[NOTE] Due to some slight cursing, this particular one shot is rated T.
Twelve Shots of Shuuya
By: Aviantei
A Kagerou Project Anthology
[Twelve Shots of Summer: Trinity Limit 11/12]
XX./10. Reunion
[Kagerou Day 2016]
Shuuya had taken extra care to get up early, but the summer heat was still unrelenting, even with the sun just barely risen in the sky. The hike wasn't helping much when combined with the humidity, either, sweat slicking his skin and sticking in his clothes. At this rate, they would probably be facing the hottest, muggiest August since three years ago.
Time flies, huh? But, seriously, would it have killed Haruka-senpai to put this a bit closer to home?
Association with Marry and Kousuke came paired with a familiarity with the woods. Too bad Haruka had wanted to avoid that familiarity and instead had chosen a pathless area winding uphill as a spot for the memorial. If he hadn't sketched out a detailed map beforehand, Shuuya surely would have gotten lost.
As it was, he finally reached his destination a half-hour after setting out, nearly wheezing from exhaustion, only to find someone already there.
A fluffy reddish-brown ponytail bounced softly with her movements, and Shuuya nearly slipped down the hill from shock. Getting ahold of himself thanks to the support of a nearby tree, he managed to step forward to see past her form. Sure enough, the small carving in wood was stuck into the ground, surrounded by an arrangement of pebbles she was pressing into the dirt with her fingertip. While she had changed her style to something more suited to the weather, a wooden pencil was still tucked behind her ear, steadfastly ignoring the mechanical advancements of the modern age.
"Ryoko," Shuuya said. Ryoko took her time placing a few more oval-shaped stones around the wood carving before looking up.
"Kano," she answered, shuffling off her ankles as support and plopping into the dirt. "I thought Kokonose would be here instead. I haven't seen him all morning."
"He's on a university trip with Ene." Ryoko nodded, her eyes trained on the small memorial. How much distance was too close? Too far? Focusing on not disturbing Ryoko's rock pattern, Shuuya left half a meter between them before sitting in the dirt. "He asked me to come instead since no one else would. How did you even get here, though? And don't say investigative journalism."
Ryoko adjusted her bangs, snatching the pencil from behind her ear in the process. "More like being a nibshit, but you get the point." Shuuya didn't know why he had even expected a straight answer. "Kokonose makes some interesting drawings these days. I took a chance and here I am." She sighed, finally looking Shuuya's direction. He quickly adjusted his posture. "Come on, haven't you learned to relax around me?"
Shuuya breathed out a chuckle. "Absolutely not." Ryoko shrugged and assumed tracing aimless patterns in a patch of dirt beside her. "I didn't even know you got back. You should have called me. Don't say you don't have my number."
"Oyaji wanted to visit. I planned on stopping by later, if it offends you that much," Ryoko remarked. Even as she drew, her eyes stayed on him, and Shuuya almost expected the flash of red—so uncommon these days, but still seared into his memory. "I'm glad you've decided to find something better to do with your time than lie it away."
She sounded smug, though Shuuya couldn't tell what for. She had vanished like the summer heat three years ago and had hardly dropped word since, traveling with her father. Like Shuuya, she was pretty much an adult now, if not more so. There was so much he could have forgotten since then, but Ryoko probably had catalogued much more.
The silence hardly existed—the wind rustling tree branches, birds chirping, echoed cries of cicadas. When Shuuya didn't rise to her taunt, Ryoko looked to her dirt lines, retracing over them. "So what did he set this thing up for anyways? I can hardly tell what it's supposed to be."
"And you call yourself an investigator," Shuuya said, earning a furrow in her brow. Seemed that part of her ego hadn't changed. Unable to keep the light tone, Shuuya cleared his throat before continuing. "That thing's pretty old, but Haruka-senpai said it was supposed to be a snake. You know, for him."
Even the mention still turned Shuuya's tongue sour, and Ryoko properly frowned, her pencil freezing midline. If you tried to put it into words, there was no way to convey everything the Mekakushi Dan felt about the Clearing Eyes Snake, about three years ago, about their time with the Heat Haze—
"I see," Ryoko remarked, her tone evenly neutral. She must have worked hard on that unaffected drawl. She flipped the pencil into her palm so smoothly that Shuuya wouldn't have been surprised if her free hand produced a notebook the next second. "And because you were with the Clearing Eyes snake when he possessed your adoptive father, Kokonose figured you would at least somewhat understand, right?"
