This book was not about hobbits.
If Ryou had been there then he would have been asking, nonstop, if they were reading about hobbits. They didn't know what it was with him and that book. His copy of The Hobbit was even more well worn than that Lennon autobiography he used to carry around with him. He had his own copy of the book, they didn't know why he constantly had to pester them about it…why he couldn't just get his own copy, or listen to it on his own…
But they didn't have to worry about that anymore.
No more Ryou. They had room to breathe, now. They had room to lay down in the grass and just read in peace. No one to pester them, no one to ask them to read aloud, no one to…no one to sit behind them. No one to rest their head on, no one to curl up into, no one to keep them warm in this godawful January cold…even with the little oasis they'd made it was still cold and their company wasn't much bigger than they were. Nothing really to curl up into…to curl up with….
There was nothing like curling up with a good book.
Nothing could come close to curling up somewhere warm with a good book…well most things couldn't compare to curling up with a good book. Curling up with someone warm, and a good book, was better than curling up alone. Curling up with someone quiet was even better. Someone who didn't ask you every five seconds what you were reading, someone who didn't constantly drag his fingers across the page you were reading even though he knew for a fact that you weren't reading braille, someone who didn't tap you on the shoulder begging for you to just tell him what was going on….if your book was about hobbits…
This book was not about hobbits.
They sighed and turned the page once more. This book wasn't about hobbits or anything related to them. This book was about being marooned on a desert island and slowly going insane from the solitude of it. Minegishi didn't think that they would have gone insane from the solitude, at least not this quickly. If anything being marooned on the desert island would have given them plenty of time to catch up on their reading. They hadn't had a lot of time for that this year, not with everything that had happened, not with everything that kept on happening. Mob. Mob was...they loved Mob. No matter what she did they would always love her...no matter what. Even if that 'what' was...even if that 'what' was over and done with.
It was all over and done with.
Mob and Ryou had broken up…they clutched their book in their hands so tight that their knuckles turned white. That was not the word that they would have used. That was in no way, shape, or form a word that should have been applicable to Mob and Ryou…but it was. It was their fault, mostly, for not watching out for her…and thinking the best of Ryou. That was the last time that they ever thought that best of Ryou…or of anyone. Mob was thirteen, Ryou was attractive and emotionally needy, which she seemed to like, and Mob was thirteen. She wasn't bright enough to know not to get involved with him, Minegishi had to give her some agency there. If they didn't give her some agency then…then they would end up creating something worse than what had actually happened…and they couldn't deal with something like that. They couldn't deal with loving someone like…they couldn't deal with…
Their book tore at the spine.
"Toshiki?" asked Matsuo as he looked up from the manga he'd been reading. They held up their book and shrugged.
"Wow…was it really that bad?" asked Matsuo as he sat up and took the book from them. He held it in his hands and frowned, his fingers shaking in the cold. There wasn't much that they could do about it. They needed to be outside sometimes, laying in the middle of their houseplants wasn't enough. They had to actually be outside, in the sun, and the dirt…even if being outside meant clearing out a patch of dirt and sitting in the cold so they could sit there and ruminate on the biggest mistake of their life.
"It didn't go in the direction I wanted it to." Said Minegishi
"Want me to fix it or do you just want me to throw this away and let nature have it back?" asked Matsuo
"You think nature would want it back?" asked Minegishi
"I guess I really should ask you that, being the chlorokinetic and all." Said Matsuo as he took their hand in his. They warmed up just a little, just enough to make the outdoors tolerable.
"You can try and fix it, I guess. I'll meet you back in your apartment." Said Minegishi, reaching into their bag and taking out another book. This one, also, had nothing to do with hobbits. That is unless they, somehow, had found their way into a tragic vampire romance. There was something about it, something macabre, that they liked…being in love with someone who was, ultimately, a walking corpse. Ryou wouldn't have liked it, of course, not enough happened for his tastes. No, he always had to go and make things exciting…maybe they just wanted to read about a relationship that was more fucked up than theirs was.
