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almondinflowerTitle: Primary Colour Ghosts
Characters: Kirihara, Yukimura, Atobe, in order of importance.
Wordcount: 8400
Summary: When Interdimensional Agency operative Kirihara Akaya undertakes a special assignment to a new universe, he finds himself caught up in the story of a life he never lived – and comparing it to the one he did.
Notes: Originally written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
willow_lotus under the title Parallels in Primary Colours. Standalone sidestory to Letters to the Interdimensional Agency, an old and very ongoing collab with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aiwritingfic. I nebulously assume that this fic occurs ten to twenty years after the events of Letters, but aside from the universe(s) of the AU itself, there's very little to tie the two fics together.
Thanks: Tothephoenixboy, ashesto, and shiorikazen, for beta-reading and handholding.
I'd been searching the city for two days when I found Yanagi Renji. Not my Yanagi Renji – just the one I'd been searching for.
It hadn't been an easy task. There were forty million people in this city, and though it had a local branch of the Agency, with state-of-the-art information retrieval services, this Yanagi Renji, like every other version of him I'd met, was good at hiding when he didn't want to be found. My Yanagi knew this, which was why he'd sent me here. I'm good at being lucky, good at being in the right place at the right time. (Or at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's all a matter of perspective.)
So it was only natural that while I was waiting to take the Tube down to the underground level, hoping to meet up with the rogue interdimensional travellers who frequent that part of the city, that a sleek black-and-gold aerial limousine should pull up alongside the platform where I was standing in queue, silently slide open a massive oval tinted glass window, and reveal within one Atobe Keigo, wearing a keenly interested expression.
“You're supposed to be dead,” he informed me. His hair was cropped and silver and his irises dyed a (presumably) fashionable pattern of flecked green and gold. Even his cheekbones looked vaguely wrong; they'd been sculpted, and not to the Grecian ideal that most versions of him preferred. But I knew it was him.
Thing about Atobe is that he always knows. Every single universe, every conceivable circumstance under which I meet him. So when I replied the way I did, it wasn't really as typically impulsive and unthinking and against-the-regulations as it might seem.
I leaned in so I didn't have to shout to be heard over the din of footsteps and impatient, grumbling passengers. “I'm not the Kirihara who's meant to be dead.”
“Is that so?” An entire door slid open. “Will you come in?”
Inside the aerial-limo I belted myself into a soft fur-lined couch opposite Atobe, my back to the driver's seat. The vehicle rose in the air, and then began a lazy and desultory upwards spiral around the airways of the city's Inner Core.
“Soda water? Champagne?” He offered me a fluted wine glass and with his other hand held out what looked like a snuffbox inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Inside was an iridescent powder glittering with all the colors one sees in petrol spilled across a road on a sunny day.
What I really wanted was to be done with my assignment and out of this world, but that wasn't much of an option, so I said, “Pepsi, if you happen to know what that is.”
“I don't, but this does. Take the glass.” I did so and he took a pinch of the fairy-dust, scattered it in the air with a snap of his fingers, and dark, fizzing liquid welled up in my glass. I took a sip. It was the real thing.
“So what brings you here?” asked Atobe. “Business, or pleasure?”
“Neither. It's kind of – a personal assignment.” Yanagi would make sure I got paid for it, and with bonuses, else I was going to whine the hell out of him for months. “Actually, I could use your help.”
He arched one eyebrow, and I noted the ten-inch dagger strapped to his belt, its scabbard decorated in onyx and lapis lazuli. “You're quick to ask favours.”
“Tezuka told me you could be magnaminous.”
That got his attention, as I'd known it would. “Which Tezuka?”
“Does it matter?”
He appeared to think about that for a moment. “Perhaps not. What do you want?”
“Do you know where Yanagi Renji is?”
His eyes met mine, and he nodded. He processed everything far too quickly, even for a neuro-enhanced individual. People say that about me, but I've met versions of myself that are clueless beyond belief. I was clueless beyond belief, when I was young. But even the child-versions of Atobe have this strange integratedness to them. The kind of person who was born knowing exactly what he wants and how to get there. Some people are blessed by cosmic karma throughout the universes.
He said: “Take us there, Kabaji,” and indicated a silver platter that had appeared from nowhere, in midair. “Would you like something to eat? The Dust can do that as well.”
“Thanks. I'm not hungry.” There are things you're not supposed to do with magic, in my home-world, and eating conjured food has always given me me psychosomatic heartburn.
