2 am and the Red King is gone somewhere.
If there's cause for alarm it gets tangled up in sympathy. He could get away with anything right now. Figures there's someone up to notice.
Someone thought he wasn't listening when they threw out some line about yeah he's holding up alright. That's real nice. Can you hear crumbling overhead? It's shedding pieces sharp and jagged like the stuff of nightmares.
That sound
don't you think it's kind of pretty? Sounds like not having to stay down here much longer.
Mikoto cuts a path through the arteries of a city that has cowered around him for years.
There was one, once, who didn't have sense enough to fear anything.
When they covered his body with a white sheet it was all finished. There is nothing there. The burning would only be an afterthought because the Tatara Totsuka existing beneath a white sheet could always be lured out again if you ducked underneath and kissed at his upper lip, or said something off color and quiet that made him laugh for once in your miserable life.
Mikoto pauses now and then, sometimes in the middle of the street. Because it takes every ounce of his concentration. The little silver ring in his pocket begs to be thumbed over again and again until the metal turns very warm.
How to focus so much energy on just not coming apart...
5 am and it should be easy to figure where the Red King has gone. After dawn washes in after he left the front door wide open, the chill with it.
Totsuka's studio apartment, with no heat and no light. It's hollow. Someone came and cleared it out. It won't do as a permanent cage but it will do for now.
Mikoto doesn't trust his reflection lying on the floor sideways in the sliding glass door. The one leading out to the balcony. He can't trust the reflection when the background is so empty. There used to be so much stuff in here you could barely move around. To Totsuka every space was fair game for storage space. So much useless junk and things he'd never get to take interest in again, like going back to visit old pieces of himself.
But every part of this place and what it held belonged to Totsuka. To imagine him living alone here is too disconcerting now, even though it was reality for a long time.
Totsuka with no one to chatter on and on to. Quiet Totsuka, flipping through a book, humming through housework, nestled down in bed all alone with no one beside him to bother awake in the morning.
Did he ever stare at a sliding glass door until loneliness started gutting out his insides? No one ever asked.
The Red King could only do the best he could for him. The thing is the Red King's best isn't shit and he knows it and it makes him guilty, angry and unable to move.
Find someone else. For happy Sunday mornings you like so much. That was the best advice he could have ever given. Someone else that'll treat you right, not like a cat he can put out, let roam some nights when he needs space and then leave the door open, a place to curl up in his bed on others.
That's not even the worst of it. Look where we are now.
Things like this don't happen to normal people who could have cared for you better.
But like a cat put out for the night he always found ways to occupy himself. Like finding ways to die.
Mikoto isn't trying to be sentimental. He's looking for a place to be and take refuge that does not exist anymore. There is nothing to calm his mind. He can't attach himself to things left behind or a place like this to keep going. But for old time's sake he tries for a moment.
- No smoking in here. Totsuka already has to smell that enough.
You can if you want to. I don't mind. It's nice.
It's only dust, not smoke, that catches the light when it comes streaming through the glass.
This is pointless.
It's pointless to remember the curve of his fragile body pressed close. Bony, skinny hips. The scent of honey-jasmine after coming from the shower. Humming that got so annoying and there was no way of stopping it even if you smothered him with pillows and blankets. There was no stopping him when he was so happy. Those silk pants he liked to wear to bed, ever easiest to get into, that felt like some missing corner of heaven when they rubbed against bare legs. They kept closeness, tenderness hidden away for only them. So trivial until it's not there anymore.
What's the point, brat? What's the point of memories you can't even touch?
By mid morning they come to find where the Red King has gone.
There's still a cold haze over the streets trying to lift. The little girl places her hand in his where he's still lying sprawled on the floor. Says nothing. Small hands can do powerful things; make a King rise up shoulders first and groggy, slow from the weight of what she was told never to tell him.
With them he simply leaves this place as if it never was. And seems no different from the Mikoto that always was : full of it.
The difference is there is nothing to bind him to this world anymore. Not to any existing memory. Nor to this family they had made together.
You will never be alone.
The ones who deserve better than watching while he goes barking after death, chasing after him.