Archive of Our Own

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Akira assured his mother yet again.

“Just— just stay inside, okay? Don’t go running around if you don’t have to—”

“Do I ever?” he said demurely.

She picked up on the smile over the phone and he could almost picture her light laughter, her own strained smile. After a small pause, she started again. “I’m sure the government will take care of you.”

“Oh, yes,” Akira said brightly. “They’ve already sent out many pamphlets and letters— have you received any over there? —well it all explains here…” He picked up the latest pamphlet from atop the phone stand and read a few choice bits out, such as plans for rations if it came to that and assurances of patrols and protection. Reminders in red print for everyone to do their part to make this crisis easiest to manage. He didn’t bother reading about the curfews and the suggestion to stay in groups. Mothers only worry.

They said goodbye at length, and she handed it over briefly to Akira’s father. He was gruff but warm and instead of feeling, as Akira did with his mother, that he must remain optimistic and comforting, Akira felt like he was the one being comforted.

“We will come get you as soon as possible,” his father said. “You owe me a game, don’t you?”

Akira allowed himself a grin. He could just imagine the mildly huffy look his mother was throwing right now. “Yes, until then.”

***

That was three months ago.

***

I should sleep.

It's very hard to sleep these days. How many days has he been up? Akira runs his finger down the calendar and strains to figure if today is Tuesday or Wednesday. In fact, even if today is Tuesday, did he last sleep on Friday or Saturday? He tries to bully his brain into order but only manages to churn annoyance into his general cloud of confusion.

But it annoys him to give in to sleep, generally speaking. It feels like escapism, which is just nonsense to which he refuses to subscribe.

Should he eat? He has not really felt hungry for quite some time; the feeling usually goes away by the third day. This is Akira's design; he may be skinny by the end of it all, but it's a sensible way to stretch rations. His limbs may feel weak, but it is just a feeling after all. He drinks a sensible amount of water from little boxes and passes his time in other ways. He should not think about food if he does not want heartburn; but generally, he worries about much bigger things than whether he should eat rice with mushrooms or rice with herbs.

Best not to think of that, either, though.

So instead of thinking about food or the outside or his parents or his friends or even anything about his own self, Akira plays go. Naturally.

He decided that, given limited resources and an indefinite period of waiting, he would take this opportunity to learn the game all over again. One month ago he began this process by fishing out one of his baby books, Beginning Go, and has been forcing himself to memorize every single word since then. Every single— well— one month ago was, after all, when it started getting really bad, when walking outside even during the day became a bad idea. There’s not much else to do. Going outside is pretty out of the question.

He can’t wait to play Shindo again. (He forces himself to think this way as opposed to, I wish I could play Shindo again.)

So Akira drags his feet to the go room, conscientiously sliding every single door shut behind him. He feels calmer when he doesn’t have to look at long empty hallways— no seeing shadows in the corner of his eye, no wondering what might be silently moving around the corner. The smaller spaces of closed off rooms feel more like a hug. (Though, in the beginning, he debated whether to keep them open so that there wasn’t that hopped up impression that anything could be behind the doors— that fear that made his fingers shake on the door handles, jump back a few times, open doors just a crack, just enough to see around, see if there was anyone— But as time went on without incident, he rather figured that the idea, the fear, his own mind was a more immediate threat.)

He drags out the board and stones and the book of life and death problems that his father wrote. Page 19. Akira places the stones deliberately, taking comfort if not pleasure in this lonely familiarity. The clack of the stones is louder than he ever thought possible. He tries to place them more softly, but such a way is foreign in his hand, and that makes him all too conscious of why he needs to be as quiet as possible in the first place. As the hour passes, his mind walks the fearful, animal tightrope between focus and alertness. Digging in the go bowl could cover the sounds of footsteps. Any sound might be loud enough in this silent world to draw attention. On the other hand, the space between reach and place comes with warm memories of long missing friends.

A loud bang pierces this quiet. His heart feels like it stops and his legs are kicking out from under him and how could he have ever thought the gentle sound of go could possibly mask the world? —he can’t tell if he’s breathing, but he tries not to— thinking now, not a second having passed, Akira can’t properly identify the sound. His brain is full of fear and no understanding. He knows that it was metal, echoing, and close. How close? Metal what? He freezes in place, life suspended for the duration of five seconds. He is desperately straining for footsteps, for a door opening. A voice.

Akira gets none of that. Just the sound of his heart slowly fading back into reality. He is still alive.

He is also, he realizes after what seems like a thousand years, somehow with his back against the wall. The board is on its side; the stones are scattered in a trail leading towards him. Struggling for control, Akira scoffs at himself. Oh, very nice! Very cool! To back yourself into a corner like a dumb rat!

So he stands as smoothly as possible, but really it isn’t possible at all— his legs give way in the middle of it, and he finds himself right back on his behind. It takes a firm hand on the wall and all of the iron will he’s able to recall to stand, to walk, to peel back the door as if danger isn’t on the other side. He remembers he is breathing, and his breath comes out too fast, too loud.

Even if the smartest thing is to run, it takes Akira an agonizingly long time to make it back to the front hall. Of course, smart seems to have taken a backseat, he huffs at himself— the problem being that he left the hammer next to the calendar. He finds himself peeping slowly around every corner, holding his breath. He scurries the last few steps and holds the hammer aloft. His arms and shoulders ache, ridden as they are with thick knots of tension.

Nothing presents itself to him. Perhaps it was far away; he should just go back to his go. Safe and familiar go. But Akira still is not satisfied. There are too many angles here, too many places to hide. He can’t relax— not until he knows—

He steps outside in the nigh silent way he has learned over the last three months. The front gate is fine, he sees— just fine, not a piece of furniture out of place. He checks to his left and right before slinking up to the doors to make sure. He leans over the makeshift barricade of the heaviest tables and desks they’ve got, runs his finger along the seam, and finds no separation. With only that, Akira relaxes a great deal.

He checks, too, the entire perimeter of his home, looks up at the walls— unscalable, surely, yes, far too high. Lovely, secure walls. At last he is satisfied, and only then does the weight of the hammer catch up to him. His arm turns to jelly and the hammer swings limply to his side.

There is no breach. He’s fine, he’s fine. It must have been elsewhere. Yes, there is someone nearby— but they are not here, and that’s important.

A person. Might be a good one. Maybe even…

Well. Best to not think of good things. Good things or bad things. Thinking is very frightening anymore.

***

During the 52nd hour of wakefulness, Akira raises a fist full of go stones and chucks them at the empty seat before him. What he knew as a child instinctively is still true now: go is a game for two, and utterly pointless to play with only yourself in mind. The frustration running through him now is the same as it was back then.

But thinking of the purposelessness of one-sided go leads to thinking of the purposelessness of… Well. And so Akira attempts to stop thinking altogether; might he still exist if he did nothing and thought of nothing?

He can almost hear Shindo now, almost see his sneer. You think way too much. Why do you have to make it so complicated?

Shindo is neutral enough territory if he really just cannot stop thinking, but it's also an area of his brain that's been played out as of late. There aren't really any new thoughts. He has not seen Shindo in a long time. It will probably be much longer before they have even a chance of meeting. Eventually Akira’s mind has wound down to the same few thoughts:

Is Shindo thinking of me as often as I think of him? Is Shindo thinking of me at all? But he knows in a logical way that these are fruitless thoughts. He cannot know the answers until they meet again.

There is nothing else meaningful of which to think. He can’t keep banging his tired brain against the concrete wall of go that has lost its purpose in his life. He can’t think about his parents if he wants to stay calm and quiet. Every now and then he is empty enough to let the gentle breeze outside, the sound of rustling leaves, soothe his brain, make noises within him that sound like thinking. Overall his bereft mind drifts back to food, to sleep, or the lack thereof.

Akira gives up. Being conscious is severely taxing. He might as well sleep. He is safe enough to sleep, at least. Just go ahead and sleep. Just sleep. Not forever. Not just to get away. Just to not be so tired. A normal amount of sleep would be fine. It isn’t escapism. It isn’t losing. It’s just normal.