He accepted my excuse, and proceeded to cross-examine me with the finesse of a society hostess and the alacrity of a homicide detective. I tried to answer as best as I could – he was doing me a favour, after all - but in the end I got tired of answering his questions (it's always the same questions, and he always wants to know so much about himself, and Sanada and Tezuka), activated my tertiary communication-implant, and beamed the Agency's tourist brochure over to him.
“Go off-universe and find out for yourself. You can afford a ticket.”
My tone had been brusque, but he didn't seem to notice; his eyes went unfocused as he took in the information I'd sent into his hardware. When his attention had finally returned to his external surroundings, the aerial-limo was already sliding to a stop.
“And we're here. Do you have the same retinal scan as Kirihara? If so, you should be able to activate the elevator.”
“Yes.” Existence is a matter of souls, not DNA, but the Kirihara Akaya who'd died in this universe happened to be an exact physical match for me, aside from age and environmental factors. At least this universe wasn't technomagically advanced enough to have security locks keyed to magical signatures. I wouldn't be able to replicate those, not even one produced by 'myself'.
“Yanagi lives on the top floor, in the westernmost apartment. ” It was Atobe's turn to beam me his contact information: a private calling code, unlisted. “Are you free for dinner tonight or tomorrow?”
There was something funny about his tone, and I checked his expression to make sure I wasn't being propositioned. As far as I could tell, I wasn't.
“It depends on how my work here goes. I'm supposed to be on vacation, so I'd like to go home as soon as this assignment's over.” It was a long-awaited and well-deserved vacation, and I hadn't been happy about putting it off. The things I did for friendship – for Yanagi, anyway.
“Feel free to call anyway.” He looked pensive as I stepped out of the aerial-limo. I wondered if we would see him at the Agency sometime. Atobe in all his incarnations is one of the most intrepid persons I know, but sometimes, just sometimes, he's a little too preoccupied with his own comfort zone to go looking for new adventures.
#
The apartment building Yanagi lived in had a hundred and fifty floors; a veritable skyscraper even in this city, where the trend in architecture appeared to be up, down, sideways and in fact any direction that would support more inhabitants. Managing the population's water and energy supply was surely some urban planner's nightmare.
Yanagi wasn't home when I rang his intercom, but it was nearly the end of the working day, so I decided to wait, slowly pacing up and down the corridor. The interior décor in this building was immaculate, smooth white ceiling and polished wooden floors with urns and indoor plants tastefully set into alcoves. There was no carpet, but the walls must have been designed to absorb sound somehow; I could barely hear my own footsteps.
I happened to be facing the elevator some twenty minutes later when the doors opened and Yanagi emerged, carrying something long and cylindrical and wrapped in plastic, tucked underneath one arm.
He saw me, and froze.
His eyes were wide and shocked; his skin ashen. It was an expression I'd seen on my Yanagi only twice in twenty years. I took a deep slow breath, reminding myself that it was okay, this wasn't my Yanagi.
Then I wanted to go up to this Yanagi and hug him, or say it was okay, or do anything that would make him stop looking like that.
He spoke first; it came out as a whisper. “Akaya.”
It isn't really my name, or at least not the name I grew up with. But I seem to have held that name in most other universes in which I exist, or some variation of it, and so for many years now it has been a permanent alias, making fieldwork easier for me. (And in fact my real name also has connotations of blood and knives, which goes to show that you never really escape yourself.) At the Agency, I am known as the Second Kirihara, and many of my colleagues do not even know that I had a different birth name, distinct from my other incarnations. Over the years I've heard much of my predecessor, who by all accounts was metaphorically both a sun seen from a close-orbiting planet at midday, and a starship hurtling through space, at the very moment before crashing into an asteroid. The crash eventually happened; he'd died while on assignment in Sector 52. I often spend my coffee breaks with Fuji Syuusuke (of Sector 61, 'verse #000329) talking about cheerful and distracting nothings - mainly we talk past each other, but Fuji does that with everyone, except Tezuka because Tezuka gets frustrated at him – and sometimes he just falls silent mid-conversation and studies my face, and I feel like a ghost is being superimposed upon me. But whatever Fuji is looking for in my features, I don't think he finds it.
This Yanagi was giving me the same kind of scrutiny now, and my thoughts were unsteady as I retrieved my business card and sent it over to his comm-implants.
