone."
Ryuuga gave Sentou's shoulder a light push. Sentou swatted at his hand, more reflex than intent. For a long time there was no sound but the rain pattering against the overhang, the concrete, the bowed flower heads just barely beginning to show their colors, the wall that separated them from the world. Then Ryuuga drifted back inside, leaving Sentou to his thoughts. The work still needed to be done, after all. Sentou would call if he needed anything, and Ryuuga wouldn't be far away.
It didn't take long to finish vacuuming-that was already most of the way done. Mopping took a little more time, if only because he couldn't pick up from where Sentou had left off. But Chiyoko would be pleased, he thought, surveying the gleaming tile. Normally he rushed through this kind of chore and had to do it all over again to make up for the first time. But there was a calm sort of stillness in his chest that lent him clarity and focus, enough to hold back the anxiety plucking at the edges of his mind until he was done.
He tucked the steam mop back into its cabinet and planted his hands on his hips, glancing towards the still-open restaurant doors. The rain had died off sometime during his cleaning. At some point Sentou had shifted forward to lean against one of the pillars supporting the overhang. Weak fingers of sunlight stretched in over his shoulders, casting diffuse bars of light across the tile. Beyond him, the light was pale and thin, but it was enough to glisten off the droplets clinging to every surface, chasing away the haze that until now had painted everything around them in grey.
Sentou's eyes were closed. His breaths came slow and even, as gentle as the breeze rising around them. A particularly cool gust ruffled his hair and made him shiver in his sleep. Ryuuga pulled his jacket off and draped it over Sentou's shoulders. He buttoned his flannel up properly, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and leaned against the doorframe, closing his eyes. Now that the white noise of rainfall was gone, the sounds of the city rushed in all around him. Cars passing by. Footsteps. Voices. A world separate from the world they had known, but one they belonged to nonetheless. They could figure out what they wanted to do with it another day. For now there was no pressure, no obligation, no imperative they had to follow. For now they could afford to wait.