compnetwork | > 01. [text]

[He shakes his head. Looks somewhere else.]

No. The Dark Hour's the last thing I remember.

[So that's it. He's just hooked up to a bunch of machines then. Nothing but a body full of wires instead of bullets. What are the chances of waking up from that? Or even being the same? A coma hints at some kind of neurological damage, doesn't it? His body had probably just went into shock and spiralled down from there. With his body as shitty as it apparently is—he may not like Takaya, but he had probably known what he was talking about—maybe he shouldn't be surprised. Except he is.]

And... [he pauses] that's not what Aki told me.

[Her heart is plummeting, mind already coming to conclusions she doesn't want to reach.

She shouldn't ask. She doesn't want the confirmation -]

What did he tell you?

[Now he's not sure not sure what to think. Was this just another way the timeline was screwing with them, or had he just died later on? Aki did seem to remember more than anyone else. He hadn't gotten the specifics from him, about what had happened that night and afterward, but he didn't think he had to. He thought the outcome had been pretty damn clear.

And now it looks like he'll have to ask Aki later, though he doesn't want to, but it looks like it needs to be done, and no one else should have to do it.]

He said he wasn't too happy with me leaving him behind.

[It's the kindest way he can think of putting it.]

[But she already knows. Akihiko wouldn't have made that kind of admission unless it was the truth.

In his world, he'd been left behind.

One timeline, death. The other, a coma. What’s the missing link? The trigger of the butterfly effect? The answer comes rushing out, unbidden -]

The pocketwatch....

[That old watch he’d given up on completely, despite it being precious to him. The watch she’d scoured the city and badgered Officer Kurosawa into handing back over. The watch the doctor had said deflected the second bullet, saving his life...]

Edited 2012-09-15 21:38 (UTC)

[He tilts his head, a brief, quizzical look coloring his expression.]

My—

[He cuts himself off, trying to follow Minako's trail of thought in the ensuing silence. It takes him a moment, his own thoughts racing from one line of reasoning to the other like an electric current, until they suddenly find a point of connection, taking to it like a sudden spark that brings a room to light—and from there, the answer comes to him, and he finally thinks he understands.

He sets down his chopsticks, pushing back his chair and standing up wordlessly. Within another few seconds he's slid open the door to his bedroom, entering inside, finding his coat and digging the pocketwatch out of its usual hiding place.

So this was the proverbial nail?

Would he have even said anything to Minato about it? Minato seemed like a quiet guy, more prone to understanding the value of silence than about the benefits of filling the void and making sure nothing stayed empty for too long. Minato wasn't someone he'd stay up talking about aimless things into the night with (even if he wasn't the one doing much of the talking). He can only see their conversations being brief and to the point. He hadn't intended to say anything about the watch in the first place. It just happened as an off-hand comment; he really hadn't expected Minako to actually look for it. That was why he hadn't told Aki, because that idiot would have gone looking for it and probably gotten himself into trouble over something he had stupidly lost in the first place.

He had told himself he didn't need it, sentimentality be damned.

He returns to the table with the pocketwatch in hand, staring down at the bullet-shaped indentation in its casing for a few seconds before offering it to her.]

This thing?

[The casing doesn't close all the way because of the indent in the metal, and the glass inside is damaged where it took the bullet, a cobweb of cracked lines that make the IV almost unreadable, but it's still ticking, oddly enough. It's keeping Port Island time, he supposes, or maybe its own. He hasn't dared correct it. He doesn't want to break it.]

Edited 2012-09-16 00:10 (UTC)

[Looking at Shinjiro now, one would never guess just how bad he'd looked that night. The coat is clean and repaired. The watch, though... it told the whole story.

She'd seen it once after the accident, when the doctors told them about it, but it hadn't been in the box of things left in his room. Maybe Akihiko had kept it, or maybe he'd left it in the hospital room. The latter felt more likely. It was a wake-up-soon charm.]

They said if it hadn't been there you'd probably have died.

[No, now they knew he would have died.

