Hard on the heels of my story from last week, _Jamais Vu_, comes the next
installment -- this one by a member of the writing circle I belong
to. All C&C welcome, public and private; the author can be contacted by
email at bishop@cybernothing.org.
This one's about Mikage, and takes place approximately 10 years after the
first story. This story contains massive spoilers up to and through the
Black Rose arc and spoilers for the series as a whole. We own
nothing; nothing is ours. Characters and situations of _Shoujo Kakumei
Utena_ belong to Be-Papas and Saitou Chiho, and we bow down before them
for it.
Jamais Vu: A Warm Place
Whitney Cox (bishop@cybernothing.org)
In the past two hours, the stars had shifted their appropriate distance
behind the window pane, appearing from behind one of the curtains and
disappearing behind the other. Mikage was quite pleased by this. So far
they had all been behaving appropriately. Not one was out of place; the
night up until now had been cold and clear, facilitating stargazing
from beneath a heavy down comforter, propped up against a few pillows,
staring out into the night sky from the warm shelter of a darkened room.
The room was dark. For the first time in nearly a decade, this did not
bother him. The lack of light did not go unnoticed, though his attention
was centred on the constellations. It simply had ceased to disturb
him. Ruka had turned off the lights when he had left to go to work; he
had most likely thought that the light would disturb his sleeping
housemate. Ruka had been wrong on both counts.
Within the past fifteen minutes, however, clouds had begun to obscure
the starlight, the beginnings of a storm slipping in while sane people
sleep. While sane people sleep, a librarian lies awake, and a radio man
does a radio show, Mikage laughed softly to himself. As he stretched out
his legs beneath the covers, the resulting stiffness made him realise
that he probably hadn't moved in quite some time. Only the stars had
moved, and he couldn't even see them anymore.
As he had done so many nights before, in the clutches of one of his
frequent bouts of insomnia, he reached for the clock radio he knew to be
by the bedside and flipped the switch to 'on.' His reward for this
action was half a song, the last half. Sounds of distorted guitars and
amplified drums filled the room, followed shortly by the lead singer's
soft, gritty voice.
/"Deaf, dumb, and thirty, starting to deserve this, leaning on my
conscience wall, blood is like wine, unconscious all the time, if I had
it all again, I'd change it all..."/
Sighing, Mikage fell back against the pillows and pulled the covers over
his bare arms. Even after a decade of playing the most eclectic American
music, Ruka still did not speak much English, not nearly enough to know
what most of his songs meant. This comforted Mikage somewhat, since if
Ruka's musical selection had been voluntary, many times Mikage would
have been honour-bound to drive down to the station in the middle of the
night and kill him as vengance for his musical selection's commentary.
As it was, however, he simply felt the frequent urge to wipe out Ruka's
music collection as a preemptive strike against a growing self-aware
intelligence that might compete with the human race for superiority.
But he knew it wasn't Ruka's fault, any more than bizarre sentience had
been the fault of the three overly dramatic girls exercising their
overly dramatic avant-garde metaphors while backlit. Some things are,
and some things comment upon them. Here, on the outside, Ruka had become
the commentator, the radio man, the narrator.
Literary critics have discussed the idea of first person storytelling
almost since the birth of literary criticism, with one of its most
interesting iterations the idea of the unreliable narrator. In a first
person work, everything the audience hears and sees is filtered through
the eyes of the one telling the story. But if the narrator is
misinformed, or insane, or intentionally misleading, what becomes of the
story? What is left to believe?
/"Got a machinehead, it's better than the rest, green to red,
machinehead, got a machinehead, it's better than the rest, green to red,
machinehead..."/
Repeat and fade, repeat and fade. Ruka's songs were always so
formulaic. Well, not all, perhaps, though enough that the formula became
apparent. Sometimes it was changed--inverted, missing a particular part,
substituted for something else--but rarely did it ever truly change.
"Don't touch that dial, don't hang up the phone, you're subjecting
yourself to Tsuchiya Ruka on 88.5 JSPR. That was 'Machinehead' by Bush,
off one of the thousands of disks that are taking over my studio, my
car, my living room, my bedroom ... hell, even my bathroom. And before
you ask what CDs are doing in my bathroom, let me tell you that you
don't want to know. Heh. I don't even remember where I got this CD;
probably sent to me by one of my legions of
mindless-slaves-I-mean-adoring-fans. See, you people all thought I was
being sappy when I said that people out there make this show possible."
An American serviceman, Mikage remembered, rolling onto his back to
stare at the ceiling. The stars were completely obscured by clouds now.
An American serviceman who had enjoyed Bush and claimed that Ruka was
the only DJ on the air who would even consider playing it. Mikage's
curse of a memory filled in the blanks.
As the obligatory commercial break began, he swung his legs out of the
bed, wincing as his bare feet set down on a jewel case. Ignoring any
potential damage, he kicked the empty CD case against a wall and pulled
himself to his feet. The room was too warm; Ruka always kept the entire
house too warm. Pushing open the window nearest to the bed let in a cool
breeze, almost to the point of being too cold. However, in contrast to
the artifical heat in the house, it felt good.
Ruka still reacted almost violently to the cold; venturing outside in
incliment weather always followed a production of layers, coats,
scarves, and whining. But Mikage never bothered with much more than an
ankle-length peacoat shrugged over his shoulders, even on the worst
stormy nights. After all, he had been dead longer than the kid had, had
spent more time in the vaccuum that was the wings, backstage. The cold
simply seemed too familiar to bother him.
Splashing cold water on his face, hearing a voice from the next room use
the air time that had cost as much as premium spots to chatter on about
some new product, he blinked at himself, belatedly, for thinking of Ruka
as 'the kid.' He hadn't thought of Ruka as that in a long time, not for
years.
"All right, ladies and gentlemen, now that our little tribute to
commercialism is over, you are now once more listening to Tsuchiya Ruka,
88.5 FM JSPR, and you will be listening to me for the next several
hours, unless you get the sense to turn off your dial and actually get
some sleep. We all know what kind of people are awake at this hour."
Yes, Ruka, Mikage thought, finishing the sentence for the rest of the
radio audience. We all know what kind of people are awake. People like
you.
