Chapter 7 – House of Memories
The Fox was the cleverest. Sooo cleverrr. Oh yes. He had discovered what nobody knew, not even Miwa Ichigen; at least not till he had died and figured out how his foresight had been tied to the great big rock that twisted all their fates together for its own fun. Ha ha. Even then all he could do is sit around and pontificate. Stupid. The Fox wasn't stupid, the Fox knew when he could take advantage. He'd slip and slide and play "let's you and him fight" and come out the winner. Nobody could stop him – not the Silver King and not the Red, who had tried to kill him but was dead, dead, dead – because even if the Fox had forgotten himself, the Slate never would. He could go anywhere, be anyone, just like he always could, because he'd always been a memory, and if he'd ever been somebody else, well, that body was gone and he could not remember it.
He remembered the Red King though. Brimming with fire that had burned the Fox until he'd thought there was none left. But not so. The Slate was left and it remembered the Fox. Nothing was left of the Red King instead. Nothing but an angry ghost. Ha ha. Fox wins. Then Fox makes a new game. This time instead of killing, Fox brings back to life.
The Blue King comes to the Fox and asks for the angry red ghost. Here you go. Happy to oblige. Have a nice day.
The Red King comes to the Fox. She wants the same thing, but she doesn't want to share. No Blue King, no problem. No trouble for the Fox.
The Black Dog comes to the Fox looking for his master. Which one, the Fox asks. Black Dog is confused. Dogs are stupider than foxes. Ask little talking boxes what should do. The little talking box says: "Give succor to a stranger when you borrow an umbrella from the Buddha." Black Dog doesn't know what that means, but Miwa Ichigen does, so Fox takes Black Dog to Ichigen. So helpful.
It went like that for a while. Not necessarily in that order. Because the Slate did not keep track of time, only of people. "What makes a King a King?" – the Fox wondered – "How does the Slate choose?" If he knew that, then he could take all of that power for himself.
"It is the same thing that will break a King," Miwa Ichigen told him.
"What, what?" said the Fox.
"Reaching for happiness. It's what defines them. A powerful wish patching up the hole in their heart. They needn't gain it, they need only not lose hope. But... if the pursuit itself becomes impossible, then the heart breaks."
And everybody knew what happened then. A big-ass Sword fell from the sky. No use at all to the Fox. The Fox knew how to steal things that were there. Mainly bodies. But how could he steal something that was missing? A hole in the heart. Perhaps he needn't steal, he thought. Nobody likes the world as it is, everyone wants it to be different, but – here is the trick – nobody wants it the same way. Suppose Fox grants their wishes. So generous. Then Fox gets little nibbles in return. A nibble here, a nibble there, soon Fox belly so full. Who wouldn't give away a hole in their heart for what ought to be there?
Fox got the idea from doughnut shops that advertised doughnut "holes" for the full price of doughnuts. So stupid. They had the longest lines, because people were even stupider than dogs. Even Kings. Maybe especially Kings. The Blue King had thought himself so smart, and where was he now? Floating in the balance like a blueberry in Christmas jelly under a glass cloche.
"What are you going to do with him?" Miwa Ichigen wondered.
What indeed. The Blue King had no more wanting in his heart. No place to aim a Sword. He was emptier than empty. The Red King would soon follow. Then maybe the Silver King would come looking for his dog. All the Kings wanted something. Until they didn't. Until the Fox lapped up all that delicious pain and closed their hearts for good.
"And then what, you evil little pokemon?" barked the Black Dog.
Obviously Fox would be the greatest. He would have all the shiny Swords and seven tails and nobody would dare make fun of him again.
The Black Dog hated the Fox, but Ichigen thought that hating someone you could not get rid of was a waste of time, so he gave the Fox advice instead. Which was so tedious that the Fox wondered whether Ichigen was trying to make the Fox give up on life and fall on his own Sword from boredom. Ha ha.
"I wonder if you've thought of what might happen should you get your own wish," said Miwa Ichigen.
Ha! As if there were a limit to what the Fox wanted. The hole in him was so large that it was a wonder there was any Fox left. If Suoh Mikoto hadn't been so spicy, Fox could've swallowed him whole no problem. It's why he was consuming the girl King more slowly. Too much fire all at once gave the Fox marthambles.
