Just a trifle that sprang to mind while writing Gone to Earth and contemplating Hijiri's possible future (this is not part of my Damaged series, however). Also heavily inspired by the violin solo in Gackt's "Sayonara," hence the unoriginal title.
Sayonara . . .
"It's in there," the desk manager said, unwilling to set a foot in the dark ballroom. "Do you need . . ."
"I can take it from here," said the young man with the instrument case. He saw how the woman trembled, and he did not want or need to cause her further distress.
The desk manager understood. Breaking her gaze from his strange green eyes, she nodded in gratitude, though etiquette dictated a final "Well, if you should need me, you know where to find me" before making a hasty retreat down the hall.
The young man smiled. He wished the woman no ill will. This wasn't the sort of thing that just anyone was cut out for. If this calling had not found him, he might never have considered that he could be cut out for it. Nor had he gone into this profession willingly. Not at first. But as he often asked himself, Who else would do it, if those who had the capability and the skill refused to shoulder the responsibility?
And so he stepped into the dark ballroom, instrument case in hand.
His eyes adjusted to the dim that was lit only by emergency lights. The eye that had never quite healed, with its catlike pupil, cut through the shadows to survey his surroundings. The chandeliers that hung like the domes of some fabled Mideastern locale but upside down. The archipelago of round tables with their moai of upturned chairs. The stage still made up as it had hastily been left, with decorations celebrating some company's twentieth year in business.
And there in the corner of the ceiling, hiding behind a cluster of stage lights, the demon perched, watching him with eyes that bulged like ripe plums.
If there had been anyone else in the room with the young man, they might have only perceived the creature as a ghost-like impression. But he could see it clearly. And he could sense its fear of him—or rather its trepidation, its distrust of humans in general and his kind in particular. And its hunger. It could not have feasted in days at least, and the young man looked an enticing meal, strange eyes or no.
All this could have shaken the young man, and no one would have blamed him if it did; but he made his way to the center of the room as though he were alone, set down his instrument case on an empty patch of tablecloth, and opened it up. The demon stirred when it saw the violin inside, but merely watched the young man carefully as he picked the instrument up, and tucked it under his chin. He lifted bow to strings.
And then he began to play.
A long, tremulous note filled the hotel ballroom, wistful, and delicate as an insect newly emerged from its chrysalis, but strong with determination to grow. Slowly it swelled into a yearning melody, the violin filling the ballroom with the warmth of its resonance. He played a bittersweet tune, as of one remembering with great fondness something that was lost. He let his eyes fall closed, and a smile come to his lips.
High in the corner of the room, the demon stirred from its hiding place. It turned its shaggy head, now one way, now the other, trying to make sense of this strange sound that was the music. The resonance of the violin pulled at the demon like a lure. The notes echoed something deep inside its nature. It unfolded itself, scurrying along the ceiling like some great tiger-spider to get a better look at its enchanter, and stared curiously down at him.
Then the violinist changed his tune. The demon started at the abrupt switch to a minor key. It shook its head, and hissed its disapproval. The young man looked up at it without pause in his playing, and into a maw like a gulper eel's, ringed with glistening saw-teeth. He switched key yet again, and the demon flinched at a particularly dissonant run, as though each note was a dagger that stabbed at it. But the violinist played on, accelerando, while above him the demon writhed in greater and greater agony.
At last it could abide the noise no more, and dropped to the ballroom floor, knocking down chairs and overturning tables. It roared and spat and thrashed out at its formless attacker, for for all the ethereal beauty the violin's melody possessed to the human ear, there was an underlying pattern, a fearful symmetry, that circled around the demon and cut into it like chains, tightening with each progression.
Still, it struggled toward the violinist, and still he played on. Even as the demon advanced through the maze of tables toward him, his fingers and bow flew over the strings as though possessed of a devil themselves, and his eye, the strange one, began to glow with an inner light. The demon gathered what strength it had left for one desperate leap upon its persecutor, its jaws wide and claws extended.
But the violinist held his ground, and attacked the final crescendo.
The chords slashed sharp out into the room. The demon leaped—but never came back down. It broke upon the music, and its pieces sputtered and dispersed back to its plane of origin, like a leaf of paper being consumed by flame, committed to the ether.
