Archive of Our Own

The kid is already crying when his mother marches him into the office.

“A-am I gonna die?” he hiccups, and an aghast look flickers across Houjou’s face before he hurries to wave away the thought.

“Of course not! But. It is important you get the surgery, okay?” He smiles coaxingly. “Think of it like… a really tough level in a game. In all of your friends’ games, the level is easy, but in yours for some reason it’s super, ultra difficult. But once you do beat it, you’ll be able to brag to everyone, and you’ll get to see a special bonus ending that no one else has. So it’s worth it to try as hard as you can. Right?”

Kaito ‘tch’s. What a stupid analogy. And yet a moment later the kid is nodding, rubbing the tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand, his expression turning serious and thoughtful.

“I guess so,” he murmurs. “I’ll… be able to brag about it?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Houjou assures him with a grin. “You’ll have a really cool scar and everything. Like an action hero.”

Tentatively, the boy smiles back.

He agrees to the surgery, in the end. Kaito watches Houjou make a pinky promise with him, swearing that he’ll be standing just outside the operating room through the entire ordeal. Watching over him, unseen and unheard, like a guardian angel.

“As if you have the time for that,” Kaito scoffs. “Haven’t you done enough? He should get by on his own strength from here.”

As usual, his words go unnoticed. (They’re hollow, anyhow. Performative despite the lack of an audience. He knows this better than anyone.)

Houjou is still smiling as the boy and his mother leave his office. He hums a cheery, off-key song from one of his games; turns back to the files on his computer screen, and Kaito stares at the nape of his neck, at the way his hair is getting longer and beginning to flip up slightly at the ends. 

He’s not sure why he’s noticing that.

He’s lifting a hand before he can even really consider it, reaching out towards Houjou, but he stops himself just in time, fingertips hovering barely a centimeter from his skin. 

Houjou seems to go still, in this moment. Sits up a little straighter in his seat. He turns slowly to look behind him, frowning, and Kaito yanks his hand back as if scorched.

Houjou blinks. He’s looking squarely in Kaito’s direction, but past him. Through him. As if he were a pane of glass, and in the end he shakes his head, perplexed, and returns to his work.

Kaito wonders if it’s possible for the dead to feel tired. 

Maybe he’s the very first.

“So,” Minato says, leaning against the doorframe of the room across the hall and giving him a wry look. “What happened to accepting your death?”

Kaito keeps his expression carefully blank as he says: “You’re still here, too, aren’t you?”

She examines her nails – pointless, as nothing about their appearances ever seems to change, but old habits die hard. “Touché, I suppose. But you know me, Kaito. I can’t just up and leave when something interesting might still be happening.”

“So you’re rubbernecking, then.”

“You could put it that way. I have to know what your end goal is here. Hang around long enough being pathetic and maybe he’ll start to be able to see you? Is that it?”

Kaito scowls. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and Minato arches an eyebrow.

“Sorry, was that too oblique? I should say ‘pining like a teenager’ instead, maybe.”

“That is not what I’m doing.”

She sighs. “You know I’m not really mocking you, right? It’s honestly… kind of nice, seeing you like this. Acting like a normal person. He could be good for you. And he seemed to like you, too.” A pause. “Too bad you had to meet him after you were already dead.”

Kaito can feel his lips press into a thin line as he stares down the hall, to where Houjou is talking with a nurse, attempting to politely extricate himself from the conversation while precariously balancing a towering stack of three-ring binders in his arms. The woman chatters away, seeming not to notice his situation.

“Are you regretting it?” Minato asks. “Not taking that weird freak up on his offer? He kept calling himself a god. Maybe he really could’ve done it. Brought us back.”

“There’s no way he could have. He wasn’t a real god.”

Minato hums in assent. “You know someone who is, though.”

Kaito makes a sharp, disbelieving sound. “What? You think he’d just snap his fingers and resurrect me? We were enemies, in the end.”

“He never struck me as the grudge-holding type.”

Houjou has managed to escape his conversation with the nurse, struggling down the hall with his stack of binders, eyes barely visible over the top of the pile. Kaito can see the inevitability of him tripping over his own feet long before it happens – and it happens right as he’s passing by, the convenience of which is of course the only reason Kaito reaches out to grab him by the collar and yank him back into balance. Minato, on some whim, tips what he’s carrying back into his arms at the exact same moment.

Houjou stands there looking frazzled and perplexed, his entire body tensed. Braced for a fall that somehow hadn’t happened.

“Huh,” he says. 

He glances to his left and right. Checks behind him, and finds no one.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Weird.”

He shakes himself, and continues down the hall, and Kaito stares after him, curling and uncurling his fingers. He still hasn’t quite worked out the rules for interacting with the world of the living. It seems to only happen when he reacts on pure, base-level instinct. Carefully planned intent no longer matters. 

There’s probably some kind of irony in that.

“Kazuraba has no reason to help me,” he says stiffly. “I made my own bed. Now I have to lie in it. That’s how these things work, Minato.”

