"…close your eyes, so afraid, hide behind that baby face…"
From The Ashes
three, cigarette daydreams by cage the elephant
V
The sun was still shining, she thought distantly. It hadn't started raining or anything. Blood glittered in the sunlight in a macabre imitation of water. Yusuke had been injured before, but she hadn't known she could lose so much blood.
That she had that much to lose.
She'd closed her eyes when she felt the pain shoot through her, reflexively, and she'd opened them a second later feeling nothing at all.
The initial suspicion that this was all a dream had drained away, leaving her only with the cold, hard facts as stark in the daylight as her rapidly paling skin.
"That's…it?" Yusuke asked herself haltingly. "The end? Game over?"
The sky had no answers for her. She felt slack. She felt ungrounded and removed, like she'd been thrown out of her skin.
Then, she giggled at the thought. She had been. That's exactly what happened! Her giggles devolved into a choking cough as she tried to swallow through her dry mouth. She found that the sensation was phantom—there wasn't anything to swallow. She felt like she was only imagining the constriction of her muscles.
She felt so lost. Powerless.
"Shit," she whispered. Then, more forcefully, she hissed, "Goddamn it!"
They were picking up her…her body, laying it on the gurney and putting a sheet over it. The sobbing kid was being bundled into the front seat of the ambulance by a paramedic. She noticed that the man kept himself between the boy and her body, not letting him see as his partners put her into the back.
They weren't going to make him ride with a dead body, huh? Small mercies.
"I'm dead," she told the empty air.
She was insubstantial, completely unweighted. She was like a bit of light that had only gained some color. She might have been air. She could even see the street through her own hands. Yusuke carefully folded her legs, hooking her skirt between them so no one could see under it from below.
She snorted. What was the use? She realized no one could see under her skirt, no matter how she sat. No one could see her, period.
"I'm a ghost," she exhaled and the rightness of it settled into her like a new skeleton.
Yusuke didn't feel like crying. She didn't want to scream or beg or anything. If Yusuke had ever considered how she, personally, would react to her own death, she might have expected at least some mourning. No such luck. Maybe it was the loss of her body, but Yusuke felt as if something had been lifted of her shoulders.
There was a kind of…relief in this, she thought. A sense of finality. It was…over.
"Oh, oh, bingo! Bingo, bingo!" Came a chiming voice.
Yusuke screamed.
The moment shattered and crashed around her ears. She flung herself forward and managed to flip in the air. Though she floated easily, her hair fell around her hair. Yusuke wasn't about to contemplate the logic of ghostliness, nah uh, not right now. There was too much unexpected afterlife guest in the vicinity for such mind boggling.
The voice had apparently been that upside down woman witting on a wooden oar wearing an elaborate kimono in shades of pink and red. Her hair, a blue slightly darker than the sky in which she was silhouetted, was done up in a cutesy ponytail with a little scrunchy and a few hair decorations. The locks on either side of her grinning face curled up at the ends.
Yusuke was struck by the vivid pink of her irises. A pretty supernatural woman on an oar.
Had she died and gone to cotton candy heaven?
"Very good, Yusuke," the woman praised, adjusting her weight on the oar so she could safely lift a gesturing hand. She giggled excitedly. "Lots of people don't figure that out until I tell them! I'm glad I don't have to waste time convincing you. Your skills of perception are really quite sharp, huh?"
What.
What the hell.
What in the seven hells.
Yusuke tried to speak, but found that no words were coming out, so she closed her flapping gob.
"Accidents like this happen all the time, and those involved usually can't accept their deaths. They are unable to find peace and instead become wandering ghouls or earthbound ghosts, trapped in this world forever!"
The cheerful tone was at odds with the words she said. Yusuke narrowed her eyes suspiciously as instinct kicked itself in gear.
"Who," Yusuke asked, "are you?"
The woman giggled again. That was gonna get annoying, fast.
"Oh it's not so complicated. I am the ferry girl of the Sanzu River, map-keeper of the roads of Yomi, helping the slow and confused from this world to the next! Nowadays, I guess some people might call me 'The Grim Reaper'!" She gave a bouncy bow. "I'm Botan! It's such a pleasure to meet you!"