He had, at the beginning, thought of Ruka as little more than a
kid. Mikage had felt so very old, as if he had lived forever already,
and had acted like it. Ruka had made the transition not without trauma,
but without bringing with him the obvious, all-pervasive cloud of
madness that had hounded the former professor. Even though he suffered
from the same burden of rememberance, Ruka seemed more like the amnesiac
survivors of the strange universe than one who lived his grief daily. He
had seemed young, and Mikage was so very old.
"You know, on a random note, which I'm allowed to do because I have the
microphone and you don't, I got a letter the other day announcing my
ten-year high school reunion. Man, you just don't notice these little
things like, for instance, the piece of toilet paper on your shoe, or
the parking ticket on your windshield that you don't notice until you're
going seventy miles an hour in a thirty-five mile an hour zone. Or, you
know, the passage of time, until all of a sudden there's a letter in
your mailbox telling you that you're ten years older than you remember
being last you checked."
But Ruka was not a kid, Mikage had learned very quickly, despite all his
appearances and adolescent quirks. He was just better at fighting his
age, the ancientness that comes with being sixteen for a very long
time. Drawing a comb through his whisper-fine hair, Mikage paused for a
moment to check for grey hairs. None there, so far as he could see,
though his hair was so light and blonde that he would probably wake up
one morning and find it all not grey, but snow-white.
"I always thought I wouldn't go to my ten year reunion, based on the
fact that anyone I really wanted to see I just wouldn't lose track of.
But sometimes it's not that easy. So I'm going to go, probably with a
couple of friends of mine. We'll move in, occupy the bar -- in the
military sense of the term -- and see how many helium balloons we can
suck down before security throws us out. At any rate, I suppose it'll be
fun enough to return to Ohtori Academy and see all the people I
graduated with that I've lost touch of, see how many of them my poor,
messed-up brain allows me to remember."
Mikage had, for the most part, given up on lecturing Ruka about his
illicit drug use (except for the time Ruka had tried to get Tsuwabuki,
who at the time was seventeen and seeking help from Mikage about his
relationship with Nanami, high). Just as he smoked cigarettes in
defiance of his own mortality, he smoked pot with Touga and Saionji,
always careful to hide his habits from Mikage, but never quite careful
enough. Mikage could never help seeing this conscious destruction of
brain cells, however, as anything but an attempt to somehow gain the
amnesia the others had been granted. It never seemed to work. Some
things, he pondered, rubbing the side of his face and gauging how badly
he needed a shave, your brain just won't let you forget. No shave, then.
First a shower. Never mind that it was three in the morning.
"So that's coming up at the end of June, and I'm sure you'll all hear
all about it, about who married whom, who's shacking up with whom, and
which prom queen has gotten fat and ugly. And until then, we have music!
Coming up this hour I've got...let's see, what do I have?" The sound of
jewel cases being shuffled. "All right, here's a little something from
the Stones, a little something from the Cure, maybe some Garbage--and
that's the band, not a comment on my music taste, for all you critics
out there. But first, just to spite all the English-speakers listening
in right now, Alanis Morisette, with 'Front Row.'"
/"I know he's blood but you can still turn him away you don't owe him
anything...."/
The rest of the song was drowned out by the roar of water in the shower
as Mikage stepped in and let it wash over him. Ruka was right; even
though Mikage spoke English as well as he spoke Japanese, he couldn't
understand most of the lyrics to the woman's songs. That was, he
supposed, what Ruka heard all his music as, not as a singer with an
accompaniment, but with the voice as just another instrument.
Which did not excuse his taste in music, per se. When they had first
begun living together, ten years ago -- when Ruka had found Mikage,
shivering, huddled in a doorway, and had offered him half his house as
if it were the most natural thing in the world to do -- Mikage had been
neatly horrified by Ruka's music tastes. To an ear wired toward Bach,
the Jesus and Mary Chain was highly unfamiliar cacophany, and at first
the complaints about Ruka's music selection had been genuine criticisms
born of distaste for the sound.
After a while, though, like the nagging about Ruka's cigarettes and
other bad habits, the insults of the music had become a strange ritual
of friendship. Mikage knew that he would never change Ruka's music
selection, and Ruka knew that Mikage would never grow to share his
tastes wholeheartedly. Though he'd never tell Ruka, Mikage had actually
developed a fondness for some of the strange foreign music, especially
Bush. But sharing this with Ruka would be like conceding defeat, and
neither friend wanted the battle to end. Not only was it fun and highly
entertaining to anyone around, but it was another means of affirming
their familiar identities. Look, I still hate your music and you still
smoke even though I tell you not to, so we're all right, we're still
ourselves. Right?
Right, Mikage told himself as he let the water run down his back. After
all this time, the one thing he should know was that you can change what
you do and who you claim to be, you can change what you call yourself
and what you look like, but you can never change who you are. You can
never escape it.
Hot water worked for him a lot like caffeine; it was something to feel,
something definite to experience. After the hyper-reality of the inside
world, the dream world, whatever it had been, the real world grated like
sun on a desert landscape. Nothing felt anymore, and what did feel felt
dulled. The caffeine helped; it woke him up, and he was more addicted to
it than he'd ever admit to anyone, including himself. But not for the
jolt that it gave most normal drinkers, but for the fact that it prodded
his nerves into consciousness. Hot water, as well, boiling hot showers
that steamed up the entire top floor, could be felt beyond the
anaesthesia of reality. He washed the soap from his hair.
With a fairly forceful twist, he stopped the flow of the cold water a
few nigh-unbearable seconds before he stopped the hot, then stood,
dripping, in the middle of the bathroom. In the new silence, the music
slipped in from the other room.
/"Miller's angels in black and white welcome everyone in, children
dreaming of wrong and right, wrapped in grace and in sin...."/
Counting Crows hadn't been on the lineup; how long had he been in the
shower? Peeking out of the bathroom at the red numbers clocked his
ablution at nearly half an hour. It had felt like much longer to him,
and yet like no time at all. Hourglasses can run backwards, he supposed,
but digital clocks can run any way they choose.
