A/N: Exactly at the chapter title says - back to focusing on the Battlefront! I love Ayame, and Naoi's past, but I love reuniting the Battlefront even more. If you want to see more of Naoi's history, as I mentioned to Zain in twitter DMs, I'll be updating The Potter's Son on Monday. Also, speaking of The Potter's Son, check out the Angel Beats AMV "Safe and Sound" by Yui Hideki on YouTube. It's so good and the beginning part gives me TPS feelings. :D
Disclaimer before we go on: I swear I do like Noda. It's just not his time! Also yes, the Avengers reference is entirely necessary.
Enjoy!
[Chapter 10]: Back to Business
"I can't believe it. All that time, she was seriously—"
"—right under your noses," Kanade automatically finished for Hinata, not even looking up from her book.
It was safe to say that, give or take time for sleep, Otonashi, Kanade, and Yuri had endured almost 24 hours of this. Otonashi was starting to feel a little like his "I'm telling Yui" joke from earlier had some validity to it.
Hinata wasn't deterred. "It's just, it's so strange. That whole time, the three of us were all in—"
"In Kyuuya. We know." Perched on the armrest of her couch, where she'd been peering over Hinata's shoulder, Yuri began rubbing her temples. "Your hometown. We get it."
"And I didn't even realize it!" Hinata said, pounding the couch with his fist. "Hell, I don't even remember seeing her in school!"
To Yuri, that really didn't seem too out of the ordinary. "Maybe you just didn't have any classes with her," she offered, then looked considering. "Or, actually maybe you did. She was probably sitting in the back corner in the shadows as usual, once in a while saying to herself, 'This is so stupid.'" Yuri and Otonashi both grinned at the memory. "You remember hearing any of that in Kyuuya?"
"All the time. We had terrible teachers."
Otonashi laughed. "I know the feeling. Shibuya had its share of boring teachers. It was tough just trying to stay in school and study hard, but Hatsune didn't want me to become a delinquent, so you do what you gotta do—load up on Key coffee and make friends with good influences." He gave Kanade's knee an affectionate pat, since her hands were occupied with the book.
Kanade lifted her gaze to the group. "I think what's bothering Hinata is based on something you mentioned yesterday," she said. "Fate leads us to the people we're meant to meet — and as far as he's concerned, he never met Shiina."
Hinata's frown and subsequent silence showed this to be the case, so Otonashi rested a hand on his shoulder.
"Yet," he reminded him. "There's a lot of Battlefront people we haven't run into, but we're going to. We didn't meet Yuri or Naoi either until just these past few days."
"Yurippe's different!" Hinata argued. "With Shiina, she lived in my—"
"—hometown," the other three said collectively.
The doorbell rang, and Yuri sprang up from her armrest. "I'll go get that," she said, pleased at the chance to get a respite from Hinata's redundancy.
As she neared the front door, it occurred to her that there were only a handful of people that it could be. Salesmen, Ryou, Sunohara, Okazaki, religious people, neighbors who had yet to make themselves familiar but were in need of a favor, and…
"Naoi."
The untidy dark hair, gold eyes, and sharp features were beginning to attach themselves to his name. She leaned against the wood of the door, the warning signs of a grin playing at her lips.
"Or is there some sort of pet name or term of endearment I should be calling you?"
"You never were the type," Naoi said, arching an eyebrow. "And I'm not sure it would be an acceptable thing to call your ex-husband."
"No, I suppose not." She nudged the door open a few centimeters wider and moved aside for him. "Come in. If you're done throwing your little hissy fit."
Naoi paused as he was stepping through the doorway. He turned to her, narrowing his eyes. "Hissy fit?" He was near enough to her face that the growl grazed her lips, but she didn't back down.
"What else would you call it?" she asked, and he scoffed in reply before finally entering the foyer. Kicking the door closed, she followed him down the hallway. "I told you what I did and didn't remember. You got all huffy, slammed the door behind you, and went home."
"I had something important to bring back here."
It was then that she noticed the brown shoebox in his hands. After what Otonashi had said to her the other day, she decided to humor him. "What's in the box? Something for my memories?"
He grunted in confirmation. So articulate, this guy. A little rough around the edges, but then again so were a few of the guys in the Battlefront. She followed a step behind him, only because there was some sort of discoloration on his neck. Deep purple splotches. She raised an eyebrow. Wow. Apparently he'd gotten up to more than he let on in the past day.
"By the way," she said, "Hinata and Otonashi told me about their side plan involving your hypnosis. And they explained your abilities."