Than theirs had been.
They were broken up now. Minegishi had made themselves perfectly clear. There was no more Ryou and Toshi or whatever he was calling them in his mind. There was no way he could possibly come back from making Mob…tricking her into…putting the idea out there. He was the one who had put the idea out there and he was the one who could have, and should have, walked that idea deep into the woods, shot it dead, and buried it at the base of a tree so it could at least be good for something. He should have stopped and thought, hey, doing the thing that had ruined his life before wasn't the best idea. He should have thought to himself that, yes, he had someone who loved him already. He didn't need someone else…not that straight up sex would have been better…it would have been easier to understand…that was all that it had been on Mob's part…
They opened their book.
The words on the page made no sense to them. This was in English, they spoke English, they spoke it nearly at the native level. They knew these characters, these letters, the sounds…they knew this book. They had read it before. They knew how to read…they focused their eyes. They felt a shift in the energy around them…they kept focusing on their book. That hadn't been Ryou and…and they hadn't wanted it to be, anyway. They wanted nothing more to do with him. They hadn't been hopeful that it had been him…that he had decided to show up after all and ask them what their were reading…and asked them to read to him about the hobbits…and dragged his fingers across their page….they didn't want that. They didn't miss that. They didn't miss Ryou's particular brand of annoying. They didn't miss him…he was nothing to them…just a bad decision they'd made in their twenties…nothing more and nothing less. Just an ex-boyfriend.
A man who couldn't hold a candle to their current boyfriend.
"Toshiki…please don't kill me." said Matsuo. Minegishi looked up from the cypher they'd been trying to decode. Matsuo sat in front of them looking sheepish, still shaking like a leaf, though maybe not from the cold. His hands were behind his back. There was something silvery down the front of his shirt. A whisp, a smoke of sorts, was disappearing into one of the old pill bottles attached to his belt…
And yet, somehow, they were less worried hearing those words from him than they would have been from Ryou.
"I can't kill you, you're the only one with a key to the apartment, and there is no way I'm living with Tsuchiya again." Said Minegishi
"Well, you might have to, since I'm pretty sure even if I did leave you the key in my will Ishiguro's absolutely itching for me to get out of here so he can stick one of his own guys in my room." said Matsuo
"He has people who WANT to be around him? Willingly? He didn't threatened their families or whatever?" asked Minegishi
"It's pretty much an adult orphanage here but, no, apparently he's been cooking something up with the Sixth and Fifth Divisions." Said Matsuo. Minegishi's eyes narrowed and their lips thinned. Not another one of these fucking internal plots. Suzuki needed to stop trapsing around the world gathering new assets since he, obviously, couldn't get a handle on the ones he already had. This wasn't going to be good for Mob. Suzuki…they didn't give a damn about him beyond the fact that he signed their checks. Mob couldn't deal with this, though.
She had enough to deal with.
"Who's plotting what now?" asked Minegishi
"I heard from Sakurai, who heard it from Koyama, who heard it from Miyagawa, not that I trust him…guy's crazy…" said Matsuo. Minegishi made the hurry up gesture. They didn't really feel like hearing a play by play of their game of telephone right now.
"Oh, right, well the point is that Ishiguro thinks that Tokyo's snubbing him and now he and the other division leaders are going to ask for an audience with Suzuki next time he's around and they're going to ask him to fire his daughter and replace her with one of them…probably Ishiguro. He's been gunning for Tokyo for a while…not that I think he can handle it. Most of us don't, actually, I mean this is Claw and none of us are right in the head but he…I head President Suzuki really did a number on him when they fought." Said Matsuo with a shudder. They didn't blame him. They'd seen archive footage and pictures of that fight, mostly out of boredom, and Suzuki really did know how to knock some sense into someone…or out of someone…but that was fine. There was no way Suzuki was ever going to fire Mob.
