"Oh? Gracing me with your presence? Hah! Never thought I'd see the day. Come on in, have a seat. Just a warning, though, things are, well, interesting at the moment. Maybe you'd like to hear about that?"

Part 7: Wicked Dream

A grey sky hung over a noiseless Shibuya. Into it dissipated particles of soul, the last remnants of someone Nagi had never known. She lowered her hand, still buzzing with heat. Or, the her from which she was viewing this dream from was did. This was her body – the shirt, the tights, the boots… the skin. everything was in order – everything bar the great black wings that fluttered from behind her back, barbed and twisted, suspending her far above the ground of the Expressway Underpass.

"It appears your partner has been erased. This would be checkmate, Lord Tosai." These were her words, from her mouth, yet she did not speak them voluntarily – it was more like she was predestined to say them, reading from a script, an audience member of her own mind, which was puppeteering her to act. For a moment, all she could hear was the beating of her wings behind her back and the howling of the gale – Shibuya, for all its restlessness, was silent – until Fret stared into her eyes and spoke.

"For so long, I'd wondered what I would say if I ever met you again. It didn't matter if it was on Earth or in heaven, I always thought how I would greet you."

"And? What is your conclusion? How shall you greet me, after these two long years?" Nagi's voice, the other Nagi's, was cold – it was not condescending, nor was it comforting, it was just deadpan and silent, echoing through the empty streets in its heartlessness.

"I hate you." Fret mumbled.

"Pardon?"

"I hate you. Two years. You had me worried sick for two whole years, not knowing if you were missing or if you were dead or– or had just left us all behind for no reason! And– and now I find you're here, right under my nose! You could've come back to the RG, let me – let everyone – know you're alive, or whatever you Reapers are, and you just–" Fret clutched the side of his head with his hands. "God damn it! I mourned you!" He yelled out, before letting out a guttural cry, his whole body shaking with unbridled emotion. He slumped to his knees and started sobbing.

"It's okay, Fret. You found me now. There's no cause for upset anymore." Is what she wished to say. Instead, the other her spoke, "I did not come back to the RG because living there became… undesirable. Once I found myself here, among the ranks of the Reapers, I had found a new life for myself. One as cold and unfulfilling as the end of my last. I was trapped between two colourless, listless worlds. Though return to the one with the people who brightened it… was no longer possible. These last two years… have been a living hell." She descended to the ground, touching down, and all but the wind was truly silent now.

"That's a nice sob story. But you want to know what 'living hell' feels like?" Fret ceased shedding his tears and inhaled. "Try being around when one of your best friends disappears one day. Try living with an anxious feeling in your stomach twenty-four seven for two years straight. Try eating your meals with shaking hands, or through sobs when they were the ones you all used to eat together. Try spending night after night in the police station for questioning or trying to get answers, or God knows – at least until they lose interest with the case. Try roaming the streets with your friends until three in the morning each week, at least until they slowly have to live their lives even though you can't because moving on just feels impossible. Try drifting apart from the only true friends you've ever had and going back to moving from stranger to stranger, never finding fulfilment as you wish, just once, you could go back to them. Try only ever seeing your best friend in your dreams, Game Master. Then tell me what a 'living hell' is." Fret refused to meet her gaze, speaking all of this into the pavement below.

"You sound like you've been through a lot since my departure, Lord Tosai."

"Hah. Yeah." Anger, followed by resignation, was cast across his face. "…There's no chance of me winning now. I knew when I saw you, when they told me who was running this show, that I couldn't erase you. The only thing I feel towards you right now is hate and I still can't bring myself to do it."

"I promise you I shall make this quick. I feel as if undue suffering would be cruel, more cruel than what I have made you experience these past years." From her hand, a blade of psychic energy formed. Nagi was internally screaming at herself to stop, attempting to close her eyes, but she was forced to watch this play out until its very end. It was as if someone had stitched her mouth shut and given control of her body to some automaton, crudely fashioned in her image.

"Oh, nothing can be as cruel as what you did. I brought myself to the UG to escape the pain of ever having to feel responsible for what happened to you, that same pain I'd felt before when I lost someone. And now you're the one signing my death warrant. I'd laugh, if I wasn't holding back tears…" He grimaced, as Nagi screamed at herself to stop moving forwards. "…Hey, Nagi?" Fret's tone had changed. It wasn't so cold anymore, to the point he seemed his old self.

"What is it, Lord Tosai?" She stopped before him, withdrawing the psych sword from her hand. It seems she would be allowing him one last question.

"Do you know how it feels? To wake up and feel like, even though time has moved forward, you're just stuck there, like you're just… moving against a river that won't ever let up?"

"I have felt that way every morning in this Reaper's body."

"Good. I just wanted to know you suffered too. That, at least, makes me happy." Fret looked up at her with honest eyes. "I was so lost without you. All those nights wandering Shibuya with no-one to guide me towards a future, feeling dazed even though I knew the city so well. I was so miserable. And here, at the end of it all, I finally can say I don't feel that emotion anymore. There's no more misery."

"What is it you feel now, Lord Tosai?"

"…Rage." Upon saying this, he leapt upon her, clasping two hands around her neck and squeezing. She tried in vain to summon her blade from before, but Fret anticipated this, freeing one hand from around her throat to grab her arm and sinking his teeth into it with two years worth of pent-up anger. The pain was immediate, causing Nagi to scream. Fret pulled his mouth away and spat out the chunk of flesh he had just torn off. "There are ways to erase people other than psychs, Game Master. I'm going to show you that. It'll be the last thing you ever see." He returned his grip to her neck and pushed her to the ground, leaning one knee on her chest with such force she felt like it might cave in. She was convinced she heard a rib or two crack under the pressure, though her rapidly-starving brain was unable to process the pain of both this and her arm, spilling blood all over the white of her shirt. She tried to gasp out something, but this time both Nagi and her other self were incapable of doing so. Her vision blackening, she chose to focus on Fret's face one last time, contorted with fury, but wet with a stream of hot tears that hit her face, directly below his. "When I said… that I couldn't kill you earlier…" Fret spat out, his teeth too clenched from anger and grief to say anything, "I lied. Right now… I don't want anything other than to see your corpse." Somehow, his grip got even tighter. Nagi's whole body was writhing now, unable to feel anything but the very bones that bore against her windpipe, intent on silencing her eternally. Her other self had given up trying to say anything entirely, sealing her lips for what little time she had left on this Earth. Her vision pulsated, a vignette of pure black around her field of view, slowly getting tighter and tighter each time until, eventually, the darkness overtook her and everything went still. The Game… the nightmare… it was all over.