She doesn’t know for certain how Minato and Shinjiro’s friendship went, but she can imagine. Minato isn’t pushy the way she is. He wouldn’t have shoved his way into his senpai’s private life and business. They likely sat at the same table in the dorm, or leaned against the same wall, not speaking but sharing the same space. Minato would have supported Shinjiro quietly, with brief conversations and an unstated trust, and Shinjiro would have come to respect the distance. Acted like a real senpai. Not troubled his leader with ‘minor’ things.

Minato probably never even knew the watch was lost.

Her thumb runs over the bullet marking for a moment before she sets it back on the table.]

Please... don’t tell Minato. [One tiny act no one could have predicted had meant the life or death of a friend. Minako knows how she’d react, if the situations were reversed. She doesn’t want her brother to even get the chance to feel that guilt. He doesn’t deserve it.]

Edited 2012-09-16 00:29 (UTC)

He doesn't need to know.

[If this was really the only thing that stood between him living and dying—regardless of how much time it actually bought him when coupled with everything he knows and feels—then her brother doesn't need that haunting his mind.

In fact—]

None of them do.

[At all. Not Aki and not Mitsuru. There are a lot of things that are better left unsaid, even if the truth is something that they're probably owed. Honesty and kindness don't always go hand-in-hand, and there are often times you are forced to choose between the two. They don't need to know he's in a hospital bed, veins plugged with wires, probably with some machine doing the breathing for him. The outcome might even be the same, in the end. And if not, he still sees a gravestone with his name on it somewhere along the horizon.]

I just died that night, all right?

[They'd be happy knowing he was alive, he's sure, even if it isn't currently much of an existence, but he doesn't need them thinking that they had maybe done something wrong. He lost the watch. The fault, ultimately, is his. And the dying part isn't something he regrets—or that his other self would; it had been what Amada had wanted. All he regrets is hurting other people in the process. If he could stop that, he would.]

Edited 2012-09-16 00:58 (UTC)

[She nods... but that turns into a scowl at the last part. Shielding their friends is one thing, but saying it like that made it sound like he didn't want to live.]

You didn't, though. I even heard some people saying you woke up before I came here. That's why I thought you already knew. You can't just give up!

[Even if she already had, earlier in the year.]

I didn't... [He sighs. That scowl.] I didn't say anything about giving up.

[Resigning himself to the future that lay in store, yes, because there are some things he can't do, and that's not so much giving up as it is taking responsibility for what you've done. Lay in the bed you've made. It had never been a matter of giving up, really. If it had, he would have been dead a long time ago.]

Just saying that's the story, is all, because that's probably how things went.

[Though there are some things about her story that don't add up. Heard some people? Why would she be hearing about it second-hand? Aki would have told her. Mitsuru would have told her. Unless it was a rumor some jackass had started.

Though maybe she had died before they could, but... something's off still. Or maybe he's assuming all the wrong things, reading into every word he hears more than he should, even though he's sure—

...Maybe he should just stop thinking.]

[She sighs. She's getting the feeling that this piece-meal story has made things even more confusing than before. She needs to get it all out before anything else can happen. He deserves that.]

I'm just... going to tell you everything now, okay? A lot of it you won't like, but... listen first, please?

[His mouth thins, turning to sit back down in his chair. He stares at the pocketwatch for a few more seconds, letting his eyes wander across its surface, before nodding.]

Alright.

We took you to the hospital after the Dark Hour. The doctors said then there wasn't a chance of you waking up. We had to keep fighting, though... so we did. We took out the Shadow on the next Full Moon on the Moonlight Bridge. Strega attacked us too, but we beat them and then Jin and Takaka jumped off the bridge.

We all thought that was the end of it. Mitsuru-senpai got us a giant sushi platter to celebrate... it was really delicious by the way. [...Side tracking... she can't help but inject some levity into the story even though she'd just told him it was dark.] Her father even came to the party. But Aigis and Ikutsuki were late.

[She pointedly doesn't call him the Chairman, or even add an honorific to the title, and the reason why is fairly obvious in another minute.]