She was safe. That was what mattered the most here.
"Oh, is that all? That's nothing, Ishiguro and the others are wasting their time. There's no way Suzuki's going to fire Mob, or even demote her." said Minegishi
"Are you sure? I heard she spent-" said Matsuo
"He's going to bitch and moan about how much money she spends and about how many privileges she gives the Awakened, and how often she gives promotions away, and whatever else she did to piss him off lately but in the end he's never going to fire her. He's got a soft spot for her…pretty much his entire head." Said Minegishi
"I still can't believe that. I mean this is President Suzuki we're talking about! I heard he once crushed a man to death in the middle of a meeting because he spoke out of turn." Said Matsuo
"He asked to go to the bathroom…and he was nothing to Suzuki. He's got their weird…I don't even know what, going with Mob. I think he just doesn't know how to relate to a woman unless he's married to her." said Minegishi with a wave of their hand. If only they could have been so dismissive on the inside. Suzuki and Mob's relationship…it was like they were divorced, maybe, if they were willing to go there. He had never been normal with her, not since the day they'd joined the inner circle, and it had only gotten worse over the years…like some kind of emotional incest, or something.
Just emotional, though, if it had been real then they would have had to kill Suzuki and then themselves before the more devoted members of Claw threw them in a traitor hole.
"Wait…are you saying what I think you're saying?" asked Matsuo, his face seemingly not sure if it wanted to turn white or green.
"Nothing physical. Just a lot of emotional weirdness." Said Minegishi. Matsuo's face settled on the same pale white it always was. Good. They didn't feel like cleaning up any vomit right now.
"That's…good…I think? I mean…you don't think that he would, right? Not that I should even be speculating about this!" said Matsuo, his eyes darting around.
"Relax, I doubt he has cameras out here…though you might want to cover your phone camera and speaker. Hatori likes to snoop where he isn't wanted." Said Minegishi
"Oh God, I forgot about him. Did you hear about what he did to the guy from the foreigner squad?" asked Matsuo
"I don't follow any grapevines that I didn't grow myself." Said Minegishi
"Oh…well it was big. Apparently that guy's into some really weird stuff…and that's by my standards and you've seen what I keep on the shelf by my bed." Said Matsuo
"Serves him right for trying to sleep with Mob. She doesn't need any more of that in her life and the world doesn't need another Suzuki. We can barely handle the ones we have. Maybe this time he'll learn his lesson about coming onto thirteen year old girls." Said Minegishi
"Yeah…we have a weird amount of that around here. More than I ever would have thought..." said Matsuo. How someone like him could have been so naïve was beyond them. He had been here nearly as long as they had, mostly confined to one division but still. He rubbed elbows with the likes of Miyagawa and Ishiguro for years now. He should have been used to much worse…they wondered what it must have been like to be naïve. Not even that naïve but just a little…to be blind to what the world truly had to offer. Was it a good feeling? They did say that ignorance is bliss after all…
Not that they'd ever know, of course, that ship had sailed years ago.
"This is Claw, we're pretty much the dregs of society all collected together in one convenient location." Said Minegishi
"I don't think that you're the dregs of society, Toshiki." Said Matsuo, his hand moving from theirs. It went up their arm to their shoulder. They shrugged him off.
"Well then you don't know me as well as you think you do." Said Minegishi, turning away from him. He didn't know them…not completely…not as well as Ryou had. Not that it mattered how well Ryou had known them. There was just a kind of…of freedom, maybe, in having someone who had seen them at their very worst, someone who knew what they were capable of. Someone who they didn't have to pretend around…not that they put up an act for Matsuo…but there were times when they found themselves doing some self-censoring. Times when they held their tongue when they wouldn't have before. Times when they'd just sat there and thought…and felt…times when they'd felt less than. Times when they'd felt…
Felt…things that Ryou had never once made them feel…not that it mattered now.
