Chapter Text
White walls stretch down, down, and down some more, extending in the longest hallway Eijun has ever seen. So white they hurt to look at, burning bright against the squint of his eyes, yet their intensity gives off no heat. It's neither hot nor cold here, but it's not comfortable, either. A faint hum trembles under his skin, buzzing from inside. Vibrating through the marrow of his bones.
He rubs briskly over his chest, his arms, trying to dampen the sensation that crawls all over him. It starts to ache, building from deep under blood and muscle and tissue, pounding dull and insistent throughout his head. The buzzing is in his ears now. Irritating him. Distracting.
Everything's so painfully bright and white and uniform, walls stretching for eternity. Forward and back—not that direction makes any difference. As far as he can tell the two are indistinguishable.
His vision blurs, head growing heavy.
Something isn't right. A lot of things aren't right; Eijun feels more and more certain of that. It's supposed to be darker for one thing.
No. Not darker. But there should be—there are—clouds and rain and lightning flashes.
There's a storm brewing overhead, almost unheard of in winter, but the entire last week of vacation has been unusually warm and wet and miserable. Terrible weather to start the new year with sheets of rain lashing the car that Wakana's mother insisted they take. The backseat is piled with boxes, all food and gifts from their friends and family. Wakana sighs that they can share with the rest of their housemates but there's such a thing as being too generous, and she's mostly referring to the car, her family's old 2009 Prius, which none of them have any use for beyond this single trip so the car will be doomed to spend the rest of its days sitting useless on the side of the street…
The sound of the rain, the squeak of the wipers, they're present and gone in a blink. No dreary gray road and buildings. No blast of hot air from the car vents. Just white walls and floor and ceiling, a stale, insipid taste drying in Eijun's mouth, and a headache trying to batter his skull apart.
For a split-second he hears something besides the blood pounding inside him. The mournful wail of a siren, cut short.
Then nothing.
Then a click, and an almost soundless whoosh of cold air.
"Eijun."
"Eijun."
He knows that reproachful tone, soft but clear over more the muddled sounds swimming around in his head. They swirl together in a kind of dull background roar and he feels like he's falling, sinking into all the noise, letting it drag him down. He doesn't particularly mind. His body is heavy, lethargic, troublesome. Who cares if he lets go?
"Eijun, don't. Wake up."
Only he can't ignore or disobey that voice. There are years of conditioning at work as he struggles to surface, coming up out of the stupor, and he breaks past the threshold with an absolute silencing of sound. For a moment he's utterly, dreadfully alone in his mind.
Then the noises start to seep back in. One at a time, distinct. A mild, constant beep from nearby, and the quiet circulation of air overhead. The push and pull of his own breath. His chest aches; come to think of it, everything aches. Fleeting, Eijun recalls that moment of numbing descent, but that option is out of his reach now. He gropes for something else instead, turning his face to the side, and a pillow gives under his cheek. His hand moves slow and searching over the blanket tucked around him.
"Wakana?" The sound of his own voice is an anchoring comfort, groggy from waking up and hoarse for any number of reasons. Everyone always tells him he's too loud. Eijun, shut up; Eijun, use your indoor voice; Eijun, people are staring…
"I'm here, Eijun." Wakana gentles her tone and he relaxes, at least until she adds, "Open your eyes."
He doesn't want to do that, and it's on the tip of his tongue to plead "just five more minutes" like any other morning she rouses him out of bed for class. He's not in his own bed now, though, and not sure why he's so reluctant to look around. A bad feeling lurks somewhere in a dark recess that he can't bring himself to shine a light on.
"Eijun."
She doesn't leave him any room for argument, so Eijun musters his resolve. The muscles in his face twitch, protesting, but he peels his eyelids open just a sliver and sees darkness. For a horrible moment his stomach drops and there's a despairing emptiness yawning inside him, his breath catching, and then—belatedly—he registers the pale filter of light from under the crack of a door across the room. Wakana is partially blocking it where she's seated by the bed, and it's almost as if her silhouette glows.
"Good," she says softly. "You'll be fine now."
"I don't feel fine," Eijun whines, the ache in his body waking up along with the rest of him, but if nothing else the incoming tide of sensation helps clear out the last of the muddy dregs swirling around in his head. "What hap—"
The memory crashes into him, all screeching tires and blaring horns and a dull bloom of pain seeping red-black through his skull. A resounding crack echoing in his ears. The car windshield's shattered web of glass fading in and out before his eyes, flashes of thunderous light interspersed with lapses of deep, deep, darkness.