He fights himself about it until he can’t anymore, until he’s too tired. That settled, he does his business the sensible way. The structure of brushing teeth, combing hair, fresh bedding gives him comfort. One thing he does not do is change out of his clothes. He never quite relaxes enough that he doesn’t imagine the absolute indignity of being caught in his pajamas.

Akira settles down in his bed, teeth brushed and fully clothed, as the sun turns orange. He lays his hammer down beside his head and feels better for it—

but still his itching eyes stare up at the dark ceiling, dart to the window, and refuse to shut. His body, used to stubbornness, fights on even when his mind has given up.

It takes an hour. The sun turns red before Akira finds sleep.

***

Even his dreams are restrained. They are full of yearning for Shindo’s back.

He sleeps fitfully, waking quite often to deepening shades of darkness. At some point his blanket becomes a cumbersome cocoon, and he panics and flops his way out of it. This keeps him awake for another four minutes before he sinks back into the mire. Then again sometime later he wakes to the sight of his pillow; he rolls himself onto his back once more and subconsciously reaches up to smooth tangled hair.

Chaste dreams full of Shindo’s back and a messy go board. When sleeping, he’s vaguely annoyed that Shindo won’t turn around to play him. When awake, he’s vaguely annoyed to be dreaming at all.

He wakes, this time with a snap, and his whole body jerks, making a few dull thumps. His clothes are hot and sweaty. He kicks the covers down to free himself up a little more, and they rustle roughly. He stills himself, trying to get comfortable.

The rustling does not stop. He sleepily kicks out again to settle the blankets. He brushes against something solid.

Akira’s eyes snap open to a shadow blocking out the light from the window.

He is awake instantly. He frantically twists and gropes for the hammer, but suddenly there’s a not-insignificant weight crashing down on his side. He grunts with an open mouth as his air is forcibly knocked out of him. Her— he recognizes it’s a woman —her unclean hair falls forward to tickle his face, and it feels to his blood-rushing skin like matches striking painful sparks. Her fingers close around his wrist as he reaches out to his fullest.

She isn’t very strong; Akira grabs hold of the hammer anyway, but she does manage to deflect his swing over her head, and now his full body is exposed, back pressed into his bed. Desperate and scared, his eyes dart all over; he cannot focus on the face before him. With his newly freed hand, he clasps her by the throat and clenches, all without really thinking.

Her breath pants out onto his face. He lets out an involuntary whimper and turns his face aside.

With a new burst of energy, she breaks his defenses in one swoop: by rocking slightly away from his choking hand and releasing the one with the hammer; he fantastically believes that she might be backing off, and his gentle hands both relax; but then she’s got one hand tugging his hair and the other grasping his chin. The mad woman dodges easily around his frantically regrouping flailing. She opens her mouth wide. He sees her teeth from the corner of his eye as she tilts his head and descends.

He yells furiously at the immense blossom of pain. He has never quite known pain like this; for young, sheltered Akira, it was always bruised ankles or paper-cut fingers. This is—

very, very hot. The heat of it is like a furnace. Wet. He’s distantly aware that his body is in constant motion trying to buck the woman off.

His hand convulses around the hammer. He swings it wildly at her head. It glances off the back of her skull with a sickening crunch, which pushes her against him. Akira’s stomach wrings itself like it is dying; he is very momentarily horrified with himself. His hand feels wet now, too. He’s never killed anything before.

Her teeth are digging in. Her jaw shifts and so does her teeth, back and forth inside his skin. Bile burns his throat. This time he screams at the top of his lungs, the loudest he has ever been in his life— because his flesh is ripping apart, and waves of pumping blood are sluicing down his face, across his nose and into his open mouth and around the contours of his eyes and up into his hair— he shuts his eyes...

Even amongst the blinding pain, he feels something small and strong struggling into him. It’s her tongue, Akira realizes belatedly. Lapping at the holes her teeth made, are still making as she pulls back— the left side of his face rips wetly— his throat burns out and he can make no more noise except to gurgle… It burns… It feels like the pain of his flesh will boil the blood all over him...

He swings again. The woman screams. It vibrates the jagged tatters of his face.

He swings again. Her skull yields. There are sticky bits on his hands.

He swings five more times even though she stops moving by the second.

Akira breathes in sobs. His eyes burn when he tries to open them, either from tears or specks of blood falling in. He can’t— he can’t— there’s no strength in him. He lies there, shaking uncontrollably, violently shivering. The warmth of the blood or her unmoving corpse is of no comfort.

At long last, Akira manages to shift himself out from underneath her dead weight. He turns to his side and pushes himself up unsteadily. Everything throbs from the top of his head right down to his shoulders. His ragged breath blows out not just from the front but also from the side of his face.

Blood— so much blood— He struggles out of his thin summer sweater and presses the relatively clean back of it to his face.

Dimly he takes in his opened door, the twisted bedding, the now-stained flooring. The blood runs down the column of his throat and finds the opening to his t-shirt. His pants are a little damp around the thighs. He chokes on his continued sobbing.

Finally Akira forces his eyes to find her face— what's left of it. The back of her head is caved in, hammer sticking out. She's all red and pink— pink brains, pink cardigan, pink little bows on her socks. Red red blood: hers, his.

Akira’s own pink cheek stuck between her teeth like half-chewed dinner.

She's the checkout girl from the local minute market. The one who used to blush and smile at the counter when he came in to buy energy drinks. He realizes this and vomits up stomach acid-- his open wound drives him mad with the added pain.

Akira drags his weak body from the room. He can’t summon one solid thought for the life of him; instead his brain just feels like an old tape on fast forward: he has the sensation of spinning, dizzying speed, of thoughts like black circles going too fast to process, white noise. His body should but cannot go the same speed. He shivers too badly to run.

His raw throat keeps gulping down metallic blood as it spills into his mouth. He has to do something—

Akira makes it to the bathroom and pulls himself up the sink pedestal as if it were a mountain. He stands there, the sink his life support against heavy swaying. After many long minutes, he painfully peels the damp sweater from his face. There are a few sparse fibers, formerly blue now red, sticking to him.

Too nervous to look up into the mirror quite yet, he bends over the basin and watches the pink foam of his blood-and-saliva drip thickly and slide into the drain. Clean the wound with gentle water. Akira knows this much. He fumbles for the stack of boxed water he keeps next to the tub and opens the first roughly. The water feels divine, but as it runs through his wound, it also runs into his mouth. He coughs and chokes, then tilts his head a different way, holding back his blood-clumped hair. When he blows his nose, small globs of red fleck the porcelain below.

He opens yet another box and rubs the water into his hairline until his fingers come away just pink. Akira reaches steadily for a washcloth— but he realizes that the half of his shirt that is not bloodied is cleaner than this rag that has not seen a machine in weeks. He uses the sleeve of the sweater to dab gently at the edges of his jagged flesh and at the droplets still clinging to his chin and forehead.

And then Akira lifts his head. And he swallows down the bile, this time.

His eyes sting; he wants to cry but won’t quite yet. The tear stops just under his cheekbone, just atop his jaw, halfway to his ear. He moves his head back and forth, like before and after, seeing his undamaged profile with one turn and then the mangled flesh on the next turn. He dabs again to remove the blood already welling. No blue is left on the sweater.

There’s his tongue, his teeth... He can see them through the hole… The edges of his lips are gone… He tries to open and close his mouth, but his nerves scream murder, so his jaw hangs limply. Now the tears do fall, Akira being too weak to hold them back.

He’s a go player.

Fuck it all, he’s a go player! Three months ago, Touya Akira never even thought of the possibility of being mugged, or getting into a car accident, or anything ridiculous like that. And now his face has been eaten. He’s a damn suit-wearing, cuffs-buttoned, tie-straightening go player. He’s only just legal enough to drink. A girl he used to casually flirt with has broken into his home in the middle of the night and eaten his face.

Akira delicately rests his forehead in the palm of his hand, and he cries.

***

Pull yourself together.

When his shaking has significantly lessened, Akira looks through the small medical kit on the bottom shelf of the cabinet. There’s nothing there that can truly help him. Paltry little adhesives that he angrily throws aside. Gently he presses the edges as close together as possible, wincing all the while. He applies the largest pad they have to the very edge of the wound, and it only covers half.