"I think I know you well enough, Toshiki, well enough to know that you're going to kill me once you see…" said Matsuo, his hand going back behind his back to join the other one. If he had been anyone else then they would have worried. But this was Matsuo. He wasn't capable of anything like…well, like anything.
"Once I see what? The dead body behind your back?" asked Minegishi
"Worse." Said Matsuo
"The nearly dead body you expect me to take care of for you?" asked Minegishi
"I'd never ask you to finish my work for me…if I had that kind of work. I deal more with the dead than the living…though I think I night be joining them soon." Said Matsuo, hanging his head low. He looked up through his bangs and smiled. The grew a vine and slapped him, gently, over the head with it.
"Oh come on, stop being so dramatic and just tell me what's going on." Said Minegishi. Matsuo kept on hanging his head low and he pulled their book out from behind his back…their book covered in a silvery substance…
Held together by a silvery substance.
"It tore and I thought that Cotton Candy would have been able to fix it, being a spider and all, but I didn't take into account the sheer amount of…ectoplasm…so, here, I understand if you want to walk deep into the forest and never come back." Said Matsuo sheepishly. They took the book between two fingers. Ectoplasm ran down the side…but the book wasn't ruined. It didn't soak through, no, it just sort of slid off…right, it existed on a slightly different plane of existence.
"Idiot." Said Minegishi, waving the book in his direction and flinging some at him. It hit the front of his shirt and slid down, disappearing into the grass beneath them. There was silver in the patch of bright green that they'd created. It began to fade back to whatever plain of existence it came from.
"What? You love nature." Said Matsuo
"Not in January I don't. If I didn't need to be out here then I wouldn't." said Minegishi
"Well I understand if you want to live out here from now on." Said Matsuo
"As much as that appeals to me I think that I'll have to forgive you for this, for now." said Minegishi
"Just for now?" asked Matsuo
"At least until you go on another spirit sweep and I have time to ruminate on what you've done." Said Minegishi
"I have to go into town later, so you'll have plenty of time to think on it…and I'll have plenty of time to head down to the bookstore for you." said Matsuo
"You don't have to do that. You're busy, that…whatever the hell you've been chasing, takes priority over me." said Minegishi. Matsuo smiled, shook his head, and leaned in for a kiss…they made a mental note to give him one of their chap sticks.
"It's not even that thing, it's something that's been hanging out in town. Ishiguro thinks that it'll be useful…I think he just wants me out of here. Or maybe he just wants all of you out of here, he's been working us to the bone…those of us that talk to you guys." Said Matsuo
"What? Does he think I'm here to recruit for Mob or something? If he wants to get in the inner circle then he can just smoke a bowl with Mob and watch Frozen with her." said Minegishi
"It's that simple?" asked Matsuo
"Mob's not that complex when you get down to it. She's just a kid….or whatever you'd call her." said Minegishi
"She's thirteen right?" asked Matsuo
"Going on thirty." Said Minegishi, rolling their eyes.
"I love that movie! Sorry, sorry, I just really like that movie." Said Matsuo
"I…don't mind it. If you wanted to watch it before bed tonight, or whenever you get back, then we can." Said Minegishi. It sounded so…so nice. Normal. Just cuddling up in bed with someone and watching a movie…one without narration. That had always been annoying…another thing that was better about being with Matsuo…not that they were in competition. Minegishi didn't need to convince themselves that they were happy, they just were, and…and any convincing they had to do came from some place inside of themselves that needed to shut it's mouth and let them be happy for what little time they had left before they had to get back to Mob and dance around…certain facts and events that they were partially responsible for.
