a/n: super late gift fic for jynxiii. (slow build akafuri fantasy au. akashi isn't in the first chapter, but he will be in the next. probably.) this fic will be updated every other day or so. apologies for mistakes and the characterization, haha.
let the wind carry you home.
(Furihata journeys to another world to save his own.)
The sunlight is a thread through the spaces between Furihata's fingers, reaching the boy's face as piercing rays that coil around his entirety and act as a second gravity. Furihata does not resist the call of the brilliance overhead, blinding and scorching as it may be, and raises his hand to filter the light that makes the spots behind his eyelids dance.
But beyond the sun is a far greater enigma: Furihata has been fascinated by the endlessness of the sky ever since he picked up his father's Plexiglas digital book, and he knows that the wide expanse of ever-changing palettes is merely a blanket to another world. Every time he gets on his LSA, he has to fight the urge to plunge into the only gateway to that other realm; there is a large opening in the center of the sky, surrounded by cascading clouds and empty with nothing but darkness. Call it a blind spot, a form of absolute black—it is the only thing that the human eye is completely incapable of discerning, all because there is nothing to see.
Limits of visual perception be damned, there is something out there. What that something is, Furihata has absolutely no inkling of. If only he could get close enough…
The symbols on the primary flight display begin to flicker haphazardly as a particularly strong turbulence—one that isn't caused by clouds and converging bodies of air—wracks through the plane's interior.
"[bzzt] - Goddamn it, Furihata! At your altitude I don't think it's a good idea to let your hands wander from the wheel, so you better focus before you end up crashing into the ocean and making me pay for the damage—" The voice from the aviation radio furiously reverberates in the walls of the cockpit and jerks Furihata from his stupor. Furihata accidentally thrusts the center lever.
After lowering his altitude and regaining his momentum with quickened breaths, Furihata mutters, "R-right, right. How did you—I mean, I wasn't daydreaming or anything."
There's static before the voice lazily drawls out, "You were heading for the Aperture. Need I say more?"
Furihata shifts in his seat. "…What a hasty generalization," he finally says, staring at the indicator and wincing at how close he had come to losing his plane.
"You would've died," the voice replies curtly. "Remember that."
"I do. I'm coming down in a few minutes."
The person on the other end sighs in resignation. "Fine. I'd rather you get off that plane than add to the long list of funerals I've attended."
Furihata nervously laughs. He briefly withdraws his hand from the wheel and wipes the sweat off of his palm.
.
Part One
CHAOS
.
"How many times have I told you never to let the Aperture distract you?" Hyuuga, the air traffic controller assigned to the district, lets out a barrage of reprimands upon Furihata's entrance into the tower. Furihata develops a new interest in his boots as Hyuuga scrutinizes his flushed face.
"I'm sorry—it's just that—"
Hyuuga waves him off and goes back to his seat. "I've had enough of excuses with that punchline. Go drink a glass of water and talk to me when you've recovered."
Furihata shakes his head, not wanting to disappoint his friend any further. His fists are trembling inside his pockets. "I'm fine."
Furrowing his eyebrows, Hyuuga counters, "Nobody who goes near the damned hole is fine afterwards. Down the water, then I'll be at least convinced that you're not going to faint anytime soon. That's an order."
Furihata obeys and immediately returns, the reddening on his cheeks and neck gradually disappearing under the cold weight of the room. The seat makes a barely audible squeak when Furihata settles on it. He can see Hyuuga's expression very well—after all, he's had his fair share of witnessing deaths caused by engine failures and, ultimately, unquenchable curiosity about the void that lies above them.
Hyuuga's just doing his job. The repercussions of applying for the position are beginning to wear Hyuuga out; although Hyuuga's only in his early twenties, he already has a few lines on his forehead, probably from worrying too much.
Sometimes Furihata feels sorry for him, but then every occupation has drawbacks. Hyuuga just happened to pick one with a free ticket to a never-ending viewing of talented pilots falling from the sky.
When he thinks about it, though, Hyuuga has gone numb from all of the casualties he's had to count.
"I'm not numb," Hyuuga spits, offended. Once he realizes that he thought out loud, Furihata digs crescent shapes into his palms and bites his lip. "Repeatedly encountering death doesn't mean that you get used to it."
"I'm sorry," Furihata repeats, his head still hanging low.
Hyuuga turns to him and slaps the side of his head. "You look like a miserable idiot. Stop apologizing; at least you're safe now."
"I'm probably grounded, though. Literally," Furihata says thoughtfully.
He gets a scoff as an answer. "What do you mean by 'probably'? You're definitely grounded." Hyuuga goes on about him running off and looking for a job that won't get him blasted to dust, but all Furihata can hear is the lull of Hyuuga's sentiments that make him the brother that Furihata never had. "Okay, what is it now? Are you actually still listening to me?"
Furihata blinks. "Uh, yeah, I am." When Hyuuga narrows his eyes at him, he adds, with his hands flailing, "And. Um. Thank you, Hyuuga-kun."
"For saving your ass? No problem," Hyuuga easily replies.
"No, no…just, thanks. For being there. I was really tempted to go into the Aperture…"
"Believe me, you're not the only one. That doesn't justify anything, though—"
"But don't you ever wonder what's out there?" Furihata blurts, the marks on his palm still visible but only superficial. He was only about fifty kilometers away from the fissure, and even then, it was apparent that it was there just because.
Still. There always has to be a reason other than the effect itself. Furihata could use one of the arguments that his mathematics-loving classmate in college used to spout: there is no such thing as one that produces the existence of itself. It's an illogical infinity. The way his classmate explained it in layman's terms involved a phrase that sounded a bit like 'a dog chasing its tail', and thankfully Furihata had enough skills in comprehension to catch up.
Hyuuga purses his lips for a moment, as if in hesitation, before saying, "I always do. All of us do. Do you think nobody lifts their head and stares at the Aperture while walking down the street? Nobody looks out their window at night and fears that one day the hole's going to swallow us whole? I think our minds are going to be the banes of our existence someday. Too many damn questions. I never wonder why there're so many insomniacs in this era."
"I remember you tracing the blame back to the chemists—was it something about experimenting with variations of LSD?"
Hyuuga relaxes and lights up when memories of their teenage years resurface. "Ah, that one hypothesis about hallucinations, and how the Aperture is just one fat illusion? Hm, that was a great one."
Trading his smile for a more serious expression, Furihata says, "See, all we had were assumptions. I want to know, not just guess."
"And that is why you're going to die early," Hyuuga retorts. "You have to make sacrifices to know. Do you really want to go that far and risk everything just so you can discover why it's there? You do realize that you can't say, doesn't hurt to try, don't you?"
"It's already painful not knowing," Furihata quietly chuckles.
Hyuuga reclines in his seat and crosses his arms, his gaze firm and expectant. "Answer me honestly, Furihata. Would you give anything just to satisfy your inquisitiveness?"
They share silence for a while, until Furihata exhales and decides that he's going to tell Hyuuga the answer that he wants to hear. For all Hyuuga has done for him, he deserves this much peace of mind.
He'll lie. Just this time.
.
.
Usually, Furihata uses his hoverboard during the winter, when the roads are slippery beyond imagination and the tragedies of his helpless feet increase tenfold. His board is the oldest model, one he had salvaged from a junk shop beside a laundromat. Furihata was fascinated by the board's simple design—there were lines that ran like schematic symbols and, when the board was activated, glowed cyan in the darkness. The board was to his liking, as opposed to the flashy ones that people of his generation obsessed over.
This summer, however, Furihata takes his board out of its compartment and brings it with him as he walks along the thoroughfare that leads to the freeway and a narrow road to a dead end. He has a feeling that he would need it sooner or later.