Eijun holds his head, feeling bandages under his fingers and tubing against his arm where the IV is taped, and gasps, "There—there was an accident…"
"No," Wakana says sharply. "It wasn't an accident."
"Wakana—"
She stands up and leans over the bed, pressing and insistent with all the hidden, intangible force her slight frame belies. "Eijun, it wasn't an accident."
He stares at her, trying to make out her expression, but the room is still dark and all he can see are shadows everywhere, creeping inward. Whatever he's going to say next gets lost in a sudden, desperate scramble, a new fear overriding the others and it comes in such a rush that he can't process where or why. Eijun finds himself blurting, "What about you?"
He reaches a hand out to her, and Wakana draws away.
"Don't worry about me," she tells him with that no-nonsense, don't-argue-with-me promptness. Her arms cross over her chest. "You worry about yourself first. Eijun, you need to be careful. And now I need you to close your eyes."
"But I just—"
"Close them. Close everything. Imagine shutting a door."
He makes a helpless, frustrated sound, but he closes his eyes like she says and there's a completeness to the black curtain he draws around himself. All goes quiet except for the hum of machinery in the background. He waits for her to speak again.
He waits.
And waits.
It isn't until the nurse comes in to check on him that Eijun opens his eyes again and Wakana is nowhere in sight.
"I'm lucky. That's what everyone keeps saying, that I'm lucky to have gotten only minor injuries. Apparently when—well, they said it'd looked bad at first. But I have a pretty hard head, right?" Eijun touches a hand gingerly to the stitches in his scalp where the skin feels all tight and sore. It'll scar, but most of it will be hidden in his hair once the shaved part grows back (right now he looks like he had an unfortunate run-in with a razor to account for the bare strip along the side of his head). The only visible bit will be the line at his temple if he pushes his bangs away, maybe to show the scar off if someone asks about the accident…
"It wasn't an accident."
Eijun lowers his hand. Minors injuries, that's all he has. Bruises from his body being jerked in the seatbelt and battered against the door. The blow to his head was the worst of it and he'd fallen briefly into an unresponsive sleep, breathing on his own and heart pumping steadily but otherwise dead to the world. Until he woke up in the middle of the night.
"I'll be able to leave in a couple says," he says brightly—but quietly. He's been warned by the nurses once already, and so the sound of his voice carries only as far as it needs to over the beep of the monitor, screen showing various jagged or wavy lines, and the hiss and shush of the ventilator pushing air through tubes. Eijun shifts in the hard, unforgiving seat of the chair he's pulled by the bedside. "I could walk out the doors today, even, but the doctors want to keep an eye on me for a while longer. Just in case. Nothin' showed up on the tests—well, no injuries, anyway. Apparently there's a lot going on in my brain. Go figure, right?"
He attempts a laugh, but it's hard when Wakana is pale and silent and disconcertingly fragile amidst all the machines hooked up to her. Living for her. Filling her with artificial life like her body's just an empty vessel and there's nothing of her left inside. Looking at her there's certainly so sign of the firm, unflinching spirit that's been by Eijun's side all these years.
She used to be taller than him when they were children, and even after he got his growth spurt her presence still outstripped her petite form. Wakana was the one who helped him study to get into high school where he could stay with all his friends. She was the one who'd slapped his face instead of Gramps and told him to aim higher to get into a good university, on a baseball team that would actually win, and maybe get him noticed.
Eijun hadn't cared about getting noticed, had scoffed at trying to get into any other school than the one his team would be at. And he'd been happy the whole time with his friends, win or lose.
He rubs his cheek, recalling the sting of her palm cracking against his flesh. Not as hard as Gramps did it, but sharper, and just as effective. "It's time for all of us to grow up," Wakana had said, voice calm and even-toned despite the redness around her eyes.
She'd been right, as usual. He'd started to feel it then, too, that he could be content staying in his peaceful, pleasant hometown, but he was also ready—more than ready—to be more. Her slap had made him finally accept that.