"I'll try but I have no idea when I'll be back. Spirits, not even the big thing in town, tend to pop up a lot after the New Year…any day that people have reverence for, actually. It's like they want to celebrate too. Plenty of food for my pets, of course, but I really do wish I could bring you with…fucking Ishiguro's having me watched." Said Matsuo
"Why you of all people? If anything watch Takeuchi…I can't get a good read off of that guy." Said Minegishi
"He thinks that I'm trying to either spy for Tokyo or join Tokyo…I'm not sure which with that guy. He's been getting kind of paranoid…everyone has, with how close we're getting to the end and all. I here that President Suzuki is going to start here of all places, so that's a lot on us right now….sorry." said Matsuo
"Why are you apologizing for? You're not the one who drove Suzuki crazy." Said Minegishi. That was what it was, really, crazy. Starting from Seasoning City…why? What purpose could that possibly serve? There was no strategy to it. The only thing that this place had going for it was the spice industry and even that was on the decline...though he was from here. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was just getting sentimental in his old age…or senile.
They hoped for the latter.
"I'm sorry that I won't get to spend time with you…not like I should. I mean you could be gone any day and so could I if that thing resurfaces again…I don't know. Sometimes it feels like we're on borrowed time or…or something." Said Matsuo
"We're all living on borrowed time." Said Minegishi. They meant it. Even this…this moment could be gone soon, in an instant. He could do something horrible, something to betray them, something that they should have foreseen and then…and then it could all be over…damn it. Was this the way that they were going to live now? Always waiting for the other shoe to drop? They hadn't lived like this in years…they had vowed never to live like this again…it was a great mess they'd made of their life, wasn't it?
"Dark." Said Matsuo with a smile, the kind that reached his scar.
"You'd know better than either of us." Said Minegishi, nudging him.
"I know, I mean I know how quickly we can die, but I don't like to really think about it. I like being on this side of the spirit belt for now. I don't want to think about what's going to come later…that much later, anyway. I want to focus on the here and now." said Matsuo
"I've never been good at that…but I guess that I can try. Until Mob tells me that I absolutely have to come back to the shitshow that is my life, anyway." Said Minegishi
"Do you have to go back, though? I mean it's not like she has you doing any specific job for her or anything." Said Matsuo…like he didn't know. Like he didn't know exactly what they had to go back to…who they had to go back to. They had to go back to Mob, to make sure she didn't make any more mistakes, to be there for her when she needed them. That was their job, to be there for her, to be the only adult in her life that had her best interests at heart. They may not have applied for the job, or even been warned that they were in the running for it, but then again that wasn't how it worked now was it? That wasn't how it worked with kids, anyway, they just sort of happened…if you weren't capable of being careful…
Even if you were careful, as careful as anyone had ever been in their life, it could still happen…and not in the way that you'd expect.
"I can't leave her. I tried, once, for her own good and she found me….she didn't take it well, either. I have to stay. Besides, if I'm not there then she's going to end up making another stupid mistake…not that I stopped her the first time." Said Minegishi
"That was on Shimazaki, not her…fuck…sorry, I just…when I think about it I just want to put him in the ground, improper burial so he comes back and I can feed him to my pets. I just can't believe he would…that anyone would do something like that to someone that young." Said Matsuo. Minegishi wanted to tell him to shut up, that he wasn't a part of this and he didn't get to act like he was, but they held their tongue. It hurt them to do it but they had to.
"Well, everyone learned their lesson and now all we can do is move on in whatever ways we can…and for me it means sitting here with you and trying to get through my book…so how about we do that?" asked Minegishi, opening their ectoplasm covered book and getting back to the madness of isolation. They weren't in the mood for tragic vampire romance anymore. They weren't in the mood for any kind of romance anymore, tragic or otherwise.
They just wanted to read.
They felt him shifting beside them. He was leaning against them, now, not the other way around…not that they wanted it to be the other way around. Not that they wished that he was big enough that they could lay on him, that they could rest on him, that they could just be there with him…there and warm…not that they wanted to leave or…or stay…and they certainly didn't want to be bothered! They certainly didn't want him to ask them every five seconds what they were reading or if they could read to him or…or anything like that. They certainly didn't want…they didn't want…
They didn't want to do anything either than sit in the cold curled up with a good book.