Twelve Draws of Christmas – 10: Phase 10
By Chronic Guardian
A/N: Composed to the tune of "I've seen the Sun" by Five Iron Frenzy
-Minami-MATH Corp, December 2090, Direct Retrievable Audio Wave #110: conversation at Hong Kong outpost between J0KER members Queen and King as follows:
"Hey."
"Hello. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas to you too, dear."
"Sleep well?"
"I tried. Conscience won't have any of that today."
"It wasn't your fault this happened."
"Yeah? Well it sure as hell is my fault things ended the way they did."
"Koizumi—"
"She was right there in front of me, Ren. Two steps and I could've grabbed her hand. Hell, I could've put a void ray through her arm if I was thinking fast enough."
"Koizumi, you can't let this be the end of the world for you."
"Heheh… It was for her."
"If you stop here then Kouchi died for nothing."
"And if I keep going then she still died for nothing. Decisions, decisions."
"She was protecting you."
"You think so? She sure did a damn fine job keeping that mind intact."
"..."
"...You still here, Ren dear?"
"I'm not giving up on you."
"Figures. Guess I'll just have to live with it then. See how far we get, eh darling?"
"At least to the end."
"I can't promise you that."
"The mission isn't over yet."
"If you want to see me at the finish line you might have to carry me there."
"I wouldn't mind."
"Hmph. I'll hold you to that, Ren dear."
"I'll be there to hold to, Yutsui."
-Close(DRAW#110)-
-Fourteen Years Later-
Beep.
Mountains, valleys, and plains outlined in green, then softly fading to black.
Beep.
Her brainwaves wrinkled a small line on the monitor. Enough to show she was alive, not enough for her to make use of it.
Beep.
The monitors on the other side of the room answered the lament.
"Beep." One of the cognizant occupants in the room matched the bleak monotone from a stool by his brother's bed. He kicked his hanging legs and kept his eyes on the one other visitor.
Hayato/Degree – Former Zetta Squad Operative
"Still alive," the other watcher murmured from his respective bedside. Older than the boy by a good two decades or so, the man rested his hands on his knees and patiently monitored the comatose woman beside him.
Renkuko "Ren" Tanaka – Former King of J0KER
"Thirty-three percent chance of recovery," Hayato said with a hopeful lilt. "Gets all the way up to fifty-two percent by the time it's been a year."
Ren didn't look away from his charge. "And after that?"
"Seven percent," Hayato returned, "and diving."
"I see."
"That's for my brother."
"And for Yutsui?"
"Fifteen percent at three months. Seventeen at twelve. Point two for anything after."
Beep.
"Hey, mister."
"You may call me Ren, if you like."
"Mister," the boy said again, "what'll you do if she doesn't come back?"
Beep.
"Mister?"
Ren leaned back in his chair and took a breath. "Then it will be over."
"Huh." The boy lifted his legs into his chest and rubbed his shins.
Beep.
"Thirty-eight percent chance you'd hate Isamu for it."
"Hmph. Not him so much as myself."
"Mister, you don't have to lie to me just because I'm a kid."
"With all due respect, Hayato the Gambler, how do you estimate your odds?"
"Kind of a mix of things, I guess."
"Do statistics make it into the mix?"
"More now. Not so much when I was little."
"Let me assure you, statistics do not apply to this situation."
"Oh."
Beep.
"Really?"
"I'm not saying it's foolproof," Ren continued as the strong lines of the woman's heartbeat faded to black. "But Yutsui is a special case: a true wild card, if you'll pardon the saying."
Hayato sniffed and shifted in his seat. "She's still human."
"Yes," Ren nodded. "And the sun slowly rises on a clouded morn. I've seen humans, Hayato; I've seen them bend and break and shatter. But today is still Christmas, and in this dark dawn I will still hope for a miracle. For I have seen miracles happen as well."
Beep.
The room fell quiet again. Hayato rubbed the fuzzy strip of blond on top of his head and looked back to his brother. Ren listened to the slow trickle and hush of fluids and air pumped through tubes. He gently took Yutsui's right wrist and felt her pulse warm beneath his touch.
"Did you know," Hayato began again, "There's a small chance that any day could be the last one?"
Ren nodded, and watched as Yutsui's eyes stayed shut. "The ancients thought something similar, once upon a time."
"I'm talking about sun death, mister."
"That's what they thought, too," Ren answered. "With days getting shorter leading up to the winter solstice, some thought the world was coming to an end. Light was scarce, weather was harsh, and the even the invincible sun seemed ready to give way to eternal night. But then, after the shortest day passed, light began to return to the world and the people celebrated. Do you know what day that was?"
Beep.
"December twenty-third," Hayato guessed after contemplating a second. "Day after the solstice."