So he'd picked a school in Tokyo (a rather prestigious one; Eijun doesn't do things halfway once he's made up his mind) and he'd studied like hell for the exam, which he'd failed to pass. Not to be deterred, he'd moved to Tokyo anyway, getting a part-time job and juggling as many work hours as he could with cram school, and now here he is, a year later, just about ready to retake the exam, but without the guidepost he's relied on all his life.
"Time to grow up," Eijun sighs to himself, hands clasped tight in his lap. He wants to reach for her, at least hold her hand in his for a bit, but… he can't. He just can't. There's a persistent scrap of memory that sticks in his mind, a darkened image of her pulling away from him like a warning, and he just can't bring himself to flout his last memory of her—even if that memory had only been a weird, waking dream.
It had to have been a dream.
"I'm back!" Eijun calls, forgetting to catch the door as it slams shut behind him, rattling in the frame. He winces, standing frozen in the genkan, but no one greets him with a reprimand. Haruno would be at her part-time job at this time of day, but Haruichi is usually home. Odd of him to be absent. He's been home a lot lately, to the point where even Eijun has noticed.
Keeping an eye on me, I bet. Eijun pulls the battered baseball cap off his head, the one with his high school logo, and skims his fingers across the downy path of hair growing over the scar. The stitches came out a week ago, and he's been perfectly fine since returning home. It isn't like Haruichi to worry overmuch, but, well. Eijun had returned home alone, and last they'd heard there'd been no change in Wakana's condition.
He kicks his shoes off and turns on the heat as he walks into the living room. After taking a few steps and shivering in his layers, he doubles back to crank the thermostat up some more, then throws his bag onto the couch and settles beside it, still huddled in his coat, listening to the noise in the walls as the heating system starts up and does its work.
Another year, another entrance exam. Truthfully, he doesn't feel good about it. He's certainly studied his ass off this past year—wasn't going to just waste all the money that went into his move to Tokyo and the expensive cram school lessons—but needless to say he's been preoccupied the past couple weeks. Testing into college hardly seems important, relatively speaking.
"But you'd be pissed if I didn't at least try," Eijun says into the empty room. "You'd probably slap me again, too." His cheek throbs with just the thought and he puts his hand to his face with a little half-smile—which turns into a frown as the cold of his fingers spreads along his skin. He can hear the air blowing through the vents, but he sure doesn't feel any warmer. "Oh, come on."
It's an older building, and not as close to the nearest train station that any of them would like, but the rent is cheap and the company isn't bad. Haruichi's been here longest, with the rest of them moving in around the same time at the start of the school year. Wakana hadn't been certain about living with total strangers in a big city, and had confided one night around the table with her second beer in hand that if not for Eijun she wouldn't have tried a share house, would have scraped for her own apartment instead, but by some lucky twist the four of them had hit it off well and Wakana had been glad—they'd all been glad—to stick together for another year or more. Broken-down utilities and all.
Eijun fishes his phone out of his pocket and does a double-take at the low battery. He'd just charged it this morning. Maybe something's wrong with the wall socket, Eijun swears up and down that the wiring in the building must be faulty and a fire hazard, but no one can ever find anything wrong when they investigate. But why else does everything keep shorting out? His brows pull down in a scowl and he scrolls through his contacts to find the manager's number. His thumb is hovering over the keypad when a familiar voice casually asks, "So how did it go?"
Eijun drops his phone. It bounces off his knee and slides somewhere under the antique coffee table that used to belong to Haruno's grandmother.
Wakana sits with her legs drawn up beside him on the couch. Her eyes are bright and curious, and there's a healthy, pink tinge to her skin. She's wearing shorts despite the temperature—and Eijun's still aware of the icy cold seeping through his coat and clothes—but that doesn't appear to bother her in the slightest. Nostalgia fills his chest at the sight of the baseball jersey fitting her slender frame. He hasn't seen her in that shirt since high school and can be certain she didn't bring it with her when they moved (because four people sharing one washing machine and clothesline means there are few secrets about everyone's wardrobes).
"So?" she repeats. "How did the exam go?"
"It… it went," Eijun answers on autopilot. Maybe he's dreaming again. Or, a painfully sharp hope digs into his chest, maybe this is real, and the rest was the dream. He laughs a little, ducking his face, and then chokes on air while jerking his head back up, keeping his eyes on Wakana in case she might vanish before them.
She's still there, arching a fine eyebrow at him. "You've worked hard, you should be more confident."