Naoi slowed, side-eyeing her as they stopped just outside the TV room.
"You can tamper with memories and bring them back." At her words, a light seemed to come on in his head. As if he understood where she was getting at, but for some reason it had never even occurred to him.
Well, good.
"I'll allow it with the other Battlefront members if they don't have their Afterlife memories back," she said firmly. "But don't you dare try anything on me. Do I make myself clear?"
He pressed his lips into a moderate frown. "So you don't… want your memories, then?"
"Your skills are necessary for Battlefront-related memories, and I already have all of mine." The rest, the ones involving him, were trivial and unneeded—or at least, her brain had seen fit to throw away whatever she knew of him.
Maybe it was for a reason.
"Otherwise, when it comes to hypnosis, I'd rather leave well enough alone if you don't mind." She tapped the lid of his shoebox. "You just stick to showing me whatever's in here."
Naoi was silent for a moment, but then he gave her a nod.
"I see." There was an uneasy edge in his tone. "In all fairness, using hypnotism on people who don't trust me has only gotten me into trouble." He absently rubbed at his throat, and Yuri noticed him wince slightly.
From this angle, she got a clearer view of the marks on his neck. They were finger-shaped. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Oh my God! I thought those were hickeys!" He gave her a skeptical, baffled look like she was absurd for even suggesting it, and she just shrugged. Okay, so she'd misjudged him for a second there. "Geez, what happened?"
"A man took something of mine. I used hypnotism to get it back. It failed—"
"—so he choked you." She frowned. Those bruises looked pretty bad, like they had to hurt. It was a wonder he could speak if the man's grip had been that strong. But another troubling thought crossed her mind. "The fact that your hypnosis failed on him is a little concerning. How many times have you done it before?"
"In this life?" She nodded. "Twice, not including the attempt I made on that guy."
Yuri cut her eyes to the side. "So your hypnosis isn't even a for-sure thing."
"Well," Naoi scoffed. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."
Behind his mask of cool sarcasm was a hint of real disappointment. She'd touched a nerve, but she wasn't quite sure how. "Well, in all fairness, I haven't even seen you do it," she amended, in her defense and his.
The hesitation and the look he gave her in response suggested otherwise. But he didn't correct her. "I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he said. And with that, he moved past her into the TV room, the shoebox under his arm.
Yuri watched him as he joined the others. Hinata mussed Naoi's hair once he sat down next to him, and the latter slapped his hand away. The box, now sitting on the coffee table, had already drawn everyone's attention.
"I suppose we will," she mused.
"Heeey, look who's back!" Hinata said as Ayato crossed the room to him. Then he scrunched up his nose, blatantly staring at his friend's neck. "Uh—what's with the hickeys?"
"They aren't hickeys, you idiot." As he rounded the corner of the coffee table, Ayato dropped his box on the surface in exasperation. Now he remembered why he was always calling these people imbeciles. Unfortunately, the only seat that wasn't occupied by Otonashi, Kanade, or Yuri's hat was next to said imbecile.
Hinata grinned cheekily at him as he sat down. "Sure they are! They're souvenirs from your trip to a bar or strip club to drown your sorrows after Yurippe burned you." He mussed Ayato's hair for good measure. "You dog!"
Mortified, Ayato swatted his hand away (and yearned to have his own cap right about now). "They're not hickeys!"
Of course, part of him knew that Hinata was messing with him, but he couldn't balance recognizing that, keeping a side-eye on Kanade and her fascination in the reappearance of the box, and mulling over that lingering feeling of unsettlement over his hypnotism in this world. It was too much already without him having to deal with Hinata's… jokes.
"They're not hickeys," he repeated, crossing his arms. "They're remnants of a failed attempt at hypnotism."
That got Otonashi's attention. "What do you mean 'failed attempt?'"
Ayato averted his eyes, hesitant to answer, but fortunately someone else took it from there.
"While he was gone, some guy tried to take something from him," said Yuri, making her way to her armchair. Moving her hat out of the way, she landed in her seat with a plop and kicked up her long legs so that they dangled over the armrest. "When he tried hypnosis, apparently the other guy was able to defy him."
Kanade stared hard at Ayato. "But it worked twice before…"
Ayato sighed, shaking his head. "I know. I don't know what went wrong."
Chuckling, Hinata laid his hand on Ayato's shoulder. "That's okay, Naoi. It's just performance issues. It can happen to the best of us. One out of five—"
"I perform admirably, thank you very much," said Ayato, squinting at him in distaste.
