![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
Title: Access Denied
Author:![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
evilgeniuskoji
Beta:visualcomplex
Chapter: 5/??
Pairing: Ruki/Reita
Genre: Mystery, Scifi, General
Rating: PG-13
Warning: None
Summary: AU. Saiko Reality is the hottest new virtual reality simulator. With an in-game experience that questions your reality and theirs, PSC's newest product has establishd a wide branch all over Central Tokyo. Such a large corporation cannot go witout its dark secrets...and as he struggles to remember his past, Ruki finds himself ensnared in the very heart of the problem.
Comments: Sorry this took so long. It was a difficult chapter. Hope it wasn't boring after all the drama!
File 01 | File 02 | File 03 | File 04
All around him there was noise, people talking, moving, their voices pitched low and high, panicked and restless. They passed Ruki by without a word, too busy to pay attention to him as they made phone calls, arranged meetings, alerted family members. Every once in a while they would glance down at him where he sat, his head bowed and elbows resting on his knees.
“Oh, no,” someone groaned. “It’s you, Ruki-kun?”
His head jerked up and spotted a tall, broad-shouldered woman dressed in a meticulous police uniform. Her piercing eyes were faintly familiar, as was her voice. “Sakuma-san…?” His voice was uncertain, but recovered when the older woman nodded once. “What are you doing here?” He got up quickly.
“I’ve been assigned to the case,” Sakuma said dryly. “You’re a busy guy, aren’t you, Ruki-kun? First arson, then murder…”
“I—arson? I thought you said it wasn’t deliberately set!” Ruki started.
Sakuma sat down abruptly by the spot Ruki had been just a moment ago. “We found a trace of a fire setting device this afternoon,” she said flatly. “In your friend’s room. Go on, sit.”
“In my…?” he sat, feeling as if he’d been hit. “What…how…?”
“Ruki-kun,” Sakuma said in an uncharacteristically kind voice. “That is not what we are here for. Please concentrate on the task at hand.” She pulled out a small, flat, metallic square. “Do you understand?”
He looked down at his hands and clenched them very slowly. “…Yes.”
“Very well. Let us begin.” She tapped a button on the square. A holographic screen and keyboard appeared before her with a blink, glowing light blue in color. “Where were you on June 1st, 11:34 A.M.?”
It took them over an hour. Sakuma questioned Ruki ruthlessly on every detail, noting it all down in her small, portable noter—one of PSC’s new inventions, she informed him when he asked. He told her everything; from the time he left the hotel to the milk he bought from the vending machine.
As the minutes wore by and he began answering the questions on automatic, the small pit of bitter regret sitting at the bottom of his stomach began to stew. His body began to shake, wracked between betrayal and grief that had just begun to sink in. Morita. Doctor Morita had been the one person to know his past, and from the sound of it, had known for quite a while. But now he was dead, and Ruki would likely never hear the reason why.
Sakuma noticed his trembling hands and barked at another officer. Minutes later she pressed a can of strong tea into his hands. “Drink,” the policewoman said gruffly. “It’s the shock.” She watched him mechanically pop the tab and sip it, her finger tapping against the noter.
“Listen, Ruki-kun,” she spoke at last. “I don’t believe you are the culprit. You’d have to be at least five inches taller, for one thing, by our calculations, and for another, the evidence favors you. You couldn’t have done it.”
His shoulders sagged slightly, but the older woman wasn’t done.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is, it’s not safe. It’s happening around you, Ruki-kun.” Her eyes were intent. “This might look like a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences. Coincidences get you killed. Be more careful from now, Ruki-kun. Be very careful.”
Be careful. Those were the very words Doctor Morita had said to him during that last conversation, and he hadn’t taken it to heart. What had he wanted to tell him then? There was so much that he’d wanted to ask, wanted to know. All slipped between his fingers.
“Watch yourself, Ruki-kun.” Sakuma stood up and shoved the noter back into her pocket. “By the way, try to catch get a hold of that roommate of yours. It’s very suspicious that he’s disappeared now.”
“Yes…” Ruki bit his lip. Kai. Where the hell was he?
---
“Kai? No, he hasn’t been around.”
“Haven’t seen him. Excuse me, we’re very busy.”
“Kai hasn’t shown up for weeks. If you see him, tell him that the boss says he’s fired.”
“No.”