Hyuuga was right about the passersby; Furihata can't help but glance at the people and the AIs who walk or float alongside him, staring at the uncanny Aperture if not at the streetlights or their watches. They're not as concerned as he is, seeming to have accepted the reality that there is a void in the sky that can never be filled.
Another thing that perplexes Furihata is the fact that he hasn't seen any toddlers for a while. The youngest children he has seen recently appear to be at least six years old; he doesn't know if there's a law prohibiting infants and nursery-age kids from going outside, but something is definitely off about their absence.
When the pedestrian sign lights up, Furihata cautiously pads across the lane with a canvas backpack strewn over his shoulders and his board by his side. Save for the footsteps that pound on the thinning asphalt and the wind that sifts through the pedestrians' clothes, the city is quiet, almost asleep in the way its people whisper and proceed without so much as conversations about the latest earthquake and typhoon warnings. After all, their tablets do that for them; some of the keen gossipers only raise eyebrows at new post notifications on their fiberglass gizmos.
It takes him quite a few turns around corners before Furihata finds himself in front of the city archives. Last week, he saw an online job posting, and he was astounded to know that the administrator had included a very handsome salary in the description. Furihata figures that it's payment for hours of uneventful filing and sorting of catalog cards. The catalog exists to this day due to some people's mistrust in what should be an infallible digital system. The point remains—who would want to work in the library, anyway?
Apparently, the reason why the administrator chose to use the salary as the job's point of attraction is the absence of anyone to even do a single task in the archives. Furihata enters the pristine building whose windows are replaced by thin glass displays of ebooks and newspaper headlines. His breaths echo in the large, dark lobby, and he only sees a sign above the counter:
NO APPLICATIONS NEEDED. GRAB THE MICROCHIP ON THE FIRST COFFEE TABLE, AND YOUR EMPLOYMENT IS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
It's a sketchy invitation—the library is practically abandoned, and Furihata muses about the possibility of the posting as one created by a user looking for someone to pass his frustrations to.
Kids nowadays. They find every reason to defy cyber-ethics.
Nevertheless, the glint of the microchip catches his eye from the table right beside the counter. It's barely visible, but the sunlight has shone exactly on it. Furihata takes some steps towards it, trying to ignore the shivers that run through his spine due to the eerie silence.
He halts midway, swallowing at the blurry image of tall shelves. There's a humming noise beyond what he can see. Some people say that when you leave a house, there are still sounds left bouncing off of furniture and doors. Maybe the concept applies to archives.
Furihata makes a dash for the microchip. He misses it at first, his palm sliding across the cold glass tabletop; when he does retrieve it, he holds the small, steel-like chip between his fingers and holds it under the light.
Funny. It doesn't look like a regular microchip at all.
It's not a microchip, he realizes, when it hums and develops fiber protrusions that fasten on his index finger. Furihata screams, slipping on his feet and pulling the device from his finger. It won't budge.
The moment the device glows, the lights in the library mysteriously turn on by themselves, and all of the Plexiglas digital books buzz into life. Furihata lets out a whimper, turns around on his front, and scrabbles across the floor for the entrance. While dragging himself to the door, he uses one hand to pinch his cheek. He yelps, "Ow—oh, forget it!"
Furihata is just an inch away from escape when a male voice laughs, starting a chain of chuckles from an audience that Furihata is yet to see. Furihata squeezes his eyes shut. Pleaseletthisbeadreampleaseletthisbeadream—
"Look, he's scared of us. I told you that this initiation was too creepy!"
"Shh, you got a good laugh out of it, anyway. Poor guy, he's probably traumatized by books by now. Do people have phobias of archives, Izuki-kun?"
"Mm, maybe."
"Thank gods you can't come up with any retorts right now."
"Stop it," a woman barks out, effectively shutting up her comrades. Furihata's crouched on the corner with his head buried in the nest between his knees and enveloped by shaking arms. Someone approaches him. Furihata doesn't dare to look.
A light hand taps his head, and Furihata forces a cry down his throat. "Are you okay?" the same female voice asks. There's a shuffle of feet, and Furihata realizes that the woman is kneeling before him. "Okay, you're not. But trust me, we won't harm you."
Furihata shakes his head while it's still wedged between his knees.
The woman sighs. "I guess that this procedure isn't going to work." Furihata unmistakably hears cracking knuckles before he's hauled up from his position and slammed to the wall, a hand fisting his collar. It knocks the wind out of him, and his hands reflexively grasp the wrist that's keeping him plastered in his position.
Furihata blinks at a brunette, seeming to be in her early-twenties. She's relatively petite, without curves whatsoever—typical of the girls Furihata's dated himself, although the woman makes up for her lack of defining features with her fierce expression. The first thought that comes to mind is the prospect of setting this woman up in a date with Hyuuga. The poor man has never had any success in his romantic life, anyway. They'd be great at looking furious together.
The brunette doesn't particularly appear as an aggressor, but her firm hold on Furihata signifies otherwise. She looks at him contemplatively, probably surprised by the pallor of his lips.
"So," she says sternly, "I'll begin again. Are you okay?"
"This is crazy," Furihata breathes out, struggling to remove the hand from his collar.
A male walking towards them giggles. "Punch him in the face, Riko. Maybe that'll knock some sense into him, teach him to answer the right questions."
The woman—Riko—frowns and eyes Furihata closely. "Why are you here?"
"To apply for a job," his reply comes quickly, clipped and straight to the point in fear of saying something wrong. Riko nods and loosens her grip on him.
Riko inquires further. "How did you find out about it?"
"The website. Heavily encrypted. Found the basic algorithm."
"Whoa, kid," a pale-skinned man grins at him. "You an IT major or a hacker? There wasn't any key."
Furihata returns the smile nervously. "No, I just looked up some algorithms and played with them. They're all over the net."
"True," another guy says. His spiked hair is outrageous, Furihata thinks.
Using her free hand to make a silencing gesture, Riko turns back to Furihata and says, "You want to work in the archives, from what I understand."
"I…Am I supposed to say something else?" Furihata offers, but takes it back when Riko shoves him. "Yes, I want to apply for a position. But I don't see the administrator or any of his assistants…"
He's met with questioning stares, and he instinctively gulps.
Finally, Riko lets him go, dusting off her palms while listening to Furihata's sharp intakes of breath. She crosses her arms and briefly cocks her head to the side, motioning for her companions to step forward. Now that they're all lined up, Furihata recognizes them—he doesn't know what memory he has of them, but he's certain that he's seen their faces before.
"You're right in front of them," Riko says, a hint of satisfaction tugging at the corners of her lips. Baffled, Furihata looks to her for elaboration. "Welcome to our HQ, although I'm frankly surprised that no one has found us yet. This is what happens when dumbasses choose to let the Net consume them and forget what a library is for."
Another brunet—a fox-eyed male—clears his throat and holds his hand out. "I'm Koganei Shinji," he greets him. Furihata's fear falters and he quickly responds with a bow. "Oh, and before I forget, this is Mitobe Rinnosuke," Koganei points to the bushy-browed male right beside him, who continues to stare at Furihata wordlessly.
Upon seeing Furihata's question written all over his features, Koganei adds, "He's simply taciturn. Don't worry, he can speak."
"Izuki Shun," a raven-haired guy throws in and waves his hand. He elbows the other guy with the spiky mane, who coughs, "Fukuda Hiroshi. Nice to meet you."
Riko smiles, all predatory teeth and perfunctory courtesy masking her ferocity. "You've probably already guessed, unless you're as thick as the bark of a giant redwood." Furihata shoots her a confused look, and she amends, "The redwood's been extinct for a millennium, sorry. Anyway, I'm Riko Aida, ex-pilot, fugitive—although in my defense I'm not guilty of running away from any detainment, assuming that I've actually committed a crime—and undercover researcher of the crux behind the Aperture."