The…Grim Reaper.
The Grim Fucking Reaper.
Not feeling the reaping, Yusuke thought, but grim might be accurate. Botan was unrelentingly laying a smackdown on her. Yusuke didn't know if she could take so many surprises in one day.
Yusuke tried to take a deep breath. Losing her temper wouldn't help anything. However, Yusuke's go-to reaction was usually "unduly hostile" and she was basically running on autopilot while she tried to reboot her brain.
"What the fuck are you blabbering about?" She scoffed. "'Bingo, bingo!' Drop the parakeet act, cotton-head! Where's your damn sense of weight, huh, somebody just died? At least act like you give a shit!"
Botan laughed, unaffected by Yusuke's harsh tone.
"Oh dear, your personality is spot-on!" She withdrew a little gray book from one of those long kimono sleeves and flipped it open. She searched for a second, then read aloud: "'When scared or confused, tends to react aggressively and be on guard. Likely to attempt a power struggle by insinuating the ferry girl is acting improperly or spout of nonsense due to difficulty processing the encounter.'"
She gave Yusuke a cat-grin. "Sound familiar?"
Yusuke ground her teeth but Botan obviously had more to say.
"'Urameshi Yusuke, age 14. A very violent character with little regard for herself or others. Impatient, brash, rude. Enjoys fighting, smoking, gambling, has little skill in social interaction.' Oh my, and a whole host of other social problems. You need a lot of help, I see."
Botan snapped her book closed and shook a finger at Yusuke. "You're a very bad girl."
"Mind your own fucking business!" Yusuke snapped.
Death was hell before she even got there.
"Ah," she realized suddenly. "That kid!"
Botan looked at her curiously.
Yusuke wouldn't be deterred. "I-is he going to be okay?"
It would suck if she died and then the kid died from some complication or something.
Botan looked a little surprised. "My, would you like to go see him?"
"I can do that?"
"Certainly, why not?" Botan said, gesturing for Yusuke to come closer. "Grab on tight and I'll get us to the hospital lickety-split."
Lickety-split apparently meant the speed of sound, because Yusuke had to hang on for dear life as they shot through the city. And through the city very much meant through the city. Botan paid no heed to any buildings she had to pass through on the way there. Yusuke caught glimpses of people in the midst of various tasks, like little clips inserted in a movie that just kept rolling on by.
Yusuke felt realization rush at her again. She was really dead. Looking at life from the outside, just passing through it all.
Suddenly, they were passing right through a window of the hospital.
"…scratches on the head and hands," the doctor was saying. "Otherwise, he is completely unharmed. No bone fractures, no brain damage."
"Thank god," a woman sighed. Her dark hair was the same shade as the boy's, and his eyes mirrored her own when she looked at him. His mother. She knelt and pulled him in close, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight. Yusuke felt a pang in her chest at the sight. The relief on her face was palpable.
Yusuke was surprised when she opened her eyes to look at the doctor, though she refused to let her boy move away. He obediently hugged her tightly. He was probably really scared, given what had happened to him. Yusuke didn't blame him for a moment.
"What about that girl?" She asked. "The one they said saved him? Is she alright?"
The doctor lowered his head. "I'm very sorry ma'am."
She shook her head slowly.
"No," she whispered, hugging the boy tighter. "That's not fair. She…She saved him. She died? It can't be."
Tears trickled down her cheeks and she buried her face in her son's hair. The boy made soothing noises, forgetting his own anguish as he patted his mother's back.
"In his place?" She sobbed. "My baby, my baby…"
Yusuke pulled away, uncomfortably. She knew the woman was just feeling the terror of what could have happened to her child. Imagining him in Yusuke's place, twisted and broken and bleeding on the street.
How could Yusuke have lived with herself if she'd let this woman sob over her son's corpse?
She couldn't have. There was no question in her mind.
She'd rushed in like an idiot, but she couldn't regret it.
