Author's Note: I have been sitting on the ideas in this halo for quite some time now. It feels good to just get them out. I was wondering what else to add to this halo. But I couldn't think of anything and just chose to end it. I might go back to Mikado and Uzuki before the season is over. We will have to see, my dear Wastelings. This season will be over in three weeks. However, there will be a simple AO3-exclusive side fic related to the Wonderland series. There will be another omake story later in the spring. I already know what I am doing next week. For now, enjoy this week's halo.
Halo Twenty-Six: Mikado:
-Mikado-
I awoke to find that I couldn't move my arm to the side because of a heavy weight next to me. Huh? What the… I couldn't move my right arm back without bumping into who or what was in with me. I know that I went to bed alone last night. What was in my futon with me?
I turned my head and opened one eye. A little girl with short dark hair lay asleep next to me. I had to admit that she looked rather cute sleeping there.
"Momoki-chan?" I asked. Wait… what is she doing here? If she's out here with me, then who's watching Purgatory? Do they even know that she's gone? I needed to get her back before the security is weakened. I reached over and shook her on the shoulder.
"Hey. Momoki-chan. Hey. Hey," I whispered, shaking her awake. "Hey. Hey." Momoki-chan slowly fluttered her eyes opened. I tilted my head.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" I asked. She blinked at me before quickly turning her head away. She came in the middle of the night to see me? I turned her face to me.
"Did you have a nightmare last night?" I asked. Momoki-chan nodded once.
"You came all the way out here to see me because of it?" I asked. She nodded again. I pulled her into my arms and held her. I couldn't believe it. Momoki-chan's never done this before. I turned her to face me.
"Momoki-chan, how did you get here by yourself?" I asked. She looked down at her fingers.
"Momoki-chan?" I asked.
"I just go just up and walked out through the door," she said in a low voice.
"Oh…" I said. "When did you figure out how to get here by yourself?"
"I see everything," Momoki-chan said. "I learned at watching Miiko-san operate the gate." She looked down at her tiny hands.
"She wasn't at desk at the time," she said. "I just watched up to the control panel, pressed the buttons, and simply walked out." I didn't whether to be impressed or worried. Momoki-chan couldn't stay with me for too long. I was about to speak when my phone rang.
"Excuse me," I said. I reached over and picked up my phone.
"Hello?" I asked. "Huh? I haven't seen him in a while. Why? Okay… Alright, I'll do it. Thank you for letting me know, I guess." I hung up and turned back to Momoki-chan. She had a curious look on her little face. Well, I have to get her back to Purgatory. I put my hands on her shoulders.
"Listen," I said. "I have to go to school. I need to get you back to Purgatory." I saw her starting to frown.
"Look, you have to go back," I said. "You will keep your friends safe." Momoki-chan looked ready to cry. I sighed.
"How about this? I take you back now and you can come and see me later, okay?" I said. She perked up a little bit.
"You mean it?" Momoki-chan asked. I patted her on the head.
"Yeah," I said. She leaned in and hugged me. I smiled and shook my head. Is this what having a little sister is like? I let her cling to me a little bit longer before gently pushing her off.
"Okay," I said. "You have to go now. I don't want Vanessa-san and them to have to be worried about you."
"Fine," she muttered. Momoki-chan frowned and puffed up her cheeks. I pulled her in for one more hug.
"Come on, let's go," I said. I got up to get dressed. When I came back, I took Momoki by the hand. She didn't try to argue with me.
Masaomi and I went up to Ryo's apartment.
"Why are we here again?" I asked.
"The teacher's really worried about him," Masaomi said. "He hasn't been in school for weeks now. They are really worried about him."
"Ah," I said. Masaomi turned and knocked on the door.
"What do we say to him?" I asked.
"I don't know. We just ask him how he's doing?" he asked. We looked up when we heard the door opening. Ryo looked out through the crack.
"Oh, it's you," he said in a dull, tired voice.
"You okay, man?" Masaomi asked.
"Yeah," Ryo said.
"We haven't seen you at school in days. Are you sure you're okay? You're not sick or anything, are you?" I asked. Something felt off. I couldn't quite grasp it yet.
"Oh," he said. I tried to look inside his apartment.
"Can we come in?" I asked. He didn't answer. Instead, Ryo backed away from the door and opened it wider. Masaomi and I looked at each other before we went inside.
