Disclaimer:

Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!


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FS

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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.

(new version)

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Starry, starry night

Paint your palette blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

("Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)", by Don McLean)

x.

From the distance…

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

x.

From the distance, her red parasol was a round blood stain on the freshly fallen snow. The impression was strengthened by her red cuffed trousers and her long transparent red skirt over her red ankle boots. Like Seiya, she had a weakness for whimsical designs and vibrant colours, and Yaten noticed in admiration that she had printed gold kinmokusei blossoms on her long-sleeved shirt and embroidered her cuffs with her original kinmokusei design.

The parasol moved aside when they arrived at the white-painted bench, revealing her snow-white face and her solemn reddish-brown eyes, which lit up when she spotted them. Kakyuu had barely escaped albinism, but even if she were an albino, she would be the loveliest case of albinism with which nature would ever have graced humankind. She was wearing glossy lipstick in a shade of red whose intensity and brightness would look trashy on any other pale red-headed woman, but she pulled it off so well that a stranger could believe that she had been born with those poppy-red lips.

"Taiki, Yaten, Seiya!" Considerate as Kakyuu was, she called them in the reversed order to the order of her personal preference—but both Taiki and Yaten were past the stage of jealousy. Seiya had always been her favourite but had also always played hard to get ever since she returned from her private school, had danced with her and fed her with the snacks he had filched from the kitchen but distanced himself from her whenever he sensed that she grew too attached. Yaten had the theory that women loved Seiya because they always desired what they couldn't possess. Their mother was no exception in that respect…

When "Anokata-mama" told Yaten about her decision to ask Seiya to marry Kakyuu and take over the Organization, Yaten pointed out that one shouldn't keep a tiger in a cage. If only she had listened to Yaten and ask Taiki instead, Three Lights would never have left. Yaten would have taken care of Kakyuu—even married her if marriage was what Kakyuu wanted; Taiki would have led the Organization and been second to none as a leader because Taiki excelled at anything Taiki wanted to excel at; and Seiya would have supported them but left whenever he felt like leaving to go wherever he pleased just to return to them when least expected. He was like an untamed animal that had to roam freely to live, and tying such a person to an Organization and perhaps even to a wife would be just as cruel as holding a wild falcon captive. But "Anokata-mama", like most women, was too much in love with Seiya's easy, happy nature to see how unreasonable her demands were.

There was no awkwardness between them despite Three Lights' long absence, and the customary hugs and kisses came naturally and were even warmer than usual. She was surprised that their parents agreed to let them see her all of a sudden, Kakyuu said when they went inside—and Seiya, who always knew how to stick to the essential information and omit the unpleasant details, told her that they owed this rendezvous to the invaluable Alan.

"And he could persuade them to change their minds just like that?" she asked, eyeing them all with healthy skepticism. "Without receiving any… service in return?"

Despite her angelic kindness, Kakyuu wasn't easily deceived; and Yaten, who despised lies, gave in to pressure and informed her that they had caught five snooping MI6-agents and received five hours with her as a reward, much to Taiki's disapproval.

Kakyuu looked taken aback but didn't comment. They all knew that the MI6 agents awaited a less-than-desirable fate—but family was, after all, family. Even if it weren't for Kakyuu, Three Lights would have to save their parents from the secret services. They owed nothing to foreign intelligence organizations and their nosy, spying, meddling agents while they owed their lives to their (admittedly eccentric) parents, who had raised them and cared for them until they were strong and rebellious enough to go out into the world and hold their own. Perhaps they were really crows—fledglings that had flown out of Kinmoku Sei to find their place in the world. But when their parents needed help in the old nest, the independent, grown-up birds would come home.

The Organization was going to have a new head scientist, Kakyuu told them after her first cup of jasmine- and rose-scented green tea. Since the mad professor in charge of Infinity was unreliable and not committed to the Silver Bullet project, they had chosen a young prodigy instead: an extremely hard-working, brilliant girl—the daughter of the couple who had discovered the ingredients for the drug which turned grown-ups into children.