Yusuke let the mother's relief wash over her and buoy her upwards, through the hospital roof.
In a moment, Botan had joined her.
"So? Safe and sound, right?"
"Yeah," Yusuke said, feeling a smile tug at her lips. "Alright, Botan. That's all I needed. Let's get a move on. Hell or Heaven or whatever, here I come."
Botan giggled into her sleeve.
Yusuke's brow twitched. This woman was infuriating.
"Excuse me, I said I'm ready. Ferry girl, make with the ferrying."
Botan laughed. "No, no! I guess I forgot to mention it!"
"Mention what, damn it?"
"I'm not here to take you away, Yusuke," Botan told her happily. "There isn't anywhere in Heaven or Hell for you to go, or anywhere else for that matter. You died so unexpectedly that we can't fit you in! We're going to give you your life back, isn't that wonderful?"
"There's…There's no place for me?" Yusuke breathed. She felt anxiety and fear clawing at the back of her neck. It was like all her worst nightmares jumping down her throat. "What the hell do you mean, there's no place for me? I saved that kid's life! I died for him! You're telling me you didn't think I would do that?"
Not even the gods believed in you, Yusuke.
An even worse realization dawned on her.
"Did you expect him to die?" She asked quietly.
Botan hid the bottom half of her face behind the book, holding it like a shield. When she spoke, her muffled words rung like church bells in her head.
"Oh, well—I didn't want to say it, because you were killed in the collision—but we didn't expect any deaths from this incident at all. Masaru wasn't scheduled to die today. He would have been hit, yes, but he would have had the ball in his hands. With that as a buffer, he would have bounced away from the car and wound up completely uninjured."
The ball in his hands? Yusuke remembered pushing against that ball. The end of her world, the last things she'd ever seen with her eyes.
Botan rambled on, "Actually, he would have been in better condition than he is now! It's silly really, you caused more harm than you helped! A complete and utter waste of life!"
A complete and utter waste of life.
Waste of life, waste of life, it echoed in her ears. She'd heard it before. A goddamn waste of space. A waste of air. Trash. Rubbish. Scum of the earth.
A giggle broke from her lips unexpectedly. Like water through a blasted dam, she was laughing so hard she had to clutch her gut. She was near crying with the force of it.
"Oh, oh," Botan fretted. "Dear, don't worry, I said we're giving you a second chance! Your sacrifice won't go unrecognized! You just have to accept the test of revival and everything will be fine!"
Test of revival. A test. To think she skipped school to avoid tests. She couldn't even get away from them in death.
Yusuke drew in a shuddering breath to speak, but found herself breaking down in giggles again.
"If you go on as a spirit without a body in the human world, you'll become a wandering ghoul, picking up all the negative energy of the living and being twisted in it! With no place in the afterlife, you'd have no chance! It's a better deal to accept the test, don't you think?"
Yusuke wiped at her watering eyes. "Oh, no. Nope. Not at all. No thank you."
"Wh-what? What do you mean?"
"I don't think it's a good idea for me to come back is all." She was still shaking, but she was calmer now.
"Why ever not?"
Yusuke snorted. "Think about it, bubblehead. What does that book say about me? Nothing good right?"
"Well…"
"And it probably tells you that my mom isn't even thirty yet! I robbed her of the best years of her life! All those people who were annoyed with me, afraid of me, whatever, they don't have to worry anymore!" She snickered. "I might as well enjoy my selfless streak a little longer while it lasts, don't you think?"
"Yusuke," Botan stared at her. "So despondent at only 14? Do you think they believe they're better off without you?"
"Absolutely," Yusuke said. There was no doubt in her mind. Her mother could finally get a man that didn't have a piece of his pinky missing. Keiko could get something done in her life, like being a chemist or curing cancer or saving the fucking world and hey, maybe she'd get a boyfriend or even a husband.
A whole fucking husband-harem, if that's what she wanted. The ball and chain was finally off.
"This is probably the best thing I've ever done for anyone!"
The teachers, she was almost sorry to make their lives better, but why not? Everybody deserved a good turn every once in a while.
