Author's Notes: I'm finally on Spring Break.

Nightmares in adulthood are often associated with outside stressors or exist concurrently with another mental disorder. Ken just wishes they would stop.



Oneirophobia



8.

The train station is mostly empty except for Ken and a few stragglers dozing on the other benches. It's bland to the point of eeriness in strong fluorescent lights, tessellated floors, and tellers' booths with dark glass fronts that reflect his dejected posture. He sits by himself and waits for Daisuke's train to arrive, although the train Daisuke was supposed to have been on already came and went almost three hours ago. All he has left is the hope that Daisuke was late catching his train, per usual, and had to take another without notice.

His fingers curl tighter around the aluminum pan in his lap, its plastic top opaque from the steam of an apple pie that has since gone cold. The apple pie is a gift his mother baked for this special homecoming occasion, because Ken and Daisuke haven't seen each other face-to-face in three years and she always said that food broke the ice better than words did.

Ryo walks out of the public restroom, drying his hands on a wad of paper towels. He bounces up on his tiptoes, shoots the wad at the nearest trashcan, misses, shrugs, and then sits down next to Ken. "Don't you think we should head on home?" he suggests, slumping over, the paradigm of boredom. They've been here for—like—ever; there haven't been any signs of Daisuke yet, not even a phone call.

"Hold this, please," Ken says and drops the apple pie onto Ryo's lap.

Ken reaches into the pocket of his windbreaker and pulls out a cell phone. The screen is blank except for a poorly rendered picture of a sunset and a digital clock. He checks MISSED CALLS two screens over to see no new numbers listed.

Restlessly, Ryo shifts the apple pie around and smiles at Ken pitilessly. The silence is terrible, broken only by the cell phone's beeps as Ken scrolls through all of the options to ensure the correct server provider has been selected and that call-forwarding isn't turned on. Once he is grimly satisfied that everything is as it should be, Ken starts a game of Snake that lasts almost thirteen rounds before the pixels bite into its own "tail" like the Oroborus.

"We talked last night," Ken says finally. "We talked last night for hours. He seemed really excited about coming home."

"So why did he leave in the first place?"

Holding back on the harshest, truest response is a lot harder than Ken had anticipated.

Years ago, before all of this shit happened, Ryo simply returned to the real world after an absence that might as well have been as long as a lifetime. He simply returned when he wasn't needed—of all times, when Daisuke was in that paranoid-yet-in-denial stage of a budding relationship with Ken. It was a time when Daisuke and Ken would have dinner together almost every night; they would make small talk and spend hours looking at each other without really knowing why. Either man could have listed, if pressed, any number of aesthetic or charming things about the other. And then there was Ryo.

That turning point happened three years ago, a long time for Ken and hardly a blip on the radar for all existence. Daisuke and Ken had a customary dinner together, bumped foreheads while arguing at the register over who was going to pay, and convened in Ken's apartment for an impromptu sleepover that led to heavy nostalgia and a somewhat platonically shared bed. (Their hands did not wonder anywhere risqué, but Daisuke learned the texture of Ken's hair and Ken learned the average rate of Daisuke's heartbeat.) On that fateful morning Ken opened his door to insistent knocking and found Ryo standing behind it, looking like death warmed over and carrying a suitcase filled with dirty clothes and the broken pieces of a foreign Digivice.

"Daisuke was jealous," Ken says. "He was jealous of you, since you knew me first. Daisuke and I both said some pretty nasty things to each other during those next few weeks, and he left not too long after our worst fight."

Ryo had been his best friend, and together they had saved the Digital World an even longer time ago than the three years since anyone had seen Daisuke. The intended target of Millenniumon's Dark Seed, Ryo had been saved when Ken knocked him out of the way and took in the darkness instead. Ken didn't remember much about the time he spent in the Digital World, honestly, but he still knew who Ryo was. Daisuke didn't. Knee-deep in that paranoid-yet-in-denial stage of a budding relationship with Ken, Daisuke didn't know how to handle the sudden appearance of someone who called his Ken a best friend, a confidant, a savior—worst of all, a partner. Ken had been partnered with Ryo before he had even known Daisuke existed.

Daisuke had the alarming disposition to snap at anyone who approached Ken in friendship if they provided an ample threat to the budding relationship. Now he was fighting against a former best friend, a former partner! He was fighting against someone who Ken opened his apartment to until alternative arrangements were made, and . . .

"I remember," Ryo says to the apple pie. "He bluntly said, 'You're mine!' that one day and you two got into a really bad fight. I didn't mean for that to happen. I just didn't have anywhere else to go."

"There were many fights besides that one," Ken murmurs. "If I want to be perfectly honest with myself, I blame you. But that's unfair of me."

"I'm sorry."

Ken powers through seven rounds of Snake, and then his concentration breaks because the train tracks are vibrating again. They produce a low noise, like a voice yelling behind glass, which escalates into a squeal that shatters the peace of the empty station. Less than a minute later the train appears from around the bend, kicking up errant sparks, and finally pulls to a stop. Ken sits up straight, drops his cell phone in the scramble to retrieve the apple pie, and watches the train's doors too eagerly.

That yearning, hopeful expression doesn't leave Ken's face until the final passenger stumbles out of the car, yawning and swinging his arms like Daisuke might have—but he isn't Daisuke. Most passengers leave the station immediately and a few others wait for their rides, but in the end there is no one left except for those still dozing, and Ken and Ryo.

"It took us years to patch things up," Ken says brokenly. "When I said that he should come back, if only for a visit, he agreed!"

"Maybe something happened and he can't call," Ryo says.