In the silence of the empty ballroom, the young man lowered the violin and bow, and placed them gently back in their case, as though putting a sleeping child to bed. A sudden stab of pain made him brace against the table's edge, but he waited until it passed and straightened, and latched the instrument case.
With the smile still on his lips, he left the ballroom as he had found it, sans demonic possession. The desk manager and other members of the hotel staff greeted him back at the lobby with outpourings of relief and gratitude, the owner seemingly unable to stop shaking the violinist's hand and bowing. Anything else they could do to repay him—free stays, drinks at the hotel bar, vouchers for his friends, anything at all, he need only ask, they were forever in his debt.
The violinist just thanked them with an abashed laugh and collected the agreed-upon fee. Then he and his instrument and his strange eye left, as he had another engagement that evening.
He did not see the man in the trench coat and detective's black suit in the lobby, watching him go rather conspicuously from behind a newspaper. Or perhaps the violinist did see him, but was not about to surrender so easily.
—
He apologized to the owner of the wine bar for his lateness, even though technically he was on time. In a back room, where he had been given a small locker, he changed into a tux. A wave of nausea made him rush to the sink, but nothing came up this time, and he fought the feeling back down as he had once fought back nerves.
It was a small crowd that night, and the few regulars and couples out on dates paid him little more attention than they would canned background music, pausing in their conversations and meals only to applaud when he finished a song. He told himself that was the way he liked it, though he would have been lying if he said he didn't miss the stage, an audience hanging on every note, the adulation. There was one middle-aged woman who usually sat at the bar whom he often caught staring at him, with some fondness in her eyes that made him wonder if he reminded her of someone long lost, or her own lost youth.
She wasn't there that night, he noticed when he finished his first set.
But the man in the trench coat and black suit was. With no paper to hide his eyes behind, it was clear to see they were a deep crimson, like a glass of Burgundy. A tumbler of whiskey sat before him.
Their eyes met, and the violinist's smile fell. He went and sat at the bar beside the other, feeling that he knew now what the condemned felt when they walked toward their scaffolds.
There were a million things he had been wanting to say, a dozen ways he could have gone. Casual, nonchalant, with the affection of an old friend, or with accusations. But he merely said "You've been keeping tabs on me."
"I promised you I would. I saw dozens of your shows—as many as my schedule would allow. I must admit I was surprised when I heard you had gone into exorcism, but that was before I saw you in action. I've gotta hand it to you. You've got real talent, Hijiri. But then, you always did."
It was a compliment, but Hijiri scoffed. There was an unspoken gap there that cheerful inflection tried to cover up but couldn't quite. It had been years since he'd played at any concert hall or auditorium, years when his career had passed unnoticed. Not by the classical community, perhaps, but by him. The shinigami. Who had all the time in the world.
"It's been eleven years, Tsuzuki," Hijiri said, wishing he had a drink himself to drown his past in. "A lot can change in that amount of time."
Tsuzuki looked down at his glass. "I know."
It felt like an apology. But if Hijiri deserved an apology from anyone for what he'd been through, it wasn't the man sitting beside him.
"I had everything I ever wanted, you know," he said, as though that might make it easier. For both of them. "The tours, the recording deals, collaborating with some of the most brilliant minds in classical music today. I got paid to do what I love. It was amazing. While it lasted. Most people are never lucky enough to be able to say they lived their dreams. But when I started seeing them again . . . the demons . . . I couldn't just pretend they didn't exist. They may not have been coming after me anymore, but I couldn't let what happened to me happen to anyone else. Not if I had the ability to do something about it."
"And how did you figure out you could use music to fight them? It's brilliant, but no one I talked to in the Ministry had ever heard of such a thing."
Hijiri shrugged. "Through experimentation, I guess. I did a lot of research on sigils and fuda and chants—all the traditional ways of controlling demons—and I just thought maybe there was a way that could be translated into sound. If certain words could affect demons a certain way, maybe there were chords or sequences that had a similar effect."
"Songs that can kill," Tsuzuki said, but with a smile that showed it was with the deepest admiration.
"And save," Hijiri added.
When Tsuzuki's smile wavered, and the warmth in his eyes turned to sorrow, Hijiri knew.