What else is there to do? He can’t very well wrap his entire face shut— how will he eat?

He wobbles out of the bathroom, down the hall, and finds his parents’ bedroom. (Avoids his own.) Akira slides open a drawer he’s fairly certain is his mother’s. Wrong drawer— he doesn’t have enough sense to blush anymore —slams it shut. Next drawer is better. Akira chucks his pants and blood red shirts to the corner and pulls out the plainest clothes his mother owns, as anything belonging to his father would be too large.

The shirt’s okay. The waist is tight and the sleeves don’t quite fit, but it works. The pants won’t do. He digs some more and comes out with sweatpants that stretch instead. When has his mother ever worn these? In a very surreal, distant way, it occurs to him that she probably actually keeps up with those workout tapes here in her own bedroom, maybe when his father is playing go. There’s a small TV in the corner, too. It’s vaguely heart-warming.

She’s also got a nice, long, soft scarf. It’s the best he’s going to get, so he wraps it gently around his face. He figures he can press in on one side and pull the other side loose when he wants to eat. (How is he going to eat?) He slowly wrenches his jaw shut and tucks a wad of the scarf underneath his chin. He spends quite some time wrapping and re-wrapping to find what works.

That settled, Akira finds a bit more strength and, as briskly and as business-like as possible, strides into his smelling, filthy room and removes his hammer with a faint squelch. He wipes the slippery handle on the corner of his bed sheets. Then he makes his way to the front hall and shucks on a thin jacket.

The night is cool and breezy, the waxing moon high.

And the gates are still barricaded. Akira angrily pulls on them, but they do not give. How…?

Heart pounding with both fury and fear, he skirts around the perimeter as he did in the day before. He finds only that she must’ve entered the house through the door that connects the kitchen and garden. But he doesn’t understand— how did she get on the property at all? The walls are unclimbable—

Eventually, he resolves himself and climbs his own barricade to reach the top of the wall. Carefully, very carefully, he perches on the tall eves. It’s not a drop that would even hurt all that bad, but he knows the sheer face of the wall would leave him stranded if he were to fall on the other side.

—or would it? She got in somehow. So Akira sidles along the top, checking in all directions. Somehow the streets are miraculously clear. —but there! at last the mystery resolves: there’s some sort of metal object—

A trash can, turned upside down. How devious, how purposeful! Like a stepping stool, it rests against the wall. She must’ve carried it from elsewhere, because he certainly hadn’t left anything in his streets when he finally locked himself in, he’s sure of it. Yes, she found it from some other street, carried it all the way here, and slammed it down earlier in the day…

And then she waited. She waited until night and climbed upon it, and from the top stood and stretched and reached the edge of his walls to pull herself over.

Akira sways with a sudden, dizzying rush of disgusted fear. He hadn’t known they possessed such forethought. He might have figured, if he didn’t spend his whole damn time trying to ignore the world and play his go.

He stretches out his legs and kicks the damn can over, never mind the loud clanging. He can’t really bother to care right now. He sidles back, climbs down again. Enters his home. Lights a few candles. Slides heavily down against the wall in the room where their dining room table used to be.

What do I do?

His wound still throbs, hot as ever. Hotter for the scarf.

What is he supposed to do! Akira rocks with his frustration. Damn what the pamphlets said in the beginning, because now what? He hasn’t seen anyone in at least a month. No relief workers, no soldiers. He can’t very well turn himself in to authorities when there are no authorities to be found. Maybe, he thinks briefly, maybe they’re still at the section borders.

And maybe, his new cynical self spits, maybe they’ve still got supplies? Please! There’s not a chance. They said there were vaccines in the beginning, but even if that was the truth then, they certainly do not have any left now. What would they do with him even if he could find them?

What would they do…? Forget that. They aren’t there anymore. He doesn’t know why he ignored that fact.

What they would do to or for him doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is what will happen.

—and for a moment there, he lets himself realize how dire his situation is, and it feels like a giant hole has opened at his feet, and he feels just as panicked as when the mad lady was chewing on his cheek…

He stops himself. Tries to think of go. Solving problems of life and death is simpler on the go board.

In quiet despair, Akira blinks up through tears at the phone hanging uselessly on the wall. Even if he could call them…

Mother, Father, your son is going to die…

***

It takes a day. He doesn’t go back to that room. He falls into sleep without a fuss while resting against the wall. His dreams are fevered like his body is fevered; he wakes every hour feeling like a furnace. He peels his scarf back just a bit to tip terrible boxed water down his face-hole. He does it just so, trying desperately not to weaken the adhesive of the pad across his cheek. He’s so hungry, but he can’t eat.

Maybe— he starts to fall asleep again, this time against the kitchen counter— maybe he can try shoving some plum porridge down one side of his mouth…

Fevered, frustrated dreams. Every time he sleeps, they become wilder and wilder. He dreams of his mother, his father, Ogata, Ashiwara, Shindo. He dreams of food. Broken go boards, chipped go stones, like that once he saw through the window of Shindo’s old, pathetic go club. He wakes in a place he does not remember falling asleep in and wonders why the hell he’s remembering Shindo’s stupid go club…

The house is starting to smell. It’s daytime outside. Akira finds a mirror and pulls back the scarf. The edges of the wound are swollen and red and a little yellow, revealed by the bandage that has fallen off, weakened by sweat. The dizziness overtakes him. It feels like being ten again, and his mom having to tuck him into bed and tell him that he can’t go to school today, and her sticking a thermometer under his tongue. He’s as weak as that. He slumps into the bathtub, unable to take a single step more, and sleeps.

Hateful dreams. Sounds like rushing water in his ears. Can’t breathe. Is he drowning? He wakes and pulls the scarf off of his nose. The house really, really stinks. She really really stinks. Dusky sunlight streams through the high windows.

What is he doing? What— how long has it been? He can’t even approximate…

He dreams of the girl eating his face. He dreams of eating. Being hungry. Eating. Have to eat. He only realizes he’s awake when he gulps around the porridge ration. He’s awake. His stomach convulses. He dreams of Shindo. Girl eating his face. Shindo. Mom, dad. Ogata eating at their house. Eating. He wakes in a pool of porridge on the ground. Where has his scarf gone?

Still hungry.

Akira sobs into his hands again. He never stops feeling dizzy anymore. There are a lot of flies in the house. He finds his scarf and re-wraps his face and drags himself to the go room. Please, if only he could…

He tries to play go to calm down. He has to figure out what to do. He can’t stay here. God, he’s thirsty. God, he’s hungry. The go board and stones swim before his eyes, and though he tries to right them into familiar patterns, he finds that nothing makes sense anymore. They’re just black and white pieces of shell and slate.

He wakes up, face pressed to the board, stones digging in. He lifts up his head but it feels abnormally heavy. He’s been in pain so long he had started to forget it, but now the pain is back worse than ever. He feels like his head might be caving in at that one point. The go board is smeared with blood.

Akira presses his scarf into his wound and winds it ‘round and ‘round his face, tighter than ever.

He’s got to get out of here.

He wakes with his hands against the outside gates. His fingers shake against the seam. He doesn’t know where this strength is coming from, but it seems he’s moved the barricade aside. He’s got to get out of here.

He dreams. He wakes.

Still hungry.

***

He’s lost his mind.

The young man has come to the point where all he ever feels is sickness, pain, and an endless hunger. He no longer thinks of go, Shindo, or his parents. He no longer feels fear to walk amongst the streets. Not that he tries, but by now he is unable to recall his former life. A young life dedicated to circles and lines— there’s no point to it anymore. Such dedication will not assuage his angry being.

He meets no one on the roads. All that is left of the quiet, dignified neighborhood is piles of trash, mangled corpses, bones encrusted with the leftovers of bad, sunbaked meat. But the young man set his mind to leaving, and that is all that matters. He does not flinch for anything.