The lights dimmed for a moment before coming back to their accustomed daytime glow. The building must have been transitioning out of nightime hours. Soon Christmas day would be upon them. Ren stroked Yutsui's palm with his thumb and watched the monitors for a small jump in brain activity. Barely enough to shift a pixel.
"Not quite," the man continued. "At that point they still thought it was an accident."
"Okay, so the twenty-fourth?"
Beep.
The pitch sounded a quartertone higher than the last sounding.
"The day they celebrated," Ren said, barely loud enough for Hayato to hear, "is today recorded as December twenty-fifth."
Beep.
Ren stopped moving his thumb. The monitor had returned to its previous pitch.
Across the room, the boy brushed the trivia aside with an unimpressed, "Huh", and let the quiet settle for a moment before starting again.
"Hey, mister?"
"Yes?"
"Isn't it—I mean, don't you think it's kind of dumb that they'd celebrate then?"
"What do you mean?"
Beep.
"Welll," Hayato held out the last consonant in a groaning sort of mumble. "The winter only gets colder from December on out. Kinda like how the hottest days of summer are after the solstice. So if the point was improving their chances—"
"Hayato," Ren interrupted with the warming hush of a patient parent. "Did you ever like gardening?"
Beep.
The boy paused and Ren heard a tongue pushing past lips in a show of annoyance. After a moment of Ren not taking notice, the tongue slipped back in and Hayato shifted on his stool again. "...Not really. Mr. Minamimoto had us all take turns in the Hokkuro greenhouse so we wouldn't have to rely on supply drops. I always tried to get on the same shift as my bro. It sucked working with Mean. One-hundred percent chance of slacking whenever that happened."
"Yes, a good partner. One of many crucial factors for success. Do you know another one?"
Beep.
"Water, I guess. But there's a eighty-six percent chance you meant something else."
"That's fine, it all starts with water," Ren affirmed. "But most plants also need sunlight. No sunlight means no chance of success."
"Maybe," the boy mumbled back. "That doesn't mean it promises anything, though."
"No, of course not."
Beep.
Ren felt the corners of his mouth follow the beep a half-tick upward. "...But it doesn't have to. If they have the sun, they have the start of a chance. Even if the snow falls and rivers freeze, if the sun keeps getting stronger then we know it all can't last forever. The world has a chance to grow again someday."
"Or maybe it just dies in winter."
"There's always that chance."
Beep.
The monitor sounded stronger, if a little more distant. "But we've made it this far, haven't we? Why not hope a little longer?"
"You know, mister, it's not smart to play dumb. There's a ninety-four percent chance of debilitating depression if you don't keep that hope in check."
Beep.
"Six percent is still a chance."
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Across the room, monitors rose and solidified. Ren heard eyelids peeling open, breaking the three-month seal of dried fluid. A small groan that wasn't Yutsui's broke the human silence.
"B-bro?" Hayato stumbled over his own tongue before falling off his perch with a solid thump. A quick series of smaller thumps assured Ren the boy was scrambling to his feet. "Isamu?!"
"Merry Christmas," Ren whispered, still looking at Yutsui's sleeping face.
Beep.
He squeezed her hand, and took comfort in the fact that it was still warm.
-End[10]-
Author's Note:
With sparsity like this, I either feel like I'm on the brink of genius or am just falling into full-blown pretentiousness.
Anyway, after a crazy week of overtime shifts, extra-curricular kid-watching, and less socializing than lately (Finally getting that under control, I guess) I come to you with this in-betweenquelish piece of Ren's side between now and 06-Speed. I feel like I overly indulge my more poetic sense when writing Ren just because Ren is the old-fashioned type so he actually appreciates it, but hopefully it wasn't too insufferable. Having a quiet little conversation about the light of things hoped for even with the possible end looming just in sight felt like just the right use for these prompts so I apologize if I waxed fluffy.
The sounding board for Ren's musings, Hayato the Gambler, is (naturally) another member of the Zetta Squad from Crow's Gamble's Choose the World You See. As with other J0KERverse adaptions, the Hayato here is slightly altered from his original appearance and here is found more cynical. As a kid with a supposedly solid grasp on percentages, I feel like J0KERverse Hayato has seen enough failures to try to keep his hopes in check. He's probably a Blank, so it's likely he's been dealing with this sort of stuff for a lot longer than the otherwise normal Hayato found in the Gambleverse. However, I ultimately feel like I focused too much on the kid's ability and not enough on developing an actual personality. I mean, he's supposed to be a foil and all, but I still like me some developed characters…
As TSoS '17 draws to a close I would like to once more encourage you to go and read some other entries. Just check out the Billboard at the forum and I'm sure you'll find something worthwhile. Also, be on the lookout for Last Rose of Summer voting and such. Until then, I hope you have a great week while we move one step closer to the end with 11-One Eyed Jack following the prompts "Sleeping in the Ashes" and "Behind the Mask".
Thanks for reading along this far,
-CG