I am. So. Sorry. For the absurdly long wait. Thing is I don't really know where I'll be going anymore with this story (apart from, you know, the obvious). My original plan seems to have gone out of the window (then again, that plan was made last year, so...), notably because of how fond I've grown of Shiki while writing the first 7 Days.
Anyway. My apologies and I hope some people are still sticking around to read this. A warning before you proceed : the end of this chapter is kind of evil, but the next one (at least one) should be uploaded in a few days. You might prefer to wait a bit in order to avoid the cliffhanger.
Or not. It's up to you.
Obviously, I'm still posting them separately because I'm evil like that.
Love you all ! *hearts*
THE 1ST DAY
Running to Hachiko, again.
The forging of the pact is like a punch in his guts.
At least he isn't even given a choice and he doesn't have to wonder whether or not to accept this and its consequences. Light, everywhere, an aura of serenity and a song that isn't coming from him, vibrating all around him and within him, resonating, forcing a bond of souls between him and
Joshua.
Joshua.
Neku wants to cry. Really, really wants to cry, but the tears won't spill just like the words won't come out of his mouth — he's forced into battle with a partner he never agreed to have before he can even see him, but the bond, link, chain is there already and he can feel him there, all through the fight.
The Noise dissolve and Neku breathes in, out, in out, looks up to the boy casually making his way to him through the crowd
the Composer of Shibuya stares at him, an almost hungry light in his eyes, hands in his pockets and a smirk on his lips.
"Howdy."
o
He can't act on it, obviously. All he can think about is how much he would love to ball his hand into a fist and punch Joshua — his partner, for fuck's sake, his humor is even sicker than Neku already thought — but his fingers won't even twitch as long as that's what he intends to do. He's frozen into submission, back to the point the two of them used to stand at, four weeks earlier.
Just as obviously, this doesn't change the fact that he knows.
And mostly, he's thinking that the Composer is the sum of all the bastardry of the entire universe, the compiled reincarnation of all of the biggest assholes that have ever been since the beginning of existence. Judas included but this isn't even just Judas — Neku's biblical knowledge isn't very extensive but this is Judas, Barabas and Pontius Pilate all at once. And the soldier who stabbed Jesus with his spear. And possibly Jesus himself, except that's actually only making him more of a fucking bastard.
Of course he's known that for a while, wanted to skin the Composer alive ever since he learned who he really was, but somehow it's even more intense now.
In the whirlwind of raging feelings, there is hatred, of course there is. There is anger. There is despair, bitterness, betrayal.
There is trust, still, inexplicably.
Worse still, there is happiness, as well ; because Joshua, Joshua is back, here in front of him again and Neku is delirious to finally see him again — because even though he had to have heard, he never did turn up at Hachiko.
But also — most of all — there is hurt.
Because Joshua is here. Josh is here, right in front of him, he's here with Neku and he's pretending that there's nothing wrong with this.
And Neku is going to have to pretend he doesn't know, pretend they've never been friends, pretend Joshua didn't kill him twice, didn't take Shiki away, didn't try to destroy Shibuya —
didn't spare and give him back his life, with added wonderful friends as a bonus —
and didn't put him back through this living-dead hell again.
And it just hurts, fuck it all, to know that even a second time around he cannot fix this ; that he and Josh could never be honest with each other.
Also his hand is seriously starting to itch from the desire to punch Josh in the face real hard.
o
He just can't believe he never noticed. There's just so much, so much that's so obviously wrong with this 'kid', from the way he knows everything about the Game and Neku to the buzzing static and the tension in the suddenly heavy air around him.
When Neku tries scanning, the entire area is quiet, except for him. Joshua's conscience, lone chime amid an ocean of silence, is shimmering, almost blinding, and Neku is willing to believe it's overpowering the mind of everyone else around.
It's certainly overboard enough to give Neku an agonizing headache just from scanning him.
This is ridiculous. Neku remembers always thinking there was something just grating about his second partner (duh), but how did he never realize that Joshua's simple presence constricted him so much ? This could never have passed as something natural.