Everyone but you, Yusuke.
I've had my turns, Yusuke thought, enough for a lifetime.
Just let it end already.
Botan shook her head.
"No, Yusuke, not so soon. Spirits are allowed to see their loved ones before they make their decision. Take some time to watch the people who care for you and decide after you see them. In fact, go attend your wake. I'll talk to you when you've gone and pondered there."
"What the hell?" Yusuke cried. "I decided already! C'mon Botan!"
But the woman had disappeared.
Fine. Whatever. Wake, sure.
Night was falling when she finally found her house. The city looked so different from above. She'd had to drop down to street level and follow the streets to get there. There seemed to be a decent amount of people lurking in the street, most in school uniform. The few that weren't were obviously teachers.
Figured the school would have to make a strong showing for their "Hero of the Day". What a farce. Everyone in that crowd was laughing and having a good time. When she heard her name, more often than not it was some variation of "she's dead? thank goodness!" There was a lack of tension in everyone's shoulders and faces. They seemed more peaceful and happy than she'd ever seen before.
It was a tension she had caused, she realized, and this was what they were like when she wasn't around. Still pretty annoying but, she conceded, not aggravating like she'd thought they were before.
Had she really been that scary?
She'd never even met most of these people.
Yusuke spotted Keiko, flanked by the shadows Yusuke had spooked in the stairwell. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had only been a few hours since. Those two were talking, but they didn't look happy exactly. They seemed more worried, glancing nervously at their friend. Keiko herself simply stared at the ground.
Her eyes were unfocused.
Yusuke hopped off the roof and floated down in front of her.
"Hey Keiko!" She greeted cheerfully. The girl didn't move, didn't acknowledge her. Of course she didn't. Keiko couldn't see the dead.
"Keiko…," one of the girls trailed off. The other put a comforting arm around her shoulders. The both looked so uncertain Yusuke wondered if they had said something to upset Keiko.
She had never seen Keiko look so blank, like she wasn't sure what to do or think. She breathed deeply, in and out, but said nothing. Didn't even move.
Yusuke felt a burning desire to look anywhere else than at her friend, to rejoin the merriment behind her. This side of the yard seemed darker somehow.
"Keiko, what's wrong?" Yusuke asked, but she didn't get a response. "Keiko, please."
A familiar, impossible-to-ignore voice finally tore her away. She couldn't quite make out what he was roaring about, but his hair was visible even in the dim light. Kuwabara was nothing if not noticeable.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She cried, thrown completely off-balance.
"URAMESHI!"
His voice shook her, even in ghostly form. For a moment, she thought he was stalking towards her. But, no, he was trying to get to the house, impeded by those three friends of his. They were literally hanging off him, dragging their feet and pulling and pushing, trying to get him to stop and turn around.
"Kuwabara," Crewcut whispered miserably, "we can't be here!"
If the orange-haired giant heard him, he paid him no mind.
"HOW COULD YOU!" He shouted again. "YOU COWARD!"
"You bastard!" She answered instinctively. "Who are you calling a coward!"
"Ju-just because you're scared!" He cried out. Yusuke was stunned at the wobble in his voice. "Yo-you finally remembered my n-name!" You can't ju-just take that back because—because you're scared! I was going to beat you! I was finally…"
He stumbled and his friends managed to drag him back a foot before he regained his stride.
"Kuwabara this is a place of mourning!" Blond hissed.
"Don't do this, Urameshi!" Kuwabara pleaded with her, seemingly staring her right in the eyes. He pushed forward and she stepped back. He pursued.
"YOU CAN't DIE UNTIL I KILL YOU, IDIOT! URAMESHI, GET BACK HERE!"
"Kuwabara!" The fat one snapped angrily. "She's dead, man! She can't hear you and she can't come back! You're disturbing her soul and her family!"
Well he was right that she was disturbed. She was bewildered.
"Let's go!" Crewcut attempted to drag him by his collar. Kuwabara shook them off and raced for the door.