"But not memorably." Hinata grinned shamelessly at him. "Not that Yurippe can recall, at least."
"She can't recall anything!"
Hinata just snickered, his grin growing wider at Yuri's own laughter and Ayato's increasing indignation. And then at Kanade's and Otonashi's faces when they realized the two weren't just talking about hypnotism.
"You know what?" he said, folding his arms behind his head. "I like this. I can work with this. This is quality comedic material here."
"I'm glad you're getting some good use out of our dysfunctional situation," Ayato said, clenching and unclenching his fists. He lowered his voice to a warning snarl. "Now I'm going to get some good use out of you."
Lifting a brow, Hinata turned his head—and Ayato met his gaze with glowing red eyes.
A keening buzz at the back of his mind, a reflection of crimson in Hinata's vacant, surprised stare, and a body gone rigid. Everything was going right so far.
"You're a stapler," he said lowly. He pointed to a stack of papers lying next to his shoebox, in front of Hinata. "Go on, make yourself useful and staple those papers."
Hinata slammed his head onto the wooden coffee table.
"OW!"
Yuri smacked a hand over her mouth to stifle a howl of laughter, nearly choking with glee. An "oh my GOD" escaped her lips before it dissolved at the end into snorts and high-pitched giggles. Ayato smirked, falling back into his seat but straightening up slightly.
Glancing from the table to Hinata, who was groaning and rubbing his forehead, Otonashi gave Ayato a thoughtful look. "Wait a minute… it actually worked."
"Of course it did," said Ayato, preening. Although now that he was coming down from the sense of self-satisfaction it'd given him, he felt kind of bad. Not for Hinata, the idiot had deserved it. But for Ryou, because he'd given her the impression that he'd back off on the hypnotism.
Then again, he'd said he'd be careful who he hypnotized. And she'd asked him to regulate it. It should be used for good—not on people he couldn't trust, or who didn't trust him. Someone could get hurt again.
"Then if there's nothing wrong with your hypnotic abilities, why didn't it work on that other guy?" Otonashi asked.
"He must have some kind of defense built up against hypnotism," said Kanade, "and other mind tricks."
Ayato considered this for a moment. "His body did seem to be resisting."
Though looking back, it felt as if the man had been mocking him all along. He'd feigned powerlessness, like a lion being wrestled by a tiny cub. It was embarrassing how easily the man had pushed him out.
"Well, it doesn't matter. It was a fluke," he said. He straightened up some more, feeling another smirk cross his face. "And why are we so invested in this topic? Have the four of you made so little progress without me?"
The shared glances of recollection among the group looked like a good sign to Ayato. Even Hinata, who had still been glaring bitterly at him, seemed to perk up considerably.
"Oh, right!" said Otonashi with a start, giving Kanade's knee a pat. "We decided we're going to look for Shiina. Any thoughts?"
Ayato shrugged. "You could choose worse."
"Yurippe wanted to find Noda," Hinata said with a small scoff.
...Noda?
The sheer bemusement must have been evident on his face as he glanced in Yuri's direction, because she shifted uneasily in her chair and scowled back at him. "You guys asked for suggestions. It was just the first name that came to mind."
"Why was Noda the first one on your mind?" Ayato asked, furrowing his eyebrows.
If Noda found out about this, he'd be thrilled. When he'd joined the Battlefront, it hadn't taken him long to notice the brute's affection towards Yuri. Perhaps, if she was so quick to think of him, his affection wasn't entirely unrequited. Ayato would sooner return to the Afterlife than stick around to see Yuri track down and spend the rest of this operation with her idiotic boyfriend.
But Yuri's response was a deadpan expression.
"Why should you care?" she said. "Last I checked, I'm not your wife. In your reality or mine. I don't see why I have to explain my random thought process to you."
"In Naoi's defense," said Hinata, and he cringed at the words and subconsciously rubbed his head before continuing, "Noda's smarts are only in battle, if that. This is a friendly-based operation, and he'd only want to pick fights. As the next person to have a reunion with, he's less than ideal."
"And I agreed on Shiina, didn't I?" Yuri said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Geez. You make one suggestion…"
"Speaking of Shiina," Otonashi said, and Yuri threw him a grateful smile for changing the subject, "we may have already tracked her down."
Hinata perked up again. "Turns out she's from—"
"The same hometown as him and Yui," Otonashi, Yuri, and Kanade said in perfect, monotonous unison.
Ayato raised an eyebrow. "And you never noticed her?"
"Oh my God." Yuri buried her head into the chair cushion with a despairing groan.
