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You always know what to say.
It’s 1996 and you’re in junior high school, and that’s what everyone’s always said about you. The rest will all come afterward, about your talents and your parents and how you shot up like a beanstalk last year and you shouldn’t worry since it’ll become you more in a few months, and you really should cut your hair since it’s getting so shaggy, but you’ll always hear that first: the ‘polite, isn’t he?’ and ‘agreeable, wonderfully well-spoken,’ as if they remember you less for what you say and more for how you say it. That suits you just fine. You can slither your way into any mold they put you in, and you’re always rewarded for your commitment to expectations. You know to keep your school uniform on when you ask a pair of talking businessmen if they have any spare change for you to call home (it’s your mother, you’ll say, she gets worried when you miss your train, and the men will never have to know she’s really a doormat) and you know to neatly fold it up and keep it in the bottom of your bag (pressed between books to dissuade any telltale wrinkles) after you’ve told your father (for it’s always your father that picks up the phone,) you’ve picked up another study program and you’re going to be home late, and yes, your grades are spectacular but they’ll only get worse without upkeep and you’ll be home in time to get a good rest, you swear, and yes you know exactly what’ll happen to you if you’re not. And he buys it because after all -- you always know what to say.
It’s just that doing what you say isn’t always necessary.
You slink around back corners with shitty little foam Walkman headphones on your ears that keep slipping enough for you to catch snippets of conversations you can’t put any context to and you try to remember how foot traffic ebbs and flows during the day and throughout the seasons so you can figure out the most unobstructed path to where you’re going, and when you get there you can let their shitty little foam cushions fall completely off because you can’t talk to anyone out there when everyone’s a mess of coming and going but these are your people, and this is your city, and here, everyone knows you as that kid with the hunched shoulders and cinched-waist leather jacket over the artfully torn tee with some decade-old darkwave band no one else at your school listens to who can rattle off both about industry history and whatever the hell’s going on over there with the britpop scene, and that’s just the person you’d be okay with being.
There’s a couple other cashiers and store owners who know you by sight now (even before your legs and hair grew you into someone easily recognizable) and you’ll stop by their places too just to grab a bite to eat or have a quick chat, talk about the weather or about the business. The older folks have always liked you -- you keep up quick, you’ve got a head for business and know perhaps a bit too much from dinner table talks with the head of marketing you share your last name and half your genes and nothing else with -- and the younger ones you can be as agreeable and blank-slate with as you are with everyone at school until they show interest in something that can catch your attention properly and you can relax and uncoil and know they’re probably not going to find some way to turn the conversation into a knife. They all know you, you’re always around, they know what you like and what to look out for on your behalf and you’ve always treated them like any school friend you’d had if you’d had any that were close to you at all -- genuine as you can be without ever getting a whiff of what you’re running from. This is your city now, the city where you are who you’ve decided to be, maybe not where you’re born but where you’ve become from , in that the you born here is more you than the one back home, and that’s all you need.
The darker it gets the more you fade into the concrete, headphones blasting like the heartbeat of the neon that bathes the asphalt that you can swear syncs up sometimes with your own and when it’s dark enough, or even just busy enough that no one will care, you can sneak your way onto the construction sites and fire escapes and back alley corners, and find these little niches, these alcoves where it feels like you’re both separate from everyone else and a part of everything at once and then you can slip on your shitty little foam headphones and they won’t fall off when you play a tape Nishi at the record store thought you’d be interested in (despite telling you not to tell anyone, and you know he’s just acting tough) and you can smoke a couple of shitty pilfered cigarettes your street clothes will reek from and you can feel like you’re where you’re supposed to be before you put your decidedly less shitty uniform back on and pretend you're someone you've been told you should be.
And sure, maybe you’ve been compelled once or twice by the call of the void, the beckoning choir of the neon-slick asphalt when you’re up on a building or looking down a rickety ladder, ready to die here before you die anywhere else, but you’ve never been serious about it, not really (and if you wanted to die you’d just forget to call home before you came back late, not that you've ever tested that theory,) so you swear it’s an accident and you’ve lost track of time or must’ve fallen asleep or forgotten just how long some art rock tracks can get because this is your city and you know it, and you’d never forget when the trains come and go (until you’re lying on the tracks and think you have 15 more minutes before you see the light in your peripherals but it's still too late when you turn.)
You wake up in the Scramble.
At first you think it’s just Nishi that doesn’t remember you, no matter how many times in your partnership you tell him you know him, that you’ve known him for at least two years and you still have that demo he made with the drum and rhythm guitar but you’ve been working on a synth part you wanted to finish before you gave it back to him for vocals, but then no one else at his store recognizes you on the second day when you’ve got mission work to do, and then when you stop in for food and clothes to help you through the week no one else does either, and it takes you until halfway through the second mission to realize they should have just told you what they took from you to play this fucked up game so you wouldn’t have to inch towards the reality that if you don’t win you’re a ghost to them, the people you want to be known to, like you've become the ghost you wanted to be in your parents’ home, some temporary person who only exists when they’re being addressed directly or recalled in the hazy way you talk about a childhood friend whose face you’ve already forgotten. You have to win, or you belong nowhere.
But you always know what to say, so in a way, you always know what to do, too. Naturally, you win.
Almost.