She steps away and lifts her chin. "You're Furihata Kouki—the curious pilot who ran too close to the Aperture yet didn't 'die'. A miracle, I'd say, but we all know that there are no miracles in this world."
Furihata can feel the bile rising up his esophagus. "How…"
"You want to find a job, but your ulterior motive is to look into pre-existing and hidden records about the Aperture," Riko says, pride lacing her voice. "This is why you're part of us now, Furihata. We need you. And you need us."
"Who are you people?" Furihata sputters in an accusatory tone.
Koganei bestows him a cheeky smile. "We are the Administrators."
.
.
Furihata's first day at his job begins spectacularly with a sit-down, a stress ball, and a cup of chamomile tea. He's well aware that chamomile is just short for 'Good luck, you dumb consumers—you're drinking something that's concocted from recycled debris. Chamomile doesn't exist, idiots'. Regardless of the ingredients, Furihata is just relieved that all he tastes is water.
"Tell us more about you, Furihata-kun," Izuki says, crossing his hands under his chin. His eyes are calculating.
It takes Furihata every shrapnel of his remaining audacity to say something in return. The liquid in the cup forms torrents as Furihata's fingers shake. "I-um, I think you know everything there is to know about."
"You're 17, right?" Fukuda asks, shaking his head in amazement. "Well, you're turning 18 in three months, but still. You're pretty young to be here. It also says in the files that you dropped out of high school, but it doesn't state the reasons why, unless I haven't read them yet…"
Furihata nearly chokes while sipping the tea and is grateful when it doesn't come out of his nose. "Ah, well. Financial issues."
Koganei peers over Fukuda's shoulder to take a look at the document. Fukuda opens his mouth and taps on the entry that he's been searching for. "Because you're—"
"Orphaned," Furihata replies automatically, unbothered by the weight that his answer carries. He's been asked this question for years, and it doesn't hurt any less; in fact, the pity just seems to grow exponentially.
There's a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up to see that Mitobe has walked over to his seat and offered him his condolences. Koganei nods. "It says here that you don't have any providers, but I suppose that we should change that according to what you just said."
It's different—Furihata has never heard this response before, and the absence of the word 'sorry' in the sentence is a moment of deafness on Furihata's part. It should have been offending—it should have come off as cold, unthoughtful, inconsiderate—but all that registers in his mind is comfort. Something tells him that he has the emotional intelligence of a rock, but Furihata finds solace in the fact that false sympathy does not linger here.
It is Izuki who wrenches him out of his haze. "How is Suzume?"
His sister's name is almost synonymous with sadness. "She's…fine. Quiet."
Izuki looks at him fondly. "Does she feel guilty for being the only one who's able to go to school?"
Furihata laughs, the sound warbled and ugly when it comes out. "Sometimes she doesn't want to put her uniform on, saying she'd rather take care of the house while I'm out there making ends meet."
Before they can delve further into Furihata's personal life, Riko arrives with a stack of papers, which she drops on the table without warning. She announces, "I haven't informed you yet of the specifics. We should start off with a brief summary of what we've unearthed in previous studies. There isn't much, but a little something is always better than nothing."
"This," Riko points to the first set of papers, "is comprised of our first-hand experiences with the Aperture. The second set is what we've salvaged from old records, but it doesn't really make sense if you don't read into the third set, which is the history of mankind, all the way back to the Neanderthals."
"But if you prefer to listen to the audiobook version," Izuki says, earning a blow to his head from Riko, "I'd be happy to help you. Everything I'm going to tell you is just basic stuff, though."
Furihata, still processing the information, just nods.
Mitobe hands Koganei and Fukuda some of the papers from the second and the third sets. Koganei begins by exclaiming, "Hey, why do you always give me the most convoluted sections?"
"Take it as a compliment if you wish," Fukuda chuckles. Koganei sinks back to his seat and grumbles before perking up again and initiating the discussion.
"Okay," Koganei says, cracking his neck as he skims over the text. "This one's about the hypothesis of there being another world behind the Aperture, which we clearly do not know anything about since—"
Furihata blurts, "I knew it!" The other Administrators stare at him until he apologizes for the unnecessary interjection.
Setting down the papers on the table, Koganei continues. "Resuming the statement—there is a world beyond the Aperture. It may be a parallel of ours, but from what we've found so far, humans in the past used to worship deities. They believed that these deities watched over them, blessed them, something along those lines. There's a concept of 'heaven', in which these divine beings resided. No human could ever go to that place unless he or she—" Fukuda raises his eyebrow at him—"or they, whatever pronoun you want to use, died.
"But there was a huge Humanist revolution that occurred two millennia ago. Some people were convinced that humans were perfect, and they didn't need any supreme deities to guide them. Basically, it's a tradition that has long been forgotten. People wonder about the Aperture because they don't remember about the ones who live in the world that it veils."
Riko augments the information. "That's not the end of the story—it's just one guess. Even before, there was no way to prove that these deities existed. Let's just say that this is one of the weaker hypotheses that we have."
It's too much, Furihata wants to say. The overload makes him slightly dizzy.
"However, we found a much more interesting artifact," Fukuda says. "They used to call it a 'diary', but we know it today as a dataform. We're pretty convinced that the narrator's an adolescent."
"What does it tell you?" asks Furihata, basking in the knowledge that he didn't even know existed.
"It talks about the 'balance of the worlds'. Imagine us being on a scale. The narrator says that we live in the 'Lower World'—it's the realm where only humans and AIs exist. Technically we're the only species alive. Then there's the 'Upper World' above the Aperture. No one knows who or what resides there. Currently, the Lower World has a population of 11,111,111,111. The dataform—ah, I mean the 'diary' says that whatever number of people we have is the same for whatever number of organisms, human or anything else, there is in the Upper World."
Furihata leans closer to Fukuda, who rests his cheek on his palm. "You said something about the balance of the worlds. If, just if, the number's not the same for both worlds, would something happen?"
"Good question. The narrator says that it's the only time the Aperture actually 'opens'. The imbalance rarely takes place, maybe once in every fifty centuries—which is appropriate since the government has recently revealed that nobody is being born anymore, and I'd say that's pretty late of them to announce it considering the fact that women have stopped giving birth nine years ago. Whoever has the higher number has to offer up as many as it takes to reinstate the equilibrium. For example, if the count is 500 in the Upper World and 502 in Lower World, then someone from the Lower World must enter through the Aperture."
Fukuda actually runs out of breath after the explanation; he threads his fingers through his hair, ruffles it a bit, and smoothens it back into place. He doesn't bat an eye when Furihata slumps to the table, looking exhausted himself. No births at all? Equilibrium? Sacrifice?
The words swim around Furihata's head in an unintelligible tangle.
He remembers how he walks around the city all day without there being a single sight of children younger than six years old on the streets.
The Administrators leave him to his contemplation of the issue at hand for as long as he likes, provided that he internalize the facts and ask the one thing that's been left unknown to him. As expected, Furihata springs back up and bursts out, "W-wait."
He stands up and says, "Wait, waitwaitwait. There's something that doesn't make sense here." He turns to Fukuda with wide eyes. "You said that the opening of the Aperture is approximately a one in a zillion chance, right? That it doesn't happen very often, that the odds are exceedingly slim?"
"Something like that; although it's not verbatim, it's probably close to that," Fukuda mumbles.
Furihata fervently nods. "Okay. Alright. The diary sounds wrong—unless you're not telling me something or I just completely zoomed past the point and missed the mark—because there's no way the Aperture rarely opens. What about those who die? I mean, there's the talk of ghosts and souls being tied to the ground, but the Aperture has to open every once in a while."