"Very little could keep Daisuke from doing what he wants. I think that's been proven well enough already."

"Sometimes people just grow apart." Ryo stubs his tennis shoe on the dirty floor. Over by the bathroom, a bleary janitor leans on his mop handle and tries to stay awake; the air is heavy with ammonia and hints of apples, burnt cinnamon, and dust. "There is more at work here than you want to realize, Ken."

"Daisuke hates me. He hates me and this is how he's getting back at me," Ken laments. He knocks his knuckles on the apple pie's plastic cover and the sound is hollow. "I've been trying so hard to get him to come back! And now there's somehow more at work than my begging him for forgiveness?"

"Ken . . . Daisuke is gone. You keep forgetting that."

"I talked to him last night—"

"For three hours you talked to the voice recording of a woman who relayed the time and occasionally asked if you wished to speak to an operator."

"You can't know that!"

"It's the only thing that makes sense. You hadn't mentioned him in years, and as of this past week you became convinced he had forgiven you. You repeatedly said that you were going to get back together with him and resolve some sort of tension that has existed between you two since you were kids." Ryo smiles without warmth. "Daisuke died a week ago, didn't he?"

Fiercely: "No!"

"You deleted the answering machine message, but I found out about it anyway. You started acting weird right around that time."

Ken watches the train pull out of the station and his hands curl into fists. "That's not true! He hates me. This is how he's getting back at me—staging his death. He wants me to worry and regret and feel guilty before he comes home and we're able to make amends. I never got the chance to apologize before, but now . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"He's not dead, Ryo!"

"They said his blood alcohol level was .401 when they found him. There's no way he could have survived with that toxicity level in his bloodstream. I'm willing to bet he suffocated from his own vomit."

"He and I were both so stubborn when it came to our pride. How could he think I didn't love him anymore? How could he? Three years!"

"His funeral is happening tomorrow and you don't know what to do. You don't know if his family will forgive you . . . or if your mutual friends will either."

Ken looks at him suspiciously. "How are you being so insightful? You're never like this."

Ryo bears his teeth; they are straight and even, clean, and his breath probably smells like minty mouthwash and the edge of apple pie crust he stole when Ken wasn't looking. "Being dead teaches you many things, imbues you with wisdom. I have all the time in the world to think things through now, since there's no need to rush eternity."

"You're not dead either."

"Even my case file is dead. It has been cold for years. Someone jumped me on my way home from your apartment two years ago. Everyone thinks the attacker wanted to mug me, and they decided that I fought back and ended up being killed. They were never able to identify the murder weapon beyond what my lacerations suggested: a hunting knife that gutted me badly enough to make me bleed to death. My wallet was missing—which supported the mugging idea—and they never recovered it, although a few months later my fingerprint-free identification card was found inside a dumpster in another city. There were no eyewitnesses. It was the perfect crime because they didn't think it was born of any premeditated motivation."

"You're not dead."

"I can't blame you for being angry, or for hating me. Daisuke left you because of me. You planned my death well and never got caught for it. You did what you thought would make you feel better."

"I feel like shit," Ken says succinctly.

"Maybe that's my fault too. Who knows. You were the one who knocked me out of the way of the Dark Seed in the first place."

"I'm so confused . . ."

"You've been talking to my afterimage for two years. I'm sure Daisuke will stop by when he realizes he's dead and that he shouldn't hold grudges anymore. Maybe that will be good enough." Ryo reaches over and ghosts his fingers across Ken's windbreaker. It shifts a little. "We had something too, right? For a while, when you were desperate for touch and wanted to forget him."

"Don't do that."

"It isn't something that you can forget, Ken-chan," Ryo murmurs. The windbreaker moves again, although nothing is actually there to manipulate it. "When you're dead, these sorts of memories will haunt you—if you'll pardon the pun."

Ken watches the pale fingers ease down the zipper. They touch the dress shirt he chose for tonight's affair; they pick at the collar, fiddle with a button, and dangerously walk around the hem, searching for pathways to bare skin in a manner that causes déjà vu. There had been a time when Ryo had done this for real and Ken's memory is able to make the connection to that, but something else about this tickles the back of his throat like a long hair. Maybe these fingers came along in an older fantasy long since buried within his subconscious, to be called up during a hot shower or after waking up on mornings when his thoughts turn sexual rather than philosophical.

Ken tightens his jaw and wills Ryo's hand to move away. Ryo complies because he has to.

"You're not dead," Ken says as he pops off the apple pie's lid. The pie is cold now, but he digs his fingers into it and seizes a dry, fruity handful that is a little too heavy on the cinnamon and might be lacking in flour. "Do you want some?"

"You have some serious issues," Ryo says. He reaches over to take the offered handful; the apple pie looks plain and messy in his hand, and Ken feels infinitely better because there's nothing there to disprove this reality now. "One day you'll accept what has happened and actually go on to live your life. That's inevitable. And then maybe we can all apologize to one another."

Ryo snacks on his handful and Ken scoops out another. His mother didn't make this pie: she's dead too, as is his father, but he bought his childhood apartment anyway to go back home whenever he wanted for his favorite dinners and dinnertime conversations. The apple pie actually came from a little pastry place that sits on the corner of 24th and Speedway, even though Ken conveniently found it warming in the oven and thanked his mother for the forethought. Daisuke loved—loves—apple pies.

"I'm starting to feel desperate again," Ken says slowly.

The smile that Ryo courts around a mouthful of sticky fingers is lazy and interesting. "Don't you think we should head on home?"

"Maybe once we finish this."

Another handful disappears into Ryo's mouth and

No!