The smell was the first thing that we noticed. The freezing air couldn't hide the smell of death. His living room alone looked a mess. Clothes were thrown about the floor. The walls had dried food stuck to them. Crumbles, bits of chewed food, and broken glasses were scattered on the floor. I tried to ignore the buzzing of the flies around us.
"Dude!" Masaomi said. "What the hell is this?" Ryo stepped over the mess with a single thought. He paused and glanced over his shoulder.
"Hm?" Ryo asked. Something was really wrong here.
"What have you been doing in here?" Masaomi asked. "Are you like a shut-in or something?"
"No," Ryo said without missing a beat.
"Why haven't you been in school?" I asked. "And what is that smell?" He just shrugged at us.
"Can I get you anything?" he asked. There was no real care behind that question. Masaomi and I looked at each other. I couldn't hear what Ryo was thinking either.
"Did something happen?" Masaomi asked.
"No, not really," Ryo said. He made his way to the kitchen.
"What should we do?" I mouthed at Masaomi. He didn't seem to know what to do. Ryo came back with two full glasses of…
"What is that?" I asked.
"I don't know," Ryo said. "Just found it in the fridge." I put up my hand.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Oh," he said. "Okay." He shoved aside some clutter on the coffee table and put the glasses down. Ryo cleared aside something on the couch and sat down.
"What happened here?" Masaomi asked again. "Why is everything a mess here? Where are your folks?" Ryo glanced up at us.
"My folks?" he asked. He turned his head and looked down the hall. I just moved without thinking. I ran straight down the hall.
"Mikado?" Masaomi asked as he ran after me. We came up to one of the closed doors at the end of the hall. I threw open the door. I backed up, covering my nose. I thought I was going to throw up.
"What's wrong?" Masaomi asked behind me. I pointed in the room in front of us. He looked up into the room.
"What the fuck?!" my best friend yelled. A woman's decaying body was lying on the bed with flies flying around. A clothesline was wrapped tightly around her neck. There was no telling how long she had been left like that?
I jumped to my feet and ran back to the living room. I didn't know if Masaomi was behind me.
Ryo looked up as I ran over to the couch across from the coffee table. He didn't say anything as I threw aside clothes. I saw what I feared. A man's decaying body was lying there. His head had been bashed in from blunt force trauma. The flies were buzzing around him too. I turned in time to see Masaomi running back into the living room.
"What the fuck?!" he shouted. Ryo had no emotion on his face.
"Did you do this?" I asked, pointing at the man's body.
"Yes," he said. There was nothing in his voice.
"Why?" Masaomi asked. Ryo shrugged and shook his head.
"They were getting on my nerves," he said. "So I took a golf club to my old man's head and strangled my mom with a clothes line." Masaomi and I looked at each other. We were standing in a tomb with a murderer. Ryo had been hanging around the bodies of his parents like it was nothing. Masaomi pulled out his phone to call the police. Ryo just picked up his glass and took a drink like it was nothing. My stomach turned as fly buzzed by his ear.
It was then I knew that something wasn't right.
We didn't stay long. Ryo didn't try to stop us as we ran out the door. We didn't stop or look back once we were downstairs. Masaomi and I didn't know what to do. We should call the police. But then what?
"We'll just call them anonymously," I said.
"What are you going to tell them?" Masaomi asked.
"I'll handle it," I said. I pulled out my phone and made the call. I just hoped that Ryo would get the help that he needed.
And that was it.
I've noticed something that has changed about me lately.
Last night, I had a strange dream. It was like I was me, but yet not me. I was looking through the eyes of another person.
At first, I stood in front of a bathroom mirror. I looked like a man in my twenties. He/I was Japanese. He had on a grey suit with a black tie. The man straightened up his glasses before he walked out of the bathroom. I saw pieces of this man's life through his eyes.
I think I was in America. Washington DC to be exact. He walked up the stairs to the Capitol. I had many ideas. I was going to try and save what was left of the world. The latter I didn't know yet. I was on my way to talk to congress when I met her. I think her name was Kate. American woman with blonde hair and rough around the edges. I certainly found her intimidating. Still, she was interested in me. At first, I couldn't figure out why.