All he got was a blurry glimpse of Udagawa, barely a flash of a picture, and by the way that's not how scanning normally works — and then he's clutching his head because it feels like it's being split open, for God's sake.
And then Joshua touches him, a fleeting contact, fingers barely grazing his shoulder [skin-to-skin], probably just trying to get his attention back but it feels like a jolt.
He can feel it all. Joshua is warm, Joshua is alive, Joshua is practically overflowing with sheer power —
"I... I'll be fine," he mutters, and he's acutely conscious that he's saying it more for his own benefit than for his partner's.
— and then Josh flicks his hair and says Neku's name.
Fucking ridiculous. He must have been deaf all this time, as well as blind and numb.
o
Okay, know what ? Whatever. Josh is an ass and that's it, nothing new here. Neku knew this already.
He's not going to give Joshua any kind of power over him, not any more than he already has, not anymore. He's not going to let himself be bothered by this gleeful asshole.
Josh would just love it way too much.
First tactic to get some alone time when dealing with Joshua : fiddle with your phone. Josh is almost constantly using his, mechanically texting when he's not calling Mr. H ; 'phone' means 'I'm busy, leave me alone' in Joshua-speak — both ways round. For some reason, that's one rule of privacy that Josh never seemed to even think about breaking.
Of course, when Neku flips his phone open with no idea what to do exactly except kill some time, his first impulse is to click on the little box with his current partner's face on it. Josh just never gives him a break, uh.
All the little white boxes are still there, but there's something strange. Neku frowns, then realizes some of the boxes with Shiki's face on them have a little rectangular blue icon in them, while the others are empty.
He will later blame this on the buzz in his head not helping his mental faculties, on top of the fact that even if he were a normal human Joshua would drive anyone insane ; but still, seriously, Neku never ever learns. He clicks on the blue icon in the first box.
A window of text pops up.
Some sort of... report, apparently, about whatever, to whomever it may concern. Utter nonsense to him, at first ; it does mention the Game but also it being under "Our supervision" (with capital O, if you'll please), and then something called the Higher Plane — "common knowledge", what, really ? — and Neku's global reaction is along the lines of 'Uuh, what ?'
But then he clicks the yellow arrow to the next page, because it seems to be winking and making eyes at him and, you know, he's just naturally gifted at finding out things he'd rather not and generally getting into trouble.
And that page's a bit more interesting.
He doesn't get quite everything — even if the writer wasn't evidently trying to sound annoyingly professional (stuck-up), there's particular terminology Neku just doesn't know about — but he does understand that he's reading a list of the things that are going on in this Game to make it a bit different from the usual (what a 'normal' Game is like, of course, Neku sure wouldn't know).
Quote, unquote :
1: its role in plans for Shibuya's destruction,
Nothing new, though still a shock to read spelled out so bluntly.
2: the Composer's absence from the UG,
New in some way, except it makes sense now that Neku thinks about it.
Also definite proof, if there was ever need for one, that Josh really is a cheating bastard.
3: the resulting limitations to his powers, and
Waaaait —
4: the Game being played by a proxy.
— oh, nice.
That'd be yours truly, wouldn't it ?
But he knew that, didn't he.
Putting the small matter of Neku's unwilling involvement in a bastard's whimsical plans to destroy Shibuya aside —
Neku clearly remembers the huge shiny laser-beams things Joshua had deigned use by the end of the week and how they allowed him to wipe the streets of Shibuya with Taboo Noise. In fact, now that he thinks about it, he's fairly sure his partner was using them again against those annoying crabs, just a few minutes earlier.
So.
This is the Composer when he's handicapped himself and given up over half his strength.
This is insane, Neku concludes.
He skims through the rest of the report — doesn't understand much of all the rambling about 'frequencies', 'vibes' and 'Imagination' but does realize when it's talking about Joshua's — the Composer's — ridiculous bet with Conductor Kitaniji, and then about himself — clicks the next blue icon before allowing himself time to think.
His cursor slips down a little.