We found out why once the Dark Hour hit. It hadn't ended when we destroyed the Shadows after all. We all headed to Tartarus, and found Ikutsuki and Aigis there - he'd taken control of her. Everything he'd told us before was a lie. Destroying the Shadows wasn't ever going to end the Dark Hour... It was just Ikutsuki's plan. He wanted us to bring them together. He even doctored the footage of Yukari-chan's father to make us go after them. Mr. Takeba was really trying to protect everyone when he released them... because he knew if they did come back together, it would mean the end of the world.

[She takes a deep breath, trying to collect her thoughts before she continues.]

[He says nothing as she begins to talk, just listens. His face is as expressionless as he can make it, taking everything in as best as he can—though when Takaya is mentioned, he twitches, because good riddance. Takaya was nothing but a sick bastard, and the world is probably better off now that he's gone. It wasn't like he didn't have a death wish anyway, so he got what he wanted in the end, and Jin followed. Jin was loyal that way—sounded like what Shinjiro knew of him. He had never wished death on him, but he hadn't ever liked him. Jin was just another messed up kid, just like the many others that wandered the streets.

The Chairman's betrayal, however, is a different story. He looks up sharply, a new light entering his eyes as his inner ire grows with every new bit of information he hears. It makes him angry, though his reaction is bridled, boiling underneath the skin. All this means is that all of them were nothing but pawns to use in whatever game he was playing, and it suddenly makes every damn thing he did reprehensible. He allowed a kid to join SEES. Allowed a bunch of teenagers to put their life on the line, getting hurt because of their solidarity towards a cause, all for a goal that was never a possibility.

He had known the Chairman for years, and Shinjiro had trusted him in his own way. Never close, he was never a friend, but respect was there. Now there isn't, just a sudden void.

But, just like he had agreed, he just listens, waiting to hear more of the many things he knows he'll never be able to change.]

[She would agree with his thoughts if he voiced them. She'd trusted the Chairman, too. Respected him, as someone who looked out for them, in a way few adults ever had in her life.

And then it'd all been a lie.]

He ordered Aigis to capture us, and brought us to the Observatory. He said he was going to sacrifice us to bring the Fall. We didn't know what that was yet, but he thought it was going to make him the ruler of the world, or something like that. Koromaru came, and Aigis managed to snap out of it, but before we could stop anything he and Mr. Kirijo.... killed each other.

[another deep breath. Then she continues in a steady voice.]

Things just went awry after that. Mitsuru-senpai was upset... It turned out Takaya and Jin hadn't died, either. Takaya was completely into what Ikutsuki had said, about the Fall. They broke Chidori-san out of the hospital and tried to get her to attack us. But in the end, Junpei brought her around. Takaya even shot him, but Chidori-san sacrificed herself to heal him.

[she sighs.] Strega disappeared again after that. None of us knew what to do. We couldn't stop the Dark Hour and we didn't have any ideas about the Fall Ikutsuki had talked about. So we just kept going to school.

[So when Mitsuru had arrived here, she had not only had to deal with him and Minato walking around, but got to add her father to the tally of dead men walking while she was at it. Well, shit. No wonder she had looked so tired. He doesn't recall a time when he had ever seen Mitsuru legitimately distraught over anything—at least, not for more than five or ten minutes at a stretch, which was about the amount of time it usually took for her to get a handle on things, for her to figure out how to deal with the situation as best she could, keeping that air of quiet professionalism about her—but he can imagine. Mitsuru's strong, but she is still human. And she's still someone's daughter.

He should've been the one taking her out for coffee, really.

His thoughts drift away from her, returning to the topic at hand, glad for a moment that the Chairman's dead and won't be able to toy with anyone anymore, but intimately aware of the growing unease starting to rise in his gut, as it usually does when he feels things are about to go wrong. Takaya being alive doesn't surprise him as much as maybe should—though then again, his apparent suicide was only ten seconds ago—and the things involving Chidori are about the same. He wondered what Strega would do with her being absent, and she had been with Strega for as long as he can remember consorting with them. They would have come for her eventually.

He had always been surprised Chidori had taken to Iori as much as she did—though the reverse was also equally true. Iori had gotten her to talk when no one else could, and visited her at the hospital more often than he could count. Stupid kid, he had probably been setting himself up for tragedy.

But then again, you couldn't really stop who you fell in love with.]

