pheasantboy | [ic] and it flew into the dark

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[ic] and it flew into the dark

Shibuya Station is probably the part of Tokyo Akechi knows the best. He goes through there several times a day. It's the main hub between Kichijoji and anywhere else he might want to go, after all—the studio in Akasaka, the shopping districts in Ginza and Shibuya itself, his high school in Nagata-cho, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Kasumigaseki. And Shido's office, which, of course, is also in Nagata-cho.

But he never used to visit for the sake of it. He's fairly sure of that.

It's as if something draws him down there. Something he can't look at too closely. Something that leads him to the steps, to stare down as if into an open maw. And then to take a step down. And another.

A keen observer—say, one with long familiarity with the dead—might be able to tell that this rather dazed-looking boy was dead, at one point. Or perhaps he wasn't. It's a little unclear.

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He does. He reaches up one hand, adjusts his collar with a small tug, and scratches unobtrusively with the tip of one fingernail. Again, those traceries around the hatchet wound light up hopefully, and fade.

But it's a little dull, waiting here for the train. Why didn't he bring a book? Maybe he can find someone to talk to? Someone who won't look at him like he's in remedial education? One of the nice cognitions, perhaps–?

And this is when he sees other-Akechi, behind him. His face falls. "Ah. Good afternoon."

Older? Weird clothes? Sorry, he's not paying attention to any of that. The sheer lack of curiosity is enough to pin him as wrong.

As though he needs the signal, at this point.

"Hello." It's plaster-face smile. He needs plaster-face smile right now to not just go what ate you. "I keep running into myself around here, but I don't believe you and I specifically have met."

He'll take those few steps over and tuck both his thumbs into his belt. No point reaching for his Player Pin now. Whatever's fucking up the Akechi in front of him is purely internal, and all the protection from external influences in the world won't do anything for that.

"No. You're, ah, clearly not one of the ones I've met. Your outfit is quite distinctive." He says it like he's talking about the weather, as if it couldn't possibly signify a deeper truth. And, in truth, there isn't much connection between his mouth and his higher reasoning; his thoughts so far seem superficial, with only the odd foray somewhere deeper.

"Have you been here long? I suppose you live in Kichijoji too? It seems quite populated with us." What a nice, mindless conversation. You can see where most of his brain went. Or perhaps that's unfair.

"I work in a different industry from the rest of you that I've met, and I have a bit more leeway to choose my own clothes." This is technically true. He's going to keep to the technical truths for the moment. "It took me a few years to figure out a different style."

Speaking of years, it's been more than a few of those since he did small talk that wasn't a veneer for hidden messages of some variety. Maybe it's a good thing that his other self here doesn't seem inclined to notice.

"I live in Shibuya, actually. The northern side, up near Harajuku."

"Oh, that's nice. I do like Harajuku. It's such a good place to be seen, and the places to eat are so interesting. I was there the other day, in fact, with one of the Akiras—we had snails...."

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Airheaded is a word you could easily use to describe his daytime TV persona, but nobody who knew him would ever have applied it to him in seriousness. It's as if he just... talks.

"What industry do you work in? I take it you aren't a detective too, with that fashion statement of yours." He seems as likely to be a successful detective as Anpanman is to feature hardcore pornography.

Edited 2023-09-23 01:18 (UTC)

"How to explain it... Have you heard of escape room games? It's somewhere between that and an augmented reality game, played across all of Shibuya."

He's remembering the Twisters that first week, when they didn't really believe that this was real, when they didn't yet understand the stakes. If he just talks about the Game itself, rather than the reasons why it's played, the other him will probably retain it. He doubts the meat of the reasons would be something his other self retains, and he has had enough of conversations that disappear meaninglessly when he's no longer having them with Players.

(He doesn't hate this conversation, actually. It's a fun puzzle, in some ways. If it was anyone but himself on the other end, he'd probably enjoy it.)

(But it is, unfortunately.)

"Escape rooms? Oh, yes, I remember wanting to go when I was younger. They looked like so much fun."

They'd been huge when he was in elementary school. A challenging situation that he could test himself against, with (indeed) puzzles to solve and opponents to outwit? Of course he'd have gone wild for it. But even when he earned money for himself as he began to do quite early on, he'd had no friends to go with—not that he remembers any of that. "Augmented reality, on the other hand, has been very fashionable this year. I played Dokemon Dash in the summer—" he really did, it was extremely trendy, and he'd wanted to be able to talk about it—"but I don't think I understood it very well.

"So you're a professional gamer, is that right? I always thought that must be so difficult, with the disrespect you get from others." And while he remembers that, he doesn't remember feeling it was their own fault for not getting a real job.

"More like I'm one of the game organizers. Inventing the puzzles, setting up challenges, making sure civilians don't wander off with scavenger hunt clues by accident, and so on."

There's not that many Players who disrespect the Reapers, anyway. Most of them are at least a little afraid, and the ones who aren't... Well, they've been around the block enough times to see the same problems that he was seeing, with the unwinnable, high-attrition Game.

"Occasionally I get to loom ominously and drop cryptic hints, which is always fun."

"You know, that does sound fun. Like someone in a mystery novel. Please show me the path that you choose for humanity, things like that." The line comes to mind unaided, with the tiniest shimmer of gold, divorced from its context and its small, golden-haired speaker.

"But if you design the games that others play, aren't you still a gamer? The same activity, but a different level of involvement? Or is that not how it works?"

"I believe the usual term is 'game designer.' That's what they use in the video game industry, at any rate." He shrugs lightly. "It's probably splitting hairs at that point. If that's how you want to think of it, I won't stop you."

His eyes light up, very slightly. (If the Akechi in front of him had any kind of extrasensory perception at all - if they were in the Metaverse, or the UG, or anywhere that wasn't the 'real world' - then he might also sense the invisible wings behind the older Akechi stretch, just a bit.)