A train passes in the distance. In this quiet world, he can even feel it rumbling. He perks up hopefully, but it does not brake. Rather, it moves right through the usual stop and keeps going, full speed. By the time he has stumbled into the station many minutes later, it cannot even be felt. The platform is boarded up and strung with barbed wire. Maybe if he can get to the tracks—

So he moves on, following the tracks where they run parallel to the street. More and more wire, heavy obstacles, fences, a better barricade than he could have ever made. There are traps, too, like animal traps, except very large and all rusted out. Bear traps, some of them sprung, a few with feet still left in them. Eventually this barricade curves off away from the tracks, and he can no longer go forward. It seems to be a bubble keeping him inside.

Still hungry.

He follows the curve, but sometimes he tires and stops for a spell. As he walks again, he finds the minute market and checks in for any food. Anything, he supposes, is better than this. —but the shop is completely empty, anything of use having long been pilfered. He finds one single packet of half eaten chips and tries to shove them down his face. The salt stings his wound and the edges cut, but what is more pain? Pain is always. More pain is hardly worth noting, especially when he’s so hungry. But even after chips, it feels like he hasn’t eaten at all.

And all this while, this entire time he is walking, the young man fades in and out of dreams. He walks in the sunshine, and then he dreams of blood and rushing water, and then he walks in afternoon rays, and then he dreams of hands groping through darkness. It seems his body has decided without him that his mindful presence is not a prerequisite to moving. He does not bother to feel out of control; he is too busy hurting. He can no longer fathom the point of moving, but he does it anyway.

***

In time he finds people, but his heart does not stir. There is a young soldier with tied-up hair leaning against the side of a little hut on the other side of the barrier. She lights a cigarette with her left hand, and in her right hand she holds her gun. She notices the young man with the scarf watching her hungrily from afar and casually levels her sights. Her fellow guardsman comes out of the hut nervously and draws a pistol.

“I’ve got him,” the girl says.

But the young man turns around and walks away.

***

The young man sleeps much, walks much. All sense of time is lost to him. He walks in circles inside the bubble crafted around the area without wondering how large it is. In a dull sense of self-preservation, he hides from the occasional patrolling soldier. At length of this period of entrapment, he watches from a safe, shady spot as more and more armed people begin to filter inside the barriers. Soldiers stand guard as trucks back up and people in bodysuits begin scrubbing up the pavement.

Still hungry.

He sleeps.

This is a dream, right?

One last thread of sense bleeds through.

I’m dreaming.

He dreams of eating and blood. When he wakes, he’s somewhere else, and his clothes feel wet and heavy. He miraculously does not feel hungry.

He’s starting to feel less and less, in fact. Less pain. Less sick. It doesn’t feel normal, though— it just doesn’t feel at all. He finds it harder than ever to move his limbs the way he wants. His thoughts become clearer. There’s a distinct separation between his body and his mind. He’s trapped now more than ever.

The next time he wakes, it’s like being born again. He opens his eyes and takes in the glory of the morning, and he remembers that his name is Akira. Touya Akira! He feels like smiling and crying all at once.

Then he turns on the spot quite dreamily and meets the vision of an evil mirror.

That’s him! That’s him! A despicable creature stands before him, and it wears his mangled face. His own eyes, glassy and lifeless, peer above a red scarf; his own hair moves ever so slightly in the breeze; that is his skin, pale but colored brightly by infection. This creature that looks like him stumbles forward, stiff and clumsy.

Akira watches, frozen and terrified, as this bizarre occurrence shuffles right past him, never looking up to acknowledge his existence. He looks down at his own hands to make sure he’s here— but that doesn’t help much, because there’s something wrong with his hands, something he can’t name. This is the strangest moment of his entire life.

He panics, but even that does not feel right. There’s something terribly, horrifically wrong. He wildly whips his head about, taking in the wall— the wall? But— he is not in his neighborhood any more… How did he exit?

He examines the wall with wide eyes and finds the hole dug into the dirt underneath the fence— the only part of the barrier planted on moveable dirt instead of concrete, and he found it…

Now he finds himself awake, really awake, for the first time in ages, in the middle of a cracked road. Abandoned cars are everywhere; lesser houses line the streets, many with their windows broken or doors nailed shut; and there’s a thing with his face wandering ahead of him.

He dumbly follows after the creature, and it feels far too effortless. He stops and looks down at his legs. They’re there, but he can’t remember moving them. He runs his hands down his body. He can move the scarf, tug the shirt, and yet— he doesn’t feel the fabric between his fingers…

He brings his hands to his face. He touches one cheek, and then the other. It doesn’t feel like anything at all, and yet somehow he knows that they are whole.

“Am I dreaming?” he asks of the empty world. It does not hurt to speak. The sound of his own voice seems to drift towards him from an indiscernible distance.

The thing with his face walks on, not hearing. Akira is compelled to follow it. He asks questions of it, demands it stop— and yet it never looks at him. So Akira stands before it and looks into its eyes, but finds no light. They are his eyes, and yet they are not. It isn’t quite like looking into a mirror, because he doesn’t see anything of himself there, just… emptiness. It doesn’t even seem… alive...

***

It all seems very impossible to him, but he can’t see any way out of his predicament. He follows the creature because he must— he feels that he must but doesn’t know why. If it wanders too far ahead of him— well— that’s just the thing. Mysteriously, it is never too far ahead of him. He is always by its side, somehow, even when he tries not to be.

This must be a dream. He watches over the shell of a man as it travels. Where it thinks it is going, he does not know. He doesn’t know if it thinks at all. Sometimes it runs fast. Sometimes the dream turns into another nightmare as he watches it devour some living creature, like a cat, and drench itself in blood. It also bumps into other shell-people on the road sometimes. They bite weakly at each other and then move on, unsatisfied.

This is the longest, most hellish nightmare he’s ever had. It rolls on and on, unbroken. When is he going to wake up? He is having one of those dreams where you’re aware of time and space, and it’s all very unnatural and unsettling. He is not naive enough, at least, to think that he will wake with his mother peering into his face and checking his temperature with the back of her hand, but if he could wake back in his home, fever passed, that would be alright.

Once, they come across a patrolman. What’s he doing alone? Why’s his back turned? What a nonsense dream! Akira tries calling out a warning, but there is no answer— the patrolman doesn’t so much as start. The shell rushes forward. Akira turns his back and tries not to listen.

Just wake up, just wake up. If only he could take back control, if only he could stop this…

***

The shell finally stills after what feels like days and days. Even though its eyes do not truly focus, it appears to spot something in the distance. Akira tries to follow its gaze.

There seems to be a man…

Akira suddenly knows— and the realization, the acceptance of what he supposes he must have known anyway— it brings him feeling like nothing else has, except the feeling is like crushing waves of cold ocean but without the wetness; it’s like an ice cube in his chest but without the shivering; pain with no identifiable source—

this is not a dream. This, bizarrely, horrendously, is reality—

The shell stops running just before the sturdy-looking chain-link fence. The man on the other side approaches. They meet on either side of the barrier, threading their fingers through the gaps. Akira looks on in paralyzing horror.

“It’s you,” Shindo breathes.

Shindo’s eyes well with tears. He twists his face as if annoyed by them. It’s achingly familiar.

Akira absorbs that face like it’s some precious miracle. Well. It is, isn’t it? Precious miracle, Shindo.

His hair looks so strange, just black, and choppily short. But those bright eyes haven’t changed at all. That smooth face with the full cheeks. He’s got a darkly stained baseball bat held tightly in his hand. He looks tired, but generally well. Shindo even manages one of his lovely crooked smiles. (Akira never thought of them as lovely until he stopped seeing them.)

“Always showing up out of nowhere,” Shindo says, laughing shakily. He stares into the dead shell’s eyes, and the dead thing seems to stare back. Might it remember Shindo like a dream from the time that Akira lived inside it? Shindo takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Just in the last place I would expect you. You haven’t changed.”

There is a small tear in the chain links. The shell raises a wasted arm and struggles its way through, scraping its flesh, reaching out for Shindo’s fresh heat.

Akira’s mind seems to spasm. Shindo doesn’t know— can’t know— the scarf hides the wound—

“Shindo!” Akira calls out. “Shindo, don’t! Don’t let it get you! That isn’t me; I’m not in there anymore—!”