Drying off, he reached for the nearest shirt, carelessly thrown over an
open dresser drawer, and pulled it on over his shoulders, brushing away
the still-damp hair that dripped on the collar and down his back. He
ruffled it clean with a pale blue and purple towel, which he fastened
low on his hips, then reached for the telephone.
"JSPR. Tsuchiya."
The ghost of a smile on his lips, Mikage walked over to the open
window. "'Miller's Angels'? Really, Ruka, you're slipping when I can
recognise something on your playlist."
"Slipping?" Ruka's voice sounded the way it always did when Mikage
called him at the station, slightly drunk on the awesome power of
broadcasting, though perhaps a bit less on the universally maligned side
tonight. "I figured I'd play something for all the old fogies out
there." His million-dollar grin was audible through the phone, the same
million-dollar grin that, through the airwaves, landed him the highest
ratings for his spot year after year--and the million-dollar advertising
figures that made him the station's most valuable asset. "What are you
still doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep, wanted a shower; the usual." The storm had started. A
thin powder of snow covered everything now, and more fell from the sky
in the gentlest possible flurry. "It's snowing."
/"They come out of the blue sky, they come out of the blue, they come
out of the blue sky, but you never know where they're gonna go; hey,
Romeo..."/
Ruka sighed audibly; Mikage bet that he had forgotten his jacket at the
house. "This late in March? That's criminal."
Laughing, Mikage shrugged. "It's actually lovely. Well, from inside."
/"Miller's angels are hovering in between the earth and the sun; in the
shadow of God's unwavering love, I am a fortunate son...."/
"I'll bet." From the other end of the phone came the shuffling sound of
more jewel cases, more music being hunted for, being selected. A pause,
not related to the music hunt. "Hey, Souji, you okay?"
/"Don't wake me please, don't wake me, I was dreaming, and I might just
stay inside today, I don't go out much these days...."/
Mikage smiled again, brushing some snow from the windowsill and letting
it melt on his fingertips. "Yeah," he said thoughtfully, watching the
white flakes turn into water and drip down his hand. "I'm all right.
Nothing a little coffee couldn't improve, though."
Ruka's laugh was genuine, but distracted. "Hey, look, the song's almost
up and I've got to make an appearance or they'll think I've set the
station on autopilot and run off to China or something. Call me back
later?"
"Sure." Hitting the talk button on the white cordless phone, Mikage
ended the conversation, though he didn't move from the window. His wet
hair hung cold and damp against the back of his neck, and he wrung it
out with the towel again. For being terribly fine, his hair held a lot
of water.
On the radio, the song faded out a little prematurely, due to Ruka's
penchant for cutting off a song early rather than fading away, fading in
to Ruka's voice. "JSPR 88.5FM, it's now nearly 3:30 in the morning, and
you're listening to Shadows of the Underground. I am your host tonight,
the one and only Tsuchiya Ruka, accept no substitutes. And now I'm about
to say the words that strike terror into your collective hearts: I don't
think I've ever played this particular tune before. Well, not on the
air, anyway, though I can't remember having heard it before. But I've
got it, and that means it's got to be good, so let's give it a go, what
say? You all can send me a couple of e-mails telling me how much it
sucks. For the first time on Shadows of the Underground, here's Moby's
'God Moving Over the Face of the Waters.'"
The trill of a synthesised piano started softly, reminding Mikage of
rain in the way that only a piano can sound like rain, followed over by
synthetic strings, swelling softly into an image one could very well
indeed believe was God, primal and mysterious, stirring the waters at
the beginning of Creation. A beautiful image for a snowy night. He did
not call Ruka back, not yet, nor did he expect Ruka to call him; he made
his way downstairs and went for the coffee machine instead.
Ruka's narcissism about his job meant that the house had no shortage of
radios, though as small as it was, one well-placed radio could have
sufficed. Still hearing echoes of the faux symphony from upstairs,
Mikage switched on the radio in the same motion that turned on the
coffee pot. Instantly, the latter little black machine started
percolating; in a house with one as addicted to coffee as the insomniac
shadow, coffee is always only three minutes from being prepared.
This house was one of this universe's great mysteries for Ruka and
Mikage. When Ruka had snapped awake into the real world, he had attended
Ohtori, held a former position on the Seitokai, and was preparing to
graduate a year ahead of the others his age -- all very plausible
components of a high school junior's life. In his case, however, dead
parents provided real estate. Orphaned at fifteen by a pair of people
who, according to certain conundrums of temporal mechanics, might never
have existed, Ruka had a house. Sometimes this universe seemed as
bizarrely coincidental as the last one, but these things were not to be
questioned.
God? Perhaps. Mikage had never bothered to think that far; difficult
topic, indeed, after coming from a place where God was highly
malevolent. Or, at least, half of him was malevolent, the other half
being quite dead. It was rather a philosopher's dream.
The Moby piece went nowhere very quickly, but did so in a manner so
lovely that when it was finished, Mikage had his mug of coffee in his
hands and had not noticed the passage of time. Black, two sugars this
morning. He'd drink coffee any way it was offered to him, but when he
was preparing it himself, black and sweet was his preference.
"All right," Ruka's voice began as the song wound down, "that wasn't
half bad, and judging by the email, the rest of you don't think it
sucked. Except for that guy in Kyoto who likes to call me up and inform
me politely that he isn't wearing any pants. So I guess we'll just put
that right over here in the stack of stuff I'll play again."
Outside the window, snow had begun falling more heavily; the single
orange streetlight in view of the kitchen window was the only thing to
give enough light to evidence this. Snow reminded him of other peoples'
memories.
"I just checked my clock, and though it's not quite 4:00 yet, it sure as
hell feels like it over here. You know, that time of morning where if
you're trying to stay up all night, you've got another half hour or so
and you're golden. So I've got my cup of coffee, and I know someone out
there who probably has his by now, and I know we're not the only
caffeinated ones in the prefecture. So take a minute to refill your mugs
for the long haul, and here's '4AM,' by Our Lady Peace."