“I'm Kirihara Akaya from the Special Investigations Unit of the Interdimensional Agency.” I wasn't sure if he was listening, but I pushed on anyway. “Please, call me Kirihara.”
He gathered himself and studied my card – a good distraction from having to look at me, probably. “I see.” Some of the colour returned to his cheeks. “What brings you here?”
I scanned the area to see if there was anyone passing by, but there wasn't, and I wasn't bound by confidentiality anyway. This was a Class V technomagical universe, which meant that most of the population was aware of interuniversal travel, although only four or five people out of every million would get to visit another universe within their lifetime.
“I came to tell you where the Child of God is,” I said, and watched many emotions pass across his face. Surprise, curiosity, suspicion, defensiveness, the pain of old heartbreak. My Yanagi is not so easily read. “Maybe it'd be better if we talked inside your home.”
Yanagi's apartment was more lived-in and less stiflingly tidy than I'd expected. Carefully chosen furniture in vague colours: grey lounge set, cushions in various earthy tones scattered across the sofa and armchairs. I refused his offer of tea, and sat down opposite him, stacking a bunch of cushions in my lap as I did so.
By now he'd calmed down somewhat, and his voice was almost like my Yanagi as he spoke: “So. He's alive.”
“Yes.”
“And not in this world. That explains many things.” He looked up, and I followed his gaze to the walls, which were lined with maps and calligraphy paintings. The maps were of buildings and continents, towns and labyrinths; drawn in pen and in charcoal, acrylic and coloured ink. Attractive but nothing special, artistically speaking – except for the qi; the nen, the aura, the life-force that flowed through them. The sensory enhancers I was using made the energies in the maps glow a soft white to my vision.
“Is that your specialty? Finding things?”
“It's what I do as a profession.”
“But you're even better at hiding things.” I saw his eyes widen as my words hit home, and I congratulated myself on having read the briefing report before coming to this universe. Forewarned was forearmed. “I spent all of yesterday trying to chase your electronic footprints. There was a period lasting nearly two years, when you seemed to have vanished from existence.”
He studied his own hands, which were folded in his lap, quite still. “Yes, that was what I did at first. But then later I looked for him. He was gone.”
“He applied to us for a relocation three years ago,” I said, confirming what he'd already surmised. “I can give you his exact address right now, if you'd like.”
“No,” he said. “If he hid, he didn't hide from me. And if he wishes to be found, it isn't me he wants to be found by.”
“But do you want to see him?”
He remained silent.
“I've been sent to take you there . Free of charge, and there's no fine print. Let's just say – there's someone who would feel better if all of this was resolved.” Why he wanted it resolved – well, I didn't quite understand. I tried not to think too hard about the whys of my Yanagi.
Again, I had to wait several seconds for his reply: “You must forgive me. This is all very abrupt. Must I give you an answer right now?”
I shrugged. “You can have twenty-four hours to make up your mind. I'll come back this time tomorrow.”
“Please,” he said. I wondered whether he meant please leave, or please come back.
Well, I could do both, even if I've never been particularly good at waiting. I would leave, and I would be back.
#
“So what is your world like?” In the end I'd taken up Atobe's invitation to dinner; there was nothing else to do in the meantime except sightseeing, and I hate Class V worlds. There's something about all that wealth and knowledge, ennui and post-scarcity, that makes me want to run off to a Class I universe and live with subsistence farmers for a week.
Admittedly, Atobe's penthouse was not exactly the place to be if you were trying to escape opulence and excess.
I casually surveyed the vast array of gold statuettes and fur rugs, oil paintings and marble sculptures that someone with a brilliant sense of visual aesthetic (Kabaji, maybe?) had coaxed into not offending the eye. “A much simpler world than this one. Well, it was when I lived there. I haven't been back in decades.”
“You don't look old enough to be discussing your life in terms of decades.”
“Working for the Agency comes with certain perks.” I was at least ten years older than this Atobe, probably more.
I could tell where the conversation was going to end up, so I said. “The Tezuka in my world was old enough to be my father. I never met him, but I heard a lot about him. He was famous.”
“How very typical of Tezuka.”
“He was a doctor and a poet. He was famous for climbing mountain ranges and discovering magical and medicinal herbs.”
“And writing poetry about the mountains, I presume. Is he still alive?” asked Atobe, noting my use of past tense.