"Yeah, well." He wants to ask. Wants to ask a lot of things, so many things that they all get jammed in his throat and he can't fire any of them off properly.
"You haven't been yourself lately."
For once in his life Eijun has nothing to say.
"I don't blame you, though. There's a lot happening."
"Happening?" he manages to echo, voice straining thin.
Wakana looks him, face solemn. "You have to be careful. You always rush blindly into things, but it's different now. Don't go off alone, okay? Haruichi's trying to look out for you, but he can only watch. So don't go anywhere alone."
Eijun's breath comes faster, pulse fluttering wild like something trying to break free. "What do you mean?"
"Promise me you'll be careful."
"About what?" His body lurches up, turning towards her, arm outstretched—only to halt as if being held back by invisible strings when Wakana's eyes widen and she flinches away. There's a sound in his ears, a shocked, confused whimper, and he distantly recognizes it as coming from him.
"Don't," Wakana says hastily. "You can't. I'm sorry."
He can't bring himself to move.
Her head turns, looking towards the kitchen—or something, someplace else—and her whole body goes rigid. "I have to go."
"Wait—"
"Remember to be careful!"
"Wakana!"
But she's gone. The end of the couch is empty. He hasn't even blinked, and when he does blink his eyes sting and the room turns watery with the overflow of tears rolling down his face.
Eijun doesn't know what he expects walking into Takashima's office, but a wall of baseball paraphernalia isn't it. The shelves are the first thing he sees, and they're full of familiar sights—well, maybe not so familiar in the case of the trophies and plaques, but the scuffed, red-stitched balls, worn leather gloves, and prized autographs help put him at ease. There are pictures, too, some framed photos and creased snapshots. Some of them feature a young girl in uniform, dirt-streaked more often than not, either alone or with a team. Sometimes it's a grown woman pictured, wearing crisp skirt suits as she stands straight-backed and proud by the side of grinning high school boys, or she's caught in a candid moment with a clipboard in hand and a pencil stuck in the bun of her hair, shading her eyes from the sun as she steps out of the dugout.
He's nosing all around the shelves before he realizes what he's doing, trying to read the names scrawled on a ball that's yellow with age, when a pleasant voice comments, "You must play a bit yourself. More than a bit, I'd guess."
Eijun reels backward, flushing, and belatedly dips in a bow. "Sorry! I just walked in and—wow, that was rude. I'm sorry."
"It's fine," the woman says with a smile and polite incline of her head. Rather than a suit or sweats she's wearing a knit top over dark slacks, her bun tidy and unadorned. "Those with an interest in the sport always like to get a closer look. Only the serious players look like they want to pick something up and play. You're a pitcher?"
"How'd you guess?"
"You paid special attention to the Tanaka Masahiro autograph, and you also looked like you really wanted to throw a ball or twenty, so pitcher seemed most likely."
"Huh. Well, you got it in one." Eijun sends the wall one last, lingering look, then squares his shoulders for the real purpose of the meeting.
"Sawamura-kun, isn't it? I'm Takashima Rei. Come have a seat. Would you like anything to drink? Coffee, tea, water?"
"Ah… no, thank you, I'm fine." There's a desk in the room but Takashima isn't behind it, choosing instead to sit in an armchair with a full, steaming mug balanced on the flat armrest. Across from her is a vacant loveseat where Eijun takes a spot, rubbing at the increasing stiffness in the back of his neck. "Um, thanks for seeing me on short notice, sensei."
"I'm happy to help. Haruichi-kun considers you a good friend."
"Yeah, we live together. Which… you probably already know. Erm."
"He told me a little, but you can feel free to tell me whatever you'd like. About yourself, or anything."
"About the accident?" Eijun says it like a challenge, although he's not sure to whom it's directed. At himself, perhaps.
Not an accident.
Remember to be careful.
But careful about what? Eijun shakes his head, slumping into the seat cushions with his hands shoving deep in his pockets. He's kept his coat on. It's rude, but the weather's cold, damnit. Maybe he should have accepted a hot drink. "Never mind," he mumbles.
"You can talk about anything you want," Takashima assures him again, cradling her mug in her hands. At least she's not taking notes. "You can ask me anything, too."
Eijun's eyes slide up and over. He waves a hand at the wall. "How about that?"