With a long sigh, Mikage drained the rest of his coffee mug and put it
in the sink, running a bit of water over it. More caffeine would be nice
right now, but outside was snow, and snow was allowed to have a slightly
dulled edge. Snow was soft, he thought as he looked out the window. Snow
was soft and beautiful, cold and quiet, everything that he could
appreciate the way he was.
/"I walked around my good intentions and found that there were none; I
blame my father for the wasted years, we hardly talked, I never thought
I would forget this hate, then a phone call made me realise I'm
wrong...."/
Mikage picked up the portable phone from the counter and dialed his
immediate supervisor's voice mail, telling her that he was sorry, but he
felt ill and wouldn't be in the next day for work. Tawa-san was
accustomed to these kind of phone calls, happening once every three
months or so after a particularly bad night of insomnia, and she
understood, so long as the call didn't come in the middle of finals. But
this was the middle of the semester, and they could afford to miss him
for a Tuesday.
Wednesday. What day was today? He had forgotten.
Halfway back up the staircase, he realised that he wanted to go
outside. More than that, he wanted to go take a long walk. Yes, he
informed the more rational segment of his brain, a walk in a
snowstorm. And that would take putting on clothing, which was why he was
walking upstairs in the first place instead of staying downstairs and
doing something on his computer. He hated it when his body knew what he
was going to do before he did.
/"I walked around my room not thinking, just sinking in this box, I
blame myself for being too much like somebody else, I never thought I
would just bend this way, then a phone call made me realise I'm
wrong...."/
Buttoning the shirt he had on already, he untied the towel around his
waist, folded it neatly, and placed it on the stack of linens that
needed to be washed. Or, in the case of that poor multicoloured towel
that had seen many better days, incinerated. To prepare for the cold, he
slipped on a pair of boxers, khaki slacks, heavy woolen socks, and a
rather heavy white cardigan.
Once upon a time, his room had been organised. Once upon a time, it had
been practically sterile. But that was when merely thinking about
something hard enough could make it happen. However clean his room might
be, especially when compared to his housemate's living space, the
entropy that Ruka generated had seeped into his compulsively tidy room.
He was presently searching in the bottom of his closet for the scarf
that Saionji had given him for his last birthday. A royal purple scarf.
The lack of colour coordination in this universe never ceased to
secretly delight Mikage. The scarf ended up tucked into the boots he
wanted to wear; how convenient. Occasionally his closet had its
benevolent moments. But mostly, it was a mass of chaos.
/"If I don't make it known that I've loved you all along, just like
sunny days that we ignore because we're all dumb and jaded, and I hope
to God I figure out what's wrong..."/
Without thinking, as one song faded into the other, he picked up the
phone resting atop the folded, damp towel and dialed the number of the
radio station. Phone cradled beneath his ear, he struggled to get the
boots on. They buckled up to his mid-calves and generally caused him
problems. "JSPR. Tsuchiya."
"I'm going for a walk," Mikage said without preamble. The last buckle
snapped into place and he stood, testing the way they felt. He hadn't
worn them in a while.
Ruka's surprise was audible. "A walk? It's snowing."
/"When I'm all alone and no one else is there waiting by the phone to
remind me I'm still here..."/
The scarf that Saionji had given him wrapped around Mikage's neck
warmly, and he started downstairs. "I know. I'll have my cell phone with
me." A pair of radios played in the background, but he wasn't
particularly listening to the lyrics.
"Souji?" Ruka's voice was strangely serious. "Are you okay with ...
things?"
"I'm fine," Mikage reassured him honestly, retrieving his heavy overcoat
from the hallway closet and slinging it around him. "I just need to
think a little while, and it's beautiful outside. I didn't want you to
be worried if you called the house and I didn't answer."
/"Life can hold you down when you're not looking up; can't you hear the
sound, hearts beating out loud; although the names change inside we're
all the same; why can't we tear down these walls to show the scars we're
covering..."/
Ruka's voice sounded as if he were trying to smile, but doing a
strangely bad job of it. "If you hadn't answered, I would have assumed
you went to bed like a sane person."
"This from the man who works nights voluntarily." Mikage cracked open
the front door. No wind stirred the landscape, though the snow fell
heavily. It was the perfect silence. He could barely see the street in
front of the house.
"It takes all kinds," Ruka replied. "It's cold out there, Souji. Don't
stay out too long."
Mikage laughed. "You sound like me now." Hanging up the phone, he placed
it on the bottom step where someone would eventually see it and put it
in its proper place. That was the way of things in this
household--eventually, everything found its way to where it belonged.
Some things just took a little longer than others.
Contemplating the landscape before him, Mikage reached into his pocket
and pulled out his tiny radio walkman and earphones. These would keep
him company. He switched on the radio just as the song was repeating and
fading, according to the formula, and conceding air time to Ruka's
voice. Taking his last warm breath for some time, he stepped into the
night.
The softness hit him like a heavy blanket, a comforter thrown over his
head, and for the few moments between turning on the radio and lifting
the earphones to his ears, everything was blissfully quiet, the same
silence found in the outer atmosphere, the silence between acts and
scenes. And then the silence was no longer silence, but Ruka's voice.
"That was 'Inside Us All,' by Creed, coming right on the heels of '4AM'
by Our Lady Peace, which I felt obligated to announce, as it is now four
in the morning, or a few minutes past."
Snow along the sidewalk had not had time to compact or crystalise, so
instead of crunching beneath Mikage's feet, it whispered like the powder
it was. He had been denied a childhood, perhaps, but he could still
recall playing in the snow before he got here, only once, on a day
almost completely unlike this one, save the heavy precipitation.
Something about snow this heavy made breathing difficult. Or perhaps
that was the weight of memories on his chest. This analogy made Mikage
laugh at himself; memories have no tangible mass. They weigh as much as
shadows. His breath plumed from between his lips.
"If you're still listening to me after all this time, you know who I am
and where your dial's set, so I don't think I really need to identify
myself again. However, for the handful of you out there who just sort of
found yourself here tonight and are listening for the first time, I'm
Tsuchiya Ruka and this is Shadows of the Underground on 88.5 FM JSPR.
Now that we've got that settled, I'd like to hear from you all out there
in the real world, so drop me an e-mail at shadows@jspr.co.jp, and I'll
see what I can do for you.