She shrugs a shoulder. “You’re different now, aren’t you? ‘Learned your lesson’ and all that. The world could always use more heroes. At least… That’s probably what he would say.” She nods in the direction of Houjou, a smile playing on her lips before she turns into the doorway and is gone.

He feels it, when Kazuraba arrives on Earth. Like a heavy stone being dropped into a calm pool of water. The two of them were always connected, in a way. Fated. Still, this awareness isn’t something he’s ever experienced before. He wonders if it’s a two-way affair, and almost laughs at the thought. As if a god would even notice the presence of a ghost.

Kazuraba does look surprised to see him, when he drops by the hospital to check on things in the aftermath of the latest closely-averted disaster. (Something to do with parallel realities – giant hands reaching into the sky to lock two worlds together. Kaito is finding it harder and harder to keep up with goings-on of the living. Bits and pieces seem to slide past him, fuzzy and unclear, as if it were a movie on fast-forward.)

Kazuraba stops mid-step, eyes wide and owlish as he stares, at odds with the glint of unearthly light behind them. His outfit is utterly unremarkable – a perfect recreation of something he used to wear to dance meets. Nurses and other hospital staff mill around them in this busy hallway, but the noise and activity seem suddenly muted. Moved into the background, just out of focus.

“When I went to the tree and you weren’t there, I thought…” He trails off. “But you’re here, huh? D’you know someone here?” His expression brightens. “Is it Ex-aid?”

Kaito crosses his arms with a ‘hmph.’ “That’s none of your business, Kazuraba.”

To his credit, Kazuraba simply laughs. “Oh, c’mon. You gotta tell me how you met him or I’ll be wondering forever.”

Kaito makes a noise of annoyance that doesn’t sound quite genuine, even to his own ears. “The whole story’s too complicated to explain to a fool like you. We got revived, though. Me and Minato. Temporarily, obviously. We were brought back to be part of a… team.” He glances away, fidgeting with the sleeve of his jacket. “Ex-aid was there as well.”

Kazuraba nods slowly. “That does sound kinda complicated. So you’re friends, then? You and him?”

“I doubt he – ” Kaito starts, before closing his mouth with a snap. He clears his throat. “We’re… acquaintances.”

Kazuraba gives him an unreadable look. “Hanging around just for an acquaintance?” He doesn’t let him answer as he raises an eyebrow and continues: “Does he have some kind of… special ghost-o vision? Can he see you?”

Kaito’s fingers dig a bit harder into his arm. He can feel himself scowl. “Don’t you have a planet to be getting back to?” he mutters.

Kazuraba laughs again – a bright, clear sort of sound that seems to resonate more deeply than a laugh rightly should, like the toll of a great bell. “You know that’s not – ah! Houjou Emu!”

Houjou is exiting the patient’s room across the hall, and he almost jumps at hearing his name shouted, hesitating before wandering over with a rather bewildered expression.

“Um, yes? Can I help you? Are you the family of a patient, or…?”

“Nah, I’m just a big fan of your work,” Kazuraba says, giving him a conspiratorial thumbs up.

“My… work?”

Kazuraba shoots him one of those blinding smiles that makes it easy to forget whatever it is you were just thinking about. “Seems like everything’s back to business as usual now, so I won’t take up too much of your time. But,” and here he steps closer and lowers his voice, “I’m just kinda wondering. Do you believe in ghosts, by any chance?”

Houjou blinks. “I. I guess so. I’ve… seen a lot weirder, honestly.” A look of nervous suspicion flickers across his face. “You’re not about to tell me this hospital is haunted, are you?”

“Well, not the hospital, exactly. More like. You, specifically. I have a sense for these things.”

“Oi,” Kaito protests.

“I’m detecting a presence around you,” Kazuraba continues, looking a bit like he’s trying to bite back a laugh. “Not like an evil presence or anything! Actually, I think it’s someone who likes you a lot.”

“Would you give it a rest,” Kaito says flatly.

Houjou’s brow furrows, thoughtful, only for his eyes to light up a moment later.

“Kaito-san?” he says, voice bright and full of hope, and Kaito’s head snaps up to stare at him.

Kazuraba’s lips twitch. “Well I can’t be sure,” he says with mock-solemnity. “But I’m getting the idea that might be their name, yeah.”

“Really,” Houjou murmurs. He smiles, then, so soft and pleased that Kaito feels as if he were inhabiting his body again, as if something in his chest had just twisted itself into a knot. “So he didn’t move on after all…”

“You know,” Kazuraba says. “I’ve always thought that certain ghosts can come back to life, in a way. If someone thinks about them enough. And treats them like they’re still living. They can get something like a second chance.” He grins, giving Kaito a sidelong glance. “Or maybe that’s just me being sentimental. 

“I’ll see you around, Houjou Emu,” he adds, taking a step back, lifting a hand in a wave. “Good luck with everything.”

