Play of Spirits
Chapter 4 - Dream of Darkness (Kouichi)

Kouichi was lost, and he followed the only light he could find.

The rational part of his mind was well aware of how foolish it was. Though he claimed to himself to be wandering with aim, in truth it was near-aimless and now it was literally black all round.

Except the faint shadow of a train track and he was following that for lack of anything else to follow. Though for all he knew, he could be going in entirely the wrong direction because despite the world being round (or so they claimed; once upon a time they'd thought it flat after all), it only flowed in the one direction. There was no walking back and finding the opportunities you'd missed the first go around. It was just the forward path looping round, dragging with it regrets.

It was melodramatic, but environment dictated thought (or at least played a hefty role in dictating it) and his was an environment like that. Where the sun had shone outside, they'd been caught in smelly and glaringly white hospital rooms and corridors that twisted and turned and somehow wound up somewhere if only one knew where they were going. And then there were the elevators: big and steel but often taken up by wheelchairs and beds that couldn't travel between floors any other way and the staircases were behind heavy doors and concrete and dark and they hardly even looked safe.

Then again, one would go to a hospice for a safety net, not a hospital, and that was where a safety net was the tattered childhood blanket that one wanted to curl up in, cocooned from the world until they were crushed by it – but the hospital was pretty different, fighting tooth and nail to keep people alive –

And some people were just tired.

He was horrible for being bitter about that fact, he knew. It was the death his grandmother could make peace with, in the end, even if she hadn't wanted to fight tooth and nail for a survival that would've been littered with complications. She said it, sometimes, that she was too old to give everything and expect to still be functional by the end of it and that children like him could afford to give more than everything now, so long as they kept the quality things to hang on later, when their wells dried up and their bodies were loose sacs that wouldn't fill up anymore.

If he wandered enough in the wrong direction, his well might wind up running on empty too.

That went back to a story his grandmother used to tell. It was about a wishing well: a very special wishing well and all sorts of creatures travelled very far to find it in the middle of a desert – and it turned out the well had no power in it at all. The effort that it took to find it, on the other hand, was what prompted them to try harder at whatever problem they'd come to wish aid for: to try harder, to see things with a clearer mind and sometimes a different perspective – and, sometimes, they came away with new friends at the end as well. Friends who'd been equally desperate and stubborn.

In other words, if you tried, there was a well within you that could make your wishes come true.

But he wasn't wishing for anything strongly enough – wholeheartedly enough – right then. That was the whole problem.

And it'd been his grandmother's last breaths who'd pulled away the string tying that cat box closed.

And yes, he was bitter about that, because she got to die in the hospital to spite the system that tried to keep her alive and she got to die high on opioids and pretty low on pain as well. That was a good way, he thought, to die without pain because he didn't want that to be the imprint for his next life. Pain. Fire in his nerves that would make him… what? Destined to be an animal in a slaughterhouse and destined to wind up in another human's stomach?

Okay, that was too creepy and he was going to discard that thought right there. Even if it was easier said than done. He had to think of something else instead and the scenery offered nothing. Just endless tracks running to what could potentially be nowhere – because if he never reached it, then it would never realise its potential in his eyes and reality was in the eyes of the beholder, after all.

He really needed company. Someone to talk to, even if he wasn't much of a conversation starter. Someone to talk to him, rather. Someone who could tell stories in the long-winded way but still not lose the audience. Bright people and made one look at them when they spoke, even if what came out of their mouth was another language or complete nonsense – and to the person who couldn't speak that language, they were kind of the same thing. Reality was in the ears of the beholder as well, even if those who weren't blind relied far more on their eyes than any other sense. Or, those humans did instead. Humans who had far too much to utilise, it seemed. Humans who had the luxury of wanting to die and animals with lesser lifespans might call that complaining the belt was too tight in the post-famine world because they lived their lives knowing full well they could be dead in the next second. Or maybe they didn't, and they weren't so different after all.

Like a train could come up behind him – but then at least he'd know he was on the right track. Even if he'd have to escape the track to escape the train as well –

And he just cursed himself, didn't he. He dove to the side when he heard the shrieks of metal dragging along metal at high speed approaching – but nothing came. The sound just stayed there, hovering in the distance where he couldn't see and he stood, waiting… But how long could he wait? Long enough? Too long? He could just as easily be wasting time and the human body would run out of water in three days even if he didn't sweat it all out with exercise first. Between light walking and standing still, he doubted there was much difference in the consumption of his body's water.

It probably hadn't even been an hour and he he was, thinking three days later.

First came today, then came tomorrow. Even if he couldn't stop thinking about the consequences of that tomorrow.