“I have no idea.” I hadn't looked at the news reports from my homeworld in years. “There was a war going on there for a long time, so maybe not.”
I'd revealed too much distaste in my voice for someone like Atobe to overlook it. “Was it a bad war?”
What a stupid tautology. “It lasted for about ten years. By the standards of your world it was small.” I let more of the old pain show through in my voice, to compensate for my blunder. Atobe (in whatever universe) has never liked dealing with other people's baggage, despite his talent for deciphering it. “Your Yukimura Seiichi could probably have won that war single-handedly, with the powers he possessed.”
It worked. He backed off, cooperated with my change of subject. “Yukimura was remarkable even among Special Force soldiers. It looks like he'll be the last of the Children of God, which is a shame.”
Again I congratulated myself on having read the briefing report in advance, since it meant that I actually understood what Atobe was saying. Being prepared was such a great idea; I had no idea why I didn't manage to do it more often. “There are bigger tragedies in wars than losing a martial arts style.”
He looked at me with his strange overdecorated eyes. “Of course. But the existence of great tragedies doesn't make small tragedies any less tragic, does it?”
How old was he; twenty-one, twenty-five? I'd never sounded that cool at his age. But he was an Atobe Keigo.
“Will you fight me?” he asked.
So this was the price of dinner? “Don't bother,” I said. “Don't you know what it means to work at the Agency? You're no match for me.”
He flushed with anger, and I met his glare coolly.
Crimson fire erupted all over my body, rising from my skin and flickering, heating the air around me to near-unbearable temperatures. I fine-tuned the energy so that it did not burn either the chair I was sitting on or the wine glass I was holding, and kept watching him.
My Yanagi or Tezuka would probably reproach me for pulling a useless power-play of this sort, but I felt too grimly satisfied to regret my impulsivity. “Don't fight just because you have something to prove,” I told him, sounding like an old man to my own ears.
“I don't.” He'd regained his composure by now. “But it isn't that why you're refusing to fight? Because you have something to prove?”
Did Atobe always have to have the ability to see through everything? The crimson flames flared out, and I had to breathe deeply to rein them inwards again. I opened my mouth, about to accept his challenge to a fight after all, and then gritted my teeth together in an attempt at self-control. “Thank you for your hospitality. I think it'd be better if I left now.”
“Call me any time you like,” he said. Calm face, calm voice – but I could sense the edges of his control had begun to crack. And I'm not good at keeping my cool when the other person has lost it.
Damn it, this happened with Atobe in every universe.
Even as I walked out the door I regretted it, just a little. Beating him up would have felt great, even if in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't have done anything except deplete my magic levels.
#
“I will accept your offer.” Yanagi was already home and dressed in dark loose trousers and a casual long-sleeved shirt when I arrived. He still didn't look as if he were very certain about his decision.
“You sure?” I asked. It was a throwaway question; I had no intention of giving him any more time than I already had.
“I cannot decide anything until I see him.” He hesitated. I hadn't noticed it the day before, but right now he looked very young. “There are too many questions I want to ask.”
“You need to gather data, huh?” A perfectly Yanagi thing to do. “You won't have a second chance, I'm warning you, so make the most of this one journey.” Then again, if my Yanagi had taken enough personal interest to send me here, he was likely to send me here again if it proved necessary.
“I understand.”
“We're going to need to visit the Agency to do this, or at least find somewhere where the magic spillover won't affect anything.”
“Would my study do? It's completely insulated to magic; I often use it when working on experimental maps.”
“That sounds like it could work. Saves time.”
“Will we need anything? Food, or a change of clothes?”
“You can if you like. I don't usually bother. We should be back in a few hours.” If everything went on schedule, which was a big if for any Agency mission, never mind my Yanagi's special missions. Still, there was no need to tell him that.
He looked at me doubtfully – had the Kirihara he'd known in this universe really been that unreliable? (Okay, probably he had been) - and then went into the kitchen. I heard the sound of a fridge opening and containers and plates being moved around.
I entered the study and tested the magical insulation there, shooting flames at the walls to see whether they would scorch or burn right through. They were all absorbed easily.
He was back in about five minutes, carrying a nondescript grey backpack that had clearly been packed full of things. Now I really wanted to finish this mission fast just to prove him wrong.
“Take my hand,” I said, holding it out.
His fingers closed around mine; they were long, and thin. No calluses on his palms – it'd obviously been a long time since his fighting days.