"I do good work, Tsuzuki."
"I know. . . ."
"I've helped a lot of people. I've atoned for my earlier sins, for my pride."
"I know."
"Well, then, surely that has to count for something. Surely I've earned a little more time. I'm only twenty-seven years old, for Christ's sake!" He could feel tears burning unshed behind his eyes, and a sob rising in his throat.
But it wasn't a sob. And this time he couldn't hold back the cough. He covered his mouth as it seized him, each compression of muscle squeezing more anguish out of his flesh. He felt like he was going to cough up his lungs. When he took his hand away, there was a tinge of blood.
Just a tinge, but enough to make him hide his hand from Tsuzuki. He couldn't look Tsuzuki in the eye, but someone had to say it aloud: "They sent you to collect me, didn't they?"
"You can't keep doing this to yourself," Tsuzuki sighed, relieved he wasn't the one to say it first. "I know they say music is therapeutic" (at this, Hijiri laughed) "but this is ridiculous, Hijiri. I read your file. You're practically more cancer than you're not. I won't pretend to know how that feels, but the pain you must be in—"
"But there's still so much to be done—"
"Don't you think you've earned a rest?"
Hijiri wanted to shout that it wasn't about him, until Tsuzuki's hand found its way to his unbloodied one, lying on the bar counter. Strange how one who was little more than a shade himself could fill that touch with such weight and warmth. All the comfort of eternal peace. . . .
It was all Hijiri could do to free himself from it.
"I have a shift to finish," he said, his voice unable to rise past a whisper past the lump in his throat. "Then . . . if you still have to do it, you can do it."
Hijiri would have liked to say he poured his whole life into his last set, that he made his last performance his finest. That he brought the house down with a piece so perfect that there wasn't a dry eye in the place when he was done, and that all who heard it would remember that night for as long as they lived.
But no one cried, and the bar's patrons would no more remember what he played when he left the stage than they would his face. The piece he chose wasn't a particularly challenging one, nor exquisitely executed. He slipped up more than once from shaky fingers, and could not entirely blame that on nerves either. The truth was, for all the genius still trapped in his mind, his control had been slipping for some time, even if no one else seemed to notice his mistakes.
He looked up from time to time in Tsuzuki's direction as he played. In part to see if the shinigami was still there, and hadn't changed his mind and disappeared again, not to be seen for another eleven years. There was no way for Hijiri to know if the silent pain etched in those crimson eyes was the discomfort his tune caused the demon Tsuzuki swore resided inside himself, or if it was the human whose semblance of a heart was breaking. Hijiri played for both, sure that either one or the other would catch his meaning in the song.
And when he changed out of his tux for the last time, the thought of running away crossed his mind for only a minute. Violin case in hand, he said goodbye to the owner of the wine bar, and followed Tsuzuki out into the cold.
Breath rose as steam from between Hijiri's lips as he shivered down into his coat, but not from Tsuzuki's. The shinigami turned to him, starting to speak, but Hijiri didn't let him. There on the sidewalk in the cold, under the light of a wine bar sign at almost one in the morning, he took Tsuzuki by the lapels and kissed his mouth, just like he'd always wanted but never thought it his place to do. He didn't have to stand on his toes this time either. Eleven years had done Hijiri that service.
Tearing himself away again was torture. But he couldn't let go, not entirely. "Walk me home," he managed, forehead pressed to Tsuzuki's. "I don't want to go here."
Tsuzuki whispered his name, smoothing down Hijiri's hair with hands that somehow stayed warm without gloves. "If you're trying to play for time . . ."
"As if time means anything to a being like you. Eleven years, Tsuzuki!"
But Hijiri could see as soon as they were out how those words wounded, and he regretted them.
He sighed. "Please. Time is all I have left."
The look in Tsuzuki's eyes said he knew this wasn't the only rule he was going to let Hijiri convince him to break. But he pressed a kiss to Hijiri's forehead, and held on to him tight as Hijiri led the way back to his apartment.
The cold night air pricked Hijiri with its needles with every breath, but he could not complain. For as long as the walk lasted, the last eleven years seemed to melt away, and once again he was where he belonged, with Tsuzuki sturdy and warm on his one side, the violin heavy in its case on the other.