"She is two years younger than me and has just finished her studies abroad. They say she is the smartest scientist they've ever had: even before she received her parents' notebooks, she had already deduced the findings on her own. Within a year, she had accomplished what a whole generation of scientists didn't manage. She doesn't know about her promotion yet since our parents want to test her for another year. If she doesn't disappoint them, they're going to hand the whole project over to her."

If this girl—whose name Kakyuu didn't know—managed to create the Silver Bullet, it would be the equivalent of finding the philosopher's stone. She would find the cure for all human problems and help humankind take an irreversible step towards becoming angels! The Organization was much better prepared than she had thought—Kakyuu admitted. They had already worked out a very sensible way of organizing society after the revolution. Four hours of work interspersed with a long break after each hour for every adult on four days of the week were enough to give every human on earth a secure and comfortable life. If most people were children and the remaining adults worked efficiently together, using the technology and knowledge we had for healing and progress instead of wars and selfish indulgence, humans could live forever—without the perpetual pain they inflicted on each other and themselves and the evils from Pandora's Box, which nature or—to put it poetically—God or the gods (depending on how many deities you wanted to believe in) had unleashed on them.

"They're searching for a good game programmer to develop a software simulating the daily life after the revolution and the possible problems which could arise. There was Itakura Suguru, who was perfectly competent and compulsively neat—the ideal man for the job. He is known to have worked on a similar simulation game, which he could upgrade for the Organization. But Itakura-san didn't want to join the Organization when he was asked because he didn't believe in the idea, claiming that an eternal childhood would be a danger to humanity. They're searching for another game programmer now although I fear they will force him to cooperate if they can't find a substitute."

She gazed at Taiki in mild reproach. "They would have asked you, of course, if it had been possible. You would have developed the programme in a flash and learn the complete Shakespeare by heart at the same time. But our parents are so extremely proud—just like you three! After you refused to come back although you were starving and they practically begged you on their knees to return, they would rather let their Organization go down than abase themselves for a second time."

She was right, of course. Without his stubbornness and his pride, it would have taken Yaten less than a month to crawl home. Yaten had braced himself for the worst, but the world outside Kinmoku Sei was even worse than expected. It wasn't danger or pain or even the hunger but the lack of an alternative to the many tyrannies of this rigidly organized, bureaucratic world, which slowly drove both Taiki and him into depression. The circus was barely bearable, but the idol life was worse. Unlike Seiya, who broke every rule in the book and got away with it, Yaten and Taiki were saddled with the unmanageable schedule their agent had set for them. Apart from doing real work like studying scores, choreographies, screenplays, and practising and rehearsing until they dropped, they had to waste time on senseless tasks like hopping from one TV show to the next, giving interviews, signing autographs, and making small talk with girls who would never have gone to even one concert of theirs if they had been old and ugly. On the other hand, the idol business paid well whereas staying independent and refusing to play along would have meant to slave away in soul-crushing jobs in which the bosses and colleagues weren't more likable than the directors and cameramen they had to work with. Comfort-loving as he was, Yaten couldn't say he would prefer living on the streets either. What he had learned was that you either starved or joined this vicious circle of exploiting others and being exploited in return—and that the people outside Kinmoku Sei were aware of it but accepted it as one of the inevitabilities of life.

Even in most movies and live action series, the rise of the heroes were just the successful corruption of innocence and the adaptation of the individual to the society they had to live in. Yaten had almost grown fond of The Z-files of Detective Boy Holmes because Holmes managed to make use of the system and succeeded but never sold out. But even Holmes needed his famous seven-percent solution to "escape from the commonplace of existence"—from this bleak, cynical, worthless world, for which Three Lights had left Kinmoku Sei.