I called up the space-time-dimension coordinates of our destination from my implants, drew energy from throughout my body, and we shifted.
#
The place where we arrived was dazzlingly bright, and wet. I landed butt-first on a tree root; about half a second later, I heard Yanagi crash into something that sounded equally painful and unaccomodating. The wind blew through the green canopy above us, sending a shower of raindrops tumbling off leaves and down onto our heads. It looked like proper H20 water.
“Oh good,” I said. “It's a true Earth-like planet.”
Yanagi picked himself up and dusted off his trousers, a query in his face.
“Well, usually the Relocation Department tries to move clients to a universe with similar geographical conditions, but sometimes their idea of 'similar' can be pretty flexible.” I made a face. “Their definition of Earth-like planet seems to change every year. I got sent last year to an Earth-like planet which was populated by metre-long single-celled ammonia-breathing organisms. And they were sentient. Who was smoking what when they called that 'Earth-like'?”
Yanagi gathered up his backpack, which had fallen at the base of a skinny tree with sharp, thin leaves, and looked at me. I put years of experience at deciphering Yanagi Facial Expressions to good use, and deduced that he was bemused and fascinated. “You don't sound like Akaya at all.”
You don't sound like Yanagi either, I wanted to say, but I didn't feel like telling him about my Yanagi, the Agency's Yanagi, and not just because it would make things complicated. I had a feeling that my Yanagi wanted his involvement in this whole assignment as little-known as possible.
Heck, I wanted to be involved as little as possible. This Yanagi was haunted by a lot of ghosts, my dead other self among them, and if there's one thing I hate doing, it's cleaning up baggage that my other selves have left behind. Isn't one lifetime of mistakes quite enough to live with?
I turned my attention to our surroundings. Moderate temperature, extremely humid air, though easily breathable. Beyond where we were standing the trees thinned out and ended in a sandy grey beach at the edge of what was either a sea or a colossal green-watered lake. Above the water the sky was blue, and mostly clear, despite the evidence of earlier rainfall.
“It's beautiful,” Yanagi said. From what I knew of his world, it didn't have many unspoiled natural places left.
I tapped into my implants and called up what I'd been given of Yukimura's whereabouts. Shifting between worlds is a notoriously imprecise process, but I have a reputation within the Agency for being one of the most accurate transporters around.
“Yukimura should be within five miles of here,” I said, as we walked down the beach. “Lemme figure out our exact location first.”
“No need,” said Yanagi. He was already pulling an electronic sketchpad out of his backpack as I eyed him curiously. He sat down on a damp boulder and began to draw. Bright white aura glowed down his arm and through the pencil he was holding.
I wasn't sure whether he needed full concentration in order to pull this off, so I kept quiet while he was sketching. After about five minutes he handed me the sketchpad. A bold red X was marked on a small irregular shape in the centre of the map he'd drawn.
“What's this, an island?” I scowled. “We're going to have to find a boat somehow.” My Yanagi hadn't mentioned this. It was a wonder we hadn't landed in the middle of the lake when we arrived.
“There's a village about ten minutes west of here,” Yanagi said, pointing to a spot on the map. “We might be able to hire one there.”
I fished around in my pockets, and discovered some local coins that I'd remembered to bring along, much to my relief. Stealing a boat was likely to bring the Agency's Ethics Committee down on my head. They'd probably take it out of my salary, too.
“That's a pretty useful gift you've got going there,” I said, as we set off in the direction of the village. “The Special Forces must have been sorry to see you leave.”
“Actually they were glad.” He kept his gaze fixed forward as he spoke. “I think they were eager to say goodbye to everyone who'd been connected with Seiichi. The war with the Coalition was in its final stages by then; we were not as necessary as we had once been.”
I was interested in spite of myself. “So you discharged yourself immediately after Kirihara's death?”
“Seiichi had already left months ago.” There was no change or tremor in his voice or stride. “With both of them gone, what reason did I have to stay?”
#
The world was tinged red, but he remained blue.
That only maddened me more. When I entered the battle-rage I did it in order to lose myself, to be stronger. Everything around me faded into one colour, into one need, one narrow pinpoint focus. My advisors had warned me that he might be some sort of exception, but I was furious to discover it anyway.
He parried my blows easily, letting me close in and then sending me sprawling to the ground with a violent twist of his blade. I was up again immediately, for a mere fall was not enough to overcome the battle-rage.