The both of them watch Kazuraba’s retreating figure as he walks away, and if Houjou notices the way the lights seem to grow brighter as he passes beneath them, he doesn’t acknowledge it outwardly. He simply looks pensive. As if his thoughts were somewhere distant.

“So you’re here, then? Kaito-san.”

Kaito huffs out a sharp laugh. “It’s not like you can hear me even if I answer.”

Houjou turns, and – 

He looks straight at him. Not through, but at. Their eyes meet. It lasts too long to be coincidence, he thinks, as Houjou tilts his head to the side, puppy-like, seemingly trying to locate the source of an inexplicable sound.

“Houjou-sensei,” someone calls from down the hall, and the moment ends just like that, Houjou turning away to answer them, leaving Kaito standing there with a tightness in his throat, a physicality to his own existence that he hasn’t felt in quite some time.

He doesn’t mean to follow him home that night. It just… happens. It’s as if he’s anchored to him in some unspecified way, feeling compelled to be within a certain distance.

Houjou’s apartment is a disaster zone. Unpacked boxes from when he moved in still sit against the wall. Medical textbooks and faded old video game magazines are piled precariously on every surface, most of them with important-looking documents and bills sticking out from in between the pages. Dishes are stacked haphazard in the sink, and the white of the fridge is almost hidden beneath a layer of scribbled post-it note reminders for things that need doing. The home of a person whose mind is always preoccupied with something else.

“You ought to clean this place,” he remarks.

Houjou makes a weary noise of assent from where he’s face-down on the sofa.

Kaito whips around to stare in his direction.

“Did you just answer me?” he asks, feeling something almost akin to his heart pounding, but receives no such reply this time. He slowly leans over the back of the sofa to discover that Houjou has, in the span of twenty seconds, near-instantly fallen asleep. Kaito sighs, that phantom sensation of his racing pulse receding. It’s not as if he can blame the man, he supposes, with the hours he works every day. To be utterly exhausted is only natural. It’s a little unfortunate that he lives alone like this, with no one to help him with the tasks that just keep piling up. 

Kaito frowns at the nearest messy stack. Reaches out a hand towards it. If he could just. Grab that dogeared paperback on top.

To his surprise, after a minute of unwieldy attempts he finds himself holding it, its weight almost but not quite tangible between his fingers.

Well that’s a first. The first time he’s been able to touch something in the physical world while genuinely meaning to. He turns it over in his hands, narrowing his eyes, trying to ascertain what might be different about this object in particular, about this moment in time. He’s certain if Minato were here she’d have some snarky theory on the matter, but in her absence he chooses to simply not think about it instead, rolling up his sleeves and setting to work with singular purpose.

By the time Houjou starts to rouse himself blearily off the couch, Kaito has organized every stray bit of clutter in his living room. His books have put on shelves where possible, his magazines ordered by date and stacked in boxes, his unopened mail and bills sorted by importance and placed where he’s guaranteed not to miss them. Kaito presides over his work with a self-satisfied nod. Now this is the organizational strength of someone who hasn’t been able to organize anything in a long time.

“What the fuck,” Houjou whispers.

He’s staring around the room like a man who doesn’t recognize his surroundings, eyes sliding warily from one neatly arranged surface to the next. There’s a faint red imprint on his cheek from where the corner of the couch cushion dug into his face, one side of his hair smooshed against his head.

“…Poppy? Parad?” he calls. “Are you guys here?”

“It was me,” Kaito says impatiently. As if either of those two would have the sense to be so practical.

“Okay,” Houjou murmurs. “Okay, no big deal. Somebody’s just… pranking me?” He reaches out hesitantly to flip through the pile of mail in front of him, the perplexed furrow of his brow becoming more pronounced. “By. Sorting my stuff?”

Kaito snorts. “What kind of friends do you have that that would be a possibility,” he mutters. He plops himself down on the couch next to Houjou, crossing his arms in annoyance as he glares out the window.

“Obviously I don’t actually believe that, alright? Just… rather not think that a stranger broke in and did this.”

“And I already told you it was me! You’re just not listening.”

“I am listening, I – ”

He stops. In the resulting silence, Kaito ponders on the words that were just spoken, reversing and replaying them in his mind before turning to stare at Houjou, who is looking, if possible, even more baffled than before, his eyes huge and dark as they scan the room.

“What that guy said earlier,” he says slowly. “About… being haunted. Was that real?”

There it is again: that jittery, wound-tight feeling in his chest, like his heart is about to beat out of it, but that shouldn’t be possible, should it?

“Don’t – don’t listen to him too much,” he manages to say, voice not quite terse enough to hide its uncertainty. “He thinks he knows everything just because he’s a god now. This isn’t a… I’m not haunting you, okay? I’m just here. I’m just…”

Just what? What is he doing here? Intruding upon the life and privacy of someone he barely knows?