Unlike his grandmother. She'd undid the drawstring on the cat box and died, and he was left with it spilt on his lap and he no longer had the luxury of ignorance – or anyone he could talk to about it all. After all, it implicated his mother. Implicated his grandmother too but him telling her in the end might've meant she wanted to talk. Or maybe she'd chosen her timing more carefully than that. maybe she hadn't wanted to talk or carry the weight of that secret to her grave and so she'd simply passed it on.

He should be the dutiful grandson and carry that weight but he couldn't carry it and do nothing, but he couldn't do something either. He tried. At first, it seemed so easy. Chase this new road that had opened up – but that was a scary new place. A brother he hadn't a clue about. A father he'd thought had abandoned him and now it turned out his mother wasn't nearly as blameless as he'd believed (or as perfect as he believed what had been wrong with that, because didn't children often think such things of their parents? And he was eleven and so still a child). And a stepmother that didn't look at all like the fairy-tale who'd wedged her way in but rather like she was being wedged out and where did this other branch of the family fit in? How could he suddenly go up to them and say: "hi. Remember me, 'tou-san? Kouji? And you might not have met me before, Satomi-san, but I'm your other step-son.'

He could barely get the words coherent in his head when alone, let alone out loud and in company and much less in the company that they were aimed towards.

So these sparkly lights at his front became the sun to his back instead, and if he turned towards it and he invariably did, again and again, he had to shield his eyes to it.

.

She almost didn't notice him, in the crowd, but then the crowd dispersed and he was left without any shadows to shield him and he was there, exposed.

She noticed him, and she noticed the thoughts that rolled off his mind, how it wandered and how his feet wandered too even if he had a direction to walk in and a place to go. And, most of all, she noticed the grief that rolled off him: no longer raw but still there, unaddressed, and those things hurt because they went against the very principles she stood for.

It pulled at her heart and it hurt. It sucked her in in a way she didn't want to be pulled in and yet she could sympathise with him. Having to accept things that went against them, went against their nature. And having to accept that their fates lay in the hands of others. All pearls of wisdom that had come after hundreds of years of arrogance and here was a child of eleven who already had a necklace of them. But there was something else missing, or else it was something that needed to be offset –

And then she looked over the others who'd caught her eye and she understood exactly what it was.

They were strange humans. Two halves that fit together perfectly into a whole.

And if she was right, then they were the key and the lock to their world.

.

There was a literal sun at his back. It was the darkness and the monotony and the lack of company, painting a landscape in his mind. He wondered how it would have been, growing up alongside his brother. Would Kouji be here if that had happened, holding his hand and chatting in his ear – or even being simply a strong and silent presence: something that kept him grounded while the whimsical world tugged him in all directions.

Then maybe he would have been the one who ran ahead and jumped in every puddle and wound up with swollen feet afterwards because the rainwater really was too cold, and his brother would be the sensible one grounded in reality… Though he didn't need that so much now, he supposed. It was all the more important to pay attention to the surroundings when there was no-one watching his back and there wasn't. There hadn't been.

How things could have been if they'd grown up together was really nothing more than alternate timeline that could never be. They'd long moved on since that divergent point. There was only now.

And yet… Where did he begin with the now?

It was at his back. The sun. Burning the back of his neck through his hair and burning through his shirt as well. Telling him not to turn around because it would be blinding and because if he turned back, then he wouldn't be going straight anymore and he'd be even more lost than before.

And yet, if he never turned around, he might wind up going the wrong way forever and never know. But it was the same either way, in a place where he couldn't measure time nor distance except with his own fatigue, and direction by the bright sun at his back that refused to give any more light but only heat, as though it were angry at his refusal to turn and look at it.

Of course he wouldn't. He was already drowning in other things and he didn't need to drown in its exhaustive yellow face at all. And so he walked on, not looking back and speeding up when the burning became unbearable –

But he couldn't outrun it: that oppressive feeling behind him that engulfed him: made him boil and sweat and burn and it stole all the air from him as well until he fell to his knees and wished it would just stop…

But it wouldn't stop. He knew that. Stray thoughts twirled as they were cut loose from their contextual stalks but they wouldn't stop except in unconsciousness and they'd come back. They always did. Even when they didn't move their bodies they moved their minds and even when one was locked in their own mind, they could think. It was the only thing they could do in those circumstances. The only thing that could do despite the body, instead of along with it. The only thing that set them free from their own powerlessness –

And yet it brought out their powerlessness as well. After all, he clung stubbornly to the idea of not looking back, knowing what he'd see. That dream or vision or fear: of his grandmother disappearing into the gloom and then it'd be his mother, then his father, then his brother and there'd be absolutely nothing he could say or do –

But he couldn't not look forever. He did want them, after all. The grandmother that would never come back and not just because of the bombshell she'd dropped for her demise. He wanted the time they'd spent together back as well. Their simple, uncomplicated lives but it had gotten complicated too quickly, and whether it had been living with a single mother, or a sick grandmother, or his personality that seemed to keep people at a distance from him (though that worked to his advantage with every class bully he'd ever come across), he didn't know. Maybe it was all of those things and more besides. Or maybe he simply became aware of those things as he lost his childhood naiveté.

