Part 16: Sleep/Wake
"Thank you all for coming," an unfamiliar voice spoke, echoing as if inside Nagi's skull. "I know he would've wanted you all here." She – no, not she, the she in the dream she had no control over, just like last night – was looking at a woman who stared back at her with sunken, sleepless eyes. She looked around forty or so and was dressed in a very conservative black ensemble, contrasting her hair, done up in a bun, a shade between chestnut and ginger. Come to think of it, everyone around her was dressed rather conservatively – something she noticed as her dream-self looked around her. The sight was massively jarring. All the male Twisters wore matte black suits, something she had never expected she would ever see. Rhyme too donned a suit and looked like one-hundred million yen while doing so. She and Shoka, who looked quite a lot less tired without the mascara covering her eyes, wore Kimonos in that same matte style, while Shiki opted for an outfit similar to the older woman in front of them. She tried to zero in on specific details as her dream-self returned to look at the woman and noticed that those stark white earrings Rindo normally wore were gone and everyone – even Beat and Neku – had cleaned up their hairstyles slightly to something more formal. Shoka's looked good in a bun; she wondered if hers did too. Her eyes did not catch Fret, seemingly absent from the whole event. He probably either overslept or couldn't make it. Typical. Though, what exactly was this?
The room they were in was small, yet spacious, and rectangular. White walls, equally white pillars built into the corners of the room, no windows and a ceiling that looked like it was made of varnished wood with bright, circular lights beaming down softly onto the scene below. Every so often a white haze would pass in front of her dream-self's eyes, which was either a sign someone had put a kettle on or that incense was being burnt in the room, the sweet scent that somehow wafted into her nose confirming the latter. Plush seating sat on top of a soft, grey carpet that led up to an ornate flower arrangement at the front of the room. It struck her that all this formality existed because this was undoubtedly a wake. Why was she dreaming of this? No, what would this dream torment her with? She realised who was missing and silently begun to pray this all wasn't happening.
She couldn't see the centre of the flower arrangement, which was relatively small compared to images she'd seen online of things like this, but still ornate and masterfully crafted. Nagi was only knowledgeable of the flowers in EleStra certain characters liked or donned, but could recognise the arrangement was constructed partially of lotuses and hyacinths, which blended with the other flowers to almost create wave-like patterns. It was something starkly beautiful and bold amidst this otherwise silent and muted room. For a second, the woman in front of them shifted slightly and the centre of the arrangement became visible. Nagi could feel her heart sink and her dream-self tensed up. A simple, white coffin. Above it, draped in black ribbon, a photograph of Fret.
"Thank you for inviting us, Miss Furesawa. I know you must be grieving terribly." Neku spoke. The woman in front of her, Fret's mother, simply sighed.
"Even now, this wake causes me to grieve. It is not how he would have wanted it. I know he would loathe this formality and tradition, but my relatives would not give me the money for it otherwise. If I had tears left to cry, I would be shedding them." She hung her shoulders in defeat. Those already sunken eyes looked as if they'd fought a century's worth of battles to reach this point.
"It's alright, Miss Furesawa. What you've done is really beautiful – if he were, I'm sure he would thank you for it." Nagi had never heard Shoka so soft-spoken and formal before. It only further served to cause her anguish. She wished she would've, despite how inappropriate it would be, come out with a quip about how she'd 'missed that loser, but he totally had it coming,' but all she could seem to manage was a polite and reassuring comment. This felt so crushingly, bitterly real.
"Call me Ane, I beg. I already told you how he was never much for tradition." Ane Furesawa managed a smile, convincingly hiding her grief for just a small moment. "In fact, I fought to have those flowers like that. They're not what one would consider 'funerary,' but they… they were his favourite." She cast a glance backwards, towards the arrangement. Nagi could sense that despite its beauty, she felt no pride. Beauty at the cost of the death of her child was hardly beauty at all.
"Would it be alright with you if we could pay our respects now, Miss Ane?" Shiki stepped forward and asked.
"Yes, you needn't ask. Please, let his soul be eased into the next life with your words." She stepped aside, clearing the aisle to the coffin.
"Yo, are we sure Pin– I mean… Do you all think that Pi– Nagi and Rindo are gonn– going to be alright?" Beat asked, as they approached the coffin.
"Just… let everyone grieve, Beat. This is probably going to be the only closure any of us get," Rhyme said with an air of resignation to her words.
"O-Okay," was all he could manage in response.
The Twisters approached the coffin as a man and a woman left it, the former weeping. She didn't recognise his face, but she knew this dream body she was in recognised the emotion well, especially recently.
"…how should we even handle this?" Shoka asked.
"If any of you want to grieve in private, just ask the rest of us and we'll step back while you say what it is you want. But, if you're asking me, I think Fret would appreciate it if we heard what each other have to say. Give his soul an ego boost, if nothing else." Neku let out a strained chuckle.
"I'll step forward first," Shiki said from the back of the group. "He knew me least intimately so it's only right." A silent agreement swept the group. Shiki stepped forward, bowed her head, and rested her hand on the sealed coffin. There she lamented how she never got to know him further before he had passed. Every so often a regretful silence swept the room as she couldn't even speak. She ended with, "I miss you, just like the others. Don't think a day doesn't go by when I don't think of you," before stepping away and bowing once more.
Shoka walked up next. She stood in silence for a long while before speaking. "I owe you my life. I don't know what else to say. I don't do goodbyes. But I know you'd never let me hear the end of it in the afterlife if I didn't say this so…" She clenched her fists, now trembling. "Later, loser." She quickly walked off and embraced Shiki, sobbing into her chest. Rhyme looked on in dismay and approached.
