09. too late; at what cost
When the television flickers to life one night in late September, Souji bolts upright from his previous state of half asleep and is hunched over the sickly glow with his hands clasped tightly over the frame of the accursed thing before he's had much time to think about what this means.
The fog never left Inaba.
It crawled steadily upward and outward until it had swallowed the entire town, thick and muggy and oppressive. It never left, but they'd done all they could, and they'd put an end to the real source of danger that had lurked beneath the cover of that terrible veil.
So why-?
Outside, thunder crashes. A heavy storm had rolled into Tokyo during the evening, and as much sense as it made in some far off corner of his mind that had grown accustomed to watching for this pale flickering glow to the backdrop of rain, they'd finished this.
And on the television appears the silhouette of a young woman. She fades into startling clarity and all at once Souji realizes that he recognizes her, had seen her time and again in and around the shopping district back in Inaba, and gripped with a horrified sort of fascination, he brings a trembling hand toward the television screen.
His fingers come to rest firmly against the glass.
A heartbeat is all it takes- rain pours, the screen buzzes with static, his cell phone begins to ring from somewhere in the room, and Souji brings his opposite hand to rest against the screen.
Solid.
He watches, eyes wide with alarm and a growing sense of fluttering apprehension that he can't yet acknowledge, as his fingertips clink against the glass. He brings back one hand, thumping it uselessly against the television, and then the other to repeat the motion. Both at once- he claws desperately at the screen in fear, in realization-
The phone's stopped ringing. He beats a fist against the unyielding television screen, hard enough to bruise his knuckles.
At the very least we can be sure that a tragedy like this will never happen again!
He tries again, with similar results. The phone begins to ring again, and he leans into the TV with all of his weight, pressing a palm against the glass while the woman behind it screams and thrashes about and the picture becomes increasingly distorted, but still the screen remains disdainfully sturdy.
I don't want anybody else to suffer like we did, ever again!
The static from the television grows louder, drowning out the woman's shrieks, the ringing from his cell phone, the rain from outside, the crash of thunder, and his own miserable, anguished cry as he throws a fist into the screen, splitting his knuckles in the process. He lets his forehead come to rest against his fist, fingers red and raw and bleeding, when the Midnight Channel finally fades to black. The buzzing doesn't stop for another couple of minutes, ringing loudly in his ears, but that's only the phone, and he can't bring himself to-
But if we let him go free and he claims another victim, is that right!
-hear the words just yet. To listen to a mostly rushed and broken apology, to hear that note of self-loathing that is growing full and strong in his own chest, to realize what this truly means, what it is they've done, and to have to acknowledge the fact that-
What I do know is if we let it happen again, that'll be too late!
-they were wrong.