He had not closed in for the kill, but stood with his sword loosely grasped by his side, a silhouette of blue hair and eyes and armour against walls the colour of blood. He was smiling. And he was as strong as I was.
I circled him, looking for openings, but could not find any. He watched me with a small smile on his face. There was no urgency in his movements. “Have you waited for this a long time, Red King?”
I glowered at his use of the hated title. “I have a name.”
He deflected my attack smoothly. “As do I. But who we are doesn't matter much in this war, does it?” His sword flashed blue in the sunlight coming in through the castle windows, even though to my eyes the sun itself appeared crimson-red. “Only what we are.”
“Who cares what you are? You'll be dead soon enough.” I tried fire this time, throwing it at him in a maelstrom of power, but he broke out in a flame of his own: focused, translucent and blue. My flame could not consume his. I spat. The world grew darker and redder.
“Then kill me, if you can. It must either be me or you, or this war will not end.”
Up till that moment, I had not thought about what I would do after he was dead.
I lashed out, and my sword tore a jagged line down his arm, bringing with it a spurt of blood, red, as red as my eyes.
His gaze met mine for an instant, both of us startled. Then he smiled again.
Cool blueness flooded my senses, and I screamed in outrage.
#
I paid the woman in silver, more than enough to buy her little rowboat thrice over; I had a feeling that we wouldn't be returning to this shore. (Partly because of my intention to port straight back to Yanagi's apartment once his conversation with Yukimura was done.)
“How did you manage to speak her language?” Yanagi asked. He sat in the prow of the boat. Despite my sense that he was easier to read than my Yanagi, I couldn't tell what was really on his mind right now.
“Communication implants. To be honest, I have no natural aptitude for languages at all.” I swung the oars, trying to steer the boat north, water splashing into the boat as I did so. It'd been years since I last rowed a boat. When I'd finally got the thing to cooperate and we were moving steadily towards the centre of the lake, I noticed that Yanagi was smiling. “What's so funny?”
“Akaya didn't like foreign languages very much either.”
“You always have characteristics in common with your multiversal counterparts. It's one of the principles of multiple existence.”
Yanagi being Yanagi, he was all attention now, inquisitive and alert and wanting to know more. “What sort of characteristics?”
“Physical and genetic, most commonly. Personality traits. And events and relationships. If you did a study of any person's multiple lives, you'd find that over and over again they make the same friendships, fall in love with the same people. When I was in university one of my professors said it was because souls aren't designed by the universe as individual entities; instead, they're created in tandem, as a web.”
“Does that mean I know you in other universes, then?”
I looked out at the water, which was translucent and tinged green from underwater weeds. Each time my oars hit the surface of the lake they sent small waves rippling outwards, in slow motion. “Yes. Although not in mine.”
My Yanagi had never known, never met, a Seiichi or an Akaya in his own world. Sometimes I wondered if that was what made him so remarkable to me. I suppose, in a way, we're each other's replacements.
“There was a Sanada Genichirou in my universe – with a different name, but he was genetically the same. He died when I was just an infant, saving me from drowning in a river.” I did not want to talk about the Blue King.
“He died rescuing you?”
“There's a certain poetic resonance to it, huh? Given what happened in your universe.”
“Yes, there certainly is.” He looked into the distance rather dreamily, eyes nearly closed. “Seiichi used to say that poetry, rather than mathematics, dictated the running of the universe.”
In my world, I wanted to say, he said that fate determined the universe.
Not that there's all that much difference between fate and poetry. In the end, they're both incomprehensible and best ignored.
#
The island was just large enough that you could imagine one family living there quite happily, and by the time we were within three hundred meters of it it was obvious that there was someone with a lot of aura there.
“No attempt to contain his own magic at all. Is it because he can't, or won't, or doesn't need to?” The question was directed towards no one in particular, except maybe secondarily towards Yanagi because he was the only one there.
“It won't be can't, with Seiichi,” he said, but he looked troubled.
“You know, everyone who applies to the Agency for a relocation has to have a full health assessment done with us. I heard that the psychologist who saw Yukimura diagnosed him with some sort of magic-induced psychotic disorder.”
I was watching Yanagi to see how he would react, but he seemed unsurprised. “It's the curse of the Children of God. He was the youngest ever to succeed to the title; it's no wonder that he began to suffer the side-effects so early.”
