Tai runs into Matt on complete accident. It's innocuous and accidental and such a strange perfect coincidence that it has no right existing in this world. He's at the grocery store staring at the milk and sizing up prices and trying to pick something because he knows no matter what he goes with his mom will find a way to turn it into a nightmare dinner or dessert. He reaches for a carton of milk at the same time as someone else and he jerks his hand back. It's like some stupid romcom that… that someone would watch. He knows someone in his past loved that kind of stuff and that they'd go on for hours about it but the names at his arsenal don't come to mind and none of them quite fit.
The troubled thought is easily tossed to the side when he finds himself look at none other than Matt Ishida, who he imagines has the exact same expression as himself. Surprised and mildly upset. Their last discussion hasn't gone well. Whatever the argument had been about had faded long with time but he can remember there being yelling and violent gesturing and one point he had reached over and grabbed Matt by the front of his shirt and yelled something at him with tears streaming down his face until all the fight left him all at once and sank to floor in tears.
While the exact argument may be gone, the unresolved tension remains and it is clear that neither of them had wanted to deal with it this way.
It's strange - he almost can't even think about mustering up that much emotion around Matt now. There's just nothing there, an empty hollow thing where friendship had once been. Now that Izzy has made him aware of it the feeling is unnerving and wrong.
"Hey." Matt makes the first move to attempt a conversation. The single word manages to be stilted and awkward all on its own.
"Uh, hi. Here for some… milk?"
"I… uh… yeah. I'm in charge of making dessert tonight. For TK and my dad."
Tai has no idea where to carry the conversation from there. The words just kind of hang in the air between them. Matt shifts his feet from side to side. Tai grabs the carton of milk just to have something to do with his hands. It's too cold in his grip. But it feels real, at least.
"You been doing alright?" He asks, the words lame and flat on his tongue. Matt nods jerkily.
"Working on my degree. A Physics major."
"Oh, STEM work. Impressive."
Matt's hand begins to fiddle with one of his earrings. The yin symbol. His other ear has the yang. How long has he had his ears pierced? Is that something he's supposed to know about Matt, or is it something that's new?
"I should head home." Matt says finally, reaching over and grabbing the small jug of milk. "See you around, I guess."
Tai nods jerkily as Matt disappears into the aisle. His hand holding the milk is cold.
oOo
Yolei eyed her corkboard with a critical eye.
"So Mimi wasn't any help?" She rolled her eyes and turned around to give a proper pout to the man who was plopped down on her bean bag chair, eating a bag of cheetos and getting the dust everywhere.
"It's a seed Davis. I'm planting a seed."
"So that's a big no." He said with a small, knowing was fully aware of how much he was annoying her.
"Urgh… why did I even let you in on this?"
"Pft, please, you didn't let me in on anything. I'm the one who started this investigation."
"Oh no you don't! I asked you if you remembered anything about the decline of Ken Ichijouji!"
"And I'm the one who gave you that." Davis said with a cocky smile, pointing to the corkboard. The item in the middle. A small polaroid photography depicting herself, Davis, Kari, and Tk all sitting down at a picnic, beaming at a camera. The thumb from the photographer covered just a bit of the edge. She must have been in her late teens, seventeen or so, and she wore clothes she had never own and sat in a place she had never been.
"...and I don't know if decline is the best word for it." Davis said, lolling his head back and staring at the ceiling.
"What else would you call it? His grades tanked, he started losing soccer matchers, dropped out of his high affluent school and started going to ours… sounds like a decline to me. Is that where we met him, when he started going to our school?"
"Sounds more like an upgrade." Davis said with a shrug. "Pretty sure that wasn't it though. I mean I met him at a soccer match once - accidentally hurt him. I remember that. But I don't know why we started to hang out. But I mean does it really matter? I don't remember why we used to be friends either." Yolei nodded alone to Davis' words, brain working.
