The Clockwork Brother
"Hey Amane, did you know…?"
...
Amane blinked, once, then twice — three times, before his eyes adjusted to the darkness of nightfall. Something felt off. The taste of copper coated his mouth, and the weight of his own heartbeat pounding against his ribcage felt foriegn, unfamiliar, as if he was inhabiting a stranger's body rather than his own.
Still, he exhaled slowly, ears popping as he swallowed. The humid air felt thick and syrupy, and the room around them was quiet as if holding its breath.
"Sorry, what was that?" he asked, turning on his side to meet the sight of Tsukasa already facing him. His younger brother's eyes were wide and owlish, innocent, illuminated by the citronella candles burning in the background — the same candles that painted his face in a ghoulishly yellow cast, making Amane shiver.
Tsukasa huffed. "I'm asking you if you know about the legend of the slit-mouthed woman," he said. His little feet kicked underneath him as if annoyed at having to repeat himself. At only six, both of them barely took up even half of the tatami mattresses they laid on, so it was funny to watch Tsukasa thrash about as if trying to fill the extra space with his rage.
"Of course I know," Amane replied easily. It was true. He'd heard some classmates discussing the rumor of this monstrous woman who slashed her victims' faces into wide smiles while he was on duty, and he had absolutely no desire to hear it again. "We need to go to sleep Tsu, otherwise mama will be mad at us."
"Eh~ how boring," Tsukasa whined, but after huffing and puffing to himself for a couple of moments, he shifted on his side, pulling the covers up over his head. A fond smile stretched across Amane's lips and he allowed his own eyes to flutter shut following this example. Though he really gave Tsukasa too much credit, because not even thirty seconds later the whispers started back up again.
"Hey, Amane." A weight pressed into him uncomfortably. "Amane." Begrudgingly opening his eyes back up, he saw that Tsukasa was using a blanket covered knee to nudge him right in the ribcage. "Just one scary story, okay? One more and then we go to sleep."
He sighed, knowing exactly how persistent his brother could be, "Okay, fine. One." Throwing his head back, Amane racked his brain trying to come up with a quick story that would appease his brother. Tsukasa always liked the more gruesome ones, the gorier the better. His little fangs would peer out from his mouth when he ogled in delight. "I don't have any," he finally said, coming up empty.
"You don't?" Even without turning around, he would've been able to tell Tsukasa was pouting at him. This disappointment however, was thankfully short lived and the pout on his face was soon replaced by a Cheshire grin. "Well, then I'll tell you a good one," he said.
The glint in his brother's eyes made Amane's stomach churn unpleasantly. Still — he shifted closer to listen. Tsukasa opened his mouth; the air cooled around them, the candles gutterered, their shadows flickered off and on the sliding doors separating their room and their parents room, and it began.
"It starts like this, there were two brothers—"
Black hair, amber eyes. Same telescopes. Same uniforms. Two heartbeats.
Latchkey kids, the Yugi Twins were. They were two halves of a full glass ever since birth.
"They were inseparable, best friends. But one of them — one of them had a clockwork heart."
Amane loved stars, Tsukasa loved chaos, so it made sense they both loved space. The romanticism of distant galaxies, the discord of exploding supernovas, the two would chatter on endlessly from behind beaten up telescopes, eyes shining and spit flying, talking a mile a minute over each other because they couldn't get their words out fast enough.
"The clockwork brother could eat and bathe and play, just like the real brother, but over time his cracks started to show. His screws started coming loose."
At 8 years old Amane confided in Tsukasa from their places curled up by the window sill that he wanted to go far away. Somewhere beautiful among the stars. He wanted to leave footsteps on the moon, trace constellations with the pad of his index finger, and skip rocks across the shimmering rivers of the milky way.
When he turned to look at Tsukasa then, instead of finding his own wistful yearning reflected on his brother's face, he saw a sharp awareness. A precision frosting over the previous innocence behind those darkened pupils, and something else. Something hazy lurking beyond the fog of just-there comprehension.
Amane couldn't find the right word to describe his brother's expression then.