This all happen in November?

Edited 2012-09-16 05:06 (UTC)

It was... it seems like a lot, doesn't it? The rest of the month was pretty normal, though. A new student transferred into our class - Ryoji Mochizuki. [Well, actually he'd transferred in the middle of the previous stuff, but details.] And we took a class trip to Kyoto. That was fun... Well, except for how Ryoji-kun, Junpei-kun and Akihiko-senpai snuck in to watch us in the hot springs! Mitsuru-senpai took care of them, though. [Shinji, you should be happy you weren't around for that incident.]

[Aki wouldn't do that and you know it.]

[Which can only mean he got dragged into it like an idiot. Because he is one. He's not sure which one of the two remaining males to blame, but Junpei sounds like as good of a scapegoat as any, unless this Mochizuki kid is one of those morons who hadn't yet learned how asinine it is to be a slave to your hormones, following every stupid impulse it likes to flood your system with on a daily basis. He can only imagine Mitsuru skinned them alive.

They probably all went to bed feeling about as manly as a castrated dog.

Had he been around, he would have had the sense to skip the entire school trip.

In fact, he did.

He missed nothing.]

Edited 2012-09-16 05:29 (UTC)

[But for all the sudden change in tone, he's glad to hear everything could at least go back to some semblance of normality. He'd rather they all get into trivial, harmless, asinine things than have to deal with the shittier parts of the world, the bits of life he's been used to seeing day in and day out.

It meant that Aki had gotten over things and wasn't dwelling on the past like he could have been. It also meant that Mitsuru was able to get back up (something he never doubted) and keep on going even after her father passed away. And Iori continued to be himself, and so was Minako, for that matter. And everyone else. They were all able to move on in some way or another, something he always had trouble doing. Their sphere of life was so fundamentally different from his.

He shakes his head (bunch of idiots), and there's a lingering trace of fondness remaining in his voice when he speaks again, because for all their stupidity, they still sound like the people he remembers. Not that he'd ever say such things out loud.]

I believe you.

Edited 2012-09-16 05:52 (UTC)

[She grins at his expression, but then it fades. The last part of the month had been wonderful, but it ended quickly, much like the cheerful tone of her story.]

Ryoji-kun... was a sweet person. He was best friends with Junpei-kun. Nearly everyone at school liked him, especially the girls. I...

[This is so hard to say. She doesn't want to feel guilt over her decisions, for her emotions... but it's hard to stick with the justifications she'd made when Shinjiro is standing right in front of her. When she knows now he probably isn't terminally brain dead.]

I liked him too. And he was interested in me. ...We ended up getting close. That was the rest of November.

Edited 2012-09-16 06:14 (UTC)

[What she was trying to say wasn't all that hard to understand: she had started to date someone else. Moved on from the comatose invalid who was probably never going to wake up.

The knowledge hurts more than he ever thought it would.

The pain is a disturbingly familiar feeling, just harsher in its sudden, piercing intensity, like reopening an age-old wound that has never fully healed and setting it aflame. He had seen this coming a long time ago. This wasn't some new revelation. He knew she would end up finding someone else from the very moment he he began to realize that he was falling in love with her. He had never expected to be with her then—he was never going to let her know, and let what he felt for her die with him. He would just stay the silent observer, and that likely meant watching her fall in love and date other people that weren't him, which was exactly how it should have been, because he knew that, in the end, he would only hurt her. This was especially true as September drew to a close, and Amada's intentions towards him had been made increasingly clear. He had expected to die.

So even the mere thought of getting together with her was a selfish one. How could you validate dating a girl when you knew with almost complete certainty you would be dead in before the next month was through? You couldn't.

He had also known exactly what kind of person he was. He wasn't the type of guy any self-respecting girl dated.

He couldn't offer her anything. He couldn't give her the world or even a life. She was supposed to get married and have kids (if she wanted to), make a name for herself, and he… couldn't give her that. Can't give her that. Being a father was never in his stars, limited at the very least by his own mortality. All he is, in the end, is a delinquent orphan with too much baggage to his name and a lifespan you could probably measure on one hand. He knows this better than anyone, which is why he knew it would be far kinder to just let her go, even though it would hurt and mean facing each day wondering what could have been if he hadn't screwed up his life. He could deal with pain. Pain wasn't anything new or unexpected. He could take that if it meant not hurting someone else. That was (and is) the last thing he ever wanted to do.