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Kai-kun?” The restaurant manager frowned and smacked his apron several times against his knees, releasing tiny clouds of flour into the air. The faint smell of fresh bread reached Ruki’s nostrils. “Yeah, he came in yesterday to resign. It’s a pity,” he sighed. “He was a good worker.”
“W-What?” Ruki sputtered. “He was in? Did he leave word? Anything?”
“No, he didn’t.” The balding man looked startled by Ruki’s vehemence. “Is something the matter?”
He sat back down slowly, disappointment trickling into him again, and shook his head. “No…it’s alright… Could you please contact me if you hear from him again?” He produced a small card and presented it to the manager.
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you.”
---
He attended the wake [1] in a somber funerary suit he’d never had to use before, with his hair slicked down and his eyes serious behind black-framed glasses. He tried to look respectable, he really did, but despite his best efforts, the bleached white blonde hair and multiple piercings in his ear gained him the disapproving glances of the doctor’s relatives and friends who surrounded him.
“Who is that boy?”
“Him? One of Kenichi’s patients.”
“Oh, one of those. Is he even supposed to be out of the wards?”
“Don’t be disrespectful, Izumi.”
“Isn’t he the one who found Uncle?”
“Is he? I didn’t know.”
“Who invited him anyway?”
“Who? I think it was Kenichi’s oldest boy Ryuuichi.”
“It’s horrible…how could this happen to Kenichi…who would even want to kill him?”
“Mother, there’s nothing we can do, please calm down…the police will find out for sure…”
Ruki ignored the whispers as he knelt onto the cushion, incense in hand. He bowed his head twice to the tablet inscribed with the doctor's name and the picture of the old man on the funerary altar, clasping the sticks of incense before him with both hands as he did so. When he was done offering his prayers, he placed them in the pot of ash with the other sticks and stood to let the next visitor pay their respects.
In the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement. Turning, he spotted a young man his age with hair dyed a darker blonde enter the house in customary funerary blacks. They locked gazes and the inexplicable cold of recognition washed over Ruki, some old echo of emotion. It passed as soon as it came, leaving Ruki strangely disoriented as the young man broke eye contact and disappeared into the crowd of mourners.
Someone cleared his throat and Ruki nearly jumped as he turned around and saw Ryuuichi. The doctor’s eldest son smiled politely at him. “Ruki-san, are you leaving already? You won’t stay for the rest of the wake service?”
“Yes, Ryuuichi-san.” Ruki cleared his throat awkwardly. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“It was no trouble. Father always said you were like another son to him.”
The polite words caused Ruki to stiffen, resentment building, but he kept his face under a tight, polite mask and bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“Will you be coming to the funeral?” Ryuuichi continued.
“No, that wouldn’t be right,” Ruki sighed. “I will go pay my respects to the grave some time after the cremation and burial.”
“Then, thank you for coming, Ruki-san.” Ryuuichi drew a small package from the sleeves of his kimono and presented it to Ruki. “Our thanks for your condolences.”
Ruki nodded once, accepting the package and slipping it into his pocket before bowing and retreating away.
He stepped outside the wide screen doors and sank down on the engawa surrounding the traditional house. No one else was along the wooden strip of flooring between the house and the outdoors, so he didn’t feel guilty for lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag.
Coming to the wake had driven home a lot of points that he’d never quite thought about before, chief among them the fact that he didn’t quite know Doctor Morita at all. He hadn’t known that the man had had an ancestral home in the countryside, or a family rich enough to hold such a lavish wake. He hadn’t even known that the man had had children, let alone four of them.
All these things added to the hollow weight sitting at the bottom of his stomach. The end of his cigarette flared angrily, releasing another cloud of smoke into the air.
It had really stung to realize that the chance to know who he really was had slipped by again. It stung more that he had been lied to by someone who told their children that he thought of him as his own son.
“What son?” he muttered to the skies. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier who I was? Why did you keep it to yourself?”
And of course, the skies ignored him, quietly gathering more woolen gray clouds to what seemed to be an amassing rainstorm.
Sighing, Ruki ground his cigarette under his foot and stood to go.
The sound of quiet footsteps caught his attention. Someone coughed. “Um…”
Ruki turned around. For some reason, he was not surprised when he met the gaze of the man he saw entering the wake. Frowning, Ruki cleared his throat softly. “Yes?” He felt a faint twinge of familiarity as he took in that rounded, boyish place. Had he seen this man before? The beginnings of a headache started building in his temple.
“Ah…that is…” the taller man looked uncomfortable now that Ruki had turned around. “We saw each other once at Morita-sensei’s clinic. My name is Suzuki, Suzuki Akira.”