"There's no question that we haven't proven the reliability of the entry." Riko has a knowing smile. Furihata must be close to the answer he's looking for. "But yes, we haven't covered everything. What's missing is crucial in validating the narrator's claims."
"If people die, there must be a constant imbalance," Izuki offers solemnly. "But why doesn't the Aperture open frequently?"
Stumped, Furihata stares at his feet—one mannerism he's acquired recently. He whispers, "Are you insinuating something…?"
"Look at us, Furihata," Riko softly says, meeting Furihata's gaze when he listens to her. However mellow her voice is, the strength of her eyes compensates for it. "I know you recognize us. We were all ex-pilots. Now we're fugitives, forced to hide in an abandoned library."
Furihata's chest constricts. It's all so vivid: Koganei's grin, Mitobe's small smile, Izuki's stunning smirk, Fukuda's uncertain show of teeth, and Riko's pursed lips. As he scans around the room for their attentive faces, Furihata sees frames around their heads, names on the bottom, and gleaming badges scarcely shown in the commemorative self-portraits. He sees the steel walls, the flickering buttons, the swiveling chair, the radios, Hyuuga's hunched posture as he furiously pounds on the desk, watching another plane go down in his screen…
"No," Furihata covers his disbelief with a chuckle. His voice cracks. "No, no. You've got to be kidding me."
Mitobe is the first one to react to the shuffle of feet coming from outside, but Riko waves him off. "Furihata-kun, we can't explain it really well, but whatever you're thinking of is probably the answer to your own question."
"But it's not possible—"
"As such," Riko cuts him off, "the two other Administrators, whom we haven't introduced yet, are going to provide the clarification. I think it's best for you to sit down."
"But—"
Riko glares at him this time. "Sit. Down."
Furihata doesn't waste a single second to quietly obey the more threatening side of Riko. He takes a seat and squirms uncomfortably at the sound of murmurs and footsteps closing in on them. The sliding doors screech as they lend passage to the newcomers. The men are dressed in the same dark clothes that the other Administrators have.
Furihata's mouth dries as he realizes all of the lies that have always been surrounding him.
The taller of the two Administrators waves at Furihata, and his the corners of his eyes wrinkle as he smiles. "I'm Kiyoshi Teppei, and you already know who this is," he wraps an arm around the other man playfully, who grunts and shrugs him off in response. When Kiyoshi doesn't refrain from his attempts to provoke his friend further, the man shoves him away and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, huffing.
"You know who I am, but here it is," he says, frowning and possibly increasing the number of lines on his forehead. Furihata tastes something vile on his tongue.
"I'm Hyuuga Junpei. I'm the Head Administrator."
.
.
Furihata has never really gone to the outskirts before; the train services don't extend beyond the metropolises, and there are virtually no records about what is out there. During his childhood, he's heard stories of rust-colored soil—not that he knows what rust is, gods know that it hasn't been around for ages—and radioactive dust in what's fabled to be a barren wasteland.
Naturally, Hyuuga tells him to get into the car and keep his mouth zipped for the rest of the ride.
The journey to the 'small village', as Hyuuga calls it, is silent and bumpy. The rough terrain jolts the car every once in a while, and Hyuuga spits a string of curses when his head hits the ceiling. Furihata looks out the window, trying to even his breaths and stifle his anger.
It takes them precisely sixty six minutes to reach their destination, all thanks to their placement in the far north of the Lower World. If they had been in the center, they would've had to travel for about a week. Hyuuga parks in front of a deserted lot, which he claims is a 'playground'. Furihata wrinkles his nose—aren't playgrounds supposed to be domes with anti-gravity properties and harmless laser guns?
Hyuuga strides towards a silly-looking contraption with suspended seats anchored by chains. "Go on, sit," he says in a strained voice, and as betrayed as Furihata feels, he can't help but oblige. The metal seat is cool even through his jeans.
Furihata squeaks when Hyuuga pushes him and instinctively holds on to the chains. There's a hollow, screeching sound when the seat moves.
"This is a swing," Hyuuga murmurs, gently pressing forward on Furihata's back when he returns to his original position. "It's been gone for over two centuries. I wanted to show you this five years ago."
Biting his lip, Furihata digs his heels on the ground to still the swing. "Were you ever going to tell me about everything?"
Hyuuga sighs, sitting on the adjacent swing and clasping his hands on his legs. "You're like my little brother. It was too dangerous to let you know."
"I know I'm an idiot," Furihata murmurs, "but I wish that you didn't keep me in the dark. I trusted you, Hyuuga-kun."
"I…I understand." Hyuuga straightens up in the swing and says, "I'm surprised by how well you took it, though."
Furihata shakes his head. "I sincerely want to punch your face right now, but all that would guarantee me is a broken fist and your revenge. Weighing the consequences, I don't think I'll be able to gain much."
The wind is gentle but cold, piercing, unforgiving—a violent shudder runs through Furihata's skin and tickles it with goose bumps, the same way Hyuuga genuinely laughs and stirs familial bliss within Furihata. He could never hate Hyuuga, but that isn't equivalent to understanding his decisions all the time. It's too much to ask Hyuuga to pretend to be the brother who's on the lookout for danger, but it seems that Furihata doesn't even need to ask.
Hyuuga clears his throat and begins by telling him, "I was young and curious, knew that there was something out there even if everybody told me otherwise. I was assigned to the tower, and I met the others. We had a plan—I was to remain and monitor the traffic, while the others were going to test the boundaries and scan the Aperture."
"They crashed," Furihata supplies, having guessed the turnout of the events already.
"Yes, they crashed. I was screaming at the radio and telling them to say something, to come back," Hyuuga says wistfully. "It was fucking traumatizing—having to hear the explosions over a transmitter. Kiyoshi was calling in for help, and Koganei was screaming. There was nothing I could do."
After heaving, Hyuuga continues, "The authorities told me that their bodies couldn't be found. There was a funeral, and I was required to make a speech. All I said was that it was my fault."
"But it wasn't," Furihata whispers. "It was never your fault, Hyuuga-kun."
"That doesn't change anything," Hyuuga gives him a wry smile. "I was ready to quit working in the tower. The days were both long and short—I dreaded the nights because of the terrors, but at the same time it took forever for the sun to disappear. One day, I packed up and decided I was going to travel outside the city limits. Needed to lose myself for a while, so I can find who I am again."
The sound of the friction between Furihata's soles and the dirt makes for an awful noise. "And you found this place."
"I found them," Hyuuga interjects, standing up and pointing to the decrepit buildings that surround the playground. "I found all of them—the ones who didn't die when they should have. Riko was crying, begging for a biological basis for their inability to die. Again, I couldn't give her anything she demanded from me."
Hyuuga's chuckle is grievous. "I thought I was going crazy. So I did what I could—I ran away from them, telling them to get the hell away from me. But Riko was a fast runner—won a couple of medals in high school track, if I remember correctly—and knocked me to the ground. She beat me up until I could realize that I wasn't hallucinating. It's funny how I could never forget how the wounds stung, especially since she was crying on top of me."
"Why here?" Furihata asks quietly, knuckles white from his grip on the chains. "Why did they need to hide?"
"You know how it is," the emotion behind Hyuuga's sneer doesn't go unnoticed. "Healthy lifestyle magazines. Retirement plans. Funeral services. Pharmacies. The whole health sector. Food production. Those who make money off of people's fear of death have bargained with the ones who survived."
Furihata shakes his head, seeming to misunderstand. "But why?"
Hyuuga murmurs, "I sometimes forget that you're 17 and too young to know how shitty this world is. Basically, the government has a program that keeps humans unaware of the fact that they are essentially immortal, to keep the economy afloat."