"Pretty much." Shuuya couldn't really say he understood completely, but Haruka had been right about one thing: Shuuya couldn't completely disregard the Snake, even if he wanted to. Its desires had matched up with Kenjiro's, which had been the same as Shuuya's then. Even if they had gotten hurt, Ayano had returned to them in the end. Shuuya couldn't deny that. "Does it bother you?"
"Hm." Shuuya's fingers found a small twig, and he settled on breaking it into smaller pieces to hide any nervous movements. "I don't think I have any particular right to be bothered by such a thing," she said. "My eyes used to do a lot more than just tell me when you were lying, you know?"
Eye contact hit him like a construction beam. Ryoko's gaze was steady, and Shuuya didn't look away until she snickered. "W-what are you laughing at?"
"You," she answered, muffling the rest of her laughter in her bare shoulder. "Don't tell me you're still afraid of me, Kano. I've only ever looked for the truth, not trouble."
"Too bad those aren't mutually exclusive," Shuuya grumbled, trying to find a convincing way to claim his blush was sunburn. Not that there was much of a point with Ryoko's attention to detail. Shuuya settled for leaning back so he could stare at the canopy of leaves above him. "What did you mean, though? What did you do back then?"
He glanced to Ryoko in his peripheral, tapping her pencil to the ground, denting spots into her patterns. "You make it sound so ominous," she said. Well, it was her choice of words to blame for that one. "I don't think I did anything particularly bad. But I did see a lot. Stuff even Amamiya's eyes couldn't reach."
Shuuya swallowed without meaning to. Out of all of them, Hibiya's vision had always been the most impressive in scope.
"There was an undercurrent to the Heat Haze," Ryoko said, all movement ceasing save for her lips. "Ripples in its movement. Something that leaked into this world. I looked into it, and all the places where those ripples were had deaths connected to them." Shuuya put the pieces together without her even saying it, but the journalistic reveal insisted she continue. "There were…gaps in the city. Where the Heat Haze opened up and swallowed our partners. That's what got me started on looking into the whole mess in the first place."
Ryoko paused to brush her pencil off, leaving a streak of dirt on her dark jeans, before sticking the eraser end between her teeth. "They're all gone, though," she said, answering the question before Shuuya could ask. "I went around and looked, and all traces of the Heat Haze have disappeared from this world. Except for well…"
She looked back to the wood carving, to Haruka's handmade memorial. Shuuya squinted, but he couldn't see anything different. It was just a stick in the dirt, now surrounded by a meticulously organized pattern of pebbles. When he looked back to Ryoko, though, her eyes were red, a sure sign of her power's activity.
"What does it look like?" Shuuya asked, and Ryoko tugged the pencil away from her mouth, tucking it back into place behind her ear.
"Just like it used to: that moment where too much heat comes off the pavement and distorts the air." Yeah, Shuuya wasn't seeing anything like that, but his eyes had never been good at finding things. "It's small, only about this tall, and this wide." Ryoko's hands hovered a few centimeters above the wood carving, then spread apart to the diameter of her rock arrangement. "Nothing like it used to be. I don't think anything could come out of it if it tried."
"What about getting inside?"
"Not happening, either. The connection's too dull for that."
Shuuya realized he had leaned forward without meaning to and forced himself to sit back. The tension still stuck in his shoulders, though. "Do we have to worry about it, though? I mean, Marry said that the Snake wasn't going to be an issue…" Given, there was still a lot they hadn't figured out about the Heat Haze. If there was another danger coming, they needed to be ready.
Ryoko shook her head, finally looking back to Shuuya. "It doesn't feel the same as before. I just think it's a connection if we need it. I mean, I tried talking into it, to see if anything would happen, but I didn't get an answer." She frowned again, though she looked more sad than angry at the lack of results.
Shuuya inhaled through his nose and brushed a few stray strands of hair from his face. "Who were you trying to talk to?"
Ryoko flinched—small, but still perceptible. He must have hit a nerve if that was her reaction. There weren't too many of them left in the Heat Haze, but Shuuya couldn't think of anyone that Ryoko would have an interest in. After that August fifteenth, she had called her own investigation closed.