He lunged through her. She felt him like a cold wind, sliding straight through her ethereal body. She turned to look at him. He was shivering at the opening.
"Kuwabara," Blond said tiredly. "This isn't right."
"It isn't," Kuwabara confirmed. "It isn't right! IT ISN'T RIGHT! She's dead, she's dead, it isn't right."
Crewcut and Okubo took his arms and led him back the way they'd come, one of them whispering, "I know, man, I know."
"It isn't right," Kuwabara shook, his face was turned away "You're supposed to…to be here for me. Urameshi, come back and fight me you coward!"
She couldn't see. Was he crying? She shook her head, unwilling to believe it.
"Come back, Urameshi!"
Kuwabara, she thought. You…you dolt.
"Urameshi…"
She tried to laugh, but it came out an awkward, hoarse croak.
Kuwabara had apparently knocked Keiko from her haze in the worst way. She was leaning against her friends, sobbing violently and clutching at their clothes. She was choking, trying to say something.
It wasn't. It was—
"Yu-uu-usuke!" Keiko wailed her name.
The sound almost brought Yusuke to her knees. She reached for her friend. She couldn't touch her. She couldn't…comfort her. Tell her it was alright, she was there.
Because she wasn't. She wasn't…
Yusuke took a step back. And another.
This…wasn't what she thought.
Not at all.
"How rude."
"Indeed. A disgraceful showing."
She turned to find Iwamoto and Akashi side by side, gossiping like school girls.
Ugh I knew you two were knocking uglies on the weekend. I hope your babies give you hell.
This was more the speed she had expected. Two teachers who hated her guts, happily celebrating her premature departure. Or late departure, as they probably thought.
"Some of the rotten garbage that hung around Yusuke, I expect," Iwamoto guessed.
"And almost as bad, too," Akashi informed him.
Oh, get a room.
"Akashi-sensei, I think it is somewhat surprising the Urameshi died in the manner she did. I was shocked at the news."
"Oh, I as well, Professor Iwamoto. To think after all the trouble she caused she finally did something to raise the school's reputation."
"Yes, I suppose she could only do it by dying, now, couldn't she?"
You monstrous piece of shit, she thought vehemently. Her only regret right now was that Keiko would still have to learn under this asshole for the rest of the year.
"Then again, to tell you the truth," Akashi made a mockery of a whisper, holding his hand over his mouth but not really lowering his voice, "I don't think she was trying to save him at all. She probably knocked him down on accident trying to steal his lunch money."
"YOU FUCKING HEARTLESS—"
She was cut off by a man grabbing both of their ties and yanking them down to his level.
"Takenaka?"
It was him. The look on his face was one he'd never seen before. Anger. Complete and utter anger.
"How dare you! On this sacred night, when the spirit of the deceased returns to look on her family one last time? Saying such heartless things about a young girl who gave her life for another," he shook their ties and, by extension, them. "That boy comes here shouting in grief and you have the audacity to disparage him for it."
He clenched his hands around their ties like her contemplating choking them with those strips of cloth. But he released them.
As always, Takenaka took the high road. Takenaka was the better man.
"How disgraceful," he said as he passed them.
She'd never heard that tone before.
Never once, not even at her worst.
She drifted after him.
For the first time, she entered her home.
I'm home, she thought absentmindedly. Like all other times, there was no "welcome back" waiting. But this time, there was no demand for coffee either. There was just silence.
Atsuko was pressed against the wall, staring into nothingness.
Takenaka knelt and bowed to her. Then he moved over to kneel before Yusuke's altar.
"Yusuke," he began. She blinked. He had only ever called her Urameshi. "Yusuke, if you are truly watching from beyond, please don't look kindly on me now."
What?
"I'm just as bad as they are. I was so surprised when the news reached the school. I thought I'd heard wrong. Urameshi Yusuke, the tyrant of Sarayashiki, sacrificed her life to save an elementary school boy? It was unconscionable. I couldn't believe it at all."
He took a deep, shuddering breath.