“Oh, you’re the one I knocked down,” Ruki laughed, embarrassed. He remembered now, though something still didn’t feel quite right. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” There was a sudden, odd disappointment about Suzuki’s face then. “I just wanted to…um…Morita-sensei…I spoke with him a few minutes on the phone the morning he…”
“Oh.” Ruki stuffed his hands in his pockets, not quite sure what to say. “Is that so?” The ache was growing steadily worse, more insistent.
Suzuki looked discomfited. “He left me a message for you.”
For a moment, Ruki could only stare. Of late, that seemed to be all he was capable of. “Why would he leave a message for me with you?” he demanded when he found his voice. “We’ve only met each other once before, and in any case, I had an appointment with him later that day, so he could’ve…”
He trailed off when Suzuki began shaking his head. “He knew who he was messing with when he decided to tell you everything,” the blonde muttered. “So he took some precautions.”
“What he was getting into?” Ruki repeated. “All he was doing was telling me about my—what are you talking about?”
The taller man raised his head and looked as if he was about to speak, but in that moment a weak ray of sunlight struck his face, revealing eyes far too familiar.
Ruki’s knees buckled, almost giving out beneath him as he was struck by a wave of dizziness. His vision swam, graying at the edges as his head throbbed violently.
A tall, glittering glass city—
“—must be here—”
“—found it!”
– endlessly blue sky, bowl-like in appearance—
—footsteps pounding on a thin marble walkway—
“—can’t see shit, did they put a darkness charm here—?”
A room carved in runes and scrolling columns of names—
“—fucking idiot, Reita—”
— gray eyes—
His arm scattered into pixels, then reformed again—
—static—
—ACCESS DENIED—
“Ruki, snap out of it, we have to get out of here! They’re locking down on us, the fucking mods are here! Ruki! Ruki! Ru…”
“…ki-san! Ruki-san!” someone shook his shoulder hard. “Ruki, snap out of it!”
His sight returned slowly. Ruki slid his gaze down from the darkening sky and locked them with gray eyes.
“Rei…ta..?”
The other man looked shaken, disconcerted. Ruki wondered dizzily what he had said that had shocked him so as he regained his balance. He focused his gaze on Suzuki as his headache eased to a dull ache, clarity returning in a slow trickle. “You…how do you know my name? I never told you.”
Suzuki released his shoulder. “I…”
His thoughts were clearing now, as if a weight had been lifted off them. “Why would Morita-sensei tell you about me? Did he know he was going to die?” Ruki stepped away as the strength returned to his limbs. “Who the hell are you?”
A stricken look was on the other’s face. “I…yes, Morita-sensei knew the possibilities…And I…you knew me from before your amnesia, too. As…” His face twisted unhappily. “As ‘Reita’.”
“Why?” Ruki ignored the second wave of dizziness as it washed over him. “Why are you all telling me this now? Why talk now, after three years of—”
Reita—Ruki’s thoughts immediately slipped into tagging that name with that face, as if it were habitual, comfortable— hesitated. “The book you wrote,” he said slowly. “Distorted Daytime. It wasn’t Morita-sensei who told you to publish it, right? He didn’t even read it.”
“No,” Ruki said. “No, it was a friend.” It had been Kai.
From his pocket, Reita drew a small, slim book and passed it to Ruki. As he took it in his hands, the title jumped out at him. Distorted Daytime.
“The day I saw you at his clinic,” Reita said, “Morita-sensei gave me that. He’d gone through it and marked every passage that contained a scene or event he knew, he said, and wanted me to look at it as well.”
The book opened to a page that was nearly completely highlighted in light blue. He looked at Reita, alarm in his eyes. “You mean…”
He nodded. “There are scenes in there that really happened. Real places…or as real as they got inside Saiko. I went ahead and marked the passages I knew too—”
Ruki slammed the book shut, his fingers clenching white around the spine as he shoved the book back at Reita and inexplicable rage surged up his chest. The other man stopped short, startled at the look in his eyes.
“Why,” Ruki said in a voice tight with tension, “are you all stepping forward now, again? Morita-sensei knew about me before I wrote this, didn’t he—so why didn’t he tell me before? Why? Why now?”
“That should be obvious,” Reita ducked his head, “by this incident alone. You didn’t think Morita-sensei died by accident, did you? He thought it was for your own good and protection that you didn’t remember. He didn’t want you in the whole mess again.”