"Yeah, the real world, or what's left of it. It's my opinion, which
faithful listeners are more than aware of, that the real world doesn't
happen from about midnight until somewhere around seven in the morning.
Everything else might be real, but there's something kind of dreamlike
about this time of night, isn't there? I bet it's even more so tonight;
this cave of a radio station, sadly, has no windows from where I'm
sitting, but I hear the snow is coming down hard outside."
Quite a snowfall it was, Mikage noted, wandering slowly down the street
with the walk of a man who has nowhere to go and is in no particular
hurry to get there. The occasional streetlight cast a dim glow; he
stopped beneath one and leaned against a park bench, looking up to see
the mechanics of the snowfall.
It was only then he realised he wasn't wearing his glasses. Out of
habit, he patted the top of his head to make sure they hadn't landed
there, but all he felt was snow.
"Since most of you hear me bitch regularly about cold weather, I'll skip
it this time. We'll just leave this with a grumble about the fact that I
was the dumbass who didn't listen to the weather report and therefore
left my jacket back at the house, so I'm going to freeze my sorry ass
off getting back home. Well, as long as I've got a warm place to come
home to, the getting there won't matter much. So if you're out in it
tonight, or if you're going out in it, make sure you know what you're
getting yourself into.
"All right, I'll stop doing my best impression of your mother right now
and just play my music. Seems like someone I know is rubbing off on me.
Coming up this hour we've got some Ben Folds Five, some more Bush, some
Radiohead, and a whole bunch more random stuff I don't have queued, but
you don't need to know that. And since, once more, I have the microphone
and you don't, let's kick off this hour with something I like:
'Circles,' by Soul Coughing."
And the strangely synthesised beat that Ruka loved so much, that Mikage
swore sounded the same in every Soul Coughing song, began to pour with a
twang out of his earphones. Smiling, he forgot about his glasses back at
the house and trudged on through the powder.
/"When you were languishing in rooms I built to foul you in, and when
the wind set down in funnel form and pulled you in...."/
Songs like this made Mikage even more certain that, even at
twenty-seven, after playing American music for nearly a decade, Ruka
spoke no more English in the real world than he had on the inside.
Considering factors of duration and exposure, Mikage was lead to believe
that this ignorance was voluntary.
Only once on the inside had he ever seen snow fall. That day, Mamiya had
huddled in his rose garden for most of the day, staring longingly out
the window, never asking with his voice but pleading with his eyes to be
let out into the powder. Instead, he and Nemuro had played chess all
day, lengthy games that only lasted so long because Nemuro concentrated
on not beating Mamiya in twenty moves. The games were punctuated by the
obligatory conversation, though conversation that day seemed to go
nowhere and happen less frequently than usual. Mamiya's already-pale
skin looked ashen, white like the snow that gathered on the windows of
the greenhouse.
Finally, as the day was growing to a close, perhaps so late as an excuse
not to let him stay out too long, Tokiko came out of Mamiya's bedroom
with every warm piece of clothing imaginable. Kneeling in front of him,
she fitted him with pants, socks, more socks, shirts, flannels, coats,
and anything else she could manage on his tiny body. Finally, she deemed
him presentable and released him through the door of the greenhouse.
Nothing Nemuro had ever seen had made Mamiya that happy before. He ran
almost like a normal little boy, though perhaps a touch more slowly,
through the drifts and banks. The snow fell heavily that late afternoon,
as it fell on Mikage now, shining in the ever-greying sky.
/"And when the ghostly dust of violence traces everything, and when the
gas is drained, just wreck it, you insured the thing...."/
Tokiko had stood there, a ghost of a smile on her lips, curving her
beauty mark closer to her nose. Nemuro knew exactly how her face looked
when she smiled, which she never did often enough. Standing outside in
only a sweater and jeans, he thought she must have been frozen. And then
he realised that he was wearing nothing more than he normally wore and
was not cold. This realisation was not allowed to last very long.
Standing there, watching her watch Mamiya, Nemuro reached up and removed
his glasses. Her face became pinker in the natural light, her nose and
cheeks illuminated by frost. Tiny snowflakes settled in her hair,
curling around her face; bits of powder rested on the high collar of her
black sweater, giving her the appearance of a thing that had either been
recently dusted or needed dusting. Her profile was unmistakable; once he
made it to the real world, whenever Mikage thought of Tokiko, this was
his image of her, her eyes widened with contentment, the corners of her
red lips turning up just slightly with delight. Mamiya must have made a
funny action, for she laughed, and her laughter was white smoke. But
Nemuro was not watching Mamiya; Nemuro was watching her.
Out of the instinct so common to the inside, Tokiko turned to meet his
gaze, the movement sending a small pile of snow falling into her bangs
in the process. Reaching up with his gloved hand, Nemuro brushed the
snow away. /You look lovely today,/ he told her softly.
/"Leaf by leaf, page by page, throw this book away; all the sadness all
the rage, throw this book away; rip out the binding, tear the glue, all
the grief we never even knew, we had it all along, now it's smoke...."/
Two sets of memories were not uncommon to Mikage; indeed, they were not
uncommon to any veteran of the inside world, whether conscious or
unconscious. Most simply regarded the second set as a bizarre false
memory; the few that actually bothered to keep track of both simply kept
in mind which event everyone else knew as having happened and which only
they held.
Perhaps it was the curse of having defied Akio and yet not having the
strength to follow through with this defiance, but Mikage remembered
everything. In a world where everyone's reality was different but
everyone's dreams were the same, truth came in ten thousand flavours.
And Mikage was unfortunate enough to know the details of each. Including
Tokiko's. Including both of his own.
/"The things we've written in it never really happened, all of the
people come and gone never really lived, all of the people have come,
have gone, no one to forgive smoke..."/
He rubbed his hands together, then stuck them in his pockets. Gloves
would have been nice right then, but he had forgotten them as well,
though they probably resided in a place much different from his glasses'
spot. His glasses were most likely right next to his computer, or the
table next to the couch, or on the dining room table sprawled across a
crossword puzzle. Somewhere logical.