"It's just going to get worse," pointed out the Black Dog, gesturing at the blueberry trifle in the cloche. "That is a living human being. He's not supposed to be here in the flesh."
"Neither are you," said the Fox. "But this girl," he tapped the skull of the pretty Strain he was possessing, "has a big imagination. We can make it work."
The Black Dog wasn't wrong. The liminal space the Strain had created was getting a tad overcrowded, but the Fox had to keep his acquisitions somewhere they would not expire or he'd have to start all over. This little pocket of nonexistent real estate was perfect, and had the added benefit of keeping out uninvited guests. The living could not visit the past, and the dead could not go anywhere they didn't remember. Only the odious upstart who had tried to kill him – and not only was there never going to be a second try, but Fox was going to make him rue the day that he was shat out into the world and curse the fate that would not let him die – only the pond scum from whose head the memories of this house had been filched could possibly find it. But he was back to being a flesh and blood sack of garbage and not likely to stray into his own childhood.
"Is that why you had him tossed out on his ass?" asked the Black Dog. "Really? You are that scared of Suoh?"
"I gave him back his sad little life," said the Fox, "so I could take all else away. First, his kingdom, then his King, soon his family!"
"Not sure he's all that broken up about the first two."
"Shows what you know. But I have seen what's missing from his doughnut."
Suoh Mikoto was an orphan. He sank tiny barbed harpoons of need into everyone around him and craved connection so much that he probably already half-loved the overconfident fool blueberry that had skewered him in his past life. Probably loved it more just for that, cause how much closer could one get than having someone literally reach inside one's rib cage.
"What a curious notion," said Miwa Ichigen. "You think the murder brought them closer together?"
The Fox thought many things. So many that they crowded in his head until he wasn't sure which parts he thought and which ones he said out loud. It was obvious, really. Suoh had wanted to be free, so the Slate granted him the power to demolish anything that barred his way. And what did he do with it? He forged bonds left and right and tied himself in knots till only death could liberate him. Munakata had wanted to bend everything to his will, so the Slate had supercharged his OCD. And he threw it in Suoh Mikoto's face. Unstoppable force meet immovable object. Murder was the result of wishes they hadn't thought all the way through. Luckily, the Fox was here to give them what they truly wanted.
There was a knock on the door.
Now who could that be? There was a very small but non-zero possibility that it could be Weismann. Their final mind-share had been absolute. However, what were the chances that the Silver King had singled out the memory of this particular house and also realized its significance? And then had also figured out a way to enter it? Not very good chances, but who knew, maybe his pet could mind-bend his inviolate being onto the astral plane or something. Self-serving nonsense seemed to be his special skill. No matter, he was still a King and the scales would bind him just the same, as they bound anybody whose puerile demands overreached the bounds of nature.
But it wasn't Weismann. It was that twit he had gleefully murdered up on a rooftop.
"Hi there," the twit said, grinning stupidly. "This place was sure hard to find. Good thing Mikoto lent me his grandpa's photo album back when I was into photography. That little old dude took pictures of everything going back to the invention of cameras."
Curse that Suoh Mikoto! Curse him! Now he was ruining things retroactively.
"Woah, little sister..." the twit continued, stepping around the Fox and into the foyer. "No offense, but does Mikoto know that you're keeping prisoners in his old house?"
"I know you," said the Black Dog with his usual insight. "You are Totsuka Tatara."
"That's me."
Twit meet twat, thought Fox. "Not prisoners," he said. "They asked to be here. Everyone who comes here gets exactly what they want. And tea." He wasn't lying about that either. His Strain was a tea devotee. And all she knew, he knew.
"Have a seat," said Miwa Ichigen, motioning for Tatara to join them at the kotatsu he had set up under the Blue King's floating, insensible body. "Wait here and you may find what you were looking for."
"Yes," the Black Dog was already nodding. "Stay. My master is never wrong. He can see into the future."
"That's amazing!"
"The future is but a reflection of the past."
The Fox was getting a headache. Too many stupid losers were congregating in his mind. And he had a feeling more were on the way. It was the kind of feeling one got if one ate no vegetables.
Miwa Ichigen was right though. Fools were always reflecting on things that they couldn't change, so his enemy would definitely come. And then the Fox would have him choose which hell he wished to be cast into. Because what better way was there to kill their joys than love.