Ruki just looked at him, his eyes hard even as the anger bled out of him and left him tired and weary. “I don’t want to try to figure this out any more,” he muttered. “I’m leaving. Good bye, Reita-san.”
A hand stopped him , grabbing his shoulder again. Reita hesitated, then flipped the copy of Distorted Daytime open and scribbling a number and address onto the inside cover before returning it to Ruki again. “Contact me if you really want to know what happened,” he said. “But remembered that it’s not just about you…and it’s dangerous to know, even if it’s just as dangerous not knowing now that they’ve found you. It’s your choice. Think about it.”
Ruki didn’t ask who ‘they’ were. He didn’t want to think about it any more, because each time he did, his head would ache harder and harder. Nodding once at Reita, he slipped the book into his pocket, turned around, and walked away as the sky opened up and a faint sprinkling of rain fell onto the earth.
It was nearly sundown when he finally reached the city again. His thoughts felt thick and heavy, weighing down on the matter of his brain like chain links. Every once in a while he felt the stinging throb of a headache coming on.
His feet halted suddenly and Ruki blinked, finally focusing his attention on his surroundings. He was surprised to discover that he stood right in front of his apartment…or what was left of his apartment. For a moment he could only stare up at the building that had been the only home he’d ever known, feeling strangely empty. After a moment of hesitance, he began to climb up the stairs.
There was a still sort of silence when the lock to his apartment clicked and the door swung open to a fairly undisturbed living room. The only trace of the fire was the black streaked walls and the sharp scent of smoke permeating everything. By habit, Ruki kicked off his shoes and lined them by the door before stepping further in. His socked feet padded softly over the carpet.
First he checked his room. Like the inspector had told him, it seemed to have suffered little to no damage. All his things were intact, and the lingering smell of the incense he always burned overpowered the smoke. Soon he would have to call in a moving company to transport his things to storage until he could get another apartment…
He went to Kai’s room next. Many things had blackened and shriveled up beyond recognition, and the stink of smoke was everywhere, mixing with an odd, unfamiliar spicy scent. It was probably worse in the kitchen, where the actual fire had been, but Kai’s room had been situated right next to it, so it stood to reason that it was as bad as it was.
There wasn’t much to look at, really. He wondered why he’d even bothered to come, but seeing the home halfway unlivable like this was like seeing a grotesque corpse; you couldn’t look away from the mutilation, but the revulsion and natural rejection was there all the same.
As he turned to go, faint light glinted off an object on the ground. Sitting on his haunches, Ruki picked it up. It felt cool and smooth, like glass, but far too slippery. A familiar pattern that he couldn’t quite place of red and white squares was etched into one corner of the object; Ruki now recognized it as a chip or pass-card of some sort. Frowning, he rubbed his thumb over the surface and was startled to suddenly feel tiny pinpricks, but when he pulled his thumb away, it was as smooth and innocuous as ever.
Now that he thought about it, the pass-card was strangely unscorched and without a scratch—though it had been carelessly laid in a pile of blackened ashes and broken glass. So why was the pass-card still intact? As if someone had dropped it there after the fire…
Shaking his thoughts away, Ruki stood again, slipping the pass-card into his pocket and surveying the room one last time. Then, for the last time, he left the apartment.
The soft tap-tap of his shoes bounced off the narrow walls as he descended down the stairs, hands stuffed into his pockets. A gust of sudden wind blew away the stink of smoke as he stepped out of the apartment complex again. He blinked several times as the sudden increase in sunlight blinded him momentarily.
His eyes adjusted to a street that was fairly empty. They skipped over a man standing on the street opposite, but then his mind skidded to a halt.
The man was staring up at the apartment building, his blank expression visible even from across the street. Ruki almost didn’t recognize him; there was a wave to his dark hair that hadn’t been there before and a stern look on his face. His eyes looked strangely dead and empty—and when he met Ruki’s gaze, there was no recognition, no surprise in them before breaking eye contact and pushing off the car he was leaning against to climbed inside.
The engine roared to life and backed out of the street. Ruki stood stock still; didn’t, couldn’t react as it turned a corner and drove out of sight. As the sound faded away, the name unstuck from where it’d lodged into his throat.
“…Kai?”
wake- It's a ceremony traditionally taken place at the deceased's home. It's not the funeral, it's sort of like...a viewing period, when you can see their body and the like. You pray, you offer your condolensces, the family thanks you for a small gift, and after the wake the body is carried to the crematory.