Nemuro's only tactile memory of Tokiko, the only time he could recall
touching her at all--or, rather, her touching him--involved several long
bloody streaks down his bare back. That night, after bundling Mamiya
back inside and giving him his injection and holding his hand until he
went to sleep, Nemuro had looked at Tokiko and she had looked at him.
Aside from the lines on his skin, the only thing he remembered with any
certainty of that night was looking up at the only window in a small,
dark room and realising that the stars were wrong. He had gotten them
wrong.
It had been, he had been certain, because he had misplaced his glasses.
He was always misplacing his glasses with their lavender scotopic
lenses. And he knew in that moment, looking at the stars, that he had
lost his glasses and read the numbers wrong. From that point on, the
night sky was going to be wrong and it was all his fault.
/"Here's an evening dark with shame, throw it on the fire, here's the
time I took the blame, throw it on the fire, here's the time we didn't
speak it seemed for years and years, here's a secret, no one will ever
know the reasons for the tears, they are smoke...."/
What disturbed him the most about that particular memory was Tokiko's
corrolary memory. Or, rather, her memory that did not corrolate at
all. She remembered snow out that window, a window much larger than he
remembered. He remembered stars. Snow and stars cannot happen at the
same time.
Three days later Nemuro stood beside a grave site marked by a simple
headstone telling only the the tragedy of all brief lives: name, date of
birth, date of death, small epitath. Mamiya's told the parable of the
bird who flies once every thousand years to sharpen its beak on a
mountain of glass; when the mountain has been worn down to a grain of
sand, a second of eternity will have passed. Tokiko wore black and did
not cry.
/"Where do all the secrets live? They travel in the air; you can smell
them when they burn, they travel...."/
The night before he had stood and the night following he stood outside
Nemuro Kinenkan, watching it burn to the ground, thanking Mamiya
silently for making the sacrifice he had feared make himself and holding
the murder weapon in his own hand. Tokiko did not wear black, but
neither did she cry, either time. Tokiko did not remember Mamiya's being
there. Professor Nemuro in the hallway with the candelabra, he
remembered Akio joking. Nemuro had not found it funny at the time. In
retrospect, however, he had to appreciate the humour value.
After that, the road to the duelling arena had been opened and the man
who was Nemuro had ascended, walking because of an old fear of
elevators, carrying a sword whose origins he still couldn't remember.
One of his memories remembered purchasing it from a small store; one
remembered borrowing from another one of the young duellists; one
remembered reaching for Tokiko and drawing it from her chest. Tokiko
remembered nothing of the sort. The memory that not even Mikage held,
the possibility that he never knew because he never had any right to own
it, was the memory of being bent backwards over the arm of a small
dark-skinned boy, arms thrown down by his sides, head thrust back.
The duel arena had been open and massive, truly a magnificent
sight. Nemuro had fought impressively, he could say now without vanity,
but impressive cannot beat selfish, and the one who fights for his own
reasons will always lose.
/"Those who say the past is not dead, stop and smell the smoke; you keep
on saying the past is not dead, come on and smell the smoke; you keep
saying the past is not even past, you keep saying we are smoke...."/
Mamiya had been beautiful. Both the real Mamiya and the one he had
unwittingly created. Both siblings had been beautiful, but in both cases
the presence of one contributed to the ugliness of the other. Mamiya's
innocent intelligence made Tokiko seem all the more contrived and
pedestrian. Tokiko's mysterious femininity betrayed Mamiya for the
boy-child that he was. Without Mamiya, Nemuro could have loved Tokiko,
perhaps, but without Mamiya he never would have stayed in the first
place.
/"Wherever you are, you will carry always truth of the scars and the
darkness of your faith..."/
If the philosophers are correct and the realms of mind and body truly
are separate, then Ohtori Akio ruled all things of the body. Suggestive,
abusive, all these things were his. To make a deal with him was to sell
one's body, not one's soul, or so everyone understood. Sometimes Mikage
wondered if the hundred dead duellists, each with his own face and name,
had had souls to begin with.
But if the man was purely physical, logic stood that a man beneath his
command could still keep his own mind. Unfortunately, those who came to
this conclusion never estimated the power of the body over the mind.
Fewer still, upon realising this power, considered that it might work
the other way as well.
/"Reality daytrips and your suit me suit me ways; turn out the light
switch, we've been awake for days, and no one's coming around here no
more, no one's coming around here...."/
Nemuro never knew what he was working on, never understood the project
as a whole. If calculations were laid upon his desk, he would perform
them; if blueprints were placed in his lap, he would make them a
reality. Always only in bits and pieces, never as a coherent whole. He
simply hadn't cared.
In this way, he surmised, he had built the universe, or at least given
Akio the parameters by which to build it. The project lived in another
fuzzy part of his brain with too many memories to make it make sense.
The hundred dead duellists, however, had no memories of their own to
contribute. Everything had happened at once, all the same actions for
different reasons and different goals, but one key phrase: for the power
to revolutionise the world.
But the power to revolutionise the world was nothing more than a wish to
be granted to a prince unselfish enough truly to desire something
eternal, for what is more eternal than the suffering of the Rose Bride?
/"Cold contagious, all the mighty mighty men, what you save is what you
lose out in the end, cold contagious, cold contagious...."/
Mikage realised that he was standing under a streetlamp, listening to
his memories and not the song, and had probably been standing there for
quite some time. Looking a little embarassed, he continued on his path.
The wind was picking up, blowing his hair around his face, and the
temperature had dropped. Fade out of the song, fade into Ruka's voice.
"You're listening to Shadows of the Underground on 88.5 FM JSPR, I'm
Tsuchiya Ruka, and that was Bush with 'Cold Contageous.' Before that we
had Ben Folds Five with 'Smoke,' and even before that, Soul Coughing,
with 'Circles.' And yes, for those of you wondering, I did take that
little break to jaunt downstairs to the window and take a look at the
storm. I left my post, I admit it, you may crucify me now.