But for the first time he saw something in Tsukasa, something he never noticed before. The thought about what it could be plagued Amane the entire trip down to the kitchen to grab snacks. And with every step back up those stairs, his heart hammered with the realization that for the first time since they were born, he was in unfamiliar territory with Tsukasa. It wasn't until he twisted the knob and opened the door to the sight that befell him that it all clicked into place.
By the window sill their telescopes lay a heaping mess of warped plastic and shattered glass. Just like that. Their once most prized possessions rendered to dust on the floor. Hearing the door open, Tsukasa turned to meet his gaze, lips curling up in a way that made Amane's insides churn.
"Amane! Look! Now you can stay here forever! With me!"
There was something frightful about Tsukasa's smile that instant, something possessive in the way he called out his name. And in that moment, looking at his twin brother, Amane found the word that had been eluding him all that time.
Evil.
"Soon, the first brother realized that one of them was not human, and night after night as they lay sleeping next to each other, he heard the tick tick tick of a mechanical heart."
As the twins grew older, Amane noticed more and more differences between himself and Tsukasa. They still had the same black hair, same amber eyes, same uniforms, and same two heartbeats. Their matching telescopes were shattered now, but they were still two halves of a full glass. Always have been.
But there was something else radiating underneath Tsukasa these days. Something insidious.
When he looked at his younger brother, Amane couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness that permeated. He couldn't articulate the rotting veneer lying beneath surface-level pleasantries.
Time went on, they started middle school, and soon their previous loving relationship grew turbulent. Violent. Each interaction with Tsukasa was like sediment, wearing him thin, and every exchange of words an anvil on his chest, until he could take it no longer. He was barely thinking straight the morning he slipped the knife off the kitchen counter and into his backpack.
"Finally, the first brother set out to destroy the imposter. He would cut him open and discard the clockwork heart so he could have his real brother again."
Black hair, amber eyes. Broken telescopes. Bloodsoaked uniforms. Two heartbeats — one growing quieter as Amane pressed down hard on the stab wound he inflicted upon his own brother. And all he could think about that moment was how perfectly his hand fit into the hole he cut out in Tsukasa, like a child's jigsaw puzzle. They were two halves of a full glass, after all.
Blood pooled around them, staining both their white shirts crimson, and matting Tsukasa's hair completely. Amane was vaguely conscious of the setting sun slanting through the window of the empty classroom, illuminating Tsukasa's expression then, as he looked up at his murderer with pupils uneven, like splashed ink on otherwise clean canvases. Throwing his head back, Tsukasa laughed. It was a disjointed, cacophonic sound, and a terrible, terrible sight, but it was even more terrible once he stopped and Amane could see every part of him clearly. He could see the head bent sideways, the cracked lips — the feral love reflected on his brother's tiny, angular face as he smiled up wide at him.
"I love you, Amane."
Gritting his teeth, Amane clutched the knife tighter still as he tore into Tsukasa a second time. Anything to make him stop talking. Anything to stop him from getting under his skin like all those times before. Tears fell in large droplets, mingling with the blood, washing away his anger to make way for his grief.
All the while Tsukasa's breathing grew quieter and quieter.
"But when the first brother cut open the second, all he found was flesh and guts and gore. For all along, the second brother had been human and the first had been hearing the ticking of his own clockwork heart the entire time."
As Tsukasa's breathing ceased, Amane's grew louder and more laborious. Even as Tsukasa's eyes dulled and his smile slipped, he did not struggle. Not even at the very end. A quiet rebuke to an otherwise turbulent life.
The grief soon folded into disbelief, and the disbelief soon morphed into hysteria. Full on sobs racked through Amane's body, as his hands fell slack around his brother's neck.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry."
And in the empty classroom, with his knuckles stained the color of spilled wine and ardour, his reply of course, is only that of silence.
"Hey — Amane! Amane? Are you still listening, or...have you fallen asleep already?"
A/N: Thanks for reading everyone. This story was originally written for the Twin Stars Zine, and is being published as an entry for the JSHK Spooktober event (Prompt Tick-Tock). I will be posting another story for the event, a hananene little mermaid retelling so look out for that!
If you have some time, please drop a review and let me know what you thought! Thanks!