We would meet up again at a deli in DC. I felt so awkward around her. Well, I would get the chance to know her better since I would be working with the Pentagon and the CDC. Over time, Kate and I got close. We started to date. I could see their relationship unfolding through his eyes. The times he would show off his math skills to her. She'd go along with it to appease him. I saw the times they would laugh together. The times where they would go out around DC and catch some of the little known sights that only locals would know. I even them through their rather… um… intimate moments. He proposed to her through a little math puzzle, you know? Kate didn't get it at first. It took work, but she managed to play along.
They got married at a courthouse. It was a small ceremony. Just their friends and colleagues attended. He wore a simple black suit and she wore a long white dress. The man will eventually move his father into the home with him and his new wife. His father and wife never really got along. Still, they tried for his sake. The family grew when their daughter was born.
Her name was Annabelle. She became the joy in my life. For a time, she brought peace to my house. My wife and I would always be holding her. Sometimes, I held Annie as I showed her one of the many math equations that I was so fond of.
I wish his story ended there. You see, this man whose life I saw through his eyes is dead. I saw how it happened.
It started out as a good morning. I kissed Kate and Annie goodbye before I headed off to work. I turned and walked out to my car. At the time, I was working on a project that could save our government. I was going to help build a floating fortress. It sounded crazy, but it was going to be our final hope. The project had been going fine so far. But lately, something hasn't been going right. I was going to try and see what was going on. It was just supposed to be there for the morning. I thought I was going to come home and have dinner with my family that day.
I walked through the Pentagon, greeting everyone inside. One of my colleagues looked happy to be at work.
"Ready to get work?" he asked. I said yes. Everything had been going well at the start. We kept trying to replace the beams and support. I tried to ignore the bad feeling in my gut. In the beginning, the project was going steady, but it was taking too long and the blackened trees were consuming the country at an alarming rate. I was worried that we wouldn't save our team in time. One of my colleagues suggested a new method developed in Canada. It was supposed to get work done faster and safely. I wasn't too sure about it, but he convinced me by showing me the data. So, here we were.
Things started to come unraveled when the support platform I was on started to tilt. I should've gotten off when I had the chance. But I was so bent on getting work done that morning. We had spent days trying to get this part of the platform stable. I thought we had it yesterday.
Shortly before ten, things grew worse. The platform wasn't stable anymore. My colleagues begged me to come down over the radio. I tried to, but it was too late. I started falling with the stairs and pieces of steel. They wouldn't be able to get to me in time. I would be crushed to death by the steel and beams. My last thought was of my daughter.
When Masaomi found me, I was in tears. I opened the door with them still running down my cheeks. My best friend had a worried look on his face.
"Are you okay, man?" he asked.
"No," I said. I told him everything about my dream. Masaomi didn't seem to get it at first.
"So… what happened?" he asked. "You could feel everything that man felt?"
"Yes," I said. "I felt myself die." I started trembling.
"It wasn't real, though," Masaomi said. I shook my head.
"It felt real," I said. I drew my knees to my chest, breathing heavily. Masaomi pulled me into his arms. I cried for all of those people I couldn't help. I cried for the baby daughter who wasn't mine. I cried for the wife who I never met. My body slumped against his. I wept and the tears wouldn't stop.
I don't really know what to do here. It's all just getting worse. I made it back home from school. The police came by Ryo's apartment and found the bodies. They didn't find him. I already saw his future. Around ten in the morning tomorrow, he will go out to an elementary school with a knife. Eleven children will die and twenty more injured. The police will kill him. Suicide by cop. I couldn't tell anyone. They wouldn't believe me. Ryo would go out and do it anyway even if I asked him to stop. I have no proof for the police to stop him.
Ryo is a lost cause now. There's nothing I could do.
I just… I just needed to be alone. Between Masaomi forgetting Saki's death, the new changes to my body, and Ryo turning into a killer, I felt stretched thin. Anri and Masaomi decided to let me have my space.
"We'll call you later, okay?" Masaomi asked.
"Sure," I said. I headed back home. But with the way my luck has been going, I wasn't going to be alone for long.
I made it up to my apartment. I hadn't even got up to the door when I saw who was waiting for me.
"Oh…" I said. Uzuki stood in front of my door with her arms folded across her chest. Her ears twitched when she saw me.
"Well hello there, Mikado-kun," she said with a smirk. "I haven't seen you in a while. How have you been doing?"