But he can’t forget, is the thing. He can feel himself clinging on to the foggy memories of that game world without meaning to, digging his fingers in and refusing to let go. It had been this absolute shock to the system. Having someone smile at him and say his name like that. As if he wanted to be friends. As if he liked him. So being alive can feel like this, he’d thought, and it had been this dawning revelation. Being alive can be simply good, rather than an endless war of attrition against the entire world.

He wasted his life, didn’t he? That’s the conclusion he’s been trying to avoid all this time, but it’s impossible to do so any longer, the wave finally come crashing in over his head. He had chances to be happy while he was alive, people who cared about him despite everything, but he let them all fall to the wayside. And it’s not until that virtual world, Houjou beaming, saying “let’s get along, Kaito-san,” that it hit him – 

Everything he could have had in life, but didn’t. The hollow meaninglessness of his brief twenty-two years of existence. And there’s no one to blame but himself.

How can he move on, when all he wants is to try again?

Houjou doesn’t seem to have picked up on his last reply. He pushes himself to his feet and proceeds to peer into the dark corners of the room, as if he might find someone lurking there. “Well if someone’s here,” he says tentatively. “Kaito-san or… or anyone else. Thanks, I guess? For cleaning up the place. Um.” He pauses; drags a hand through his already messy hair and shakes his head. “Yeah, this is weird. Too weird, sorry. I can’t be talking to ghosts right now.”

He’s muttering something about ‘like Bugsters aren’t enough to deal with already’ as he makes his way into the kitchen to scrounge up some food, opening the cabinets and cursing as something falls out of them with a clatter.

Kaito stares after him, a tight feeling in his throat. The kitchen next, he decides. It’s a disaster in there, too.

Houjou is in a noticeably better mood the next morning, having acquired a shower and a few more hours of sleep (in a proper bed, this time). Rather than begrudging acceptance, it’s more a kind of awe on his face as he stands there in his kitchen glancing all around. He reaches out to touch one of the countertops, now devoid of the pile of dishes, recyclable packaging, plastic bottles, and strange odds and ends that had been littering it.

“Haven’t seen the actual countertop in months,” he murmurs. He smiles a bemused sort of a smile, looking over his shoulder in what happens to be Kaito’s general direction. “This is… really nice, but. Just kind of hard to wrap my head around, y’know? You didn’t really strike me as the housework type.”

“I’m not,” Kaito says shortly. “But clearly you need someone’s assistance.”

Houjou’s expression turns awkward in the apparent silence. “You are Kaito-san, right? That guy didn’t say for sure, so… Um. Okay, how about. Open that drawer and close it again if you are.”

Kaito grits his teeth and grumbles a noise of aggravation, but does as instructed all the same.

Houjou’s answering smile, lopsided and amazed, makes him forget any annoyance.

“That’s incredible,” he laughs. “I mean, having a ghost here at all would be wild, but you especially, Kaito-san. I really thought you… were gone for good…”

The grin falters.

“But it’s… kind of sad, isn’t it? Not being able to talk to you when you’re right there.”

“You get used to it,” Kaito mutters.

Houjou seems to weigh his options before nodding to himself. “Well. I’m gonna tell you about the day I had yesterday anyway. And if you want me to shut up, just. Make a noise or something. Rattle a chair.”

He launches into aggravated complaints about one of his coworkers in pediatrics who “should seriously reconsider specializing in children’s medicine if he’s no good with kids,” and Kaito thinks that, in another time and place, he never would’ve bothered to listen to this. What strength is there in mundanity?

Here and now, though. Being talked to, being trusted with such inconsequential little details, as if it were the most normal and familiar thing, it’s – 

It might as well be his whole world. 

Emu talks. About everything – work, the Bugsters, the larger-than-life stories Kiriya tells him, new movies he wants to see but knows he probably never will, his father who’s been calling again lately, more and more frequently, asking for money and forgiveness. 

Kaito listens. Some days he talks back, and each time he does it seems as if maybe, somehow, more of what he’s trying to say is coming across. Like a spotty phone connection gradually regaining a signal. Emu seems to hear him more often. Not literally, but more like an implicit sensory understanding, nodding or laughing in response to his dry comments, only to look surprised after, not quite sure of what it is he’s reacting to. Some days he will stop short when he enters a room that Kaito is in, as if, just for a split second, out of the corner of his eye he’d seen someone there.

He’s getting better at keeping track of time, through the routines of Emu’s schedules, and so he knows: Weeks pass like this.

Until one evening, Emu with his back to him as he waits for his water to boil, explaining at great length the “lore” of a game series he loved as a child, he turns, and.

Freezes. Stares directly at him with his eyes like round dark coins.

“…Kaito-san?” he says slowly.

Kaito regards him suspiciously. “What?”

“I can – I can see you? And actually… hear you?”

There is a long stretch of silence.

“What,” he repeats, less of a question and more of a statement this time, something thudding in his ears that’s almost like a pulse.

Emu’s grin is giddy, astounded, and he’s crossed the kitchen in an instant, reaching out across the table for his hand – 

And it passes right through.