"Sure. I played second base in junior high and partway through high school until my family moved. My new school didn't have a girls team so I was a manager for the boys instead. I admit I wasn't happy about that at first, but the job turned out to be more interesting than I thought, so I continued through college."
"And now you're a therapist."
Takashima shrugs delicately. "Life takes you down unexpected paths sometimes. I haven't left baseball behind me, though, I assure you."
Eijun laughs a little; he'd noticed a fantasy baseball plaque from last year sitting on one of the shelves and wonders if it comes and goes, or if it's as good as a permanent fixture. Maybe she likes to relieve stress at the batting cages. Maybe that's how she knows Haruichi. "I pitched through junior high and high school," he tells her, the strain easing from his shoulders as he sits up and leans forward. "We were a small, cobbled-together team, and we always lost in the first round. Every single tournament. Pretty sad, I guess. But I had fun, you know?"
"Haruichi-kun is handy with a bat. I imagine you practice with him sometimes."
"Oh, hell. He can send my pitches flying." Eijun grins outright. "Not all the time, mind, but he just…" He closes his hands together over top one another and mimes swinging the wooden bat Haruichi prefers. "Whoosh, crack! And it's gone. Who knows, maybe if he'd been on my team we'd have won some."
He tells her about his old teammates. About living under the same roof as Wakana and Haruno. He tells her stuff she probably already knows about Haruichi, although he thinks the story about the one and only time Haruichi got falling-down drunk surprises her.
Eijun doesn't tell her about the accident, or anything that happened after.
Not yet.
"Here's your change," Eijun says to the high school girl on the other side of the counter, handing over the coins and the plastic bag with her curry bread, canned coffee, and the latest issue of Junon. "Have a nice day!"
The girl gives him a dubious look, then glances sideways, and when he follows the line of her gaze he notices the streaking of rain down the storefront windows.
"Ah," he says in understanding, and lets out a rueful laugh. "I guess the weather took a turn. Do you need a—"
She pointedly digs a collapsible umbrella out of her bag, but at least she's smiling this time, and she nods her head politely in goodbye before leaving. A gust of cold air blows in when the door opens, and then the store is empty.
Eijun rubs his arms and pulls his shoulders inward as he waits for the cold blast from outside to dissipate, but minutes pass and he still feels a distinct chill creeping over him. It lingers on his skin like an icy touch he can't shake off. "This is ridiculous," Eijun mutters, going to stand next to the hot food display in an attempt to leech warmth from the heap lamps. There has to be something wrong with him. Haruichi and Haruno have started to protest whenever Eijun turns the house into a sauna, so he's the only one who's abnormal.
Haruno had told him with big, worried eyes to go see a doctor. "What if it's because of the accident?"
Yeah, what if? Eijun shivers and he can't say whether it's from the cold or from the thought. Or just from the sound of the rain pattering against glass and pavement outside. If he listens close enough, deep enough, he can hear the crunch and crack of impact, the moment of crumpling metal and shattering glass, dredged up from the murky depths of his memory. The horror rises up, then sinks back down as soon as he releases it, a hidden but undeniable presence that won't give him any peace of mind.
He's considering Haruno's suggestion, as reluctant as the idea makes him. Eijun's always been healthy and robust, hardly ever getting sick and recovering fast from minor injuries. He can count on one hand the number of times he's had to see a doctor (the pretty nurse at school doesn't count).
For some reason all Haruichi said about the matter was, "Have you told Takashima-sensei about it?"
But Takashima isn't that kind of doctor, so…
So maybe it's all in Eijun's head. Which might be worse than there being something wrong with his body.
He sees Takashima every week, give or take a few days. The sessions are short, around half an hour long, because they happen whenever she can fit them in her schedule. They're also free. Eijun doesn't know how he feels about that. People pay a lot of money for this sort of thing, don't they? Even if it's just sitting and talking about baseball, or his family, or that time when he accidentally kissed Haruno (he'd been aiming to plant one on her cheek but she turned her head at the wrong moment) and it was only fair afterwards to also kiss her boyfriend (it made perfect sense at the time). So they sit and they talk, about anything and everything, and it's… nice, he supposes. Maybe it's helping, maybe that's why he hasn't… seen anything out of the ordinary lately. But whenever he brings up the subject of payment Takashima gently puts it back down.