Shindo’s throat convulses. He tilts his head back. Shindo looks Akira, the real Akira, right in the eyes. And he says tenderly, “I know.”

Akira chokes on his warnings. He gazes into Shindo’s eyes, and Shindo gazes into his. It’s warm. Wonderful Shindo. Miraculous Shindo.

Shindo nods, and they understand each other. Then Shindo draws back just a little and lifts his hand to the clawing hand of the shell. Akira wishes he could feel that skin— the comfort of a human touch…

Shindo examines the hand that used to be his, not unlike a distant time when Akira did the same as boys. It feels like an entirely different life. (An entirely different life, and yet Shindo is still here.) Shindo gently but firmly turns the hand, inspecting the raw fingertips, the long, bloodied nails. Then he lets go and steps back for real. He shifts his bat into his dominant hand.

“Come here,” he tells Akira. “You can, right?”

Akira blinks back at him blankly. “I— maybe, I…” He sizes up the fence. Could he climb that? What about the shell?

Shindo huffs out a laugh. “I mean, come inside.” He pats the space over his heart.

Akira can’t really believe his ears. “I—” He wants to say, I don’t know what you mean, but the words don’t make it out of his mouth, because it’s untrue. Somehow he does know exactly what Shindo means.

“Don’t worry,” Shindo murmurs. “I’ve got plenty of room.”

Akira takes one last look at the oddly calm shell of himself before walking straight through the fence like it was never there at all and to Shindo’s side. Without taking his eyes from Shindo’s eyes, he walks inside of Shindo and makes his home there.

The world shudders and flickers into darkness for a brief moment. Akira can’t see, but when he instinctively reaches out, his fingertips don’t exactly feel the texture but definitely feel the pressure of Shindo’s arm.

They come back to reality in the same position, with the shell on the other side of the fence beginning to shift restlessly. Akira is rushed with so many emotions, most of them pleasant— they’re together at last—

but Shindo seems unsteady. He stumbles backwards a few steps and leans heavily against his bat. He brings his hand to his forehead, scrunching up his bangs.

“Shindo!” Akira gasps, moving forward. He holds on to Shindo, the only thing that’s tangibly real.

“I’m fine,” Shindo pants out. “I won’t faint.”

“But—”

“Just dizzy,” he says roughly.

Akira would argue more, as is his nature around Shindo, but a jangling clatter draws their attention. Whatever made the shell pause— some distant lingering affection for Shindo, perhaps —has it paused no more. Very ineptly, it is making its way up the fence, kicking about as it looks for footholds.

“Aw, shit,” Shindo mutters casually.

“Put it out of its misery,” Akira hisses malevolently.

Shindo gives him a double-take like he can’t quite believe Akira said that, but he reflexively takes his bat in both hands. They back up, giving some room for the wind-up and swing. Any second now… stupid thing...

Shindo falters. “Wait, I don’t think I can!”

Akira glares. “What do you mean?” he demands. “It’s a monster. It isn’t me! Destroy that thing before it can hurt anyone else.”

Shindo takes his sight off the shell, never mind Akira’s panicking. His eyes are wide and round and childishly fearful. “But where are you bound? Isn’t it— isn’t it your body?”

Akira shakes his head, as if this nonsensical question is a fly he can scare off. “Bound? What do you mean, bound?”

Shindo steels himself. “I can’t lose you.”

And instead of facing the creature, he turns tail and runs, fast, faster than Akira’s shell can keep up, but not faster than Akira’s soul— because Akira is inside him, is him, and will not be separated from him. Akira stays by Shindo’s side, looks over his shoulder, and watches the thing in pursuit get left behind.

***

Shindo catches his breath on the sidewalk of a street Akira doesn’t really recognize. He’s got a sportsman’s backpack and a bottle full of water from which he sips.

“You’re very… quick,” Akira says awkwardly.

Shindo grins up at him, unabashed. “Soccer!”

“What?”

“Soccer, like every other day after work or school. I’m not just some pale little nerd, you know. I’ve got excellent cardio.” He snickers like a loon.

They fall quiet for a bit. Shindo suddenly stops looking at Akira, and only in its absence does Akira comprehend the intensity of the gaze that was just drinking him in.

“Do you think we’re far enough away?” Akira asks impatiently. He’s worried sick but not for himself.

Shindo shrugs. “Probably shouldn’t get too far, actually. Oughta be able to find it again, right?”

Akira raises his eyebrows. “Right? Wrong!” he shoots back, shaking his head.

How could he have missed this infuriating, waffling, annoying shrimp!

“No, yeah!” Shindo insists. “Look, I mean, if it turns out that you’re bound to it— I mean, we’ve gotta keep you here, right? Yeah, so, we’ve gotta make sure nothing happens to it.”

Akira shakes his head slowly again, this time in confusion as opposed to consternation. He floats down to sit next to Shindo. “I don’t understand.”

Shindo keeps looking around like a meerkat, except he doesn’t seem to be anything but casually uneasy. It seems his bat and leather armor have gotten some use. “Sorry?” he offers vaguely.

It’s extraordinarily strange to actually be talking to a human, a real live human being, and have the person talking back. It’s even stranger that it’s Shindo, of all people— but if he was paying attention, he shouldn’t have expected anything less. While Akira ponders this, Shindo ponders the sun, the simple map he memorized in his head, and whether he can manage to survive a few nights with the food he has packed. Akira absorbs this information for a second, and then snaps his head up to stare at Shindo in puzzlement. Shindo looks over at him, too, and smiles.

Shindo already knows what Akira is finding out. You’re inside me runs through Shindo’s head, meant for Akira.

“But if it doesn’t look too weird, I prefer talking out loud, to be honest. I mean, there’s no one here to find it weird, so…”

Akira puts his face in his hands and sighs. Shindo is getting a headache. Calm down, would you?

Akira doesn’t really breathe anymore, but he pretends to take a deep breath. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

Shindo clearly thinks that Akira’s being a bit slow. “You’ve gotta tell me, Touya. Where is your spirit bound?”

“Spirit?”

Shindo scratches his head. “Uh, yeah, you know… Your…” and he waves to indicate Akira’s— well.

Akira looks down at himself. “Is this— this is my spirit?”

Shindo shrugs awkwardly. His thoughts say, Duh.

Akira stares at him blankly. “That would make me… dead.”

Shindo frowns at him.

“I died.”

Shindo nods.

Akira processes this for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “No. Can’t be.”

Shindo scoffs heartily at him and stands up to stretch. “Y’know, you’ve always been kinda… I dunno, not really rigid, but— you just seem to think that things are gonna go your way until you get proven wrong. You’ve really gotta loosen up, man. I could smell you back there. You damn rotted.”

Only Akira’s current position allows him to feel as Shindo feels; only he knows that it pains Shindo to say such things. Shindo turns his back on Akira as if to survey the surroundings, but they both know it’s too hide the tears welling up.

“But I can’t be dead,” Akira tries to reason.

Shindo just snorts. “That’s some major denial going on there. You’ve got some issues you need to work through—”

“We can’t be talking if I’m dead!” Akira interrupts angrily.

Shindo wipes his face on his shoulder and turns towards Akira. They glare intensely at each other for a long few moments before Shindo laughs harshly to break the tension. “What, don’t you believe in ghosts?”

***

Shindo has lunch while Akira fumes at him. This isn’t the time to be closed lipped! But Shindo clams up on the subject of ghosts, clams up so hard that Akira can’t force the thoughts out of his mind. Shindo’s will is strong.

Shindo studiously avoids his gaze as he munches on a protein bar. Akira’s anger is giving Shindo one hell of a migraine; he squints his eyes against the sun and chews very slowly. Akira has the grace enough to feel bad for this and fishes for a different subject.

“That looks good,” he says dumbly.

Shindo gives him a weird look and shrugs.

“I just had crackers and rice and things,” Akira explains further.

“Oh.” Shindo throws the wrapper into the street. Cleanliness doesn’t exactly seem important right now. He says in a light but certain tone, “You’re not hungry now, though.”

“… no,” Akira admits.