“Ah.” His smile falters, and something seems to falter within Kaito as well, a bated breath being let out. “I guess that was too much to expect. But.” His eyes meet his, and he laughs in abject astonishment. “This is crazy. You’re really… right here.”

“Of course I am,” Kaito says shortly, but he can’t quite disguise the waver in his voice. 

“I wonder why, though, all of a sudden.” Emu sinks into the seat across the table, tilting his head as he studies him. “Did something happen? In the… ghost world?”

“Ghost world,” he echoes.

Emu leans in closer, conspiratorial. “Is there one of those?”

“If there is, I haven’t seen it.”

He nods slowly. “That makes sense. If you had, you probably would’ve crossed over to it, right? You wouldn’t have been able to come back.” A pause. “But then. I still don’t know why I can see you now.”

He remembers it, suddenly. Kazuraba’s voice, with that uncanny, crystalline brightness to it. You know, I’ve always thought that certain ghosts can come back to life, in a way. If someone thinks about them enough. And treats them like they’re still living.

Kaito laughs, a moment later – a sharp, disbelieving sound.

“Annoying bastard,” he murmurs, and when Emu frowns at him, he adds: “Not you. You… It was probably just. Because you talked to me. So. Thanks.”

“Really? It’s that easy, then, to bring people back to life?” Emu’s tone is a bit sardonic. “I’ll have to let the game disease research team know about this.” He goes quiet, then; expression softening, looking at him steadily. “This is nice, but. I do kinda wish I could give you a hug or something. Doesn’t feel like a real reunion if I can’t.”

Kaito clears his throat, feeling strangely warm. “I don’t want a hug,” he mutters.

Is that a lie? He’s not sure. It’s been too many years. No matter how he tries, he can no longer remember what a hug feels like, beyond the abstract concept of it.

Emu laughs. His eyes look tired. “Maybe you don’t, but I do. It’s been kind of a rough week, in case you hadn’t picked up on that while I’ve been rambling to you.”

Get one of your friends to hug you, he almost says, but he finds he doesn’t like the thought of saying it. That a pang of something unnamable prevents him from doing so.

“You should cut him out of your life, you know,” he says instead. “Your father. He’s been taking advantage of your kindness for too long. It’s better to forget about weak men like that.”

Emu considers this. 

“Yeah, probably,” he says finally. “But even if I tried, I don’t know… if I could. Even if he sucks, how do you just forget about your dad?”

You don’t, is the answer. You never do. But instead of saying it, Kaito changes topics again, telling him to hurry up and have dinner already, that he’ll blow away in a strong gust of wind if he gets any thinner, and the small, wearily fond smile he receives in return seems to imprint itself in the back of his mind, lingering there as an afterimage as Emu gets up from his chair to do as instructed.

“Hey. What do you think is a ghost is?”

From where he’s lounging on the sofa, Kujou Kiriya gradually lowers the red-and-blue video game system he’s holding. Emu, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, continues pressing buttons on his own game without pause. They play something called “Monster Hunter” cooperatively with each other on the rare occasion that they both have enough free time for it. Kaito has gleaned that this can be done from a distance, but they prefer it like this, it seems – both in the same room, Kujou saying ‘nice work, meijin’ and ruffling his hair when they accomplish something.

“A ghost,” Kujou says blankly.

“Yeah. Do you think a ghost is… data, maybe? Like could you call it that? Data of a person’s life that’s left behind?”

“You might have to back up here for a sec.” He leans over to peer down at him, his expression slightly concerned. “You tellin’ me you got a ghost problem?”

Emu chews on his lip for a moment before replying: “Wouldn’t really call it a problem. Not for me, at least.”

“Right,” Kujou says slowly. “Okay. What kind of ghost is this, exactly?”

“He’s from – well. You know that thing I told you about before? That happened while you were… gone. The game world thing. I know you say you don’t remember it, so this is kind of. Hard to explain, I guess.”

Kaito ‘hmphs.’ He’s occupying the chair across the room, arms folded, fingers tapping against the crook of his elbow. “He’s just going to look at you like you’re crazy, you know.”

“Shush,” Emu tells him sternly. “Kiriya always believes in me.”

Kujou’s eyes are sliding back and forth from Emu to the apparently empty space he seems to be addressing. “Uhh,” he says. “Sure, yeah, I’ll keep on doing that. ‘Cause the alternative of there not being a ghost is seeming a lot worse, suddenly. This guy is… right there, you’re saying?” He points in Kaito’s vague direction. “How long has he been there?”

“Like, how long has he been sitting there today, or…?”

Kujou lifts a hand to stop him. “Okay, you know what, I don’t even want to know the details, I don’t think. Let’s just get back to your original question. You askin’ me this because… you want to bring him back to life? As a Bugster?”

Kaito’s finger pauses in its tapping. He glances over sharply, eyes gone wide.