Eijun's realistic enough to accept the truth: he doesn't have the money to pay—not for the sessions or for anything else but the bare necessities. Living in Tokyo isn't cheap, crappy share house or no. Cram school isn't cheap. And the hospital bill, he doesn't even want to think about that. So he can swallow the bitter pill that comes with accepting charity, but only for now. Sooner or later, he has to give back. It's way past time for him to be giving back; he's been receiving things from other people for so long and he'll be turning 20 this year. As an adult, what will he have to show for 20 years of being raised up by others?
He brings a hand up and slaps himself across the cheek—a love tap by Sawamura standards, just enough of a shock to put him to rights before he settles into a brood. None of that, thank you very much. The cold and the rain are getting to him, that's all. Hardly anything to freak out over. With the exam over Eijun has time to work extra shifts and save up, so maybe he can afford to buy a little something for Takashima as thanks for listening to him yammer about farm life in Nagano. He should get something for Haruichi and Haruno, too. A new book for Haruichi, and maybe a new plant for Haruno since her last one died. They die on her a lot, much to her chagrin, but she likes them so there's always something growing in the house.
Eijun has his phone out (with a low battery again, damnit) to check for new releases by Haruichi's favorite authors when he feels a tug on his pant leg and almost jumps out of his skin.
"Wh-what the?!" He fumbles his phone, clutching at it and cringing away from… a little girl. There's a little girl standing next to him, maybe five years old or thereabouts, round-cheeked and wearing a red barrette in her hair. Her raincoat is bright yellow and dripping water all over the floor where she stands. Eijun can feel the chill emanating from her hand where she still has a tiny fistful of denim, and her skin is a shock of cold when he reaches down to try and nudge her fingers loose.
"Hey there," he says, dropping into a crouch after successfully diverting her grip and letting her hold his hand instead. "Sorry, I didn't hear you come in. Where're your parents?"
The stiff drape of her coat lifts and falls with the shrug of her shoulders. More droplets roll off her sleeves to collect in a growing puddle on the tile.
"Okay, well, uh…" He scans the store but it's still empty. There's no one standing out front, either. "Were you with your mom? Dad?"
She takes a while to answer, blinking slowly and speaking in an equally sedate rhythm. "…Mommy said we were going somewhere. She was taking me with her."
"Did she say where? Or maybe… do you know where you live? Have you been lost for long?" The girl tilts her head at him, silent, pale-faced and dark-eyed and—okay, yes, kind of creepy. Eijun hopes and hopes with each passing second for a worried mother to come bursting through the door. He thinks he's all right with kids, normally, but the eerie calm of the little girl is wreaking havoc on his nerves. He almost wishes she'd cry like any other lost and scared child, but that's an unkind thought for sure. "Okay," he says, taking a deep breath and drawing up a smile. "I'm sure your mom is looking for you, maybe she'll show up here soon. I'll call the police so they can help find her. What's your name?"
"Aoyama… Keiko."
"All right, Keiko-chan. I'll make that call and—"
She tugs on his hand and her gaze is imploring. "I was supposed to go with Mommy. We were supposed to go together."
For a little girl barely old enough to start school she has a fierce grip and Eijun's skin turns white under her fingers. "Okay," he says quickly, resisting the impulse to pry her off. She's just a kid, she has to be scared after all, even if she's not crying about it. "Okay, we'll find your mom. Don't worry. Here, take this." He gets a warm pork bun out of the countertop display and offers it to her, patting her head once she accepts it.
There's a koban not too far from the store. Eijun looks up the number and reports to the officer on duty about a lost child, leaning on the counter to keep an eye out front in case a woman who might be Keiko's mother passes by.
"Yeah," he says into his phone. "Her name's Aoyama Keiko. She looks about five, and she was with her mom… eh? Yes, I'm sure." Eijun frowns. "No, this isn't a joke! Why would I—" He quiets, listening, and then goes very still. The rain outside continues to pour, and he lowers the phone from his ear with the officer's fading voice going, "Hello? Hello?" until falling silent from hanging up. Eijun stares down at the floor. The rug by the door is damp, but the tile from there to the counter is dry.
