Game for a Memory
Chapter 7

This time, he awoke to headlights, and his body was scrambling away from them before his mind quite processed what it saw. The car screeched to a halt and the next moments were a mess of confusion with the babbling driver, Ikuko running down the road in her slippers and him staring at the overcast sky, processing it all.

He wasn't too surprised, in retrospect, to find himself waking up in a hospital next. There was no drip, at least. Just the usual monitoring equipment and a few extra things for special cases like him. Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation… and then there was telemetry and the EEG and, as always, he found himself staring at the brainwaves because the rest of his body was fine but his brain would never be.

How many doctors had they gone to? How many operations had they tried, and yet there'd been a wall between his past and his future that he couldn't overcome. And now that wall had sunken and thinned: done by a dream or a pocket space in the world where medicine and the advanced technology of the current times were powerless. But how long would this peace in slumber last? How long before the Battler Ushiromiya within him began to assert himself once more and what should he do about it? That problem – the main problem, really – had not been solved.

If he wanted to be frank about it, the only thing that interim had accomplished was giving him a bit of breathing space… And who else could honestly say they needed some time off from their own soul? Then again, the question of the soul was metaphysical. Just like the existence of that meta-BATTLER, the Endless Sorcerer, and the witch of the island that was Beatrice. Just like those memories that made little sense otherwise… Because as much as dreams are a possibility, he could hardly expect fleeting dreams to give such a deep impression.

On the other hand, his brain was so screwed up that the best neurologists in the world had little idea of what to make of parts of it, and had no way in the least of fixing it, so maybe this new brain of his was more partial to fleeting dreams than concrete facts. Hachijo Tohya's fleeting dreams anyway, otherwise he'd be suggesting that Battler Ushiromiya had pre-warning of the events that had occurred on Rokkenjima island and nothing, dream or magic or otherwise, had suggested that.

'What are you thinking about so deeply?' asked Ikuko suddenly above him.

He hadn't heard the door open or close at all. 'Wondering if this brain of mine's better with dreams than reality,' Tohya replied with a slight smile. 'Seeing it's a dream that talked me out of doing something stupid.'

'Talked you out…' Ikuko began, before she caught on to the implication. 'Tohya!'

'I couldn't stand it,' he confessed, and her face softened a little. 'I'm sorry.'

'You…' She shook herself, then latched onto something else before she descended into a reprimand that was too little and too late. 'When did you find the time to dream? When your life was flashing in front of your eyes?'

'Something like that,' Tohya agreed, before reconsidering the lack of detail. 'Do you believe in magic?'

She raised in eyebrow at him. 'I'm a mystery author,' she chided. 'I entertain magic as an explanation a character may resort to when faced with something that escapes their ability to explain… But as the author, I'm the god of that universe and able to explain everything.'

Tohya closed his eyes. 'Then let's do it,' he said. 'Write those tales. Every possibility the characters can think of. Every possibility we can think of.'

'The Rokkenjima incident?' she checked.

He dipped his chin.

'Interesting,' she said thoughtfully. 'You were so adverse to it before, I wondered…' She shook her head. 'Well, you'll tell me when you want, I imagine.' She frowned at him. 'But this time, can that be before you throw yourself in front of an incoming car?'

'I'll do my best,' he promised, but he doubted it would happen like that, if things escalated again. 'It was just…intolerable.'

She sighed. 'I can't pretend to understand,' she said.

And he liked that about her. He didn't need someone to pretend, to give false reassurances and useless advice.

'Anyway, since you brought up the story this time, I take it you have a specific plot in mind?

'A few,' he admitted. 'Something to offset the first one first though, I think.'

'The one where Eva Ushiromiya is the culprit?' she asked, amused. 'Well, it's not like we ever wrote that one up. Seems a shame to resort to the same theory the masses use, especially for our first foray into the tale.'

'True.' Especially now that the question of her guilt was in doubt. 'Why not the magic explanation, to start? The inexplainable that they attempt to explain.'

'They?' Ikuko raised an eyebrow, but she entertained the idea nonetheless.

.

It was a couple of years later when they wrote and published the original skeleton draft, the one where Eva Ushiromiya had been the culprit as per the initial slew of memories. Neither of them had expected that particular tale to bring Eva Ushiromiya to their door, considering the number of forgeries that had been revealed by that point.

But she laid out her reasons and they were all valid ones. The stories were too insightful, knowing details taken for granted as fiction in the general public but known to her to be fact. She hadn't been sure, she confessed, seeing as the servants had talked quite a bit about the layout of Rokkenjima after its destruction, but the epitaph in its glorious exactness had proven himself.

She was part-wrong, of course, but not all that surprised to see the truth. She confessed gold was a strange and cruel spell, and memory was no different. Years of hurt were still etched on her face, and Battler Ushiromiya stirred for the first time since the exchange with the Endless Sorcerer and sparked a bit of pity.

That was, of course, separate from Hachijo Tohya's pity for the stern woman in front of them battling with her own shadows.

'Do you dream of a sorcerer?' he asked abruptly.

Eva considered him a moment. 'Not a sorcerer,' she said, and her eyes seemed strangely…accepting. 'But a witch. A witch called Eva.'

They'd hit that nail on the head, then. Funnily enough, that was one of the things they'd used their artistic license to add in, to mirror Battler's and Beatrice's own situations. For Eva to actually have dreams including one… Well, it seemed the witch or sorcerer was a good antithesis, and appropriate how, of the three, the sorcerer was the closest to the white area.

Or maybe that had to do with Ikuko's executive decision to make Battler Ushiromiya the protagonist of their books. Narrator bias.

Still, the crux of her visit had turned out to be the truth, the truth perhaps every mystery writer (and a good many mystery fans) aside from the pair of them were looking for, even if they hadn't managed to put it together themselves.

There were some things more important than the truth, after all, like peace of mind.

And it turned out that Eva Ushiromiya's silence was, in fact, because she harboured the same sentiments herself.

.

The truth didn't set them free. The truth had only been a red herring in the end, to them at least. Even for Ange Ushiromiya who had spent years stewing in anger before Eva's death had realised it hadn't been truth she'd been searching for after all, but everything else she'd lost that day.

And Hachijo Tohya had to admit to his role in keeping that away from her. And his role was two-fold because, after Eva's death, he and Ikuko were the only ones who knew the truth and it was him who insisted on not seeing her.

Maybe it was because he was still afraid of Battler inside of him, even if the echoes were now dim and far between and mostly sedate. On the other hand, the tail end of his discussion with the Endless Sorcerer stuck with him. His own words, at that. That allowing something to say simmering wasn't nearly the same as moving on from it, and maybe the other reason he was avoiding Ange Ushiromiya was because it could very well cascade into that endgame.

Moving on… Wasn't that what he'd wanted all this time? Wasn't that the ideal ending, the ideal endgame? Really… when had he become so indecisive? Maybe because the Tohya he'd been before his memories started trickling in hadn't been all that great either, full of holes and riddled with instability, like an old abandoned house that could collapse at any moment…

And that's what it boiled down to, really. It hadn't been about the past at all, but about the present and the future. And an island explosion and eighteen lives lost over the course of a night served as a very good reminder that the future was uncertain, and so his fears followed it.

And one day, the part of him who was fighting that fear would triumph, and he'd meet Ange Ushiromiya… and that might have nothing or everything to do with acceptance and moving on, but he'd only see when he got there.