And just when things seemed to be going so well...
Ah, well. This is a tragedy, after all.
Ken remembers learning about tragedies in one of his classes, back when he still qualified as a human being. Aristotle had identified key components, beginning with a string of misfortune and ending with catharsis. By the end of a tragedy, the remaining characters were purged of their anguish, or everyone was dead.
He knows, and he has always known, that any story he has any part of will inevitably be a tragedy. It has happened before, again and again, a ceaseless cycle of misfortune and struggle and suffering, beginning with the death of his mother. He has always been the hapless protagonist forced to watch the world around him fall apart.
But this time, he thinks, he must have been relegated to the role of a secondary character, a bystander who is equally helpless as the story's centerpiece quietly destroys themselves.
It's much, much worse.
Eika does not come back the next day. Ken finds himself anxiously checking the clock every few minutes as he drums his fingers on the counter. Every time the café door opens, he rushes to greet her, only to have to hide his disappointment when it's somebody else. No Longer Human rests on the shelf in his bedroom, completely read over the course of the previous night. He doesn't want anything to do with it anymore.
Ken is distracted all day, eyes wandering to the window whenever a girl in a school uniform walks by, heart beating faster in expectation whenever somebody comes inside. But Eika Ishihara never does show up, and as the day grows later, the literati of Anteiku gradually thinning out and taking their Murakamis and Shikibus and Kyuusakus with them, plastic covers glinting in the light of the setting sun, Ken feels panic mounting. He doesn't want to turn the little sign hanging on the door to "closed," doesn't want to lock the door and turn off the lights, because she might just be running late. Maybe she decided to go back to school and she has to catch up on homework. Ken is smart; he knows her absence doesn't necessitate a tragedy.
But he is also not an optimist, and he can't help but worry that it does.
The sun is long gone below the horizon, but he's still sitting at their table, looking out at passing cars and late night foot traffic, when Renji comes to get him for that night's scavenging. "Let's go," he says quietly, and Ken rises slowly, feet dragging the entire way, hoping against reason that she comes running with a smile and a, "Sorry I'm late!" holding Dazai or Souseki or whatever she wants, still alive. He's afraid that this will be the night he finds her in the gorge, body broken and eyes lifeless.
He doesn't understand. He thought he's reached her; he thought she'd opened up to him. He doesn't want to believe that she's lying dead somewhere, because Eika Ishihara means more to him than just his humanity now.
He regrets all of the chances he didn't take.
When they reach the lonely stretch of road overlooking the gorge that feeds much of the 20th ward, Renji suddenly stops walking, refusing to round the corner. Ken looks back at him for an explanation but before he says anything, the wind changes directions and the smell hits him.
Acrid, sour, fearful. Somebody is alive out here.
Under normal circumstances, they would check elsewhere and come back later—Ken never thought about it too hard, because the implications of waiting are akin to acting as a vulture, circling a slowly dying animal and waiting for it to finally give in like the death seekers who leap from the overpass—but Ken's feet are moving before Renji can stop him, and he's running down the road, looking to where the guardrail is broken and finds his nightmares have bled into reality, dressed in a school uniform with her back turned to him. The height is the same, the build is the same, and her braids are whipping in the wind. There's no mistake.
"Eika!" he calls, all politeness and proper social etiquette having long fled his mind at the sight of her with her toes over the edge, "Eika!"
Her shoulders stiffen and she steps back to safety, meeting his eyes. Ken expects tears, inconsolable grief for the life she intends to take, but finds her expression worryingly calm, looking more surprised than anything. "Kaneki," she says pleasantly, "What are you doing here?"
"That's…that doesn't…." There aren't words, not in any book he's ever read, not in the entire Japanese language, to describe just how lost he feels now, how powerless and confused he is with Eika standing so close to the edge like that, looking like she doesn't even realize that it's over when she takes that plunge, like she doesn't fully understand what it would mean. "Why are you here?"
Her cheeks turn a light pink in embarrassment. "I was just…." She looks around as if searching for the words in the dark around her. "I guess…" she laughs uncomfortably, a smile stretched painfully across her face, "That's probably obvious, right?" She looks down at the gorge, appearing much more like an endless void in the dark of night. "Do you ever wonder what goes through people's heads when they do stuff like this?" she asks softly, "When Dazai threw himself into the Tamagawa Canal, what do you think he had on his mind?"
Ken takes a slow step towards her. "I don't know," he says honestly, trying to keep his voice even and his face calm, trying not to let his body betray the urgency he feels.
"Do you think he remembered the word games he wrote about in No Longer Human?" she asks, "What's the antonym of death, anyway? We never decided."
"Eika," Ken says gently, moving closer ever so slightly, "Did you really plan on jumping?"