"We agree with Itakura-san that staying children wouldn't do humanity any good," Yaten told Kakyuu. "People don't become less nasty and dumb because they are pint-sized. Most children are just as mean as their adult counterparts with the exception that they don't multiply."

"Do you really think so?" Kakyuu gazed hard him with her serious, straight-lashed eyes, which were almost ruby-red in the evening light. "Even if that were true, we would have solved the problem of overpopulation, which has become so serious that humankind will become extinct in the next few hundred years if we don't discover at least one—preferably two or three—other planets to live on. We're living on borrowed time, depleting all natural resources, contaminating and destroying earth, creating the sort of waste which won't go away in the next millions of years. People dump and bury and forget their trash and burden future generations with a legacy equivalent to a death sentence! Children are always innocent victims of the same adults who should be protecting and supporting them. When they grow up, they will receive a very limited time to deal with these sheer insoluble problems their grandparents and parents had left behind. The Silver Bullet would stop this circle of reproduction and death and buy humankind time to clean up the mess of the last century."

She was too optimistic—Yaten pointed out—since she assumed that the people who stayed adults after the Silver Bullet had turned most of the world's population into children would be better than the adults who were populating earth right now. Apart from the catastrophes which could happen and kill all the children, who were defenceless and who would depend on a bunch of adults who weren't even their real parents, conflicts among the adults could escalate after a few decades. In two or three centuries, the new world wouldn't be much better than the world we're living in now—with the exception that the Silver Bullet had turned dying into an option which only depressed people ready to commit suicide would choose. The world would be overpopulated again—this time with children and dumb, selfish, eternally young people who refused to age and die naturally while the number of people who wanted to reproduce would pose an ever-present, mortal danger to humankind.

"That's the perfect scenario for Armageddon, if you ask me. You're placing all your hopes on human intelligence, a simulation game, and common sense. But if people aren't sensible now, they aren't going to be sensible just because they can live forever. Most people don't learn anything without being forced. An eternal life would only make humans more indulgent and more entitled to their privileges than they are now."

"That's why the people who can stay adults need to be carefully chosen from the codename members who are competent and can be trusted. Only the incorruptible, intelligent people who honestly believe in the greater cause and who are loyal to the Organization are allowed to keep their maturity."

"It's hard to manage a whole world's population of children with those people—even with all the knowledge and the technology we already have," Taiki mused. "You will need a certain amount of specialists, who are great at teamwork, to manage and maintain the machinery, not to mention the administrative work and the competent staff you will need. Such a tightly controlled, large community with so many children can only thrive when there are no natural disasters and everyone is on the same page. If it's perfectly managed and your game programmer has succeeded to simulate all the possible scenarios and worked out all the solutions in advance, the first years after the revolution will be bearable enough to create a stable system."

"We have the best people on our side," Kakyuu claimed. "And the most promising prodigies receive their education here, at Infinity."

"But then the amount of children who are allowed to grow up—and there will always be children who want to grow up—need to be carefully matched with the amount of those who have already grown up and were capable of assimilating into the community. Any accidental death of a specialist can be fatal to the whole community, and the absence of a natural death is, like Yaten said, a new serious problem humankind will have to face. It will end in an extremely despotic tyranny with enforced 'suicides' unless humankind can escape to another planet. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I think it's improbable that humankind will survive such a plunge into the cold water without a lucky mutation or an extremely thorough education and a perfectly managed life. Such a live would leave no space for personal experiments and failures, no freedom to explore one's individuality. It would negate all the values we believe in and snuff out the chance of finding personal happiness. The way to this utopia would be paved with corpses because you can't plan such a coup and a revolution without sacrificing innocents. Considering such promising prospects, it seems easier to use the knowledge and the technology we have now to improve living conditions and give everyone a good education."