Author:
evilgeniuskojiBeta:
visualcomplexChapter: 5/??
Pairing: Ruki/Reita
Genre: Mystery, Scifi, General
Rating: PG-13
Warning: None
Summary: AU. Saiko Reality is the hottest new virtual reality simulator. With an in-game experience that questions your reality and theirs, PSC's newest product has establishd a wide branch all over Central Tokyo. Such a large corporation cannot go witout its dark secrets...and as he struggles to remember his past, Ruki finds himself ensnared in the very heart of the problem.
Comments: Sorry this took so long. It was a difficult chapter. Hope it wasn't boring after all the drama!
File 01 | File 02 | File 03 | File 04
All around him there was noise, people talking, moving, their voices pitched low and high, panicked and restless. They passed Ruki by without a word, too busy to pay attention to him as they made phone calls, arranged meetings, alerted family members. Every once in a while they would glance down at him where he sat, his head bowed and elbows resting on his knees.
“Oh, no,” someone groaned. “It’s you, Ruki-kun?”
His head jerked up and spotted a tall, broad-shouldered woman dressed in a meticulous police uniform. Her piercing eyes were faintly familiar, as was her voice. “Sakuma-san…?” His voice was uncertain, but recovered when the older woman nodded once. “What are you doing here?” He got up quickly.
“I’ve been assigned to the case,” Sakuma said dryly. “You’re a busy guy, aren’t you, Ruki-kun? First arson, then murder…”
“I—arson? I thought you said it wasn’t deliberately set!” Ruki started.
Sakuma sat down abruptly by the spot Ruki had been just a moment ago. “We found a trace of a fire setting device this afternoon,” she said flatly. “In your friend’s room. Go on, sit.”
“In my…?” he sat, feeling as if he’d been hit. “What…how…?”
“Ruki-kun,” Sakuma said in an uncharacteristically kind voice. “That is not what we are here for. Please concentrate on the task at hand.” She pulled out a small, flat, metallic square. “Do you understand?”
He looked down at his hands and clenched them very slowly. “…Yes.”
“Very well. Let us begin.” She tapped a button on the square. A holographic screen and keyboard appeared before her with a blink, glowing light blue in color. “Where were you on June 1st, 11:34 A.M.?”
It took them over an hour. Sakuma questioned Ruki ruthlessly on every detail, noting it all down in her small, portable noter—one of PSC’s new inventions, she informed him when he asked. He told her everything; from the time he left the hotel to the milk he bought from the vending machine.
As the minutes wore by and he began answering the questions on automatic, the small pit of bitter regret sitting at the bottom of his stomach began to stew. His body began to shake, wracked between betrayal and grief that had just begun to sink in. Morita. Doctor Morita had been the one person to know his past, and from the sound of it, had known for quite a while. But now he was dead, and Ruki would likely never hear the reason why.
Sakuma noticed his trembling hands and barked at another officer. Minutes later she pressed a can of strong tea into his hands. “Drink,” the policewoman said gruffly. “It’s the shock.” She watched him mechanically pop the tab and sip it, her finger tapping against the noter.
“Listen, Ruki-kun,” she spoke at last. “I don’t believe you are the culprit. You’d have to be at least five inches taller, for one thing, by our calculations, and for another, the evidence favors you. You couldn’t have done it.”
His shoulders sagged slightly, but the older woman wasn’t done.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is, it’s not safe. It’s happening around you, Ruki-kun.” Her eyes were intent. “This might look like a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences. Coincidences get you killed. Be more careful from now, Ruki-kun. Be very careful.”
Be careful. Those were the very words Doctor Morita had said to him during that last conversation, and he hadn’t taken it to heart. What had he wanted to tell him then? There was so much that he’d wanted to ask, wanted to know. All slipped between his fingers.
“Watch yourself, Ruki-kun.” Sakuma stood up and shoved the noter back into her pocket. “By the way, try to catch get a hold of that roommate of yours. It’s very suspicious that he’s disappeared now.”
“Yes…” Ruki bit his lip. Kai. Where the hell was he?
---
“Kai? No, he hasn’t been around.”
“Haven’t seen him. Excuse me, we’re very busy.”
“Kai hasn’t shown up for weeks. If you see him, tell him that the boss says he’s fired.”
“No.”
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Kai-kun?” The restaurant manager frowned and smacked his apron several times against his knees, releasing tiny clouds of flour into the air. The faint smell of fresh bread reached Ruki’s nostrils. “Yeah, he came in yesterday to resign. It’s a pity,” he sighed. “He was a good worker.”