"Do you really believe that humans are selfish?"
"Most of them are," Hyuuga replies, the conviction in his voice unwavering. "They don't tell you that you're practically invincible. Why would you tell your enemy that you can't defeat him, anyway?"
"The term 'enemy' might be a little extreme," teases Furihata in hopes that he might lighten the mood.
His small success is evident in Hyuuga's snort. "I was using figurative language, idiot. I would've assumed that you got at least that far."
Furihata holds his hands up. "I got it, I got it. I was kidding, geez."
"It's okay to be angry, Furihata," Hyuuga cocks his head to the side and squints at the grin plastered on Furihata's lips, threatening to fall off any moment now. "I've lied but you can stop doing the same. I hate it the most when you pretend that things are okay, even when they're not."
"You can tell me what you're hiding, too," Furihata shoots back. "There's a reason you decided to tell me now, right? You can't just choose to disclose this big of a discovery at any time you want."
Furihata thinks that he hears Hyuuga swear under his breath, but he isn't sure. Although Hyuuga is still the same person he's known throughout his childhood, things are different now. Circumstances have changed, and he understands that sometimes people have to betray the past to secure the future. Hyuuga appears burnt out. "I was about to tell you that. Do you usually go to the shopping district?"
Clearly, Furihata doesn't know what that has to do with anything. "Sometimes I run errands on the side to cover Suzume's field trip expenses. What about it?"
Hyuuga nods in acknowledgement. "I figured that you didn't own any Plexiglas tablet. Do you listen to the messenger AIs walking aimlessly on the streets? Do you watch the news on the screens?"
"What?"
"Just answer the questions," Hyuuga presses.
Furihata scratches the back of his neck. "Well, yeah, they're right in my face so I couldn't do anything to ignore them. Those earthquake and typhoon warnings have been popping up for almost three months now, and even the AIs keep reminding me of them—"
Hyuuga shakes his head in disbelief. "You should know danger when the signs are there. Do you actually listen to the warnings?"
"Uh…do they mean anything? I don't think the predictors are accurate, because nothing's happened so far."
"So far," Hyuuga sighs, massaging his temples. He tenses up when the bleak wind sweeps through the playground and blows sand into his eyes. Groaning, Hyuuga pats the edges of his eyelids when the wind is gone. "If you can only trust science once, let it be this time. The folks recently developed instruments to foresee earthquakes and typhoons a few months before they actually take place, and the warnings have been broadcasted for three months already. What do you think?"
Furihata sharply breathes. "Are you saying…?"
"An apocalypse is impending," Hyuuga answers, gesturing for Furihata to walk with him towards the car. "This is why I—no, we need your help."
"How exactly am I going to help?" There's an audible tremor in Furihata's voice due to the weight of the responsibility that Hyuuga is placing on his shoulders. He stands up and matches Hyuuga's strides in no time. "I can't stop natural disasters."
"You never learn," Hyuuga mutters. "You can prevent them, if my hypothesis is correct. One of the signs of the Aperture opening is—"
"An apocalypse," Furihata finishes, aghast. He stops in his tracks, heart hammering against his ribcage in absolute terror. It isn't just the disasters that terrify him; the mere thought that he would finally see what lies behind the Aperture after years of staring at it with blind eyes is enough to make him vibrate with anticipation and throw up in dread.
Another thing about the opening of the Aperture troubles him.
A sacrifice.
Furihata is jerked back into reality when he realizes that Hyuuga is already getting into the car. He runs and holds the door to the driver's seat, preventing Hyuuga from closing it.
Raggedly, he says, "That means that there are two people who died or were born."
"You have to find them," Hyuuga says, frowning at Furihata's hand on the door. "Hospital registries, the census, pregnant mothers…we're taking a chance here. You'll have to go through the current events in the whole of this world."
Furihata's mouth dries. "Hyuuga-kun, I'm trying to ask—I, the second option—"
"What?"
"W…What am I supposed to do when I discover that two people were or will be born? Seeing as it's the more logical option in our situation of…of human immortality, I don't think I know what you're trying to make me do." Furihata's trembling, finally discerning the scope of his duty. The world or one person—it seems like an easy choice, but it isn't. It never is. "Do you…do you want me to kill one of them? Do you want me to be a murderer? What if it doesn't work—what if that person ends up not dying?"
Hyuuga clenches his jaw and is about to wrench the door from Furihata's grasp, but he balls his fists in an effort to control himself. "One, we aren't exactly sure that the disasters will be caused by the imbalance between the worlds. Two, we don't know whether the imbalance is borne of death or of birth, in spite of 'dead' people not being exactly dead."
He finally pulls the door until it's only two inches away from the jamb and takes a deep breath. "And three—don't ask questions you know the damn answers to."
.
.
"I'm home," Furihata mumbles to himself, toeing off his worn-out running shoes at the doorway and bending over to fix them by the row of slippers nearby. He rubs his eyes wearily and suddenly frowns, the aroma of pickled radish and anchovies (all manufactured from artificial constituents, of course) wafting across the diminutive living room and drifting right into his nares.
Furihata drops his backpack on the couch and strides to the quiescent kitchen, wincing at the fact that he had forgotten to prepare dinner for his sister. He holds his hands up and signs, Suzume, I'm really sorry, I just—
Suzume is already sitting and holding her chopsticks. Furihata widens his eyes when Suzume drops her chopsticks and rises to wrap her arms around his waist. She looks up and exclaims with her fingers and bright eyes, Oh, Nii-san, don't worry about it! I was worried about you, since you came home so late.
Ah, I just met up with Hyuuga-kun, Furihata pats her head and sinks down to the seat next to hers. Are these from delivery? Tell me you didn't go to the drive-thru or anything.
Suzume's laughter doesn't bear any weight nor any sound to it—it's just her eyes crinkling, her teeth flashing, and the corners of her lips stretching to accommodate a grin. She grabs a bowl to her right and fills it with meager rice. When she puts the bowl down, she rapidly signs, I'm thirteen, Nii-san. I can handle myself. Besides, I didn't order anything; I just made these myself.
Furihata opens his mouth but Suzume beats him to it with her hands. Nope, I didn't burn anything. It tastes decent, I think.
Grinning while shaking his head, Furihata picks his own chopsticks up and gets a first sample of the anchovies. Whoa, this is great! His fingers are frantic while getting his message across. Suzume just nibbles on the radish, a wistful yet sad smile painting her features. They've gone over this for a thousand times; said their meals were satisfying, delectable, everything they've ever coveted for in the supermarket. Furihata sits in the corner in the middle of the night watching as Suzume clutches her stomach to quell its grumbling. He views the money he has left in his account, sobs wracking his shoulders when he realizes that it's not enough to feed them for a year.
Hyuuga, before leaving for the HQ, had thrust two cartons of milk into Furihata's arms. "Managed to sneak away with some supplies," he had whispered, looking around for any bystanders. "Warm milk always helps for a good night's sleep."
At 9 pm, Furihata closes his eyes and thanks the universe for giving him a friend who could at least lend a hand in spite of being in a tight situation himself. The warm mug is sending tingles onto Furihata's palm, and Suzume shoves her fringed blankets down with a questioning look.
Furihata offers her the mug of milk and signs, Might help you sleep a little better.
I'm okay, Nii-san, Suzume signs back, but eventually she takes a sip under Furihata's urging stare and sighs contentedly. She empties the mug soon and huddles up in her blankets, suppressing the soreness in her back from sleeping on the floor. She holds her hands up. Nii-san, can you sing me that lullaby Okaa-san used to sing us?