He straightens up. Glances down at his feet. The puddle has spread around his shoes and tiny ripples skitter across the surface with each drip… drip… drip…
"I'm sorry, that can't be right. Aoyama Keiko drowned along with her mother last month in a tragic murder-suicide. Both were confirmed dead. The story made the news…"
Eijun turns, his heart pounding a dreadful, encroaching beat in his chest that blocks out the sound of the rain, until everything gets lost in a rush of white noise when he sees no one behind the counter with him. The little girl is gone. But there's water pooling on the floor, and an uneaten pork bun sitting in the center of it.
The rain has backed off, but in its place there's a shroud of cold drizzle hanging over the city and Eijun's breath mists in the frigid air as he skids on slick sidewalk in front of a building. The automatic doors open and he ignores the elevator, going straight for the stairs instead. His shoes squeak wet on the steps, up two levels, and then he blows into the hallway, through another door, firing off a short, "Sorry!" to the startled receptionist behind the front desk. If there's anyone else in the waiting room he can't tell, already moving towards Takashima's office. Quickly, before he loses his nerve, or before his nerves all fall to pieces, whichever happens first. His hand grips the knob and turns.
"She said it wasn't an accident," is the first thing to leave his breathless lips, and it's not what he meant to say, but the rest tumbles out regardless while the door swings shut behind him. "Everyone says it was an accident—the rain, it was raining really hard, and she isn't used to driving, must've lost control of the car or something. An accident. Only, she said it wasn't. Wakana said so. I heard her. I saw her. And I just—just now—"
Takashima pushes a steaming mug into his hands and makes sure he closes his fingers around it. He's shaking, and his teeth are chattering, and he's dripping all over her carpet just like Keiko had dripped all over the store's floor. Funny—this is all hilarious, Eijun's sure, and he can feel the laughter building hysteric in the back of his throat.
"Come sit down," Takashima says, steering him to the loveseat and sitting him down without a care for the upholstery getting wet. "Drink some tea, it will warm you up."
It's probably supposed to calm him down, too, and Eijun sips at the chamomile blend while Takashima gathers an afghan off the back of her armchair and drapes it around his shoulders. Then she takes a seat like it's just another session, and waits.
She has to wait for a while; Eijun only realizes time has passed when he finds himself staring at the bottom of the mug which has cooled in his hands. "Sorry," he says, jerking out of whatever stasis had been holding him. He sets the mug on the table and hunches his shoulders, arms braced on his knees with his hands locked together. "Sorry, I just…"
"Take your time," Takashima tells him. "I'll listen to whatever you have to say."
"It sounds totally crazy," Eijun warns.
"Try me."
Well, yeah, in her line of work she's probably heard it all. Eijun tries to take comfort in that, but when he opens his mouth he's pushing onward out of sheer stubbornness alone. "Wakana was careful," he begins, pulling the afghan tighter around his shivering frame. "Really, really careful. She didn't accidentally lose control of the car. Everything was fine until… until…" He closes his eyes. She'd been sitting right there next to him, talking, eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. "The car… swerved a little. I looked over and she—she didn't look well. She was pale. Sweating. At first she didn't respond when I said her name, but then, suddenly, she spoke. I heard her clearly. She just said, 'You.' And then she passed out. I grabbed the wheel and managed to stop the car from going into the other lane, but there was no way to brake at the light." Eijun recalls the wail of a horn and the glare of headlights coming towards them, tires screeching, and the collision that spun the car round and round. Swirling chaos and noise, his consciousness bleeding in and out of focus, and then finally a long, empty blank until he woke up in the hospital that night.
"So you're saying that… something… caused her to lose consciousness? Something no one could identify?"
Eijun rubs his hands over his face and shudders. Shakes off the memory of the crash. "Yeah," he says, taking a deep breath. "There were no drugs in her system. She hadn't been drinking. She's never had fainting spells before, doesn't have anemia… so it had to have been an accident. Basic human error because of the slippery roads. Like that one saying, the simplest explanation is the right one."
"Occam's razor. It's a sound principle in most cases."
"But not all the time, right?"
"No, not all the time."
He nods. "This isn't that simple. Wakana didn't make a mistake while driving, something happened to her. I'm sure of that part at least." His hands are shaking again. He clasps them and continues. "So… here's where it gets crazy. I saw her when I woke up. I thought I was dreaming, but she was there. She spoke to me. She sounded normal. Well, not everything she said made sense, but it was definitely Wakana talking. She said what happened wasn't an accident. And then she was just gone. Shit, when I started to think about it I thought I'd seen her ghost or something." Eijun lets out a brittle laugh. "I was seriously thinking that. But then I found out she was alive. In the ICU, comatose, but alive. So what kind of sense does that make?"