"On my way back up, I stopped for a cigarette with Touya, the new kid
who does the morning show and wanted to get here early to set up. Great
kid, really, and anybody who can should hang around after I'm outta here
and listen to his show; this kid is really talented for being so young,
and all of you who are about to remind me that I was younger than he was
when I started can just shut the hell up. Anyway, being new and twenty
and stupid in that way all twenty-year-olds are stupid, he asked me how
long I've been working here on this show. I had to think about it, and
when I figured it out, the answer was almost a decade.
"So I suppose I'm just kicking back here doing all the things I'm not
supposed to be doing, like smoking, and babbling when I should be
playing music, and I'm thinking about being old. And I know what you
smartasses out there are thinking: he's twenty-seven, that's not old, et
cetera, et cetera. But age isn't a matter of numbers any more than
gender is a matter of equipment. I know some fine princes who started
out their lives as princesses.
"You can get a lot of living into twenty-seven years if you know what
you're doing. Sometimes it's a good thing; a little experience never
hurt anyone, especially when you're called upon for a repeat
performance. But at times like this, it can just leave you feeling old
and tired. And there are few things sadder than an old man with a
microphone.
"Maybe it's sad that you can practice something for so long and never
get any good at it, any of it, particularly the important parts--things
like dealing with people, figuring out about yourself, things like
that. You know, they used to tell us that it'd all be okay someday.
Somewhere along the line, someone gave us the impression that if we
could just practice long enough, if we could follow those examples that
get set forth for us by our oh-so-esteemed elders and such, we could
eventually get this all right. Then maybe we wouldn't have to hurt the
people we love because of action or inaction, decision or indecision. We
were promised that we'd get the hang of this, and you know what? We were
lied to.
"Or maybe it's because time never flows the way you think it
should. Remember being a teenager? I do. Those were the years that
lasted forever, sometimes a little more literally than others. So you
get all the practice being a teenager and doing teenager things, and
then you get into the real world and realise that those things aren't
going to help you anymore. So you end up being old, but you end up being
an old teenager, and who knows what the hell to do with an old teenager?
"There's a rock on my desk, just a little white rock, with the words
'carpe diem' carved into the flat side of it. For those of you who don't
speak Latin, and I sure as hell don't, it means 'seize the day.' A close
friend of mine gave it to me a few years back. I had no idea what it
meant at the time. I still don't really know, but I have a bit of an
idea. This little rock--not that little rock, wiseass--sits here and
reminds me that I've got a little power over my life, which is a little
more than I used to have, and it's my job to make as much of it as I
can. It reminds me that, you know, I could die tomorrow, or the day
after that, and old doesn't matter a thing when you're dead.
"Of course, this rock kind of justifies my pack-a-day habit, which I'm
sure he didn't mean when he gave it to me. He doesn't really think much
of my smoking, or my just about anything, for that matter. Kids, don't
try my lifestyle at home. And if you do, make sure you have someone
around to keep an eye on you while you're seizing your days right and
left.
"All right, sermon's over. Man, when I get going, I sound kind of like
one of those sappy idol songs, don't I? Well, I've got a little more
music and a lot less talking scheduled for the rest of my time here
tonight, so let's get this show going. Up next I've got...somewhere
around here...okay, here, 'God of Wine,' by Third Eye Blind on your only
station for crazy deejays at 4:30 in the morning, JSPR."
As Ruka talked, the snow began to lessen, the wind blowing away the
clouds, until the opening melancholy chords of the next song started and
it wasn't snowing anymore.
/"Every fault that I repent, there's another chip you haven't spent, and
you're cashing them all in, where do we begin to get clean again, can we
get clean again...."/
Once, while talking to Ruka late one night, Mikage had identified
himself as a man in love with a boy created by a man. And why not, he
figured, call it love? He couldn't not have loved Mamiya--not the real
one, but the false incarnation--not when Mamiya was created to be
everything he wanted in a companion, placed into the body of the boy he
wanted so desperately to save. Scientifically, all factors converged in
a favourable climate to produce the desired result. On a rawer level, a
desperate man created the thing he needed to allow himself to survive,
and in the process fell in love with it. On a rawer level.
And so his memories were of standing in darkness, bitter darkness,
holding the cold hand of a boy who had been dead for years but who
wouldn't let go of him. Of whom he wouldn't let go. Sometimes there
really wasn't a difference.
Mikage remembered his mother only from the sound of her voice in the
years he could remember, before he had been taken, remembered the soft
tone of her Hungarian lullabies. His father he never knew. Of the few
people he had been close to in his life, honestly close to, one was dead
in both worlds and one had run away in fear from him in one world and
never knew even met him in the second.
/"I know, I know, I know, I know, I know I can't keep it all together,
and the siren's song that is your madness holds a truth I can't erase
all alone on your face..."/
Then, he thought, tightening his scarf around his face against the wind,
there was the man he had shared a house with now for ten years. Ruka was
right; when you're pushing thirty, ten years at anything shouldn't make
you feel ancient.
But when ten years should only be a third of your life, and instead it's
three-fourths, ten years is a long time. On the inside, no one bothered
with questions of the passage of time, since such things seemed
irrelevant. In Akio's garden, nothing would age or decay, and therefore
needed not be bothered with. If everything was always as it had been,
then nothing changed; if nothing changed, nothing aged. If nothing aged,
then time meant nothing.
/"Every glamorous sunrise throws the planets out of line, the star sign
out of whack, a fraudulent zodiac, and the god of wine is crouched down
in my room, you let me down, I said it, and now I'm going down, and
you're not ever around, and I said no..."/
Though the wind now bit through all layers of Mikage's clothing, the
clouds had begun to clear again. Through them, if he raised his eyes
long enough, he could see patches of the sky. Tiny crystals of snow,
picked up by the wind, danced across the asphalt of streets, whipping
around his feet. Magic, he thought, the snow on the wind reminded him of
magic. The large gate of a nearby house provided him with temporary
shelter from the wind. He wasn't so far from home now.
The question no one thought to ask while on the inside was how long the
current time had been. How long have you been sixteen? Seventeen? Can
you remember being fourteen or fifteen? Not can you remember events that
happened, but can you actually remember the being? Can you recall
anything but your preprogrammed memories and what you are right now?
And if you can't, what does it mean? Who tells your story, and can he
trust what he tells you? What does it mean to be real? Are you real?