The blockade in Furihata's throat is forcibly swallowed down, but it leaves a lasting ache in its wake. "Of course," Furihata says, knowing very well that Suzume can understand. He places his palm over her eyelids and props himself on his shoulder. Suzume leans into his touch, exhaling when Furihata starts caressing her forehead.
Furihata hums, recalling his family's backyard from ten years ago where he and Suzume used to 'uproot' their mother's AI gnomes in favor of finding the little treasures that their dad buried for them. He laughs when he remembers his parents' silly arguments about the color scheme of their house, and he knows by heart how his mother would giggle when his father swept her off her feet. He remembers having enough to eat, having a warm glass of milk, a comfortable cot, a whole family…Furihata remembers how human touch had felt like after a day of school, and now all he can see are silhouettes of his parents and their blurry faces.
Furihata's voice breaks when flashes of that night thunder through his mind like echoes of anger hidden all these years. The glass windows broke (weren't they supposed to be shatterproof?), the alarms sounded, his parents dropped to the floor like flies, Suzume stayed under their father's desk, unable to speak a word. The police department swung by after thirty minutes, and they informed eight-year old Furihata that his parents were gone. Stray bullets, they said, but from Furihata's eyes then they were still weapons of murder, no matter how accidental they were.
He had asked Hyuuga if he ever saw his parents outside the city. Hyuuga, astonished, didn't affirm, saying that it was odd how he could never find them.
Suzume is fast asleep, breathing softly through her mouth and unaware of her brother's tears falling on her cheeks. Furihata finishes the lullaby, hearing Hyuuga's words reverberating in the small apartment. Murdermurdermurder, the voice in his head says. Come now, think of it as retribution. It's a small price to pay for the safety of the rest of the world. We just can't live without the necessary evil, can we?
There are hiccups ravaging Furihata's lungs, and he hastily wipes his eyes in shame.
.
.
"How can I help you…?"
"F-Furihata will be fine," the brunet supplies, glancing warily around the busy hospital hallways. There's a mother pleading to see her son, but a buff AI stands guard outside the room. "Um, I was wondering if there's been a pregnancy or a birth lately…"
The nurse scrunches his nose at him and summons a holographic screen, seeming to scan Furihata. "You're a boy, Furihata-kun. I don't believe you're qualified to investigate in the premises."
Furihata holds his hands up. "I was just asking," he says, careful not to let the jitter slip from his tongue. "You and I know that there should be no births and deaths at all."
The scanner blinks red. "You…you haven't been trained by the government, have you? You don't have any existing records in the system. Are you one of them?" Furihata raises his eyebrow, and the nurse whispers, "I mean, the Administrators. The government warned us of them."
"I'm 17," Furihata quickly answers, relief bubbling underneath the surface. Izuki must have deleted all of his records or blocked any access to them. "I don't even know who those are. Like I said…I'm just curious, because I've never seen a baby for a while."
Suspicion arises in the nurse's eyes. "Really. Kid—" Furihata coughs and drops his name—"okay, Furihata-kun, I'm not authorized to release any of the information withheld in this hospital. You'll have to go up the chain of command to get even a tiny bit of info about our patients. Needless to say, they'll shut you up afterwards."
"But why go to all that trouble?" Furihata cocks his head to the side, finally gaining the confidence that Hyuuga has always told me to conjure. "I'm not looking for a specific person, so just the knowledge of a pregnancy isn't classified, right?"
"Believe me, the security is grating on my nerves, too—"
The nurse is cut off by blaring alarms and the abrupt appearance of holograms all over the hospital, each one showing a full-body profile of Furihata and a flashing sign that clearly reads INTRUDER.
"Obviously I'm out of here," Furihata says in a high-pitched voice and breaks into a run.
.
Hyuuga pounds on the glass table, causing the other Administrators to jerk from their positions. "I get that you're clearly inexperienced in this field, but what the hell were you thinking?"
Furihata bites his lower lip so hard that he can nearly taste the rusty tang of blood. "I—"
"When I told you to search for medical records," Hyuuga is seething when he keeps pacing around the HQ, "I didn't mean having a friendly chat with the neighbor over tea and biscuits. Face-to-face conversations are the worst way to tell your lies."
"What did you want me to do, then?" Furihata helplessly says, now bearing the consequences of his previous failure. Riko is about to intervene, but Kiyoshi lifts his hand to silence her.
Hyuuga groans. "You're still a kid. I knew this was a bad idea—"
"Hyuuga, you're being a kid yourself," Riko mumbles, shaking her head at him to prevent him from losing his temper. Fortunately, Hyuuga does calm down a little after glancing at his comrades and seeing their disapproving looks.
"Okay, all of this is a bad idea," Hyuuga pinches the bridge of his nose, still avoiding Furihata's stare. "But I wanted you to do what you did best. Hack into the system. Track all records through your screen, which should be fairly easy since you're not dealing with any condescending and deceiving pathetic excuses for humans."
Furihata slaps his forehead, lips quivering. "I…I'm sorry. I messed up, I messed everything up—"
"You didn't," Kiyoshi says, placing his hand on Furihata's shoulder to ease the tension. "It's not yet the end of the world—"
"Well, soon it will be," Hyuuga grumbles, but Kiyoshi fixes him a smile that could only mean his punishment later. Kiyoshi clears his throat and pats Furihata's back. "Like I said, we're still good. You go do the undercover stuff, while we go into the field and survey things. Stand and wait to see if the sky falls apart before we find the source and broadcast the truth all over the Lower World."
"If it does?" Furihata croaks, unable to believe that they might not be able to save everyone because of him. "My mistake could cost the lives of eleven billion people."
"This is not only your burden to carry," Kiyoshi quietly replies. "This is as much as everybody's fault as it is yours. Besides, it's not fault—it's destiny."
Mitobe sets a Plexiglas tablet before Furihata, which projects a holographic screen and keyboard. There are numbers filling up boxes, increasing at the speed of a nanosecond; the slot machine-like image only stops changing numbers once it reaches 11,111,111,113. Furihata squints at the bright screen and blinks when a timer appears beside the population count.
It's set to count down to two hours from now.
When Furihata looks up, the Administrators are already strapping in their gear, which consists of bulletproof vests, communicators, portable holograms, hoverboards, and guns. Fukuda lodges the latest version of the Glock in his belt's gun holster. "There might be some violence. You know, when we're preaching The End and authorities think we're a couple of psychotics who escaped from our wards. Worse, they could recognize us, realize that we're not possums playing dead, and kick us out of the metropolis again. For good."
Izuki pats his backpack and puts on his smartglasses, tapping the frames while adjusting to the information that appear right before his eyes. "We're set. I'll scout in the downtown and shopping districts, since I've already installed my own broadcast in the video screens. Flashy, but it will have to do."
Nodding to his left is Riko, who burns through Furihata with her stare. "Rain or shine, the world will know the truth. Even if the Apocalypse does take place, at least we won't be living under a rock anymore. I received word from the other HQs. They're ready."
Furihata's fingers are quivering when he turns back to the hologram and sees all of the open tabs. There's about five thousand of them—they're all gateways to withheld statistics. He only has two hours to track the newborns.
"W-wait," Furihata stammers before any of his comrades step out the door. "I know that this is a terrible time to ask for the compensation that you put up on the job, but…can you promise me one thing?"
Koganei cocks his head to the side, seeming to consider as the Administrators also do. Hyuuga is the one who speaks out. His voice breaks, but he coughs to regain his composure. "We don't have that perfect, foolproof plan that guarantees the fulfillment of petty things such as promises, but yeah, go ahead. We're listening."
"It'll be the first and last thing I ask of you," Furihata casts his head down low and clasps his hands, almost as if in a praying stance. Did humans from thousands of years ago believe in miracles? Did they have a god they could ask for favors, safety, or salvation? "Please promise me that no matter what happens, you'll protect my sister. Please keep Suzume safe."