"So that all people would suddenly make sensible decisions, which result in win-win situations for everyone, or make sacrifices for the sake of the common good?" Kakyuu gave Taiki a sad, ironic smile. "If all people were like you, humankind wouldn't have any problems at all, but most people aren't interested in anything which requires serious brainwork. They don't care about the future of humanity or even the future of their own children. People like you are so rare that they can barely survive without stooping to the level of the society they're forced to cope with."

She leaned back and sighed, and Yaten discovered why she always looked so intriguing to him. Her face was young and possessed the doll-like beauty so popular in Asian cultures but her deep eyes were old and wise, like the eyes of a witch whose youth had been frozen in time.

"Of course you three are going to make a difference in the world and change it one step at a time," she gently proceeded, "but will the change ever be great enough and the step you take wide enough to stop this rapid downward spiral? I admit that the Organization uses its power to force peace and a prolonged childhood and a sustainable lifestyle on the world; and for the next decades, humankind will be deprived of the right to reproduce so that we can let accidents reduce the population until it's manageable. But any political and social system has failed its citizens—and even the most democratic, liberal countries are moving towards total governmental control. If you have to choose from all the possible alternatives, a comfortable, secure life and a long childhood, possibly even an eternal life, under a benevolent monarchy led by people who truly believe in equality between the sexes and races and who support freedom and individuality as long as you don't endanger others is certainly more desirable than all the racist and sexist religions and hypocritical political systems that are currently in power." She impulsively grabbed Seiya's hand, as Seiya had remained silent throughout the whole discussion. "I love freedom just as much as you do, but I agree with our parents that dealing with it should be learned and that people who are less lucky than us don't have the time and the opportunity to learn—not in the world in which they're living now!"

She paused to flash Akatsuki-san, the rugged bodyguard who had just brought them their dinner wagon, a warm smile and distributed the bowls and plates with the regal gestures of a princess, who had seen them and internalized them from the moment she learned to walk and speak, and Yaten had the vision that she would make a formidable queen. Feeling his pensive gaze on her face, she turned and affectionately rubbed his arm before she made the announcement which would change their lives: "I've watched your advertisements and tried Galaxia's Sunkissed Buns and the drinks—and I've come to the conclusion that if we continue like this, there would be nothing left which money couldn't buy but also no food of any nutritional value left to normal people. We could wait until all people—especially those in power, who don't feel the agony of the people at the bottom of the social ladder—come to their senses. But by that time, if that time ever comes, there would be no duck left in the lake, no fish left in the sea. After seeing what you three had to do to 'make it' in the world, I've come to the conclusion that the Organization is the last hope we have. We're so close to developing the Silver Bullet, but traitors and the secret services have wrecked the health of our parents, who need to retire in ten years or less unless they want to work themselves into the grave. I'm going to leave Kinmoku Sei to see the world with you three after you've become international celebrities. But I'm not going to abandon the Organization and the people who have given me life and raised me!"

"In short, you're going to lead the Organization!" Seiya impatiently cut in. He had been observing them without saying a word—an indication that he was too distressed to speak.

She nodded and gave him an apologetic smile, well aware that she had just shattered his dream of a free, unattached life. "You once said that you would always protect me—but I want to protect the people I love as well. Since you refused to lead the group for reasons I can understand, I've accepted the responsibility in your stead. I haven't met the codename members yet, but our parents have already made a will and saved it in Pandora's Box in case something goes wrong." Since Seiya didn't utter a sound of approval, she took a sip of the champagne Taiki had poured all of them and sighed. "I still have a lot to learn—I don't even know how the codename members are named and ranked yet, but I'm sure that I can depend on you three and that we can change the world for the better. In ten years or less, when our new head scientist has completed the Silver Bullet and you've shown me around, Seiya, I'm going to meet up with the seven crows and accept my duties as the Organization's new Anokata!"

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That was a terrifically…

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

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"That was a terrifically smart move of them," Taiki murmured after Kakyuu had left for the bathroom. "We will all be working for the Organization now, whether we like it or not."

