Author: Rosé
Notes: Spoilers for Spiral, up to episode 14 or The Big Recap Episode. Nothing too major, though. I mean, there's nothing like "Eyes Rutherford dies!" in this. Not that he dies, or anything, I don't know. Ultimately he will, but that's because his future...is death. :gets hit by a random Raikiri: OW. (Everyone dies of old age, ya know?)
Spiral Suiri no Kizuna, and all the characters within, are owned by Mizuno Eita. And...Shirodaira Kyo? I don't know...one thing's for sure, though. It's not owned by me. If it was, things would be a lot different. And I'd imagine that instead of having momentary lapses of reason every five episodes or so, everyone would sort out their differences and solve all the problems in ten episodes, tops. And Kousuke, Ayumu, and I would go through and declare war on any and every nearby 'go' salons and rake in the dough. Show me the money!
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Thick grey clouds covered the sky. The seeming ceaseless cloud cover marched along: a strong wind was blowing in from the east, a wind carrying the clouds and the leaves with it, the minds and the memories that were let loose to drift along the east-born breeze like so much driftwood. Chameleon-like, the city buildings that reached high enough, almost seemed to have been scraped away by the clouds and the wind, so grey they were, so matching with the clouds above. They were pillars holding up the sky.
A storm was growing. Flashes of light could be seen in the distance: lightning, thunder's dancing herald.
Already it was raining, the droplets of water dive-bombing from the cloud cover before finding their place in the ground. The rain wasn't the thin sprinkles that would evolve into a fine mist; nor the needle splashes of water which, carried by the eastern wind that grew stronger by the moment, would sting any open patches of skin like so many bees. They were thick and lazy; a long and hard opener for what would surely be a wet and stormy night. The city sidewalks were slick and damp, and most that could help it were already safe from the rain in their respective homes, sitting down to dinner. Though sunset was surely not for another hour or two, it already seemed as though night had long since fallen. The only substantial source of light came from the lamp posts and from them the light that fell, pools of illumination on the ground.
Umbrellas were useless against this weather. The wind would carry the rain no matter what he tried. Especially given how occupied his hands were: his left fumbled with the bag that he carried, nestling it close to his body like some oversized football, and his right fumbled with his coat in hopes of somehow shielding some part of his body, a little bit, from the water. A wistful and ultimately futile hope, but given that his destination was close enough, dealable. The hospital loomed up through the gloom like some sanctuary: he now knew what pilgrims must have felt like, taking refuge in the nearest church possible while fleeing from someone who wanted to remove their head from their body. Still, an umbrella would have gotten only in his way.
He ignored the strange looks acquired; dashing into the hospital lobby and pausing only long enough to make sure his shoes were relatively mud free before ascending through the elevator: he generally took the stairs, as it was too easy to be caught in an elevator. Exceptions could be made for days like this, though. If Kousuke had paused to look, he knew that he would resemble a drenched red porcupine or wet cat: for the sake of dignity, his impatience, and the sheer fact that he was wet drove him upward. Floor five.
Swiftly exiting the elevator's door, he passed by several identical rooms before settling upon the one he wanted. A quaint nameplate next to the door declared it to be room 510, with the resident one bomb-happy Takeuchi Rio. A normal girl would be asleep right now or, if not asleep, pondering their hospital-bound fate with a gaggle of friends leaving flowers in their wake. Rio was anything but normal: she blew up her own chest, after all. So when Kousuke slid open the door, he wasn't surprised to be hit in the face with a perfectly aimed hospital pillow. Taken by surprise? Yes. Surprised in general? No. Rio liked to throw pillows at him, after all.
"Kousuke, you idiot," Rio uttered, her way of greeting. Her grey eyes narrowed, a scowl settling itself across her features like so many birds. "You're late."
Ignoring the fact that he was wet, he crossed over to where Rio sat on the hospital bed. The pillow, he dropped in her lap, ignoring her protest at having the now-damp pillow come in contact with her. He ignored her again, dropping his wet plastic bag, and the contents within, on a nearby table. Kousuke continued to ignore her protests of the water up until the point he fished out a towel from the hospital room's bathroom, and started to dry himself as best as he could with it. It was slightly futile effort, but he did the best as he could and proceeded to occupy the room's sole couch, an innovation that seemed designed perfectly for people like him.