Evenly, Takashima replies, "There have been instances where people report seeing the ghosts, spirits, or images of their loved ones who haven't passed yet on. Often they have some kind of message to convey."
"Because that's so much less crazy."
"I don't believe you're crazy, Sawamura-kun."
"That makes one of us at least." Eijun bows his head, but after dropping that first bomb the rest don't seem like a big deal. "There was another time. I was home alone, and she was just… there. Encouraging me, chastising me—I miss her a lot, of course I do, so I could have dreamed that up, too. She warned me, though. She said I had to be careful, but she wouldn't explain why. For some reason she had to leave in a hurry. Why the heck would I dream up something as cryptic as that?"
"Can you recall what she said, exactly?"
"She said…" Eijun reaches for the memory. It should be easy, he's thought about her words a lot, but this time he strains for it. Pressure bears down on him and his shoulders slump further. His head is full of ringing. "'There's a lot happening.' I'm always… rushing into things. Don't go alone…"
"Sawamura-kun? Sawamura-kun!" Takashima's voice is muffled, echoing in his ears. He tries to lift his head to see her but the world tilts, blurring around the edges, fading into black. She's telling him to focus. To stay with her. He wants to do as she says and it seems terribly important to listen, but his strength is all worn away like rock eroded after many millennia. Resistance, he feels with a deathly certain chill, is futile.
Sorry, Wakana. After you warned me and everything.
Is this what happened to you? Is it the same? Fuck. Fuck, no, I'm not—
"Sawamura-kun, hold on, I'm getting help."
"Sensei," he says with one final push, "be careful."
"Son of a bitch," Rei swears viciously as Sawamura falls limp on the loveseat. It happened fast—much, much faster than it ever had before. He'd turned pale right before her eyes and dropped mid-sentence, just like he said Wakana had. "That son of a bitch, he really has gotten more powerful." But never mind that now, if something isn't done Sawamura will be lost like the rest of them. Rei hovers nearby, not quite touching, that last warning a bright, flashing beacon in her mind. Should she risk it? There's not enough time to call someone else. It's her or nothing, damn the consequences. She braces herself and reaches—
The door to her office bangs open for a second time that day. Rei whirls, utters a shocked, "What are you—" And then she corrects, "Never mind, stupid question. Get over here and help. If it's you, he can be saved."
Eijun is slow to wake up. When he first stirs into a dim state of consciousness he's happy to go no further, remaining where he is. He's quite content here, and for a while he can't be bothered to guess why. He's peaceful, that's all that matters, and he's warm—warm for the first time in weeks.
For the first time since the not-accident.
He jolts awake at that, eyes blinking open at a ceiling awash in soft light. A familiar ceiling from this angle, like the bed under him and the blankets drawn around him. He's home, back in that little house shared with Haruichi and Haruno and Wakana, where the rent is cheap and the appliances are always shorting out for no discernible reason. He'd once joked about the place being haunted.
"Hilarious," Eijun says to himself.
"I'm glad you think so."
Eijun doesn't have the energy to be shocked. He's weary all over, and now that he's awake to enjoy it his head throbs. Turning his face, he finds someone sitting in his desk chair that's been pulled up alongside the bed. Close enough, apparently, to hold Eijun's hand. Weird, but definitely not the weirdest thing that's happened to him recently. Not that unwelcome, either, when Eijun gets a good look at the guy. There are worse things to wake up to than holding hands with a handsome stranger.
Although if the handsome stranger turns out to be of the ghostly variety, that might be a problem.
"Who're you?" Eijun asks, pulling his hand free just in case.
The guy lets go without a fight. He barely even glances in Eijun's direction, attention fixed on the display of his phone and tapping away. Well, that's kinda rude, Eijun thinks, and then he wonders, do ghosts or whatever even have phones?
"I'm not a spirit." Eijun stiffens when sharp eyes lands on him, and a sharper smirk turns up the corner of a mouth that has no right being that attractive. "I'm not reading your mind, either. Telepathy's not my thing, thank god. You're just obvious. And you're welcome."
"For what?"
"For saving your life."