"I don't think it was their idea," Yaten darkly objected although he agreed that their parents had made use of the situation. Kakyuu had always been much too kind, much too eager to absorb all the suffering she had heard and read about to augment it and treat it as her own pain. Her limitless, universal compassion and their parents' fierce altruism must be the reasons why Seiya, Taiki, and Yaten were unapologetically individualistic and selfish. Seiya and Taiki might believe that humankind would eventually evolve into something better with time (Yaten couldn't tell what his two brothers thought since both of them were accomplished liars), but Yaten knew that, as far as he was concerned, humankind might as well die out in one or two hundred years to make space for another species. In all honesty, it would be better for earth—as if earth mattered in this vast universe!

Foreigners often thought Yaten was xenophobic; homosexuals believed him to be homophobic; and women claimed that he was misogynist. And they were all dead wrong because Yaten didn't despise any select group of people but all humankind in its entirety. Kakyuu refused to believe that Yaten's attitude expressed precisely what Yaten felt, but there were scarcely any people in the world whom Yaten could tolerate and only a handful of people whom he loved deeply. As long as those people were fine, Yaten couldn't care less about the rest. He also had a dark suspicion that humans couldn't suffer eternal peace and happiness and that, if the sparkling, rosy biblical version of paradise existed, it would cause terminal boredom and ruin the poor souls and angels doomed to stay there.

The problem with life—Yaten observed—was that it wasn't half as complicated as most people wanted to believe. After all, living was (in Taiki's words) just like gardening: Just put the right flowers into the right soil and watch the weather so that you were prepared for droughts and storms. Like people, flowers had their strengths and their weaknesses, their quirks one had to accept if one wanted to help them grow and bloom. Some flowers like dahlias were gorgeous and fragrance-free; others, like kinmokusei, were inconspicuous, with an irresistible, unforgettable scent. Orchids—so tough and beautiful—were easily drowned; but forget-me-nots and Japanese primroses loved the rain.

And of course there were always bugs and mildew, decaying roots and rotting stems and weeds… Admittedly, Yaten and Taiki, who were lazy, let Seiya deal with the weeds.

"What do you think about this?" Taiki asked Seiya, as expected. Taiki's greatest problem was his intellect, which forced him to study a situation from a hundred different angles and made him talk himself out of his own decisions to consider them again later. Seiya ended up making decisions for Taiki whenever Taiki didn't care enough to decide for himself. And his role in the future of humankind was, even to Taiki, too abstract and insignificant to ponder.

"If you had a drug which could give you an eternal life by taking years off your body without endangering your mind and your life—what would you do with it?" Seiya asked in return.

"If it doesn't turn me into a child and wipe out my memories? Take it, I suppose," Taiki said, what once again proved to Yaten that he never knew what Taiki was thinking. Now Taiki must be imagining the dizzying amount of books he could study or the endless lists of poems he could write during his eternal life. There were billions of computer systems to be written and hacked, myriads of inventions to be made and dismissed, zillions of stars and comets to discover…

"Same here," Seiya admitted before he fell silent again. It had been implied that the Organization would create a version of the Silver Bullet which didn't automatically shrink all adults but gave them eternal youth; and even though they had discussed the advantages and disadvantages of an eternal life for humankind in general, they hadn't taken the idea seriously enough to consider its consequences for their own future.

"I wouldn't want everybody to live forever!" Yaten shuddered at the thought of an eternally young Takeo the Asshole, whom Yaten would rather see dead. "But an eternal life for me and the people I can stand doesn't sound too bad."

The truth was that once the Silver Bullet was found, it would change the world forever. Humankind would either adapt to the changes it brought or die out. Until then, wars would be fought, and empires would rise and fall.

"Right now, only one girl and one mad scientist are capable of developing the drug," Taiki pointed out, whereupon Seiya, who got what Taiki meant, shot Taiki an amused smile.