She looks not at him, but towards him, eyes to the side. "I thought about it," she mumbles, "Dazai, Akutagawa, Hara, Kawakami…they all felt the way I do now. But I'm a coward compared to them. I'm afraid to jump."
Afraid to die.
"Looking at you, Kaneki, makes it even harder." She looks back down at the abyss, and Ken edges closer. "Actually, you know, I planned to die the first day we met. I'd always walked by Anteiku but I'd never gone in, so I thought I'd give it a try just once. Then we got to talking, and I just…I couldn't do it. Looking at you makes me want to live." She smiles, genuinely, radiantly, and Ken can't help but smile back, telling himself it's not too late, it's still not too late.
"Kaneki," she says breathlessly, overcome by emotion, "Jump with me."
He takes a shuddering breath, stepping closer. "Together?" he asks weakly, "But I thought you said you wanted to live."
"I can't do it alone," she says, "But if you're with me, I think I could. That's why you came out here, isn't it? That's what you tried to tell me before, when you said we're wrong, that people do understand. You understand."
"That's not what I meant," he tries to tell her.
"Why else would you come out here?" she laughs, a question that Ken simply refuses to answer. Her smile becomes desperate. "Please, Kaneki. I know…together…we could do it."
He's standing beside her now, hesitantly meeting her eager gaze. He gently smiles back and takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. "Ishihara," he says gently, attempting to ground her and return to reality, "I don't want to die."
Her smile falls and the light leaves her eyes. "But," she swallows, "We could…I can't do it alone."
"I know." He squeezes her hand and pulls, leading her back to the road. "So let's live instead, okay?"
Eika doesn't pull away and she doesn't answer, her eyes blank and hollow as she follows him, one shaky footstep at a time. Ken sees Renji amidst the trees as they walk back up along the road towards town and wonders what he must think, but it doesn't really matter to him.
Ken is a reader and not a writer, but he's acquainted with so many stories by now, so many turns of phrase and narrative styles and plot devices, he thinks that, surely, he can rewrite this so it isn't a tragedy.
The lights of the high rises of downtown welcome them back to the world of the living. Ken is too tired to remember the way back to Eika's and ends up going back to his place instead, and it's only as they're going up the stairs and Ken is turning the door handle that the tears start and Eika finally begins to cry.
She cries while Ken sets his bag down and when he gently leads her to sit at the table, and she cries while he tidies up around her, picking up old laundry and plastic bags. She cries when she shrugs her jacket off of her shoulders at Ken's insistence, and she cries when he comes to sit beside her.
Her arms are pale and slender, the undersides dotted with dark purple and brownish welts and blotches, bruises in the shape of fingers on her skin. Eika buries her face into his chest and shudders, and Ken never asks or says a word, but he slowly wraps his arms around her, head resting on top of hers, and wonders what comes next.
The sunrise filters through Ken's curtains, falling across the room towards where Eika is lying on her side, still awake. Neither of them have slept yet. Ken told her to take the bed hours ago while he remained sitting at the table, trying to figure out what to do, glancing over at her from time to time and meeting her unreadable expression.
"Sorry," she says hoarsely, throat raw, the first word she's spoken since walking through the door.
He's not sure what she's apologizing for exactly, but he shakes his head anyway. "It's okay." He looks over and finds her staring at him, eyes and nose still flushed red but no longer crying. "Do you want to talk about it?" Silence settles over them, and Ken quickly amends, "You don't have to, of course." Eika is quiet for a time, eyes moving to look at the slowly growing patch of sunlight on the floor. "Do you…" Ken hesitates, "Do you wish you had jumped?"
"No," she says. "I'm glad you came. I'm glad you stopped me." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "You know, there's…something I wanted to tell you. It's not really anything important, but I just…I just wanted to say it."
Ken glances at her, eyelashes fluttering, cheeks flushed, frowning nervously. He thinks he knows what she wants to say, and even though he's a little uncertain, he thinks about all of the things people have told him since he met Eika.
It can work.
"Maybe you should wait to tell me," he says, "Until you're feeling better."
She bites her lip. "Yeah. Okay."
"I mean, you might be surprised by what kind of answer you get." He smiles, and her eyes widen slightly. "That's pretty good incentive, right?"
"Yeah. It is." She smiles back, timidly, a little like she used to. "Thank you…Ken."
From the way the sunrise sparkles in her eyes, Ken just knows that he's done it this time. He's taken what he's learned from every author he's ever read and changed the ending of Eika's story.
He's so overcome by joy that he temporarily forgets about his own story, the one in which he is a protagonist, one that is rapidly approaching the next change in fortune, one that is irredeemably a tragedy.
I'm thinking there's going to be just one or two more chapters for this, and since they're pretty short, I might be able to have it ready next week.
This is also the end of the semester and I have one last sizable term paper due then, so apologies in advance if it's not done by then.