the freedom of apathy
There's a question that's been nagging at Toya since they started the writing.
He's been waiting, half-anticipatory, half-apprehensive, for his next flash of memory, for the next fragment of his hazy past life to return to him. So far, Toya's gotten nothing concrete, just vague sensations of déjà-vu he can't place. A sight, a sound, a smell. It means something to him and he's not sure why, and if he tries too hard to think about why it's significant, his head just starts to throb again, stars exploding behind his eyes.
Toya gets the feeling of his world shrinking. He feels like there's something hot on his heels, encroaching on the edges of his awareness, and frankly, Toya's afraid to find out the truth sitting at the bottom of all the riddles. He doesn't want to know. This goes beyond a simple desire to build a new life with the identity he woke up with in the hospital—Toya doesn't want to keep that identity so much as he fears the reality of his old one.
So when the question starts to tug at his mind, Toya tries to ignore it. Whenever he gets one of these spontaneous lines of thought these days, he finds it suspect, wondering if this is really something he thought of, or if it's the conception of his other-self, his old identity infecting his mind with the question. But the question's been burning at him so badly that he can't ignore it any longer.
Ikuko's poring over the plot outline for what feels like the umpteenth time, checking for any conceivable inconsistencies. Though this has ostensibly been a collaborative effort, Toya's not contributed much to the writing. Ikuko does the lion's share of the working, being the more experienced writer. Toya occasionally supplies ideas and character touches that just feel… right to him (right without knowing why), but that's about it. Ikuko doesn't really seem to mind, and for that, Toya is grateful—whenever he thinks about this book of theirs, he feels woefully inadequate.
He stares down at her purplish-black head, long tendrils of hair falling over her back and shoulders. She is the very picture of authorial dedication, and he hates to disturb her, but…
"Ikuko?"
"Hmm."
"Do… Do you think that, maybe, this is disrespectful to the dead?"
She doesn't respond for a long time, pen still scratching on paper, words almost magically materializing from the ink. Then, Ikuko lays down her pen and sits up in her chair, looking up at Toya with a curiously neutral expression on her face. "What do you mean?"
Here's another change in the world around him that's thrown Toya a bit off his axis: Ikuko's odd shift in personality. She still teases him sometimes, still acts like herself sometimes, but these days she is for the most part almost off-puttingly serious. At this point, Toya's almost ready to go around saying nothing but the most inanely stupid things, just to get her to behave normally. Anything to see that she at least does not have a face that she hides from him.
He shrugs, not meeting her gaze. "It just feels like it's disrespectful to the dead."
"Toya, countless novels have been written based on the lives of people who are now dead, and you don't see them being criticized as disrespectful. Just think of it like that."
In that moment, Toya nods, envying Ikuko her apathy towards things like this, and wishes he could just put the question and everything else that comes with it, out of his mind.