"I kind of only cared about baseball until Yui came along," Hinata admitted, scratching his hair. "I guess I was in my own little world. I just can't believe I noticed Yui and never Shiina!"
Otonashi chuckled. "Well, as far as I know, you never made a promise to find and marry Shiina."
A hesitant frown from Hinata. "Yeah, but…"
"And you noticed Yui in the first place because you almost hit her with a baseball," Kanade chimed in helpfully.
Hinata looked thoughtful. "You're right… If I had hit that ball anywhere else, I might not have met her." He laughed then, shaking his head. "I was really lucky."
"Yui was lucky," Ayato said, which earned him a surprised look from Hinata. "Lucky her nose didn't get obliterated."
"I don't know what I expected," Hinata grumbled.
"Hopefully not a compliment." Ayato glanced over at Kanade and Otonashi, then at Yuri. "So, if we know where Shiina's hometown is, what's our next step?"
Yuri didn't miss a beat. "We go to Kyuuya."
At this, Kanade raised her head from Otonashi's shoulder and eyed Yuri curiously as the latter stood up and stretched. "I thought you wanted to just spend time here for a while."
"Yeah," said Otonashi, "just the five of us."
"That was before we found a clue already." Yuri smiled sweetly. "And before I endured twenty-four hours of Hinata's incessant Shiina rambling," she said, leaning in and lovingly pinching Hinata's cheeks as she took his chin in her hand. He batted her away, but while the smirk on his face was sheepish, it showed no trace of regret. "We can hang out today as a group. Maybe get some dinner or something. But if this is an operation, then we've got to get this going. I figure tomorrow or the day after that would be a good time to head out."
"I should have known," said Hinata, grinning. "Fast-paced as ever."
"It always has to be now with her," Ayato said to him under his breath, a similar smirk tugging at his mouth. "Trust me."
Yuri narrowed her eyes in their direction, quirked her lips, but said nothing. Kanade, on the other hand, tugged on Yuri's sleeve as she passed and stared up at her inquisitively.
"So what are we going to do now, Yuri?" she asked softly.
Again, Yuri's gaze drifted towards Ayato. Then it dropped down to the coffee table. "For starters, I want to know what's in this box that's so important Naoi had to leave the pleasure of my company to get it." She scooped the box into her arms and perched herself on the armrest of the couch nearest him.
This earned her the most surprise Ayato had ever seen on Kanade's face at a time.
"Are you sure?" Now that Yuri had moved from the armchair to the end of the couch, Kanade was able to reach from the edge of her and Otonashi's couch and touch Yuri's knee. "I know you said yesterday that you—"
"I've decided to humor him," Yuri said sternly. Ayato thought he saw her send a swift look in Otonashi's direction.
She lifted the edge of the lid.
His breath caught.
Her eyebrows furrowed.
With careful fingers, she gingerly lifted a photo from the box. And she squinted at it. And she lifted up another. Twisted it around, maybe looking for a date on the back, so that he and everyone else could identify it while she stared and searched in disbelief. It was one from their wedding night, with them curled up on the couch still in their wedding attire and drinking champagne. Yuri's lips formed a wry grin as she read the back, and when she turned the picture back around he could see why.
"Nothing's changed, we've just stopped living in sin," the back read in Yuri's handwriting, along with the September date of their wedding three and a half years ago.
He searched her face for any sign of recognition, any flicker of a memory behind her eyes. There was nothing. No spark of realization. Just a gradual expression change, sixty percent of the humor and dubious scorn fading from her grin. She set the photos down on top of the lid resting between her and Ayato before picking up another.
Still no spark. Only squinting.
"Thought you said we were together for five years," Yuri said, scrutinizing the picture. "I look sixteen or seventeen in this."
"We were friends before. For about two years."
Yuri hummed in vague acknowledgement, her trademark sound of acceptance when she was too lazy to say "I see." But there was something else behind it. Lifting her gaze from the photo, she gave him an oddly familiar look. One he quickly recognized as the same look Ryou gave him when she was trying to read him like one of her fortune-telling cards.
Something akin to excitement stirred within him. If the spell had broken, or the picture had made even the slightest crack…
"You actually weren't messing with me." Her attention fell back on the picture, and she managed a light chuckle. "I mean, I know I just met you, but I don't peg you as some masterful photo editor."
He shook his head. "Pottery's more my forte, if anything."
That sparked her attention.
"Pottery?" Her head shot back up, and she regarded him with surprise and then veiled distaste. "Tell me you're not related to Kimito Naoi."
