Go, Going, Gone
Kida grabs Mikado by the sweater and pulls.
Down a ramp, over a crossway, through a city crowd, letting out a boisterous laugh all the while.
With Mikado here he is flying, rapid mouth movements, harsh swings of bony arms, a distant flicker to the world.
Mikado follows, his feet sore and his mind overflowing, catching glimpses of the fading day from Kida's censored tour-guide motions.
This Kida is so real, as is this Mikado, and perhaps they feel like they've finally found each other again when they never knew they had been lost (though they were always the losers)
And then Kida turns into a whisper, becomes a croak, and Mikado doesn't see anything different with the neighborhood, but perhaps Kida-kun does.
And he would ask, but then Kida is normal again and his jokes are cool to the overly warm air of Ikebukuro's flesh, so Mikado forgets and forgets not to laugh, and they're on their way again.
Kida turns back, a half glimpse, and there is a blood stain on the wall, a younger, yellow boy with his right hand fingers shaped into a gun and his left hand curling around a real one such that Kida can almost here the sonic boom. And then it is gone, so Kida remembers and remembers Mikado, normalcy and all, who is laughing at his jokes, pressing eternally forward.
Kida knocks on Mikado's head lightly with his fist and starts a blushing one-sided tirade on the status of the town girls, continuing in time to the indelible tattoo of their feet on concrete until Mikado's thoughts turn him red and Kida stops thinking at all.
And so they go.