Emu looks pensive as he lets his head fall back against the couch cushion behind him. “I mean. If someone can ‘die’ from the game disease and be turned into data… Is that so different from being a ghost? Either way, it’s a perfect impression of them that’s left over. A ghost is probably just a cluster of electric impulses also, if you really think about it. Couldn’t one become a Bugster, just like you did?”

Kujou sits up slowly; runs a hand through his hair with an incredulous laugh. “Emu… I think this is all kinda beyond me. I get why you’re asking me, but. You think I have any real clue how I came back? As a Bugster or as a human? I’m just a coroner, man. I know about death. Or. I used to. Nowadays I don’t even know what to think about that.”

“Yeah,” Emu murmurs. “Sorry. I’m just grasping at straws here, I guess.”

Silence stretches for a long moment.

“There is… one person who’d know for sure if this was possible,” Kujou says.

Emu makes a pained face. “I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

“What? Who’re you talking about?” Kaito demands.

Emu levels him with a tired, sympathetic look. “I guess you managed to avoid him while you were hanging around at the hospital, huh? It’s probably better if we just go to meet him, honestly. You’re not going to like it, I’ll say that much.”

Kaito can feel his frown deepen.

The man preens visibly, kicking up an annoyingly long leg before crossing them at the knee. “Oh? Come to request my godly assistance, have you?”

“This guy?” Kaito says, from where he’s standing next to him, a finger pointed, accusatory, at his smug face. “This fucking guy?”

Emu gives him a small, weary nod.

He’s struck, suddenly, by the bitter irony of all this. There’s no way he could’ve, his own voice echoes in the back of his mind. He wasn’t a real god – 

Clearly the lines between real and fake have been blurring since he died.

Dan Kuroto, for his part, seems pointedly indifferent to the story being told to him – until Emu begins speculating on the concept of a real, actual ghost in the machine. At that, he perks up, an eerie gleam in his eyes that Kaito can’t say he likes the look of. Reminds him of someone he no longer cares to remember.

“You’re right that a ‘ghost’ isn’t too different from my dear game disease carriers in stasis,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else, tapping something furiously into his laptop. “And in fact, the energy signature I’m picking up right now from him is a very similar wavelength… Oh.” He stops, then, leaning back and giving Emu a sly look. “But you know, I remember that man. Kamen Rider Baron. I think I already offered to bring him back to life, didn’t I? And he refused me rather rudely.”

Emu narrows his eyes. “And?”

He shrugs a shoulder, nonchalant. “I’m just saying. That having to help such a person for nothing in return seems a bit unfair to me, doesn’t it? Maybe we could work out some kind of transaction – ”

“Here’s a transaction for you,” Kujou growls, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and shoving an odd device in his face. “You do this and I don’t lock you up in your little jail cell for the rest of the year.”

Dan glowers at him, mutinous. “Always the same with you,” he mutters. “No creativity to the threats.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ I hear?” Kujou asks.

Dan looks away, attempting an air of aloof disinterest that he doesn’t quite manage to pull off. “Well,” he says finally. “I am curious about the logistics. And let’s be real. Only my genius could make this happen, in the end. Now shoo, shoo.” He waves a dismissive hand at them. “I’ve got ideas circulating.”

“Sorry,” Emu says later, as he walks back to his apartment, stopping under the spotlight glow of a streetlamp to glance back at Kaito. “I guess I didn’t even… really ask you, did it? If you wouldn’t mind being a Bugster.”

At this point, I’d take anything, is what he would say if he were a more honest person. He’d say it desperately, pleadingly. Any kind of tangible existence you can give me, I will accept.

“I don’t think I have a problem with it,” is what he says instead. “Though it might help to know what the hell a Bugster even is.”

“You know, that’s a real good question,” Emu mutters, and turns away again to continue his trek back home. “Maybe we can try and figure that one out together.”

Spending so much time at the hospital again, haunting the CR breakroom while Dan Kuroto attempts to calculate the exact electrical readings of his ghostly presence, feels strange after having taken up residence in Emu’s apartment. Sometimes Emu will even suggest that he stay the night, if Dan is on a bender, fingers flying across the keys, the device he’s built to detect Kaito whirring and beeping with a fervor. On those nights he finds himself missing it – the apartment. Maybe it was inevitable after having cleaned so much of it, but it had begun to feel like… a place to belong.

He’s come to understand, mostly through the man’s apparent total disregard for sleep, that Dan is also one of these things. A Bugster. Kaito’s questions on the topic (communicated through Emu) have, predictably, not resulted in very enlightening answers.

“It’s quite simple, you know. Enough that even a plebeian could understand. A Bugster is a cluster of three billion lines of cognitively-aware malware coding compressed enough to create a semiphysical form, constantly connected to the wireless worldwide grid, which allows for immediate dispersal into it at will and the reappearance at another point…”

That’s around the point he’d stopped listening.

Poppy and Parad, who materialize into the premises from time to time, have been Bugsters from the moment they were born, Emu tells him. He doubts they’d have much helpful insight on what it is to be one – no more than a human could describe what it feels like to be human.