“W-What?” Ruki sputtered. “He was in? Did he leave word? Anything?”
“No, he didn’t.” The balding man looked startled by Ruki’s vehemence. “Is something the matter?”
He sat back down slowly, disappointment trickling into him again, and shook his head. “No…it’s alright… Could you please contact me if you hear from him again?” He produced a small card and presented it to the manager.
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you.”
---
He attended the wake [1] in a somber funerary suit he’d never had to use before, with his hair slicked down and his eyes serious behind black-framed glasses. He tried to look respectable, he really did, but despite his best efforts, the bleached white blonde hair and multiple piercings in his ear gained him the disapproving glances of the doctor’s relatives and friends who surrounded him.
“Who is that boy?”
“Him? One of Kenichi’s patients.”
“Oh, one of those. Is he even supposed to be out of the wards?”
“Don’t be disrespectful, Izumi.”
“Isn’t he the one who found Uncle?”
“Is he? I didn’t know.”
“Who invited him anyway?”
“Who? I think it was Kenichi’s oldest boy Ryuuichi.”
“It’s horrible…how could this happen to Kenichi…who would even want to kill him?”
“Mother, there’s nothing we can do, please calm down…the police will find out for sure…”
Ruki ignored the whispers as he knelt onto the cushion, incense in hand. He bowed his head twice to the tablet inscribed with the doctor's name and the picture of the old man on the funerary altar, clasping the sticks of incense before him with both hands as he did so. When he was done offering his prayers, he placed them in the pot of ash with the other sticks and stood to let the next visitor pay their respects.
In the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement. Turning, he spotted a young man his age with hair dyed a darker blonde enter the house in customary funerary blacks. They locked gazes and the inexplicable cold of recognition washed over Ruki, some old echo of emotion. It passed as soon as it came, leaving Ruki strangely disoriented as the young man broke eye contact and disappeared into the crowd of mourners.
Someone cleared his throat and Ruki nearly jumped as he turned around and saw Ryuuichi. The doctor’s eldest son smiled politely at him. “Ruki-san, are you leaving already? You won’t stay for the rest of the wake service?”
“Yes, Ryuuichi-san.” Ruki cleared his throat awkwardly. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“It was no trouble. Father always said you were like another son to him.”
The polite words caused Ruki to stiffen, resentment building, but he kept his face under a tight, polite mask and bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“Will you be coming to the funeral?” Ryuuichi continued.
“No, that wouldn’t be right,” Ruki sighed. “I will go pay my respects to the grave some time after the cremation and burial.”
“Then, thank you for coming, Ruki-san.” Ryuuichi drew a small package from the sleeves of his kimono and presented it to Ruki. “Our thanks for your condolences.”
Ruki nodded once, accepting the package and slipping it into his pocket before bowing and retreating away.
He stepped outside the wide screen doors and sank down on the engawa surrounding the traditional house. No one else was along the wooden strip of flooring between the house and the outdoors, so he didn’t feel guilty for lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag.
Coming to the wake had driven home a lot of points that he’d never quite thought about before, chief among them the fact that he didn’t quite know Doctor Morita at all. He hadn’t known that the man had had an ancestral home in the countryside, or a family rich enough to hold such a lavish wake. He hadn’t even known that the man had had children, let alone four of them.
All these things added to the hollow weight sitting at the bottom of his stomach. The end of his cigarette flared angrily, releasing another cloud of smoke into the air.
It had really stung to realize that the chance to know who he really was had slipped by again. It stung more that he had been lied to by someone who told their children that he thought of him as his own son.
“What son?” he muttered to the skies. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier who I was? Why did you keep it to yourself?”
And of course, the skies ignored him, quietly gathering more woolen gray clouds to what seemed to be an amassing rainstorm.
Sighing, Ruki ground his cigarette under his foot and stood to go.
The sound of quiet footsteps caught his attention. Someone coughed. “Um…”
Ruki turned around. For some reason, he was not surprised when he met the gaze of the man he saw entering the wake. Frowning, Ruki cleared his throat softly. “Yes?” He felt a faint twinge of familiarity as he took in that rounded, boyish place. Had he seen this man before? The beginnings of a headache started building in his temple.
“Ah…that is…” the taller man looked uncomfortable now that Ruki had turned around. “We saw each other once at Morita-sensei’s clinic. My name is Suzuki, Suzuki Akira.”