"Except it does. It's harder to pin us down. There's too much room for coincidence or just explaining things away because we went to the same school. But there's no reason we should have been friends with Ken. If we can figure that out, then maybe we can figure out why we were such a close knit group. And what happened. And where exactly we went."
"Ugh, this is torture." Davis exclaimed, throwing his arms up. "Everytime I think I'm on the verge of remembering something it just slips right through. There must be a way to try and get through whatever barrier our brains put up. Maybe it's from trauma… are there solutions for that?" Yolei hummed to herself and looked back at her corkboard.
"We'll try something out."
oOo
"Alright, I think I have everything we need." Joe said as he entered Izzy's apartment. The place was bigger than anything he had ever been able to buy, Izzy's budding career as an advanced code scripter leaving him with enough room to get a place where the living room and the kitchen even had their own separate rooms. It made him feel ashamed whenever the idea of hosting their meet ups at his place was brought up. He didn't want the others to see his small messy place with careful medical notes posted on every available surface to help him study.
The table set up looked a lot like arts and crafts, with scissors and glue and pieces of posterboard. Joe set down the last armful of supplies on the table and looked at Izzy and Tai. Izzy was staring at the supplies with a slightly raised eyebrow. Joe felt himself blush.
"So… What's your idea?" It was clear that Izzy was trying to keep the sceptical tone out of his voice, but was also failing.
"I don't know what it is, but I for one am very excited." It was clear that Tai meant it too, already having reached across the table and started to absentmindedly fidget with a piece of paper.
"Well, uh, I was thinking that none of us can really understand what a lot of the letters say, right?" Joe said, and he gestured to the copies he had made of the two letters. "So maybe it would be better to try and isolate the concepts. Instead of trying to read it as a whole. And, uh, a studying technique I've used a lot is grouping information together in a visual form. So I was thinking that we could have a paper for words we done understand, and then one for phrases, and and then sentences and so on." Joe looked up nervously. Izzy's face was blank for one terrifying moment.
"Prodigious!" He declared, face lighting up, and Joe let out a small breath he had been holding. "We can even try to group together things we want to investigate specifically. Any people or pronouns."
"I'm definitely on board." Tai said, throwing Joe a bright smile that made his chest warm. "Classic Joe." He said, and it was clear that his mouth was moving before Tai had even full formed the words. "You always come through when we need you."
Joe let a smile creep on his face at the praise, heat rising to his cheeks. It felt good to be so -
And then suddenly Joe broke through the barrier into the water, feeling the freezing temperature of the bay press in on him from all sides. Panic flooded through his mind as he pushed through the water, hands reaching out for something… something… there! Joe felt his hand brush up against something, some kind of cloth. He followed it further and wrapped his fingers around the the small arm, pulling it up, pulling it to safety.
The world stuttered for a moment, reeling him forward. To a point where he is looking up at the water, alone this time. Above him, the sunlight refracts through the water, and it is beautiful. His lungs are burning, and yet he feels a surge of peace wash over him even as dark tendrils move in from the edges of his vision. Joe feels so tired, and his eyelids droop downwards, and then as if from very far away, something like pure light and ice surges through his veins.
-reliable.
Joe sputtered as he took in deep breaths, one hand clutching desperately at the front of his shirt. He could still feel the, like a ghost, the water around him, the cold clinging to his skin. It took him a moment to realize he was sitting on the floor, and there was a hand on his back, rubbing small circles. And voices. There were voices trying to talk to him. He forces himself to focus.
"-alright." Tai. Tai's voice. Familiar. Familiar in a way that is almost foreign. Like his mind can recognize more of the cadence there than before.
"I'm… I'm okay." Joe said, but even he could hear his voice tremble. He wasn't sure what that was. How that had happened. Already he could feel it beginning to slip through his fingers. "Can you… I need some paper. And a pencil." Izzy was up in a moment, going to grab something for him.
Joe sat for a moment, going over the thoughts in his mind, as if holding them in his hand. He wasn't sure what any of it meant. But he did feel like some kind of strange, profound, sorrow had began to bloom in his chest.