"My brother was the one who died with me," Ryoko said softly, staring at the ground. Her eyes had lost their sheen of red. "We were a miscarriage. In the end, I got the power and he was left behind." It wasn't a hesitation he was used to seeing on her, but she looked as if there was something left to be said. "I saw him. He had grown up over there, on the other side. I just thought I might be able to talk to him properly. That's all. I mean, don't you have things you wish you could have said to your mother?"
This time, Shuuya was the one to recoil, and Ryoko murmured a "Sorry" into the air. "Investigative journalism," she offered as an excuse.
"More like nibshitting," Shuuya dryly retorted, pushing his thoughts far from his mother. There would be time to remember that later, when he was secure with his family, when they could all take their time to understand and reflect.
Ryoko half-heartedly smirked, but it was better than her expression from before. "Ah, now you're getting it."
Silence without silence followed again. Shuuya looked back to the memorial, hoping to find something, anything, that indicated the presence of the Heat Haze on the other side. He couldn't find anything. The more he stared, the more it looked like a scene from a movie than something he was actually seeing. Even if there was a chance someone on the other side could hear him, what would he even try to say?
"I should get going," Ryoko said, brushing dirt and bits of dried plants from her pants as she stood. "I really only came to see what was out here, and I guess I know now. Nothing I can write up on, but not every lead has to be worth the effort of words."
"Hold up." Shuuya had grabbed her wrist before she had even taken a step. A little bit lower and he and Ryoko would have been holding hands. "You've been gone for so long—are you going to stay this time?"
Ryoko looked down to him, eyebrows raised. Shuuya scrambled to stand properly, putting them on eye level. "Is that a request?" she asked, metering her words out carefully.
"Ryoko—" Shuuya protested.
"Not this time." Shuuya's tongue stuck to the top of his mouth. Ryoko propped her free hand on her waist. "Oyaji and I still have a lot that we're looking into. And even if I've been pulling in some pretty pocket money, that doesn't mean I'm quite ready to settle down just yet." Shuuya wasn't holding onto her wrist that tightly. She could pull away any time she wanted.
"But you're not leaving today, right?" Shuuya stepped closer, and Ryoko blinked at the sudden proximity. "Then at least come and hang out with us today," he insisted. "The Mekakushi Dan always gets together today. Sure, Haruka-senpai and Ene can't make it, but everyone else will. I'm sure they'll want to see you. And, well, sure we're gonna go out, but it'll be my treat."
"Huh?" Good, he had managed to fluster her enough. Things were always much easier when Ryoko's guard was down. "Kano, what are you trying so hard for?"
"It's your birthday, right?" Shuuya said, and Ryoko fell silent. "Then that's the least I can do for you."
And even though she tried to fight it, Ryoko's lips curled into a smile.
[NOTES] Because what would be an Aviantei fic without an OC? Seriously.
Once more, thanks to Chronic Guardian for the feedback! Maybe with some effort we can fix the last piece...Hm.
Anyway, yes, I went there. And by there I mean teasing a project I'd like to get to some day. Given everything on my plate, who knows, but until then, this serves as kind of an epilogue... Eh, whatever, I'm sure it works. I like how this one came together at the very least.
But the prompts. "Those who were left behind" feels rather obvious, considering the whole concept of the Heat Haze and the memorial here. "Gardening" I took in rock gardening sort of way, which let me add a lot of cool details (I think). Wonder how Haruka's gonna react when he comes back and finds pebbles everywhere.
I'm also counting this as my Kagerou Day piece for this year! While it would have been nice to post it on the fifteenth, that does not fall in writing challenge guidelines...so it's a bit early. In any event, it's directly connected to last year's T-Sauce piece from this time, "The Memorial." Technically, it's the third in a sequence, but "Natalis" is so it's own thing I don't even know if that properly counts. That being said, have a good Kagerou Day folks! Be wary of the Heat Haze.
Anyway, this is the next to last piece of the summer, too! That means next weekend will be the final piece in this collection, too. For the prompts, we have "My friends are my power" and "These Days We Chance Upon." While I'll be doing something small, I hope you'll stick around for it nonetheless.
Please look forward to it.
[POST] 081316