“Oh, you’re the one I knocked down,” Ruki laughed, embarrassed. He remembered now, though something still didn’t feel quite right. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” There was a sudden, odd disappointment about Suzuki’s face then. “I just wanted to…um…Morita-sensei…I spoke with him a few minutes on the phone the morning he…”
“Oh.” Ruki stuffed his hands in his pockets, not quite sure what to say. “Is that so?” The ache was growing steadily worse, more insistent.
Suzuki looked discomfited. “He left me a message for you.”
For a moment, Ruki could only stare. Of late, that seemed to be all he was capable of. “Why would he leave a message for me with you?” he demanded when he found his voice. “We’ve only met each other once before, and in any case, I had an appointment with him later that day, so he could’ve…”
He trailed off when Suzuki began shaking his head. “He knew who he was messing with when he decided to tell you everything,” the blonde muttered. “So he took some precautions.”
“What he was getting into?” Ruki repeated. “All he was doing was telling me about my—what are you talking about?”
The taller man raised his head and looked as if he was about to speak, but in that moment a weak ray of sunlight struck his face, revealing eyes far too familiar.
Ruki’s knees buckled, almost giving out beneath him as he was struck by a wave of dizziness. His vision swam, graying at the edges as his head throbbed violently.
A tall, glittering glass city—
“—must be here—”
“—found it!”
– endlessly blue sky, bowl-like in appearance—
—footsteps pounding on a thin marble walkway—
“—can’t see shit, did they put a darkness charm here—?”
A room carved in runes and scrolling columns of names—
“—fucking idiot, Reita—”
— gray eyes—
His arm scattered into pixels, then reformed again—
—static—
—ACCESS DENIED—
“Ruki, snap out of it, we have to get out of here! They’re locking down on us, the fucking mods are here! Ruki! Ruki! Ru…”
“…ki-san! Ruki-san!” someone shook his shoulder hard. “Ruki, snap out of it!”
His sight returned slowly. Ruki slid his gaze down from the darkening sky and locked them with gray eyes.
“Rei…ta..?”
The other man looked shaken, disconcerted. Ruki wondered dizzily what he had said that had shocked him so as he regained his balance. He focused his gaze on Suzuki as his headache eased to a dull ache, clarity returning in a slow trickle. “You…how do you know my name? I never told you.”
Suzuki released his shoulder. “I…”
His thoughts were clearing now, as if a weight had been lifted off them. “Why would Morita-sensei tell you about me? Did he know he was going to die?” Ruki stepped away as the strength returned to his limbs. “Who the hell are you?”
A stricken look was on the other’s face. “I…yes, Morita-sensei knew the possibilities…And I…you knew me from before your amnesia, too. As…” His face twisted unhappily. “As ‘Reita’.”
“Why?” Ruki ignored the second wave of dizziness as it washed over him. “Why are you all telling me this now? Why talk now, after three years of—”
Reita—Ruki’s thoughts immediately slipped into tagging that name with that face, as if it were habitual, comfortable— hesitated. “The book you wrote,” he said slowly. “Distorted Daytime. It wasn’t Morita-sensei who told you to publish it, right? He didn’t even read it.”
“No,” Ruki said. “No, it was a friend.” It had been Kai.
From his pocket, Reita drew a small, slim book and passed it to Ruki. As he took it in his hands, the title jumped out at him. Distorted Daytime.
“The day I saw you at his clinic,” Reita said, “Morita-sensei gave me that. He’d gone through it and marked every passage that contained a scene or event he knew, he said, and wanted me to look at it as well.”
The book opened to a page that was nearly completely highlighted in light blue. He looked at Reita, alarm in his eyes. “You mean…”
He nodded. “There are scenes in there that really happened. Real places…or as real as they got inside Saiko. I went ahead and marked the passages I knew too—”
Ruki slammed the book shut, his fingers clenching white around the spine as he shoved the book back at Reita and inexplicable rage surged up his chest. The other man stopped short, startled at the look in his eyes.
“Why,” Ruki said in a voice tight with tension, “are you all stepping forward now, again? Morita-sensei knew about me before I wrote this, didn’t he—so why didn’t he tell me before? Why? Why now?”
“That should be obvious,” Reita ducked his head, “by this incident alone. You didn’t think Morita-sensei died by accident, did you? He thought it was for your own good and protection that you didn’t remember. He didn’t want you in the whole mess again.”