It’s Nishi that ends up getting the highest point total (and of course, unable to perceive himself in any way he got over his self-consciousness and the bravado of performed masculinity quickly) but you’re still here, and you could have done better if you would have let him lead less or maybe if you’d just focused on yourself more, because of the two she was really more rooting for you and “that brings us to now,” says the woman in traditional clothes and a blinding white void, because she likes your attitude so (and this isn't standard protocol, she says,) you’ve got a choice: you gamble again or you come work for her.
And you -- you always know what to say.
And it’s good, because this is probably what you’re meant to do.
You slip into Reaperdom like you were born with wings, dancing between efficient and creative in your requirements for wall clearing with such vaseline-slick ease that you’re guarding routes for less than a year before you’re a Harrier, breaking records that'll only be broken again by a scant few months, and by ‘98 you’ve been recognized by the Conductor as one of her best and brightest, her right hand if her left’s at the side of the Composer, and you’re really not keen on letting anyone know that you’ve made it this far chasing the half-forgotten melody of a feeling you got when you were fifteen and swore the city had a heartbeat. The higher up you go, the more you hear it, and it’s singing to you like a holy choir that you can’t help but want more of. You’ve died once and found your place, shed your skin and reinvented yourself, and now you think you’ve found your purpose in whatever that choir is singing.
If you get closer, you might even be able to drown out the dissonant, hateful sounds you pretend not to hear but that honestly you always really have, weighing down at home so much you carried it with you until you could shed it off with your pre-Game self and decide how much you want to engage with the negative vibe and who’s going to be the source of it and if that source is going to be you. The high-fi mosquito pitch of the highest coloratura in that choir doesn’t hold a candle to the impossibly low frequency rumble that swarms with Noise as people go about their daily lives, carrying their baggage like gongs that clash with each other in the streets, but if you get closer maybe you can at least hear an ensemble that can match the dissonant volume. It's everywhere now that your ears are open to hear it, and there's just so much that you don't know if your suffering in its presence is empathic or from the sheer quantity of human strife and maybe it was better when you didn't know, and couldn't hear, but the tradeoff is irresistable.
You’re eighteen when you erase the Conductor, and you assure her it’s nothing personal. You just can’t stand the way she runs things.
It’s been three years since you “died,” reattuned to the RG, and promptly faked your own death via disappearance to stay on the streets you love -- and you'd stay on the street if you had to. You’ve never cared about the RG more than the touch-and-go relationships you have just like you had when you were fifteen with every person you meet, and even if you thrive in every moment you have in them when they're happening you can’t bring yourself to care too much after hearing the UG’s tune (and, of course, knowing how easy it is to disappear and how little it means when you do.)
After she’s gone, you get to hear the next refrain: truth spoken from the mouth of divinity as you settle in to take your victim’s place and you realize that you were right, and this is what you’re made for. Your Imagination, after all, is at a level others might call insane; you’ve got a gift and you’d be a waste if you were anything but Conductor. It’s in part your city, but you belong to the city, too. It's a partnership. It's the only one you've felt you can actually put trust in.
(if you can't trust your god, after all, who can you trust?)
You always know what to say, and it makes you very, very good at your job. On one hand you’re playing the prophet, interpreting the word of your God, the god of your city and your home and everything you’ve become and loved to become while in it, and the other you’re the preacher, speaking to the congregation only that which they need to hear and understand for Their will to be done.
Their Will becomes everything that matters to you, your work becoming faith, your faith becoming your life, and your existence mellowing out to that pulsing heartbeat that you’re sure is in sync now with your own. You let the RG melt away entirely and focus on the title you’ve killed for and the task is so massive and daunting you doubt you'd have time for anything else anyway (but it doesn't matter, because for the first time with all your heart you can feel unafraid to love something in a way that won't hurt, and your heart's too big and too unused for it not to swallow you whole but you, euphoric, can't bring yourself to mind.)
You can hear it sometimes among the social jungle's deafening din -- the music you can’t doubt is whatever the two of you are making -- and you wonder if that’s when your issues with sobriety start or if it was sometime before that (not that you can really remember,) during your wild chasing of the choir and the death of your personal life that brought you here to the sound you want to sink into and meld with. It only gets worse when you can throw it in a shaker with the dissonant sound of the thoughts of the city and slip into the thrumming frequency of the UG like you’re happy to drown in the incessant drive of robot rock.
(it’s good, though, you drown and it’s good, the kind of good you’re at when you can lie back and listen and swear you hear the turning of the world, and you’ll do anything to keep a buzz and tune into that instead of the massive weight that’s slouching your shoulders more the older you get because no matter what happens, there’s always that song and even suffering sounds sweeter when you hear that melodic undertone)
You can handle yourself, of course; you always know what to say even if you’re not in the best mind to say it. You do well under pressure and you have since you were a kid and learned how to slither out of any consequence. You know who to be to each person below you to keep them around but not too close to be dangerous for you or Them, you know how to motivate every single Reaper who answers to you and can still be motivated and you know exactly how to get rid of the ones who can’t be. You know who to keep close and why to keep them near you, and you know how to use even the most dangerous weapons in your arsenal. You know every tactic and you’ve tried them all, picking and choosing your favorites depending on the Player you use them against. You know the rules better than anyone, and you know when to stretch and bend around them for Their benefit, and you know the city, and finally, you can hear its heartbeat and it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard aside from the Composer who can render you, at any point, totally in awe and utterly speechless.
So when it’s been eight years and you're twenty-six and They tell you They’re ending it all, you don’t know what to say.
You speak anyway.
You get 30 days.