Which leaves only one person.

“Wish we weren’t at work,” Kujou mutters, looking at Emu tiredly over the rim of his coffee mug. “You could at least buy me a drink if you want me to talk about this.”

“Sorry.” He claps his hands together, contrite. “I’ll make it up to you next time we’re out, okay?”

He doesn’t seem capable of declining requests from Emu, Kaito has noticed.

“It’s like…” Kujou taps a finger against his mug thoughtfully. “Instead of blood and meat, suddenly you’re made out of static.”

Both Emu and Kaito blink at him, blank-faced.

“…Static?”

He nods. “You forget about it, sometimes, until you interact with the actual physical world, like you hold something in your hand, and. It feels fuzzy. Not muted or anything, but. Just this steady buzzing sensation under your skin. Like all the particles in your body are constantly being sent along 500 electrical wires and then back again. You never totally manage to stay still, even when you try to – there’s always something moving you.”

“Wow,” Emu murmurs. He turns to give Kaito a wide-eyed, searching look. “Does that sound… tolerable?”

Kaito pretends to think on it for a moment. Emu will scold him if it seems like he’s jumping into this without considering the ramifications.

“Well I already turned myself into one kind of monster while I was alive,” he says, off-handed. “This can’t be much stranger.”

Of course, Emu doesn’t just let that slide.

“Wait,” he says later, pausing in the middle of the messy stack of paperwork he’s dragged into the CR during his so-called lunchbreak, tucking his pen behind his ear and narrowing his eyes at him. “What did you mean about turning yourself into a monster? Was that like a metaphor or…?”

“Literal,” Kaito says simply.

“…Oh. Okay. Alright. That’s…” He seems to be having an intellectual debate with himself before leaning in across the table. “Did you look cool?”

“That’s the main thing you want to know?”

“Well. I’m sure it was probably complicated at the time, but… It’s all done and past now, right?” His expression is all innocence. “Might as well ask the most obvious question first.”

Kaito rolls his eyes. “I looked like the Demon King from Majou Densetsu 4,” he says drily. It’s possible he’s been reading a few too many of those old game magazines scattered around Emu’s apartment. But it’s not as if there’s much else to do when you’re dead and don’t sleep.

Immediately, Emu sits up straighter in his seat. “Eh? You… Really?” He looks a bit awed, and then thoughtful, and then, oddly, a bit pink in the cheeks. “The Demon King is so sexy, though… I had a huge crush on him when the game came out.”

Kaito whips his head back around to stare at him. “Wh – on a video game character? He’s not even human.”

Emu sighs at this. Exasperated and overly dramatized. “You normies just never get it,” he says, mock solemn, and hides a good-natured laugh behind his hand, still smiling as he returns to his paperwork, Kaito left sitting there with a strange, fluttery feeling where the pit of his stomach used to be.

Construction on “the corporealization machine,” as Dan refers to it, begins in full force – a treatment table not unlike those used for CAT scans, but with just enough strange about its design to make you look twice. A hired crew of engineers are soon bustling back and forth and piecing the thing together on the CR floor at all hours of the day. Kaito watches them from the observation window, a growing trepidation sinking its claws into him.

“Oh, that’s coming along pretty well already, huh?” Emu, yawning as he finishes his early morning rounds, steps up next to him. He puts a hand lightly on the glass as he peers down. “Something that big will probably take another week or two, though. You don’t need to hang around here anymore I don’t think, since all the specs are compl – ”

“Houjou,” Kaito says. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

Emu tilts his head at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the… the campaigning on my behalf. Dan Kuroto is easy enough to figure out. He just wants to see if this will work, but you. Why did you bother?”

Emu seems to muse on this before smiling sweetly. “I mean, we’re both Goriders, right? Call it team solidarity.”

“That’s not a real reason.”

“Hm. Just Kamen Rider solidarity, then?”

“Be serious,” Kaito snaps, something hot and bitter curling through the place where his ribs used to be. “All this work to bring me back from the dead? Do you even know me? Do you know anything at all?”

Emu stares back at him with wide, startled eyes.

“What do you think I’ll do with my life if you give it back? Do you think I’m some selfless hero like you are? Do you think I fought for peace and justice when I was alive? Because I didn’t. I never did. I fought for – for absolutely nothing! For the stupid ideas of an angry little boy who never grew up!”

He doesn’t need to breathe, or have the lungs for it, but somehow he still finds his breath coming quick and hard in the following silence. 

“Well,” Emu says slowly, “clearly you’ve changed enough to gain some self-awareness. So that’s something.”

It’s odd, the way his anger just disperses at those words – gone in a puff of smoke, leaving him feeling hollow and worn out. He thinks he’d very much like to sleep for a while, if he had the ability to do so.