"Though, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you, since it's not like you can take it back to the general public in my world - on the downlow, the Game is also a sort of training arena for psychic powers."

Let's see what happens here.

Absolutely nothing, is the answer. He just laughs that infuriating little laugh, as if other-Akechi had said he liked laser tag.

"You know, I want to tell you that can't be right. But then, one of the children here is a vampire, so I'm trying to row back on what I instinctively disbelieve." A train swishes through behind them; he gives it an uninterested stare.

"You're not reading my mind, I hope?"

"I don't have any reason to right now. Unless you think there's something I should be looking for?"

It's the smile-for-fans now, the one that suggests a wink without actually winking, the 'we're in on a secret together' smile. He hates how easily it all comes back, sometimes.

"Most of the powers we run into are pretty minor, actually. Prompting people to remember things they've forgotten, stuff like that. Except then our latest crop included a kid who could time travel - the sort where you just send your consciousness back in time - and that was a headache to figure out that that's what he could do, let me tell you."

He rambles on like it's nothing.

That's just fine; Akechi will ramble all day. He won't notice any superficiality, since it's almost all he has left. But his smile fades to something more aware at that mention of things forgotten; the gold that sparks through what's left of his mind remains inside the tapestry.

"You can remind people of things they've forgotten?"

"Myself personally? No, that's not my trick. Mine is making people blurt whatever is on their minds at the time, regardless of whether or not it's a thing they'd normally say or the appropriateness of the situation."

Eyebrows raised; you do have his interest, now.

"Why? Is there something you've forgotten recently?"

"I don't—" But he breaks off. How is he supposed to know? How many times can he explain that memory just works differently, where he's from; that it's normal?

"Everybody here says I have. They seem so sure. As if I should be like them, and it's a crime that I'm not."

"Well, put aside the opinions of others for a moment."

It's the sort of thing that's not easy, he's aware. Some of the casualness of his posture disappears.

"If there was something there, would you want to try? To remember it?"

He doesn't fade; just looks up—up, is that right?—at yet another other-him. All of them so similar, and him the outlier. The question feels weightier than the other times he's been asked it.

"... it depends. What I want is to go home. My friends are there, not here. I belong there." That wound through the core of his being, leaking futile hope into the ether. "Assuming I have forgotten, what would I do when I return? I wouldn't belong any more."

He does in fact have six or seven centimeters on the younger Akechi; even death can't prevent him from beanpole.

"Hmm. Well, to continue this hypothetical - would your friends reject you, if you didn't 'fit' anymore?"

"They wouldn't reject me. Not exactly. They'd just—leave me behind." It's one of the things he's retained, that speaks to the deepest parts of him—that connection between how he is now, and how Ren is at home.

"Not on purpose, of course"—he hastens to add this. "But there are people it's hard for us to see, for too long. We forget them. We try to help, but... they just aren't there.

"You can tell me it doesn't make sense. I do understand how it is for all of you." And there it is, understated but almost Akechi acerbic. The boy is in there somewhere after all.

"What about reaching out to those people, then?"

He doesn't comment on the fucked uped-ness of that statement. It goes in the box to process later. He's good at that.

(He can almost see how this could happen, if that box was just... gone.)

"People who 'aren't right' tend to band together, whatever their circumstances are. They find each other and build their own communities and ways of living - make groups that march close enough to the beat of the same drum that they can march together."

And that is the thing that makes him go—not for long, not dramatically, but there's a noticeable shimmer of his awareness, of silk and pearls, as that mention of outcasts finding each other is managed away to nothing.

He blinks, remembering part of the conversation but none of the trigger. Awkward—he's tried to talk around the issue, and made it worse. "To be honest with you, there's only one person I know who's like that. I'm not aware of anyone else, though it strains credulity if there aren't any others.

"We've been trying to help him. It's just..." He hesitates, testing the concept. "Someone else here suggested he views us the way all of you view me. As wrong. But I don't want to believe that."

Now that is some interesting data - and not the blanking out bit.

Just one person who sticks out? That's a cause, or a potential catalyst, or something to be worth noting. Someone who, perhaps, knows the truth.

"Just the one? You're right, it does strain credulity."

If the other him has said it, then saying it back to him isn't going to set anything off, right.

"But it could also be that something happened to this person in the past that makes it difficult for them to relate to others. If everyone around you is happy - it doesn't matter if it's 'real' or otherwise, that can be very isolating. Humans form bonds based on shared experience. If there's no one you can share that experience with..."

He trails off, half to see if it triggers something else, but if it doesn't - to see if the other him can fill in the gaps.

... and it does. It hits the same trigger, or as near as; the loneliness that ate him up like acid. Again, though, he resumes the conversation at an earlier point.

"I'm afraid I find that hard to believe too. But that's one of the things it hasn't paid to discuss. People have got quite irate about it, and I'd rather avoid that."

If other-Akechi is looking, he may see a hole where a text message should be, and Inaba-Akechi's attempts to explain that you just can't tell people their mother died because it was her time to die.

"That's the thing I would find hard to believe, I'm afraid. I'm far too used to seeing things that look happy and sweet to outsiders that are rotten on the inside."

Not saying that that must be what happened here, but not denying his own perspective either. He can see why the others find this exhausting, but he's not ready to abandon this yet.

"Well, but isn't it the other way around?" Something gleams in his eye, in the depths of his mind; something that can still be convinced to anchor to a problem. "In my case, my situation, my home, looks rotten to all of you. But I'm an insider.

"Whose word, apparently, counts for nothing." But his face falls. "The only problem being my friend, of course. I know he's not happy, like the rest of us. That's the problem."

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