Shindo nods to himself. “Because ghosts don’t eat granola.”

Akira can’t help the little huff of laughter. Shindo smiles a bit more brightly. “No,” Akira admits again. “We don’t tend to eat at all. …I suppose…”

Shindo stands and wipes his crumb-y hands on his worn jeans. Akira stands with him easily.

“Alright, listen, this is really important, okay?” Shindo looks like he would shake Akira if he could. “You’re dead. Alright? You got bit, I’m guessing, and the bite got infected, and you got sick, fever, right— and it killed you. It just killed you, okay?”

Akira glances around the desolate suburban streets around them as if they could give him a better explanation of events. But as Shindo says, it all aligns in his gummed-up memories.

“Fine,” he accepts quietly.

Shindo licks his lips. Akira feels Shindo’s heart twist. “Yeah, okay. And— and that must’ve sucked, but— but you’re not gone. You’re right here. You’re not gone.” Shindo’s eyes are shining and hurting. “So I need you to think, Touya. You really have to think about it. What’s keeping you here?”

Akira feels unnaturally sluggish trying to process this question. “I don’t—”

“Yeah, you do,” Shindo insists gently. “You’ve gotta. Just, you know, listen to your heart or whatever. How are you… feeling?” When this gets no results, he tries again. “What were you doing before you died?”

“Nothing much, to be honest,” Akira bites out. “Just… hiding like an animal.”

Shindo’s hands twist around his bat and he scuffs the pavement with his dirty sneakers. Akira may understand Shindo well now that he’s inside of him, but it seems Shindo has a harder time understanding him. He peers at Akira with something like confused pity. “So… so… are you, uhm, mad that you hid?”

Akira considers that. Considers Shindo, with his pure black hair and his leather jacket and his white-kneed jeans. His bloody bat, his big backpack. His newly rough palms and the way he isn’t afraid to be standing out in the open. “Yeah,” Akira says at last.

“Where’d you hide?”

“I just barricaded my home.”

“And you would rather have… been on the move?”

“I’d rather have— I don’t know. I just— really wish I hadn’t been so— so scared!” Akira forces out. And once he does, the rest tumbles out, too. Why not, if Shindo is the only one who’ll ever know. “I just sat around my house and played go! I told my parents—”

“—where are your parents?”

“—China. I told my parents that I’d just sit still like a good boy, that the government would take care of me. And I did, I just sat there, even when people started getting crazier and the sane ones started moving out, when the curfews got stricter and they were shooting people in the streets! When the rations got smaller and then they stopped delivering them! And I just went home and locked myself up and stopped going outside—”

“—that’s normal—”

“Yes, sure, normal! I was being so very sensible, so very mature! But I was a caged rat, trapped inside myself! It was me, not them!”

Shindo’s face is crumpled like the floodgates of his tears are about to burst. Funny what dying does to a man; Akira can’t ever remember being this open in his entire life.

“I mean, look at you,” Akira continues, this time much softer and quieter. He gestures up and down. “You’re not even—” He tries a laugh but it’s pathetic. “Why are you always the crazy one?”

Shindo lurches a few times and massages his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Akira whispers. “Am I doing this to you?”

Shindo doesn’t answer, lips closed tight. Akira forcibly calms himself for Shindo’s sake.

“I was just playing go,” he says. “Just sitting around and playing go like nothing had changed.”

Shindo straightens up. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he smiles. “Go?”

“…yeah. Go.”

Shindo bites his lip as his shoulders start to shake. “Nerd.”

Akira sends waves of ghostly enmity at him. (Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work this time.) “It’s not funny.”

But Shindo is so shiningly fond in this moment that it feels warm even to a ghost. It’s a blessing.

Then Shindo gasps and looks to the distance. Startled, Akira whips around. “What is it? Is there someone—” But there isn’t anyone coming. “What the hell, Shindo, I thought you saw danger—”

“You were… playing go.”

“Can we not talk about that?”

“No, but… I mean… that might be…”

Akira groans in frustration. Shindo does not have the courtesy to be sorry. Shindo looks at him and says, “Let’s go to your house!”

“…what,” Akira says flatly.

“Well, come on!” Shindo cajoles, smile taking a decidedly smarmy twist. He’s already walking back the way they came with a spring in his step and bat propped against his shoulder. “This feels right, I bet this is it. Good, that’s much easier!”

Akira follows right behind his shoulder. “What the hell are you going on about? And why are you going this way!” he demands with a touch of fear.

“I think you might be bound somewhere in your home,” Shindo says confidently. “Yeah, like… when I think of it, it doesn’t really make sense for you to be bound to your body, does it? I mean, the corpses walk on for a while, but eventually even that will stop, right? You need something more solid. I think I know—”

“That thing is back this way, you realize!”

Shindo falters, but continues walking more sedately.

Akira presses his advantage. “So, if my body and spirit are completely separated, if I’m not bound to that thing… Then you can destroy it.”

Shindo treks on without looking at him.

“You can do it, right?” Akira points to the bat. Shindo must see him in peripheral. “I can’t stand its very existence. Are you strong enough?”

And Akira meant, Are your arms strong enough to swing the bat forcefully?

But Shindo means something else entirely when he lets himself think, No.

***

They make it back to the chain link fence in short time. Shindo, finally nervous, darts around corners. “Check for me,” Shindo whispers.

Akira gapes in confusion for a moment before— “Ah!” Of course, if he’s a ghost, then he’s not really in any danger, is he? He floats ahead of Shindo a bit, and it’s pretty liberating to be able to yell back, “You’re safe.”

Then Shindo climbs the fence and Akira walks straight through it, and they keep going like this, with Akira scouting ahead and Shindo looking over his shoulder. We’re the perfect team, Shindo thinks. Akira is proud to agree. Shindo alternates between a march and a jog, somehow keeping his breath— yes, great cardio —and they make truly excellent time. But even having met in the morning, they are barely even halfway to the next section’s wall by dark. Shindo points out a particular house as the sun turns red.

Shindo stands on the porch of the home, bat at the ready and nerves made of steel. Akira senses mostly firm determination underneath his still-living heart, pumping with mounting adrenaline. He slowly opens the door with the handle of the bat. Before them is a long hallway, plunged in darkness, and at the end is a staircase.

Shindo glances at Akira and wiggles his eyebrows. Watch this.

“Please excuse the intrusion!” he yells into the house. For good measure, he chucks a rock so that it bangs and scuffs the floor.

“You’re an idiot,” Akira hisses. He’s not quite sure why he’s being quite.

Shindo rolls his eyes and holds a hand up to his ear, like a cartoon character listening to a pebble dropping down a dry well. And, indeed, from within the house, there is a faint clatter.

Akira feels cold again and clams up. Shindo, on the other hand, whoops loudly and backs off the porch and onto the sidewalk. The shuffling approaches rapidly. Shindo winds up, light on his feet.

The shell of the woman is in her nightgown and a hairnet. She’s maybe 40, and much disheveled, and her middle is all red, and there’s a cigarette hanging out of her shriveled lips. One last cigarette before I die, she probably thought.

She presses her hands to the doorframe and snarls, the very image of an irate mother of young, rowdy children. Then she stomps towards Shindo, who laughs and doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Alright!”

Akira watches the bat connect with her skull, and as a spray of thick blood blossoms from her head, so the dawning horror blossoms in Akira’s mind. He turns away quickly, but cannot help but to see her fall and to see Shindo follow up the knock out with a finishing blow.

“No problem,” Shindo says with barely a deepened breath. He scratches his blood-flecked nose as he walks up to the porch again and bangs the bat between the door frame like ringing a bell. “Anyone else? Any munchkins? Come on out if you’re here! I’ll take you on!”

Nothing comes running. Akira floats forward to check, still sick and fearful.

“Nothing on the first floor,” he calls back to Shindo, who has been cautiously edging inside. Shindo spares his a strange sideways look before nodding at the stairs. Akira floats up while Shindo makes loud taps on each step.

Eventually they have the whole house cleared. Akira lets Shindo know what a massive idiot he is. Shindo sticks out his tongue and makes a comment about questionable opening moves.