It was only then that he looked at her and said, "I didn't think I'd be timed!" It came out as a long dog's whine, and he hated himself just after saying it.
Rio's demeanor switched abruptly, going from a scolding empress to that of a very small and very eager child. "Did you get it?"
He nodded affirmation, indicating the dripping bag that he had dropped on the nearby table with his head even as he settled down in his chosen spot. Kousuke just watched, amused at the sight of Rio tearing into the dripping plastic bag, ignoring the water. From the careful folds, and the wrappings within the wrapping, she pulled out the contents: a large book of crosswords, as she had requested to him. A pencil, one with a large eraser.
"Why a pencil?"
"So when you make a mistake..." Kousuke replied cheerfully, leaving the dangling phrase hanging like a hook for the fish to bite. Dangerous words.
"Kousuke! Idiot!" The pillow hit him in the head: Rio threw it with the same deadly aim as the first time. Kousuke just used it to pad his perch on the couch, lying down with his head tilted towards the ceiling, eyes flickering over to Rio and back up again. She scowled at him, rolled her eyes upward to beseech the stormy heavens for patience, and returned to the bag. He watched patiently as she extracted a puzzle ring, and a bag of candy that, when turned towards the light, read as to being artificially flavored melon drops. Faux flavoring, when the real thing was too hard to get...or too expensive.
She gave the bag a long and unreadable look. She turned the same look to him, an expression that he couldn't quite read, although Kousuke knew: any Rio without her melon was an unhappy Rio. "Melon...drops? But...I wanted a real melon."
"They're too expensive for me," Kousuke protested, useless as it was.
"Stingy!" If Rio had an extra pillow, Kousuke knew that she would have lobbed it at his head with deadly aim. As it was, she preserved it. Instead, Rio blushed. "If it were Eyes-kun, he would have brought an injured girl her heart's desire, a melon."
Kousuke sat up then, before the silence could become too oppressive. Or, worse, Rio launched into a rhapsodic litany extolling the many virtues of Eyes Rutherford. Either one was bad enough: her hostility grated on his nerves, and if he had to hear anything more about Rutherford from her he'd run out into the rain screaming like a madman.
"Rio. Have you ever heard about consensual reality?"
Her sparkling eyes and slight girlish blush reverted to a quizzical gaze. It sure beat her temper tantrum, when she chucked pillows at his head. "What?"
"Consensual reality," Kousuke repeated, emphasizing each delicate syllable of the phrase. Rio remained looking confused. Inwardly, he was relieved, as he knew if she knew what he was going to say, his future would involve pillows to the face, at best, and at worst she'd rig a bomb to blow up his apartment in revenge. "It's the idea that everything that's real is a joint agreement."
"Joint agreement?" Rio repeated, looking for all the world like a vole numbed by a fox's riddle.
"Everybody agrees upon what's real and what's not. Example: the sun. Everybody agrees that the sun exists, that it's real. Or how not everyone can agree if a God exists or not."
"But there is no God." She paused, and a roll of thunder picked up where she left off. The rain was picking up, the storm brewing outside: from the room window, they had a view of Tokyo and random blasts of lightning illuminating the skyline. It would be a sorry walk back for Kousuke. "But if everyone agreed on one, one would exist."
"Right. Or if the world decides that Kiyotake-sama was just a figment of our imagination and never existed, what's to say that he was ever real?"
"It seems to be a rather dubious idea. Shaky reasoning."
"Yeah. But! If we both believed that those melon drops were a real melon, who's to say that they're not?"
Rio was silent for a long moment. She gave Kousuke another unreadable look, as he maintained what he hoped was an encouraging expression on his face. Rio looked down at the bag of melon drops in her lap. She looked up at him again, and looked down again. Delicately, she pulled at the bag: with brief resistance, it hesitated before opening, slightly ripping. Kousuke held his breath. She pulled out one melon drop, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.
A tense silence emerged, held, and was shattered.
Rio spat out the melon drop like it was something vile and foul-tasting…which it was. Kousuke knew; artificial flavoring couldn't deceive her. "Kousuke, you idiot!" she screamed, chucking the bag of melon drops at his head. He ducked, she missed.
The thunder rumbled, the lightning flashed. The storm raged on: it was almost, but not quite, enough to mask the sound of Rio loud wail as she cried. It was just barely enough to hide Kousuke's amused chuckle as the second pillow hit him in the face.