The seven silhouettes in the doorway shift in unease. Hyuuga turns on his heel and takes a step forward, tossing over his shoulder, "We will. We promise."
They set on to their assignments, their footsteps disintegrating in the wind. Furihata is left to stare back at the hologram, and he closes all tabs and starts writing a code that could help him break into any firewall. He glances at the timer warily, hearing the ticks resound in his head as one hallucination.
One hour and fifty three minutes. He doesn't even have all the time in the world to save it.
.
Each minute that passes is equivalent to another bead of perspiration streaking Furihata's cheek. He might have a cardiac arrest long before The End takes place. His wrists feel like springs hanging listlessly from their pockets, and his mind is an overflowing keg of adrenaline. It takes all of his willpower not to smash the tablet into the floor and bury himself a grave while it's still not raining ash and blood.
Forty four minutes and counting. The code keeps malfunctioning, keeps being countered by security systems and chocked to the virtual gutter. He stands up and drags and enlarges the hologram into the size of a cinema screen. The birth and death rate counters show 0's. He paces, pressing on his temples and repeatedly whispering, comeoncomeoncomeon.
Furihata closes his eyes, and instead of gathering all of the information that could prove to be useful in his one hell of a dilemma, he sees his parents, their backyard, Suzume. The hallways of their house are adorned with tablets like the one in front of him now, each one showing photographs taken during family trips, birthdays, holidays, and regular days which are worth living for all the same. He remembers his father 'pulling the plug' for the dysfunctional AIs, telling him, "You don't have to persist if there's nothing left. You can't wait for something to spring out from nothing, can you?"
Now that he thinks about it—why is The End any different, if it was written in the stars?
Everything comes to a halt at that moment—the timer reads ten minutes, and Furihata isn't looking at it nor the open file on the screen. He's staring intently at the communicator on the glass table. Without another thought, he grabs it and slips it on his head. It buzzes to life immediately.
"This is another lie, isn't it? We can't do anything to save ourselves. The Aperture will open regardless of us knowing."
No response.
This time, Furihata helplessly shouts into the speaker. "Tell me! Please, I'm just…I'm tired of all the lies. You know that this mission would fail."
The communicator proceeds to play strings of static until it self-activates its screen function. Furihata stumbles backward when a map of the city flashes in his eyes, seven red dots moving towards what appear to be huge domes and centers.
"Evacuation centers," Koganei's breathless voice hovers in the communicator. "No time to explain."
Izuki's voice rings next. "We needed this. You needed this."
"I don't—"
As always, Hyuuga is the one to straighten everything out, the one with the responsibility of filling Furihata in. Furihata's throat is dry when he listens to Hyuuga heave breaths, wishing that he could be more than an idiot for once so he could also be worth confiding to. The worst thing about secrets is that they always surrounded him, and never did Furihata hold one of them as if it was his own.
"Blame it on the universe," Hyuuga growls in the midst of ushering others to the nearest center. "Be angry. It's your right. We made you do this," he huffs, letting out curses when an explosion rips nearby, "because you'd be better off knowing you tried rather than sitting in the dark and watching as we're all reduced to sediments in the road."
The library rumbles and shakes, causing the shelves to topple like dominoes. Furihata's whimper gets caught, and he crouches under the first coffee table that had only brought him trouble. Still, he keeps the communicator close. "P-please, stop making my choices for me."
"Suzume, come here!" Riko screams, her shrill voice piercing through Furihata's communicator. Furihata realizes with a jolt that he can't save his sister in time. He crawls out from his hiding place and runs to the door, narrowly avoiding the falling debris and glancing at his watch.
One minute.
Furihata scrambles out of the crumbling library, accidentally skipping a step and twisting his ankle. He groans out in pain, somehow landing on his side and decreasing the impact. The world becomes hazy beyond recognition, but eventually his vision refocuses and he catches a sight of the blue sky.
Like everything else, it's falling apart.
"No…" he murmurs, unaware that the others are still hearing him. He's lying on the ground with a sprained ankle, dusty clothes, and a communicator that serves as his lifeline. Like this, he is what he always thought he was: a coward. A grain of sand in a landmine. An insignificant seventeen year-old boy who got to put the pieces together. Even if humans are invincible now, their memories of cities, family, friends, lovers, pain—of life itself—won't ever be repaired.
Hyuuga's right again. It's their minds that would kill them inside, even if everything else doesn't.
The communicator vibrates beside his ear. "We still need you, damn it," Hyuuga grinds out. "Think you can give up now? Not on my watch."
It's not giving up, Furihata wants to say. It's succumbing, conforming. Adhering to destiny or whatever's out there to cram us into the place where we are now.
Dark clouds begin to overrule the sky while the Aperture widens its rim. At the sight of lightning, Furihata instinctively cups his ears and waits for the inevitable clap of thunder. No sound ever comes.
Furihata experiences an epiphany as he lowers his hands from the sides of his head.
Why am I just waiting for it?
Inhaling sharply, Furihata heaves himself up on one foot, holding the communicator close to his lips. In spite of the darkness monopolizing the heavens, he limps, staggering with every step yet finally, finally knowing what a hell of a menace destiny truly is. Right now, his 'destiny' is plastered across the Aperture like a revelation. Staring at him right in the face, daring him to run away.
For what it's worth, his role in this universe isn't monumental until The End. He might as well take what he can get.
"You're right," Furihata tremulously mumbles into the communicator, hoping that someone is still listening in spite of the chaos that walks the Lower World. "I can't give up. Not like this."
.
.
Parties. Vacations. Interviews, exams, graduations, marriages, projects, laws, retirement…those are things that people can prepare and plan for, either by disclosing details to confidantes, filling up yearly planners with unintelligible scribbles, or handing in neatly printed and bound documents that cover every inch of what humans want to see in their futures. These are dates that people dread or anticipate, even if they know that everything will go according to what they envision.
When it comes to death, the planning part is a little futile. Someone can create a bucket list and jump off the nearest cliff to prove how fragile yet strong humans can be, but all of that happens pre-mortem. Humans create distractions such as wills and handwritten letters to loved ones to prepare for that one goodbye that no one ever wants to hear, but in truth, no one is ever geared to die, because no one knows what comes after. No one knows if there's an after.
But of course, humans don't have to worry about the very thought of death. It's one less thing that they have to face.
.
Furihata hugs his knees close to his chest, his forehead glistening with the sheen of cold sweat. Planning his decisions just keeps him awake, and he goes over every dialogue he's thought of in the last hour. His ankle is still throbbing with the minor injury, but he presses on the bandage to counter the pain with even more pain.
Beside him, Suzume snores softly, a few scratches on her cheeks but otherwise unharmed. When Furihata arrived at the evac, he fell to his knees in front of Riko, thanking her ceaselessly for keeping her promise. Riko had even learned the basics of sign language in under two hours just to calm Suzume down.
"Can't sleep?" Izuki walks over to his spot on the floor and hands Furihata a can of soda. The latter politely declines.
Furihata sighs. "Not when I know that the sky is being torn open outside. These walls—they're not barriers. They're thin membranes bound to break the longer we leave the Aperture open."
Izuki raises an eyebrow and says, "I'm reading your concerns. You want to be the sacrifice, don't you, Furihata-kun? Are you becoming more self-righteous by the second?"
"No, it's not that—that I want to be. I will be if I must," Furihata mutters into his arms. "We don't have much of a choice, and even if no one's dying, the pain's still…there. Scratching and forcing its way out."
There's a brief silence before Izuki points his index finger at Suzume's sleeping form. "Your sister? You'll leave her to close the Aperture? Is it worth abandoning the only family you have left to see the 'other side' we've always dreamt of discovering?"