Shindo rifles through cabinets and drawers efficiently before successfully finding a few battery-operated accent lights. Then he locks the door against the setting sun and goes about setting pots and pans on all the window ledges.

“Sweet,” Shindo mutters as he opens the pantry to find just three rationed meals left. He eats two of them in one go. Akira sighs pointedly in exasperation.

When the sun no longer glows into the house from behind thick, drawn curtains, Shindo finds it to be time to retreat upstairs, and as he goes, he layers each step with the remaining pots and plates of the house. They search the rooms upstairs. There’s quite a nasty scene in the kids’ rooms: two skeletons and daddy in a suit. They close the door on it. The master bedroom, however, is relatively fine if one can get past the large bloodstains on the bed sheets. And apparently, Shindo can. (Apparently, Shindo has gotten used to a lot of things in the past three months, including sleeping amongst blood and bashing in corpses’ skulls. Who would ever have looked at the go-playing geek in the sports jersey and thought what a warrior he could make.)

Shindo tests his swing a few times to make sure he’s got room for emergency defense. Satisfied, he wipes his bat on one side, then flips and folds the sheets until he can lie where the bed is clean. He keeps the accent lights on the bedside table. They gently flicker over his sleepy face. He’s got his shoes on, and it seems the bat might be permanently attached to his hand.

Still, Akira thinks as he looks down at his friend, he looks almost peaceful.

“You okay?” Shindo whispers.

Akira doesn’t know what to do with his not-body, but it isn’t really a problem seeing as how he isn’t tired. He simply lowers his face to Shindo’s level. “I’m dead, Shindo, you idiot. No, I’m not okay.”

“But you’re still here,” Shindo murmurs warmly. Akira falls silent and Shindo closes his eyes. “Would you mind?”

And since Akira is right there with him, he knows what is meant. He floats over to the window and surveys the street below. “There’s one, but he doesn’t know we’re here… He’s moving on…”

“Good, good.”

Akira hesitates. He has to speak up before Shindo sleeps.

“Shindo.”

“Mmmgh?” is the sleepy reply.

“Did she have a ghost?”

Shindo yawns. “No.” Don’t think so.

Akira looks over to see Shindo’s half-open eyes gleaming in his direction. “Are you some kind of medium?”

“Some kind, I guess,” Shindo agrees. “Must be.”

Akira frowns in annoyance. “It’s just that you seem to be relatively casual about ghosts.”

“Yeah, well,” Shindo mumbles. Meet one, you feel like you’ve met them all.

And then— well, who knows. Maybe it’s because Akira is actively searching Shindo’s brain for the answer; maybe it’s because Shindo is too tired to fight; maybe, and this one seems right, maybe Shindo has finally decided that ‘today’ is ‘someday’.

The flicker of light in Shindo’s swimming eyes is positively hypnotic.

In his mind— their mind, shared— Akira is before the go board in a dark room. The intensity is great. A smooth hand appears from nowhere to place white. And Akira knows this: this is sai. sai… the letters rearrange in his knowledge. This is Sai. And what was once just a hand in his imagination extends into a real memory, up a pure white sleeve and crossing over long strands of hair. Strong chin, noble forehead and nose, beautiful eyes. This is Sai.

Akira remembers like he lived it. Go boards, pointing fans, sweet smiles, swimming tears. He sees himself as a puzzled little boy and perceives Shindo as a tormented teenager. Farewells. Lots of love.

Akira knows he is crying without knowing how he even could anymore. Shindo closes his eyes so that he won’t.

Shindo sleeps. Akira keeps on watching.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Shindo mumbles when he wakes briefly around midnight. Then again he sleeps more gladly than Akira ever managed. Akira glows with gentle happiness; he can do this much for Shindo.

***

On the next day they travel in the silence of comrades. Akira looks at this man who has puzzled him for so long and suddenly knows all his secrets. He is surprised to find that this only endears Shindo more to his heart. Shindo transforms from an anomaly to a life support system, and neither of them minds the change. As he said before, as he was originally told by Sai—

Hikaru has enough room in his soul for this.

They camp again in a new house just before the wall. There are soldiers cleaning up the town just beyond here. Hikaru doesn’t believe he’d get in too much trouble, but it isn’t really ideal to run into them anyway. He beats down a few locally roaming monsters and bemoans the state of his jacket, which, so he says, was a gift from his friend, Tsubaki. Akira thought it looked a little big on him.

“Is Tsubaki alive?” Akira asks delicately at night.

“Oh, yeah!” Hikaru says gladly. “And so are my friends Akari and Mitani, believe it or not! ...actually, I was holed up with them in the safe zone… Uhm, I just volunteered for a little run. Oops. I hope they aren’t searching for me.”

He at least blushes. Akira tries not to show his amusement. “You moron. Typical Shindo. You’ve got them worried sick, you inconsiderate jerk.”

“Yeah, well…” Hikaru pillows his head in his arms and stares up at the ceiling. “Zombie movies are really too hysterical. This is far from an apocalypse, you know. Whatever. We’ll head over there after we’ve finished business at your house.”

***

In the early morning, they stand before the wall. Akira walks through, takes a fair look around without getting too far from Hikaru, and drifts back. Given the all-clear, Hikaru tosses his bat over, then crawls his way through the tunnel Akira had originally made.

The streets here are familiar, not just to him but even to Hikaru, who visited him many times in the past. Akira no longer has to strain to remember his general path. They pass by the convenient store.

“Oh! Oh! Let’s stop here!” Hikaru pipes up, wandering off course.

“There’s nothing there,” Akira scoffs. “We need to keep going—”

“It’ll just take a sec if what I want is here. Come on.”

Akira sighs and keeps a lookout while Hikaru browses barren shelves.

“A-ha!” he crows at last, and he holds a box of cheap hair bleach above his head.

Akira, ashamed in his place, hides his face in his hands. “I can’t believe…”

Hikaru drowns him out with laughter.

***

Having braved barbed wires and dodged soldier and smashed one more of what Hikaru calls zombies and Akira prefers to think of as shell-people, they stand before the gates of the magnificent Touya home in silence. Hikaru gives Akira one last sympathetic but determined look before striding through the debris that once was the barricade. He enters this house quietly.

Akira stares up at the ceiling and wills himself to be anywhere else. Hikaru understands and sweeps the house on his own steam. Akira looks to the phone on the wall, the untouched state of the kitchen, the door to his parents’ room, anywhere—

but he still can’t help but to see Hikaru following the trail of blood, Hikaru standing in Akira’s bedroom doorway, the burdened slump of Hikaru’s shoulders. Blessed, life-supporting Hikaru.

Akira pointedly turns away when Hikaru drags out the convenience store girl wrapped up in Akira’s bedding. He hears Hikaru chuck it into the road, and then hears the creak and slam of the gate.

“First thing’s first,” Hikaru says mock-cheerfully when he returns. “Do you have any food?”

Akira manages a small smile and gestures toward the kitchen. Hikaru enters immediately, and after some more slamming around, whoops with glee.

Akira watches Hikaru eat the porridges that Akira couldn’t stomach. Then Hikaru packs the rest very tightly into his previously deflated backpack and moves on. He searches Akira’s house as unabashedly as he searched the other two, but his ignoring the bloodstains is too stiff this time.

Hikaru finds the go room quite naturally and grins as he enters. Akira, trailing behind, suddenly feels a twang in his soul. There’s something pulling at him from the go room, something like a big magnet, and it feels… ecstatic.

Akira floats inside. His eyes are immediately drawn to the bloody go board.

Hikaru laughs softly, exhilarated. He crouches down beside it and reverently caresses the lines.

“This is mine,” Akira whispers. This feeling is as amazing as the first time he played against Sai in the go salon of times passed.

“Yes,” Hikaru hisses.

“Mine.”

Hikaru beams up at him. He says, “Play a game!”

The bubble of shining glory pops, leaving Akira like ice. “No.”

Hikaru’s face falls. “Why not?”

Akira’s face twists and Hikaru’s stomach twists in nauseated response. “This damn game— this wretched thing—”

“What?” Hikaru asks in astonishment. “Touya, what’s up?”