"Thank you for everything you did for everyone. I hope you find peace. But if you ever find yourself lost on the way to heaven…" She produced something from her pocket and hung it around the portrait – a pendant, with a bell shape, faded yet still shining brilliantly. "Let this be your guide. It helps people who are lost. …You were a really great friend to my brother. I hope you knew that." She swiftly let that last part out before walking to join the other two.
Beat stood at the front of the coffin and just stared. His eyes bore a hole into the picture of his deceased friend and his whole body trembled. Yet he remained starkly silent, unable to even open his mouth. When he did, he let out a single, strained word. "Goodbye." He ran to the others before he broke down, only allowing the tears to fall through clenched teeth and spittle. Neku watched the scene to his right with downcast eyes.
"You sure you two don't need any support? I… I can't stand seeing them all like this." Rindo nodded, but Nagi's dream-self did not move. Neku took this to mean yes and approached the coffin.
He cleared his throat and, in a husky voice, began.
"You made everyone happy. You deserve to know that, at least. Everything feels so empty without you. It's like the world's lost its colour. But… speaking personally, you were an amazing friend. You shouldered everything you did with a smile and… and I just wish I could've been more like you when I was in a state like you. I like to believe that, even if the credit for your change belongs to someone else, I played a role in it too. Because you changed into someone really… really amazing. That change made me so, so happy. So, I won't say goodbye. I'll say this, instead. Thank you, Fret. For living. Because that's all you to had to do to make the world a better place." Neku placed one hand on the coffin, seemingly in prayer, and absconded. He wept as he made his way to Beat, who sobbed openly now, and embraced him along with Rhyme.
"…I want to say goodbye now." Rindo told her. "If it takes any longer, he won't be able to hear me through the tears." His voice was low, clearly on the brink of cracking into sobs. He strode forward. He tensed up, breathed heavily and averted his gaze from the photograph of his friend. Then he opened his mouth.
"I wish this didn't happen. I wish I could turn back the clock still. If there was someone out there who could let me do it, I probably asked them a million times. But I'm still here. And you're still gone. A-And it won't… stop… hurting…!" He reached his breaking point and the tears began. "I w-wish we could still d-do everything we said we would as students, m-man…! But we c-c-can't, and we never w-will! How am I m-m-meant to face the future knowing wh-whatever happens, you won't be t-there to cheer us both on?! I-I… Fret…" Shoka, who had stopped crying, walked over to Rindo and led him by the arm to the group proper. As she did, she heard a few final words Rindo had for his friend, spoken in a near-whisper. "Please, don't go…"
Finally, after staring at the coffin for what felt like eternity, Nagi felt her dream-self's body begin to move. It felt stiff and cold. Nagi looked at the display in front of her, Fret's face crowing the front of it. And she stared again. For a long, long while. Completely unmoving. She heard only the sounds of tears next to her, smelt only the aroma of sickly-sweet incense and felt nothing as she stared at everything in front of her. It was as if all emotion had left her dream-self's body completely, like she'd expended it all grieving. And then, her mouth felt dry. Cold sweat formed on her forehead, but stayed in place, refusing to slide down her face and offer some form of reprieve to the blistering heat there and behind her eyes. Her knees began to feel weak and her fingers had already gone numb, to the point she could not feel them against her tightened fists. And finally, she buckled. Falling onto her knees, arms splayed over the white wood of the coffin, she let out deep, anguished sobs from the depths of her being, her grief pouring out in torrents, waves against the silence of the room. Hot tears splashed against wood, carpet and her mouth as they fell, and refused to cease until the grief she had so bottled up was released. Her fingers tried in vain to grip the smooth, rounded top of the coffin but could not, slipping away from it no matter how hard she tried to hold on. All she could choke out from her clogged and sobbing throat, through all her gasps and weeping, was a single word. "Tosai…" She felt someone lift her limp, stiff body and suddenly her perspective shifted.
She was floating now. There was no body to contain her. Three figures stood on top of a building, watching formally-dressed, black-clad individuals leaving one adjacent. The one in the centre flapped his barbed, Stygian wings as if in discomfort.
"This 'never going back' thing kinda sucks." Fret sounded as if he'd been crying. Even in this ethereal state, Nagi could feel the shock course through her like electricity.
"Unfortunately for you, them's the brakes 'til the city's safe. No fan of it myself, 'course, but…" Hanekoma spoke from beside him.
"Hmph. You willingly chose to factor yourself into the Reapers. You've written the equation and the chalk can't be erased from this blackboard now. Get used to it." That voice… Lord To– no, Minamimoto?
"Yeah, yeah, Professor. Can it. I just…" Even from this distance, Nagi could hear the pain in his voice.
"Look, for what it's worth, a lot of Reapers have these regrets when they first sign on. But don't get too torn up over it. What you're doing now is helping those kids to live a lot more freely." Hanekoma pat his shoulder.
"…I know. I hate it being this way, though." He hung his shoulders, before straightening up and flying off.
"Hmph. You're an integral part of the calculations against those rats a few planes up. Don't lose sight of 𝑥!" Sho called out to him. The wind howled as the two remaining UG denizens continued to observe those leaving the wake beneath them. Hanekoma suddenly jumped slightly, before calming himself.
"Speaking of those calculations, someone ought to know discussion of them…" Hanekoma turned and stared straight at her. She suddenly felt a jolt of fear. He couldn't see her, right? She didn't have a body! She was invisible!
"is not for prying eyes." He snapped his fingers, and she awoke with a start.