Ruki just looked at him, his eyes hard even as the anger bled out of him and left him tired and weary. “I don’t want to try to figure this out any more,” he muttered. “I’m leaving. Good bye, Reita-san.”
A hand stopped him , grabbing his shoulder again. Reita hesitated, then flipped the copy of Distorted Daytime open and scribbling a number and address onto the inside cover before returning it to Ruki again. “Contact me if you really want to know what happened,” he said. “But remembered that it’s not just about you…and it’s dangerous to know, even if it’s just as dangerous not knowing now that they’ve found you. It’s your choice. Think about it.”
Ruki didn’t ask who ‘they’ were. He didn’t want to think about it any more, because each time he did, his head would ache harder and harder. Nodding once at Reita, he slipped the book into his pocket, turned around, and walked away as the sky opened up and a faint sprinkling of rain fell onto the earth.
It was nearly sundown when he finally reached the city again. His thoughts felt thick and heavy, weighing down on the matter of his brain like chain links. Every once in a while he felt the stinging throb of a headache coming on.
His feet halted suddenly and Ruki blinked, finally focusing his attention on his surroundings. He was surprised to discover that he stood right in front of his apartment…or what was left of his apartment. For a moment he could only stare up at the building that had been the only home he’d ever known, feeling strangely empty. After a moment of hesitance, he began to climb up the stairs.
There was a still sort of silence when the lock to his apartment clicked and the door swung open to a fairly undisturbed living room. The only trace of the fire was the black streaked walls and the sharp scent of smoke permeating everything. By habit, Ruki kicked off his shoes and lined them by the door before stepping further in. His socked feet padded softly over the carpet.
First he checked his room. Like the inspector had told him, it seemed to have suffered little to no damage. All his things were intact, and the lingering smell of the incense he always burned overpowered the smoke. Soon he would have to call in a moving company to transport his things to storage until he could get another apartment…
He went to Kai’s room next. Many things had blackened and shriveled up beyond recognition, and the stink of smoke was everywhere, mixing with an odd, unfamiliar spicy scent. It was probably worse in the kitchen, where the actual fire had been, but Kai’s room had been situated right next to it, so it stood to reason that it was as bad as it was.
There wasn’t much to look at, really. He wondered why he’d even bothered to come, but seeing the home halfway unlivable like this was like seeing a grotesque corpse; you couldn’t look away from the mutilation, but the revulsion and natural rejection was there all the same.
As he turned to go, faint light glinted off an object on the ground. Sitting on his haunches, Ruki picked it up. It felt cool and smooth, like glass, but far too slippery. A familiar pattern that he couldn’t quite place of red and white squares was etched into one corner of the object; Ruki now recognized it as a chip or pass-card of some sort. Frowning, he rubbed his thumb over the surface and was startled to suddenly feel tiny pinpricks, but when he pulled his thumb away, it was as smooth and innocuous as ever.
Now that he thought about it, the pass-card was strangely unscorched and without a scratch—though it had been carelessly laid in a pile of blackened ashes and broken glass. So why was the pass-card still intact? As if someone had dropped it there after the fire…
Shaking his thoughts away, Ruki stood again, slipping the pass-card into his pocket and surveying the room one last time. Then, for the last time, he left the apartment.
The soft tap-tap of his shoes bounced off the narrow walls as he descended down the stairs, hands stuffed into his pockets. A gust of sudden wind blew away the stink of smoke as he stepped out of the apartment complex again. He blinked several times as the sudden increase in sunlight blinded him momentarily.
His eyes adjusted to a street that was fairly empty. They skipped over a man standing on the street opposite, but then his mind skidded to a halt.
The man was staring up at the apartment building, his blank expression visible even from across the street. Ruki almost didn’t recognize him; there was a wave to his dark hair that hadn’t been there before and a stern look on his face. His eyes looked strangely dead and empty—and when he met Ruki’s gaze, there was no recognition, no surprise in them before breaking eye contact and pushing off the car he was leaning against to climbed inside.
The engine roared to life and backed out of the street. Ruki stood stock still; didn’t, couldn’t react as it turned a corner and drove out of sight. As the sound faded away, the name unstuck from where it’d lodged into his throat.
“…Kai?”
wake- It's a ceremony traditionally taken place at the deceased's home. It's not the funeral, it's sort of like...a viewing period, when you can see their body and the like. You pray, you offer your condolensces, the family thanks you for a small gift, and after the wake the body is carried to the crematory.
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