School was a good place to be done with such naiveté.

But still, reality didn't stop him from thinking. Reality didn't stop him from wanting a father all those years, and then being bitter he wasn't there when he wanted him. Reality didn't stop him from wanting his grandmother to be alive, then remembering how badly she'd been and how very much she wanted the end of her suffering. Reality didn't stop him from remembering the first time he'd laid eyes on his brother (that he recalled) and how different they seemed from each other, and how there was a family portrait there with holes he didn't fit into, if there were holes at all. It didn't stop the possibilities, the doubts, the uncertainties, and the choice that he'd have to one day make and make stick, instead of hovering as he still did.

But now the sun was unbearable, truly unbearable, and he was curled on the ground and sobbing and there was still no relief to be found and he still had that paranoid notion that they – his family – would appear and then disappear into the sun one at a time and he'd lose them all, and lose the road he clung to as well.

But he'd tumbled and rolled and he looked up and it was there, and blinding.

And there was his grandmother, and then she was gone again.

And then his mother and he could only crawl to his knees and open his mouth and she was gone again too.

And then his father and he was reaching out and half to his feet and calling out a mishmesh of addresses because what did one even call a father they barely recalled? But then he was gone as well and it was Kouji and he was running after him, running towards the sun when he couldn't see anything else at all, snatching at the empty air and Kouji would invariably disappear as well and yet he was still running, and running away from all the progress he'd made.

One could be well aware of the dangling carrot analogy and yet reach for the carrot anyway.

And he reached. He snatched at the air and Kouji disappeared as well – but this time, there was someone still there. He could barely see, barely make it out and some part of him hoped it was Kouji, still there and just covered in shadow instead of something or nothing at all but it would be nothing. It had to be, like all these phantoms in his mind and his body would clue in eventually and he'd fall to his knees again –

Except the figure was reaching out a hand and his own searching hand grasped it firmly.

A real, solid, hand.

And just like that, he could blink and try to make out who stood in front of him as the blinding sun backdrop disappeared as though it had never been there at all.

And there was someone talking as well.

Company at last. And he sunk to his knees – or meant to, except he felt the straight back and fuzzy cushion of a train seat instead.

And when had he found a train? And who was Shinya?

'My little brother,' the other replied and he realised then he was speaking out loud. 'I'm Kanbara Takuya. And thanks for that. I thought I was going to fall.'

'Kimura Kouichi… and you're welcome?' Kouichi hedged, because now that he'd stopped running and was off his feet, he was rather confused. He hadn't stopped to think about the 'why' at all, of all the other things he'd thought about. 'Where are we?'

'Back on the train, I guess.' There was a soft flop beside him as the other sat down clumsily. 'I could've really done without that though. If I'd known this is the sort of game we'd be playing, I'd have just stayed at home.'

'Game?' Kouichi repeated. 'It's not a game.' He didn't know anything about a game, but something like that was a nightmare, not a game.

'A nightmare,' the other repeated softly. 'Maybe so. I could only drown in a nightmare and still be alive after it, I suppose. A game would rewind to a set point after all.'

Again with the game. What did that mean? And why were they on the train at all?

'You're not going to get anywhere sitting on your bottoms, you know.'

Kouichi blinked again. His vision was clearing, which meant he could make out the boy next to him: about his height and a hat on his head. But he couldn't see anyone else. Seats along the sides and with plenty of standing space in the middle but not many places for him to have missed someone – in this carriage anyway. But the voice was too clear, too close, to be someone calling from another one.

'Yo, I've got places to be.'

And he only put the implications of that statement together when he almost rolled off the edge of the platform. And maybe the only reason he hadn't was because he'd caught site of the edge first of all, and caught it – and then caught Takuya as the other boy grabbed at air and missed.

'We're making a habit of this,' Takuya said, sounding a little too unperturbed about the whole situation – but it nicely offset his own thoughts, spiralling off with no conclusions to be found. Or maybe that was his own expectations. "We're making a habit of this" was really more of a throwaway line than anything else, after all.

"I've got places to be", however, implied the train could talk.