“I think… there must be some meaning behind it,” Emu continues. “For everything to happen like it has. Me meeting you, and then meeting you again in this world… How could I just ignore you after all that? Even if I didn’t like you as a person, as a doctor I wouldn’t feel right, y’know? If there was something I could do for someone in front of me and I didn’t do it.”

Kaito’s chest feels tight.

“You’re too naïve,” he says. “You’re too – ”

Too good.

“Yeah, maybe,” Emu laughs. “But I think I’d rather be like that than the other way around.”

With the machine inching towards completion, he decides that it’s time to go find her. Home seems like the most obvious place to check. (Though he doesn’t actually know, does he? If Zawame is her home. He certainly never thought to ask when they were alive.)

Stepping out for a bit, he writes on a memo pad on the break room table. Will return soon. – Kaito

He reaches out for the energy of the tree, which at all times he can subtly feel like a homing beacon, and pulls himself toward it.

When he opens his eyes, he’s standing at the foot of it. It seems to have grown larger, since the last time he was here – its canopy of branches and leaves stretching out further over the shrine buildings and grounds, leaving a complex latticework of sun shadows on the earth.

He wonders what will happen to it if he comes back to life. Will their connection be severed? Will it be in danger? But he shakes his head as soon as he thinks it. It’s far older than he is; been through more than he can even comprehend. It doesn’t really need him.

He leaves the shrine behind, heading into the city proper, a strange, jarring mix of scenery that hasn’t changed at all and scenery that is entirely unfamiliar. Some streets are like looking at a photograph of a memory. Others seem to have had every piece reformed and rearranged. 

The faint tug of Minato’s presence brings him downtown, through twisting, claustrophobic back alleys until he arrives at a building with a set of stairs leading down to the sublevel, the flickering sign in front of him reading “Bar Nova.” It’s dim inside, most of the décor varying dark shades of purple, and he thinks the smoke smell would be overpowering if he were alive. Minato and a middle-aged salaryman are the only two patrons – she sits a few barstools down from him, nursing a glass of something that she can’t partake in, but every few moments she’ll move it very slightly across the counter. The man keeps glancing over warily at the drink seemingly inching along by itself.

“Is this what you’ve been doing this whole time?” Kaito says. “Messing with people?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” She turns to smile at him, resting her chin on her hand. “Nice to see you, too, by the way. Did you miss me?”

“Keep dreaming.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. How’s your star-crossed romance going, loverboy?”

He glowers at her. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he echoes through gritted teeth. She laughs at that, and he hesitates before continuing: “I might… be coming back to life, though.”

In typical Minato fashion, even this news isn’t enough to take her off guard. She simply sobers in an instant, giving him a long, thoughtful look.

“Really,” she murmurs. “Well congratulations. If anyone could manage it, I had a feeling you could.”

“You – ” he starts. Curls and uncurls his hand at his side. “You could, also. If you want. The whole process… I could have them do it for you, too.”

She seems to hold the idea in her mind, examining it from every angle.

“No,” she says finally, leaning back in her seat. “That’s alright.”

A pang he can’t explain travels through him. “But – ”

“Don’t get me wrong, Kaito. I’ve been starting to think… I would like another try. I look back at my life and I just wonder. What the hell was that? What was I doing? There had to have been… something I wanted. Wasn’t there? Something actually for me. Rather than just spectating in on other people’s dreams.

“But that’s why I can’t just let you resurrect me. I think this is… the first thing I need to do for myself. Find a way to come back on my own.” The corner of her mouth curves upward. “I’m making okay progress. The bartender here is an old friend of mine. She talks to me a lot when there’s no one else around. And I may have been haunting Takatora a bit, too. Which is very funny even if it doesn’t lead anywhere.”

He thinks that all of this would be so much easier if she were there with him. But he gets it, too. Her feelings about her life aren’t so different from his own.

“So,” he says, “then this is probably goodbye. For a while, at least.”

“Yeah,” she says. Raises her glass to him with an expression that’s oddly soft, devoid of any of her usual sharp edges. “I’ll see you back on the other side.”

Kujou was right. It’s not anything like being human. There’s an electricity to every tiny movement, something staccato sharp having taken the place of the old, steady thump of blood through his veins.

But even so, when he swings his legs over the side of the bed, and places his feet on the floor, the physicality and weight of it leaves him breathless for a moment. He’d forgotten what it was like to have presence. To occupy space. To feel your body working as you exist.

Dan is gleefully celebrating his successful experiment, cackling to himself on the other side of the room, but Kaito barely registers it. He only hears:

“Kaito-san?”

Emu tentatively puts a hand on his arm. He jumps at the touch, at the pressure and warmth of it, staring down at Emu’s fingers before snapping up to meet his eyes. Emu lets out a breath of astonishment. A broad, delighted smile begins to stretch across his face.

“It really worked,” he laughs breathlessly, and throws his arms around him, squeezing tight, pressing his face against his shoulder.

Ah, Kaito thinks. So this is what a hug felt like.

Maybe, all this time, he had been wanting one after all.