"What you did, Yusuke, what you did was worthy of praise but I can't—I can't praise you for it. Don't ask me to, please. Yusuke, the one time you should have been selfish! You should have thought of yourself, Yusuke, of the people who…who care about you."
He sighed, clenching his hands over his knees. She sat down in front of him, resting her chin on her knees. His face was older than she'd ever seen it before. There was an absence of that fire that made him Takenaka.
He was just a sad man.
"There was something great living in you," he said. "You had so much potential. I see that now. That's why I tried so hard, why I pushed you so much. I wanted you to know you could do it." A pause. "I—I keep thinking: what if you stayed at school? Why didn't you stay, Yusuke? Why didn't I make you stay?"
Takenaka was shaking like a leaf, tears rolling down his face. She clutched her sides. She suddenly felt very small.
"I'm so sorry, Yusuke."
"It's not your fault, old man," she told him. "This isn't your fault!"
He lowered his head, bowing so low his nose touched the floor. She could see tears pooling on the mats.
Her mother's voice drifted over to her.
"You reckless fool. I raised you to be strong, Yusuke," Atsuko whispered to her knees. "Yu-yusuke, I raised you…to be strong!"
She sobbed suddenly, head falling back into the wall. There were tears dripping from the corners of her eyes. "My baby. My baby, my baby."
"Mom, please, I—" She didn't know what to say. What could she say? How could she have not known that her mother…that she…
"My baby," the woman whimpered.
Takenaka, holding in his tears, bowed once again to the sobbing woman, and departed into the night.
Yusuke remained at her altar, incense curling through her in the lazy circulation of the air conditioning.
Sensei.
"Come on now, Masaru. Let's greet big sister, okay?"
Yusuke looked up to see a woman bowing to her mother with a little boy in tow. The boy copied her clumsily, then followed his mother to kneel before the dead girl.
It was him.
His eyes were big and beautiful, his face small and pudgy with childhood fat. He smiled brightly at her.
No. Not at her.
He couldn't see her at all.
She was dead.
"Hello, big sister! Thank you for playing with me, and for saving me from that car."
The mother bowed her head, murmuring a solemn thanks.
She bowed once again to her mother, clutching her son's hand. He was looking around curiously at the flowers and the ribbons and the candles. It struck Yusuke that this could have been some kind of party, some happy occasion. Was that what he saw? Or did he see the ornaments they offered to the dead?
If she could change it, would she have one or the other?
Her mother was still crying. Soft, little hiccups, like she didn't have the strength to sob anymore.
She couldn't take it.
She sprinted after the mother and her son.
"You shouldn't thank me!" She screamed into the night.
"You shouldn't thank me because—because I didn't do anything. I did fucking NOTHING!"
No one could hear her. Her voice didn't even echo.
She was choking. She felt like she was dying again.
"Momma, why's big sister in that box? Is she asleep or something?"
"Yes," the mother replied, biting her lip, "in a way she is."
"Oh," the boy murmured. Then, more brightly, "When she wakes up can I come over? She was really fun to play with! You think she'd want to again?"
The mother knelt beside him "No, son, you can't do that."
"Wh-why not?" His eyes got very big. "Is-is it because she's a big kid? I'm little, I know, but we had fun!"
"No, son. It isn't that."
Yusuke watched. She watched this woman who hadn't known her at all, who only knew that she was the girl who saved her son from a speeding car. She watched as this woman sobbed for her death.
How could she possibly explain it to her son?
The nice girl was dead. You can't play with her because she's dead. She wasn't coming back. She wouldn't wake up.
This boy would know death, and it was her fault.
"Botan."
The escort of souls drifted down to float beside her
Yusuke trembled. She twisted her hands in her skirt.
"Yes, dear?"
"This test. Whatever it is, I'll do it."
[got a song? suggest it! because you asked: pairings. a good question. endgame isn't my style; yusuke's relationships will develop naturally and a good deal of them may involve romantic aspects. hell this may be a bag of polyamorous love by the end. just be warned: there will DEFINITELY be some non-heterosexual things in here. If Yusuke getting friendly with Keiko's ass didn't alert you to that.]