—
The keys he threw on the kitchen table. The violin was settled down with a bit more respect in an armchair.
Last time they had been together in Hijiri's apartment, Tsuzuki had offered to cook. But last time Tsuzuki had been trying to keep Hijiri alive.
He looked like he really didn't want to have to speak, and anyway, Hijiri wasn't ready to hear it. "Not yet," the violinist said as he relieved Tsuzuki of his trench coat.
The coat became his suit jacket. The jacket, his tie. His shirt soon after. Hijiri fixed his gaze on the buttons. Anything other than the pity he knew he would find in Tsuzuki's eyes. He only had so much time. He wanted to fill it with other things.
When he started on Tsuzuki's belt, Tsuzuki had to grab hold of him, slow him down. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
Hijiri could have laughed. "I've wanted this since I was sixteen years old. More or less, anyway. I don't want to wait any more. I don't have time to wait. I don't want to go having regretted what I never did." When he looked up into those burgundy eyes, Hijiri felt he could drown in their sorrow. "If you can find it in you to love what's left of me, that is."
As if there was any lingering doubt, Tsuzuki kissed him deep and long for all the years he had to make up. Hijiri shut his eyes tight, just trying to hold on to the memory of Tsuzuki's mouth against his, Tsuzuki's hands on his naked skin, while he still had memory left to hold. Like trying to hold on to a song with his bare hands. For a little while, feeling his whole being exalted, transported to some plane where he could lose his sense of self in exquisite trills and harmonies.
Tsuzuki surrounded him like a symphony. Like one Hijiri had heard a thousand times in recording, memorized, but never before heard performed—familiar phrases touching him like they were brand-new. Tsuzuki played him with an expert touch, set him resonating, and did not rush his rhythm. Hijiri didn't bother to wonder if this was the first time he mixed business with pleasure. If he had to, he would have guessed it wasn't, but it wouldn't have mattered a whit.
But, like trying to hold on to a song, the real thing always proved too fleeting to bear. The pain that gnawed at Hijiri's bones like a demon come rushing back in the end to shatter his brief peace. And remembering what had brought Tsuzuki here to him, so, finally, did the tears.
"I can't put it off any longer, can I?"
Tsuzuki held tightly to him, as if that, as if anything, might somehow soothe his trembling. But all it proved to Hijiri was that he had nowhere left to run. "I'm so afraid, Tsuzuki. I know, it's stupid, but I am. Even having been through this all before, even knowing what comes after . . ."
"It won't hurt," Tsuzuki murmured next to his ear, as though all the hurt was his already. "I promise. It'll be just like falling asleep. And you'll know nothing more."
No pain, Hijiri thought, no weight—no sense of gravity or time. And no sound. Just silence.
But silence scared him most of all. The sob in this throat threatened to become a cough, and Hijiri turned away as it shook him, trying so hard to hold this rundown body of his together, just a little while longer. As if it would do him any good.
Tsuzuki only held him tighter, pressing kisses into Hijiri's hair that was soon damp with his own tears.
—
さよなら。。。愛した大切な人
君への想いだけはきっと残る
さよなら。。。泣いてた昨日までの僕
静かな夜だね
—
Hijiri would not remember his trial before the Lords of Judgment, in the Land of the Dead. He would not remember how Tsuzuki had offered testimony, as the shinigami assigned to his summons, far beyond what was required. The case Tsuzuki made for the usefulness of his particular skills, and the terrible loss it would be to the Ministry of the Dead if he was allowed to pass on, would pass through and from Hijiri's mind, leaving no lasting trace.
He would remember nothing between going to sleep in Tsuzuki's arms in his own apartment, and waking up in the infirmary bed, cherries blooming outside his window—and the former feeling more and more each moment like it was just some dream he had awoken from.
But he remembered this place, and he could feel that his body—or this semblance of it—was his own again, its invader ousted. The silence didn't frighten him anymore.
His violin sat upright in its open case on the visitor's chair in the corner, to greet him. By the door, just waiting for Hijiri to wake up, Tsuzuki stood with hands in his pockets and the most beautiful smile on his lips that Hijiri thought he had ever seen.
"Welcome home."
Japanese lyrics quoted from "Sayonara" by Gackt C.