And then she had badgered her way into his bedroom and made things complicated. He had tried to say no. Tried, but he had given in to every selfish particle that still resided in his body. Maybe he abandoned restraint because he was weaker-willed than he had thought, or maybe because he had been terrified about what was going to happen in the next few days. Or maybe he had given in because he had just wanted so badly to be happy for once. And was that really so wrong, to want to be happy for a little while? For five minutes? A day?

He couldn't say no. Couldn't give a valid reason for why they shouldn't be, because that reason was between he and Amada, and what would be, would be. And look how that turned out. He might as well have been dead.

She had done what he had expected her to do—wanted her to do. He's not angry, and he can't (and would never) blame her. They hadn't even been "together" for all that long. He just wished it didn't have to hurt so much, knowing that she did, but that's his own damn fault, not hers, and it will fade once everything isn't so raw. And he can deal with that, because only one thing matters.]

Were you happy?

...I was. Those weeks were a lot of fun.

["But so were the weeks with you--" It sounds like an excuse, even as she thinks it. She can't give him excuses. Even when they're true.]

But you've probably already guessed things didn't stay that way. Aigis never liked Ryoji from the moment they met. She kept calling him "dangerous." We never took it seriously because, well, he's flirty and you know how she is with me, anyway. But the next full moon, Aigis disappeared during the Dark Hour. Fuuka-chan found her on the Moonlight Bridge and we all went after her... only to find her and Ryoji-kun both. Aigis was in horrible shape. It turned out... that Ryoji-kun was really a Shadow. Aigis had finally figured that out and attacked him.

[He nods.

Then that's all he needs to know.

He could say other things now, and ask a hundred others, but he won't. He will wait for later, after her story is done, when he can finally take in the whole picture and see everything he needs to see. So for now, he continues to listen.

He still notices her use of past tense when she refers to Mochizuki, and guesses at the future that lies in store for him, but his suspicions are still far and away from the unraveling truth he's hearing, and his eyes widen in surprise when she mentions that Mochizuki was a Shadow. Not... human at all. But... that didn't make sense. He had always seen Shadows as beings that existed, but were never really all that sentient, if at all. Mostly mindless things that they'd probably never be rid of.

Guess he was wrong, and that added an element to the Shadows that made some things in Tartarus even more disturbing, considering the possible implications, but nevertheless, that would explain why Aigis would react to him so badly. She probably sensed just what he was in some way or another, even if she couldn't put that feeling into words. And if he had the strength to take her down—

Well, he wasn't an ordinary Shadow.

But that much was all ready obvious.]

[It just gets stranger, of course. Minako pauses as she tries to condense all of the main points.]

Aigis was unconscious, so Ryoji-kun told us the whole story. Ten years ago, the Kirijo Group created a Shadow called Death. But that Shadow was too dangerous. Yukari-chan's father realized this and so he let the Shadow escape. That Shadow split apart as it left and became the twelve Shadows we ended up fighting all year.

But Aigis followed the main part and chased it to the Moonlight Bridge. I don't remember this myself, but it happened that my family was there at the same time. Death was too strong for Aigis to destroy. All she could do was seal it away inside the one person watching the battle. Which was me.

...Minato told me it was the same for him. Whoever lived that night received "Death," and when we came back to Iwatodai it started attracting the other Shadows. When we defeated them all, Death was whole again and left us, becoming Ryoji-kun.

Edited 2012-09-16 20:02 (UTC)

[He's beginning to see where her story is heading, and the horizon he sees there guessed is a dark one. You didn't call something "Death" for no reason, let alone a Shadow who could assume human form, having been trapped inside a human body for years.

He knew Aigis was a robot—a being who didn't think along the same lines humans did; their grayscale morality was not hers—but why the hell would you choose to do that to a little kid?]

That why Aigis was so protective of you?

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1/3 or something

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/done

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