Furihata flinches at the accusatory tone. "It's worth saving the world, and I think that's what matters more in the end."
Izuki's answer is light laughter, which he muffles with his palm. There's something so young in his features, and it almost seems as if it's begging to be let go of once more. "You've grown up considerably these past few days. You sound so…old. You think you're down to the last wire."
Furihata smiles sheepishly, the grime framing his cheekbones under the low light. Everybody else is huddled close to each other, hoping to drown the fear out with human contact. Furihata knows that their fear isn't something like his—theirs hangs over their heads and takes a step back when they spread the warmth on their fingertips, while his clutches at his chest and mars his insides. Even if he does reach out for Suzume or his friends, nothing will change. Fear is integral to his being just as much as air is.
"Probably."
They sit like that for three more hours before Izuki decides that he's done for the night and he's still human for wanting to rest. Furihata, on the other hand, recalls the information he looked up right before the virtual systems went down—the government has set up a contraption, one that would take the sacrifice to the Aperture— in front of the capitol. It's unthinkable for them to have hired experts who could build that contraption during the onset of the Apocalypse. They must have hidden it for more than a thousand years.
It sounds so simple in Furihata's head: step right into governmental property, surrender as a sacrifice, and bind the officials to an agreement that would guarantee Suzume's sustenance. If he's actually, completely up for the plan, Furihata could have gone out in the dead of the night.
He's still here. That makes all the difference.
.
They're all there when he reaches the point of no return—when they cross the capitol's threshold, Suzume tightens her grip on her brother's hand, and Hyuuga's hand latches onto Furihata's shoulder to stop him momentarily. "This isn't what I intended for you to do, and you know it. I'll go in your place."
It takes much of Furihata's small courage to do as much as shrug Hyuuga's hand off. He lets go of Suzume for a while and faces all of them—his sister, the brother he's never had, the dead strangers who became his friends in less than a week. He thinks all of this is foolish and reckless, but, well, Furihata has the title of "idiot" to live up to, or so he thinks.
"S…starting now," Furihata musters up his remaining will even when his knees are wobbling. "I get to make my decisions. And this is the first and most important of them."
Suzume's face scrunches up as sobs wrack through her. She signs, Nii-san, don't leave me.
Furihata smiles and opens his arms, not surprised when Suzume runs straight into them and embraces his waist. It's better like this, he muses, since Suzume can't see him cry.
.
The officials come around a little later, who exclaim at the sight of the sole volunteer standing in front of their door. One of them mentions the prophecy of the Aperture's opening and states that the sacrifice must not just be consensual—it must be voluntary. None of that matters now; Furihata's telling all of them that he's afraid, but this is what's meant to be. Hyuuga argues and Suzume protests with fervent signing.
"I'm sorry it had to end like this," Mitobe whispers, and it startles Furihata more than it should. Nevertheless, Furihata grins after being taken aback, using the crinkle of his eyes as a blockade for the tears.
"Who said anything about anything ending?" Furihata scratches the back of his neck. "There's another world out there. I'll be home someday, even before you know it."
I can't lose you, Suzume signs, not minding the wetness on her cheeks. She hiccups and shakes her head furiously.
Furihata pats her head—it's easy to touch her like this before he can't get to touch her anymore. It's painstakingly easy to look all of them in the eye and tell them that it's okay.
Riko interrupts his thoughts, hastily wiping a tear before saying, "I want to beat you up because you're not making sense, but for a teenager, you're awfully right. You're too brave for your own good."
It doesn't fail to make Furihata chuckle nervously and look up at the uncharted territory he's supposed to travel to. The skies aren't clearing up at all. The thought that he can change the weather at the least makes his insides flutter in spite of the sick feeling that currently marauds his stomach. "I want to think that, Riko-san. I truly do."
The Administrators stand in front of him, with Riko wrapping an arm around Suzume. If they weren't terrified, they would have taken Furihata's place. Furihata doesn't understand the forming pit in his abdomen—he's not so sure if it's there because he's proud of himself for doing this or because he's disappointed that no one is coming to his aid now.
Kiyoshi clears his throat and says, "Well, we…guess this is farewell, then?"
"Yeah," Furihata mumbles, closing his eyes to the gust of wind that rolls over them. His ribcage has faced much wrath, but he doesn't feel pain anymore, not even in his ankle. The only thing that stands out is the emptiness inside of him. His body feels hollow. "Yeah, I think this is farewell."
Take care, Suzume mouths with uncertainty, the corners of her lips twitching as they move in an unfamiliar fashion, I love you, Nii-san.
I love you, Furihata mouths back.
.
He's told to stand on a platform that's glowing cyan like his hoverboard, and maybe, just maybe, he can pretend that he's just flying over streets and escaping from the traffic. He hears noises from the numerous buttons that the officials are pressing on the generator of the contraption, and then comes the slow hum that indicates that the platform is alive and well-prepared for other-worldly travel.
Furihata can't believe how smoothly it has gone from the moment he told the Administrators his idea to this very second, but he knows that he's not alone in convincing Hyuuga and the others to let him choose. The machines whir like they have just been developed. Like they have just been born. It's funny how Furihata can discern the interest of inanimate objects in a world that's worth sacrificing for.
He looks at Izuki and whispers, "Thank you."
Izuki smiles at him and offers him a salute.
Around him, the trembling city is a mountain of shards and broken frames, of abandoned homes and the remnants of the wrath of something as trivial as fate. Furihata doesn't shudder anymore when he hears the sharp slice of jets through the storming skies, mostly because he knows that they're looking for the lost, and partly because there's a thrumming in himself that's far louder than the clamor that surrounds him.
The platform begins to rise, and Furihata waves, swallowing down the pesky ache.
He tells them, nearly stumbling and falling to his knees on the platform, "I'll be back! I promise!"
"I'll make sure of it!" Hyuuga shouts back. He waves back. Hyuuga takes his glasses off and mumbles incoherently while hiding his eyes under the crook of his arm.
The faltering smile quickly morphs into a straight line, and Furihata lifts his head and stares at the Aperture. He closes his eyes at the first drop of rain that falls on his face and lets his tears flow along when the downpour gets heavier. Everything is collapsing below him, but he couldn't care, not now—he's too busy taking large gulps from the thinning air. He doesn't even notice when the synthetic fibers, which were fastened to his finger the moment he became a part of the Administrators' project, lose their hold and fall from the sky.
Furihata casts a furtive glance towards the ground, where everybody else who matters to him are letting him go. Huge mistake. He extends his hand and reaches out for them, hoping that they will beg him to stay. Hell, he's begging himself to stop this lunacy. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to leave—
The rain begins to cease when Furihata's nearly there, but he curls around himself and traps his sobs with cupped hands. Strange enough, he doesn't feel like he's about to be squashed by air pressure.
The platform stops pulsating in blue and whirs quietly. It must be the farthest it can take Furihata.
Jump.
Furihata blinks through blurry kaleidoscope eyes and wrinkles his nose at the distant voice seeming to originate from the Upper World. He balls his fists and turns slowly, careful not to fall.
Jump, the voice whispers again. It's the only way you'll get there.
The Aperture is at his fingertips, but there's enough space for him to still back out.
Let the wind carry you away.
Jump, Kouki.
His heart is a wild beast ravaging his chest with maybes, nevers, and a little bit of okay—okay, Furihata says out of the things he wants to hear himself whisper. Okay.
There's a stream of sunlight piercing through the treacherous clouds, and it draws him in.
.
So he jumps.
.
.
The last thing Furihata sees before he emerges into the unknown is a ruined yet beautiful world. He has to catch his breath and remember that he's still alive after all of this.
.
to be continued