"The psychopathic solution would be to eliminate both of them and save ourselves the hassle of pampering humankind," Yaten, who liked to verbalize his thoughts, spelled out what Taiki had suggested. "Anything is better than being a slave for all eternity!"

"For all eternity?" Seiya gave him a skeptical look. "There is no place in her utopia for people like me!" He would rather commit suicide before letting other people decide when and how many children he was going to have. Next they were going to tell him when he was going to have sex and with whom.

They all gazed into the distance for a moment to visualize the situation…

"Of course I could always start a rebellion—but since I couldn't ever do that to her, I'd just shoot myself!"

The grossly risible mental image of Seiya trying to usurp Kakyuu or shooting himself brought a smile to Taiki's and Yaten's lips; and all of them touched glasses and drank up their champagne before Taiki nonchalantly asked, "When?"

"When we take out the prodigy and the professor?" Yaten, who was feeling drowsy because he was missing his afternoon nap, yawned.

"Before or after taking the Silver Bullet ourselves? And stealing a few samples for our parents and for Kakyuu, of course!"

"And for Igarashi-san, Shizuka-san, and Akane-san," Seiya added.

"Why Akane-san?" It was only natural that Seiya felt indebted to their agent and his daughter, and Seiya's generosity had always been troublesome at best. But Seiya and their headstrong director of Detective Boy Holmes had been locking horns since they started to film Young Moriarty's first appearance; and while Yaten was the opinion that it was only Akane-san's way of showing affection, Seiya looked irritated and hurt by her barrage of insults, whose harshness rivalled Yaten's whenever he was fed up with Seiya.

"I've grown accustomed to her ear-splitting screams. No one can shout 'Se-e-i-ya' like she can!"

Taiki, who didn't like distractions, stoically focussed on his question. Before or after the official handover—which definitely won't be smooth, considering the state of the Organization at the moment? Before or after the revolution?

"After!" Yaten decided. "Three-thirds of the world's population would be wiped out by then, which would solve the problem of overpopulation for a while."

It was the grim humour of the desperate fly caught in a spider's trap, as they all knew that none of them could betray Kakyuu… All of them had felt this compulsion to protect her ever since they were toddlers, not because she was a pretty girl or because they thought she was weak (she could aim almost as well as Yaten and once beat Taiki in fencing during practice) but because she was so selfless and tender-hearted in such a self-defeating, suicidal way. Kakyuu wasn't only so noble and good that she could never survive by herself—she also thought that most people were ignorant and careless but had the capacity to be as kind as her.

Just like Taiki had difficulty in comprehending that true stupidity existed and "depression" was to Seiya an abstract word, Kakyuu firmly believed that all humans and animals were essentially good—a preposterous philosophy, which even years of living with Yaten couldn't exorcise out of her. They would have to protect Kakyuu from herself again, just like that time when she threw herself in front of Seiya to save the wolverine, whom Seiya had tried to fight off with the sword and the morning star from their father's medieval weapon collection.

"What have you three been talking about?" Kakyuu, who had just returned from the bathroom, asked. She had removed the pins from the high buns on both sides of her head, and her smooth reddish-brown hair was spilling over her shoulders down to her back and her hips, where it brushed against Yaten's hand when she sat down beside him. She smelled of her familiar kinmokusei fragrance, of pure sweet osmanthus with a barely noticeable whiff of roses, mingled with the natural scent of her skin; and Yaten felt so homesick that he could rest his head on her lap and stay there until the world ended.

"We briefly considered shooting your two best scientists," Seiya informed her with misplaced honesty, "preferably after the completion of the Silver Bullet so that we can take it and be together forever!"

"You know, Seiya…" Kakyuu shook her pretty head and gravely looked from one foster brother to the next. "I'd be less concerned about your jokes if I didn't know you so well."

x.


A/N: I had to split this chapter, so there will be six chapters left to upload before I can continue the story from where I've left off.