Have you ever considered how your perception of yourself would change if
you were wrong about that answer?
Ostensibly, Mikage should have had the truth, or something closely
resembling it, for he could synthesise the memories of everyone who had
been there. According to logic, enough accounts should produce a version
approaching the real one. But all he really held were ten thousand
different lies. He had become the most unreliable narrator of all.
/"And there's a memory of a window, looking through I see you searching
from something I could never give you, and there's someone who
understands you more than I do, a sadness I can't erase all alone on
your face...."/
Before the song had ended, Mikage had pressed the speed dial key for the
radio station. "If I guessed who this is, would I be right?" Ruka
answered the phone.
"I don't know," answered Mikage, "would you be?"
Grinning audibly, Ruka started shuffling around with the fade controls.
In the ear that wasn't being occupied by the cell phone, a soft buzzing
sound began, the sound of metallic insects. Mikage waited for the words
to begin, but there were no words, only a simple melody. He had been
silent for nearly a full minute before Ruka started chuckling quietly.
"Nice to hear you listening to my show with such interest."
Mikage tried not to shiver too much. "It was either the ear with the
cell phone or the ear with the headphone, and I thought I'd pick the
more euphonious choice." As the wind died down, he started walking
again.
"I think I've just been insulted." The late night deejay's voice was
strangely musical when paired with the instrumental piece.
"Perhaps you have been," Mikage conceded. "What is this?"
"A little Nine Inch Nails. One I know all the words to," Ruka laughed.
"Are you still out in the cold?"
Looking up at the sky, Mikage could almost begin to make out
constellations. "Headed home now." Pausing for a second, he checked
street signs to regain his bearings, then turned left at the appropriate
time. "Say, Ruka?" Without waiting for a response, he continued, "What
do you think would happen if I ever found something wrong with the stars
here, too?"
There was a soft silence that followed, ended by the exhale of Ruka's
smile. "I think it would just be you forgetting what the stars were
supposed to look like here, Souji. Now get home and go to bed. You've
got work tomorrow."
"I called in sick." Trudging up the front path, he fumbled in his pocket
for his house key, then realised that he had left the front door
unlocked again. He did that frighteningly often.
"Maybe so," countered Ruka, "but you still need sleep. Is that the sound
of the front door?"
"Yeah. That's the sound of the front door." Mikage shrugged off his coat
and left it on a hatrack to drip dry. Sitting down on the steps, he
unfastened his boots and threw them ouside. "That's the sound of the
front door again, just in case you were wondering."
Ruka's voice was teasingly soft. "Thanks for the information. Now, the
song's almost over, I'll be home in another hour and a half, you're
there already, and I know you haven't slept in several hours. Good to
know you're home."
"You sound almost like you were worried." The cordless phone found its
home in its appropriate place in the kitchen again; the coffee, still
warm, would wait for one of them to wake up again, or would turn itself
off out of sheer boredom. Nothing to be done.
"You're rubbing off on me, I suppose." Ruka smiled. "Song's almost over,
Souji. Get some sleep."
"I will." With a click, Mikage turned off the cell phone, snapped it
shut, and put it on the kitchen counter. The next appliance to meet its
electrical demise was the downstairs radio, falling into silence as his
walkman kept providing music. As he passed the lightswitch, he thought
of leaving it on, as was his custom. Instead, he flipped it off
casually, leaving the darkness behind him.
"All right, that was 'A Warm Place' by Nine Inch Nails. Tsuchiya Ruka
over here, and we've got a bunch of commercials that I know you're just
dying to hear all queued up. And when we come back from the commercial
break, you've got another hour with me and the Shadows of the
Underground I can exhume.
"But before we go into that, I've got one more song, another one of
those pulled from a CD I found between the seats of my car. Here's
Radiohead, with 'Exit Music (from a film).' Should make a good lullaby
for all concerned parties."
The shadow commentator and the honourable shadow. A pair of concerned
parties, indeed. Perhaps God had a sense of humour. God or the universe,
it was mostly the same.
Without something to remind you, Mikage mused, the past becomes almost
irrelevant. You could almost forget that all the things you remembered
had never really happened. And yet, they had, every one of them as real
as anything the 'real world' could produce. And every time encountered,
they seemed new.
In the bathroom, Mikage slipped the walkman out of his pocket, turned it
off, and left it on the counter. Once more, it would find its
appropriate place eventually. The cold had turned his cheeks pink and
the snow had dampened his hair; he grabbed a towel and began to dry
himself. From the other room, he could hear the strains of the guitar
that began the song.
/"Wake from your sleep, the drying of your tears, today we escape, we
escape...."/
If Ruka didn't choose his music unconsciously, Mikage might have been
inclined to hurt him occasionally. And here he was at the beginning
again, where he had started the night, or at least his insomniac segment
of it. Stripping, he left his snow-damp clothes to hang over the shower
curtain, everything but the shirt, which wasn't wet and he didn't want
to take off anyway.
Standing in front of the mirror, cold and swallowed in a shirt too large
for him, he looked nothing at all like himself. He looked like a shadow,
like the name that had been chosen for him or that he had chosen for
himself, depending on what you asked. Somehow, this was all right.
/"Breathe, keep breathing, don't lose your nerve, breathe, keep
breathing, I can't do this alone..."/
The bedroom was still dark, and only upon entering it again did Mikage
realise that he had never turned on the light in the first place. The
fierce red glow of the digital clock and the orange streetlamp outside
the window gave the only light.
As he curled into bed, reaching to turn off the clock radio, he sighed
at Ruka's music choice. Lullaby, indeed. Songs about lovers' suicides
aren't supposed to help insomniacs. But the beat was slow and soft,
almost like a lullaby, and if he didn't listen to the words, he could
imagine that it had been written to lull someone to sleep. With a slight
smile, he flipped the switch to turn off both the radio and the alarm,
then fell back against the pillows.
When Ruka arrived home nearly two hours later, having stopped by the
grocery store to get the few things he had promised to get earlier that
week, he found Mikage like that, curled up against the faded pillow
stained blue-violet, sound asleep.
- 30 -