“I never want to look at this game again!” Akira spits.

“Touya,” Hikaru says. “It’s go, Touya…”

Akira clicks his tongue at Hikaru. “Listen, you can dye your hair and play baseball with people’s skulls and holler like a madman when the rest of the world is trying to stay as quiet as possible—” Akira grows louder and louder, feeling absolutely possessed with rage like never before, swelling with it— never mind the dangerously calm mask Hikaru’s adopted like the face he used to wear before the board— “We’ve grown up, and so has the world, Shindo. All of our luxuries— our McDonalds and our internet and our television comedy shows— they’re all gone, Shindo. You say it’s not the apocalypse, well that’s fine. But if you say this isn’t a serious wake up call, I don’t know what you’re trying to sell.”

Hikaru has knelt on the opposite side of the board. Something deep within Akira notes that it is desperately sad that Sai’s fan isn’t in his hand. Akira forcefully ignores that note.

He continues, “With so much suffering in the world, are you honestly going to tell me you have time for go? I’m sick to think of my foolish, living self! Even when hell came up to swallow me, I sat here, placidly playing go, meekly wishing for the way things used to be. It’s all so very pointless! Don’t you see?” This last bit he positively yells, because nothing seems to be affecting Hikaru.

“Go is completely trivial! No one can afford themselves go in a world like this!” Akira winds down. “I spent my life blindly dedicated to this… to tiny little stones and a chunk of wood. Now in death let me be spared from remembering my past mistakes…”

Hikaru doesn’t move even after Akira’s done. But he refuses to feel ashamed before Hikaru’s cold fury and even deeper sadness.

“It isn’t,” Hikaru says lowly after many long, lonely minutes. “Please don’t ever say that in front of me again.”

Akira purses his lips and glares elsewhere.

“Sai would have cried to hear you say that.

“Go is not useless. Go will never be useless. I would never say that music is useless, or paintings are useless. I would never say that love is useless.”

Akira meets Hikaru’s tearful eyes.

“Go let Sai live for a thousand years, and brought me and him together. I loved Sai. Now he is gone, and the only thing left of him is go. If I were to forsake go, I would forsake the love I had for Sai. If you forsake go, you forsake the years of love your father poured into you. And…” Hikaru gulps around the thickness in his throat.

“Go brought me to you,” Hikaru tells Akira. “If it can do something like that, then it will never be useless.”

He ends by saying, “I won’t force you to play me. But if you stay here… if you remain on this earth, by my side… Please play me again some time.”

Akira hunches over to hide his anguished face behind the curtain of his hair, and is not unaware that it looks like bowing to the victor.

***

That night Hikaru is quiet but gentle. His cheer, while notably muted, is still exuded like a peace offering. Akira takes that gracious hand and follows Hikaru about the house with the occasional rusty smile.

He says nothing when Hikaru peers into Akira’s own closet, brings out the kind of shirt Akira’s sure he’s worn to many a pro match, and breathes in the last vestiges of the scent of Akira’s living skin. Hikaru avoids his eyes but slips the shirt into his backpack.

More businesslike, he finds the bags Akira uses for travel and stuffs the bloodstained go board inside of it. He also stuffs a few more articles of clothing in another bag, citing the approaching fall. “Your mom’s coats could maybe fit my friend Akari, is that okay?” He also drains the boxed water into his large water bottle and then stuffs a few more little boxes into the already full backpack. All that finished, he piles the three bags— the food and water, the clothes, and the go board —in the front hall.

“How are you going to carry this all back?” Akira can’t help but to nitpick. “It’ll weigh you down, tire you out— how will you swing your bat— this isn’t a good idea—”

Hikaru chuckles. “Yo, Touya, relax. I’m gonna put my hands in the air and turn myself over to the soldiers. They’ll drive me to a safe zone. No problem.”

Akira has his misgivings. “Is that really going to work?”

“Yeah, totally! Don’t believe sensationalist media, Touya.” He laughs loudly. “They wouldn’t have let me in, but they’ll gladly let me out of this section. I’ve done it before.”

“If you say so…”

After that conversation, Hikaru announces it’s time to do his hair. Akira snickers into his hand as Hikaru whips off his jacket and shirt and digs the bleach from his backpack. He leans kneels beside the tub in the bathroom and bends over. He uses the boxed water to and Akira’s shampoo to wash his hair. They chat about the safe zone while Hikaru dries off, but then Hikaru claims he needs absolute quiet to do his hair. He looks like a moron with Akira’s mother’s clips holding sections of his hair and his tongue sticking out as if it might help his concentration.

“I’m glad you don’t pull that face at the go board.”

“Shut up, will you!” he snaps lightly as he pushes the paste into his roots.

***

Later on, he yawns and lies back on Akira’s parents’ bed. Akira gazes down from above and admires how fond he can feel for those stupid bangs. Hikaru looks like Hikaru again, and thus the years that the crisis had wrecked on his face now magically melt away.

“Hey, Touya.”

“Yeah?”

“When was the last time you talked to your parents?”

Akira tries to reign himself in. He knows strong emotions give Hikaru physical ailments; he doesn’t want to hurt Hikaru…

“I don’t know anymore. It was a long time ago. The phones haven’t been working.”

Hikaru yawns again. He seems to have lost the capacity for speech. We’ll find them. We can make calls on a satellite phone, right? Hikaru isn’t sure what exactly a satellite phone looks like, or how they work, but he’s fairly confident he can find one if he tries.

Akira wants to sink into the floor, but he’s also fairly touched. “What could you possibly tell them?”

Hikaru closes his eyes. I don’t know. The most basic truth, I guess. They have to know that you’re…

“…I suppose,” Akira concedes, though it hurts. “They wouldn’t believe in something as ridiculous as ghosts, would they?”

Hikaru laughs through his nose. Don’t underestimate that dad of yours. He’s clever. And then he thinks, I know! We’ll play a game against him! Just like I helped Sai play go against him, I’ll help you…

Akira gapes incredulously. “I don’t know… Would that help him or hurt him? —and anyway, even if we contact him and he and mom are safe, he’s all the way in China. With the state the world is in, we won’t be allowed to travel."

But Hikaru lies there with a content smile. I’ll make it happen somehow. Since it’s for you.

“…why—”

“Because you’re still here,” Hikaru says, and it sounds loud in the quiet of the world. “Despite all odds, you’re still here, and so you still matter.”

And since Akira knows him best, is part of his being now, he feels the simple love radiating from Hikaru’s soul, and he settles down beside it to enjoy its warmth.

***

When he wakes, it’s time to go. Hikaru stretches and prepares for the long journey back. Akira stands before the gates and looks back at his childhood home. He may never see it again. He may last a thousand years on this earth and watch it change irrevocably. Or maybe he’ll stay with Hikaru until Hikaru dies, too, and then their souls can depart this world together. Akira likes that better. He doesn’t know what god has in store for him, but if he has any say in the matter, then that’s how he wants to cross over.

“Let’s go.”

Hikaru loads up the bags, gets a good grip on the bat. Then he smiles his blessed, crooked smile and shoves aside the barricade and opens the gate.

They turn out onto the street—

and are greeted by the shell that once held Akira, there at the opposite end of the street, slowly approaching.

“How!” Akira gasps. “How did it know to come here?”

Hikaru shrugs out of his gear and readies up. He thinks, Maybe it can’t help but be drawn towards me. Maybe even that version of you has been looking for me this whole time.

“Akira,” he says out loud.

“…yes?”

Hikaru doesn’t take his eyes off the shell, but his face is smooth, untroubled. The scarf on the shell flutters away in the breeze of approaching fall. Its gruesome, gaping maw flashes gnashing teeth.

“Tell me you’ll stay with me,” Hikaru says.

Akira understands. Hikaru needs all the strength he can get. Akira doesn’t feel embarrassed to speak the truth.

“I’m not going to disappear. I’ll be with you until the end.” Akira has decided to believe in that with all the power left in his soul.

Hikaru steps forward with a peaceful smile and the shell comes running. Hikaru winds up. Hikaru swings.

Hikaru slays the monster.