Ayato huffed. "Believe me, I would love to."
Lounging next to him, Hinata smirked in sympathetic understanding and crossed his arms. "He's his son."
"His son?" Yuri stared at him as if she were seeing a corpse resting on her sofa. Ayato cringed, a knot in his stomach twisting tighter. God, please don't tell me… he muttered inwardly. "I thought his son was—"
"You're thinking of his other son Hayato," Kanade said before Yuri could finish. For once, Ayato looked on her with gratitude.
Hinata nodded, gesturing next to him. "Yeah. This is his evil twin brother, Ayato."
"You're making it sound ridiculous," Ayato said, glaring at him.
"Hold on," said Otonashi, sitting up. "How come you can remember Hayato Naoi and not him?"
Yuri huffed at him, rolling her eyes. "Maybe for the same reason I can still remember you? It's not like they're the same person."
"But if you remember Hayato, then you should have freaked when you saw Naoi. Right?" said Hinata with a shrug. "They're identical twins."
"Hayato died when he was just a kid," Yuri said. Fixating on Ayato, she made no attempt to hide that she was examining his features. "I never saw his adult face."
"Anyway, we were practically homeschooled until I was twelve," Ayato added, feeling his face heat up underneath her close observation. "Our father kept us home as much as he could get away with. It gave him more time to train us. You would have only ever seen him in the workshop, or the shop, or pictures they took of him at art shows."
"Yeah, you'd more often hear of him than see him…" She trailed off, meeting his eyes. Strange that just the day before she'd been staring straight through him, and now it was like she was trying to detect the exact shade of gold in his irises.
After a moment, she cleared her throat and dropped her attention to the innards of the box just as the photo fell from her hands.
"Well, your story checks out," she said. She pursed her lips, a faraway look suggesting she was mulling over a thought. "It's just…" More glancing back and forth between him and the pictures. "It's like it's not even me. Like I'm seeing a different version of myself."
"At least Naoi can agree with you there," said Hinata, elbowing Ayato in the side.
Discomfort settled in, and it wasn't from Hinata's jab. Or at least not his physical one. Yuri promptly sent both him and Hinata questioning looks.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked, putting the lid back on the box. "Either it's me or it's not. It's as simple as that."
Otonashi shrugged. "It's you, pre-Afterlife memories. Naoi believes there's a significant difference between that Yuri and the one sitting here."
Yuri blinked. "Uh, yeah. That one actually knows who he is."
Ayato opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it in bemusement. That was… technically true.
"She knew the Naoi in the picture, but not the one sitting close to you," Kanade explained.
"…What?" Yuri gawked at her.
Hinata snorted. "My thoughts exactly."
"According to Naoi, getting your memories of the Afterlife back changes who you are currently," Otonashi said, trying to help. But even he wrinkled his forehead in confusion, still trying to make sense of the theory. "So there's the you who was born in this life, and then there's the you now who remembers your past life and your time in the Afterlife."
"If it's all based on memory, there's also the Yuri who remembers everything and everyone but Naoi," Kanade considered. "So there could even be three of you."
Massaging her temples with one hand, Yuri held up the other for peace. "Okay, not knowing you is already confusing enough as it is," she said, pointing to Ayato. "It's so unnecessary. For the sake of whatever the hell's left of my sanity, can each of us just be one person, please?"
The request was fair. The more his friends discussed it, the more convoluted it sounded, and he wasn't prepared to deal with that. Yuri's missing memories of him were the bigger concern, as was the operation at hand.
And the fact of the matter was, now that the contents of the box had failed to jog her memories, he would have to stay on her good side. Until they found another way to break the spell, or she let him take it into his own hands with his own specific skill.
She just needed to learn to trust him again. And he needed… simplification.
"Fine." Ayato nodded to her. "There's only you."
Otonashi, Kanade, and Hinata heaved a collective sigh of relief. Moving the box aside, Yuri got back on her feet at once.
"Good. No need to make things more complicated than they have to be."
She bent down, picked her hat up from her armchair, and set it on top of her head. Her hands on her hips, she turned to the group with a smile.
"Now. Back to business!"
Preview:
"Is this how you flirt with an amnesiac?"
"—and Kanade was running so fast she accidentally headbutted him!"
"My advice? Stop trying to pick up broken things."
"Can't I make a simple comment without you all debating my memory?"
"I thought I saw storm clouds."
"You're the only thing about her that's ever changed."
[Chapter 11]: Night in Noroi.