“I really don't get why your military recruited him. Seems like none of the mess between all of you would ever have happened if you weren't in the Special Forces and forced to strain your magical powers to the breaking point. Like, you might not have even met each other.” Unlikely for the trio of Yanagi and Sanada and Yukimura not to meet, in any universe, but still. It was possible. “I mean, you're a post-nuclear society. It seems like you'd have enough in your arsenal that any individual's special techniques would be pretty negligible in the long run.”
“Not even if he could use them on hundreds of soldiers at a time? He was the most powerful Child of God in recorded history.” I'd begun to fall in love with the way Yanagi's voice sounded when he talked about Yukimura, as if there were six different emotions all tussling and clawing at each other for dominance. Was this why Fuji and Yanagi liked asking me questions about the Blue King? “Hopefully he will be the last.”
Despite his words, he seemed as if he was mourning already, for the loss of a magical school, a technique, a set of knowledge that would irrevocably depart from his universe. Well, that was true of any Yanagi. In the past I'd occasionally wondered what would hurt my Yanagi more, the death of a friend or the destruction of his library.
I wanted to talk some more, but we had already arrived, the rowboat beaching on what seemed like the island's northern shore (based on the position of the sun, and depending on how genuinely Earth-like this planet was). I pulled up the oars, stacked them on the floor, and then jumped out into the shallow waters, soaking my clothes through in the process. Then I grabbed the gunwales and pushed the boat further upshore, shaking my head at Yanagi when he asked whether he should get out and help.
It was mid-afternoon by then. After the boat was safely high on the beach, positioned upside-down so that the wood could drip dry, we stood on the sand looking at each other. I tried to squeeze salty water (I'd gotten a taste of it when I leaped overboard) out of my shirt-sleeves onto the sand. The magical presence we'd sensed for the last ten minutes was still there, and so strong it was almost overwhelming.
Whoever was giving off that aura was clearly located at the center of the island. “Is it him?” I asked. We were close enough by now that anyone familiar with the the magical presence would recognise it, surely.
“It is him.” I watched as Yanagi closed his eyes, took one slow silent breath, gathering his resolve. “Let us go see him, before I become afraid to do so. I'm a coward when it comes to reunions.”
“I don't think you're a coward,” I said, as we began walking. “I mean, wouldn't it be weird if you weren't at least a little bit worried?”
There was no established track through the tiny forest that grew on this island, but there was plenty of space to walk in between the trees, and we were certain of our direction. The land sloped upwards for about a hundred yards, until plateauing out at what looked like the highest elevation on this island, a piece of grassy land well exposed to the sun.
There was a wooden cottage with a thatched roof there, and outside it an old woman, tiny with age, hanging laundry on a clothesline. She didn't see us until we were mere yards away from her, and then she turned, saw us, and let out a cry of surprise.
I barely heard her scream, that was how preoccupied I was by now with the presence of Yukimura – and that was like a scream in itself, protracted and excruciating, audible only on the extrasensory level. Quite a mage, this Yukimura Seiichi was. But that wasn't what bothered me.
He felt like the Blue King. They were the same person, surely as this Yanagi was the same as my Yanagi, and the Kirihara who had died at Yukimura's hands three years ago was myself.
It really bothered me, and I wanted it not to, else my Yanagi would find out and refer me on to Human Resources and I would be sentenced to more sessions of self-awareness training and possibly a refresher course in epistemology.
The old woman put up her hands as I walked closer, wary and definitely a little frightened.
“Does a blue-haired man live here?” I asked.
She scrutinised me with suspicion and made a looping gesture with her fingers, probably a sign to ward off evil. “You're here to see the leper?”
For some reason my comm implants had trouble processing her language, so that it was a full second before I processed the sentence. When I did, I felt dizzy.
“What did she say?” asked Yanagi, noticing my expression.
“That he's inside,” I lied, turning away. He followed behind me as I went up to the solid oak door of the cottage, and reached for the handle.
“Let me do it. It might not be safe.” Yanagi-style understatement.
“Do you think I'll get hurt? I'm not as weak as your Kirihara was.” I flung the door wide open, to a world filled with magic gone wild.
Aura flooded the cottage, the mild colour of its glow – the shade of cornflowers – belying the magnitude of its power. If you've ever walked into a magical storm – like the ones you find at abandoned technomagical research labs, or former war zones turned to wasteland by mage-weapons – then you'll know what it felt like. The brilliance of the aura forced me to shield my eyes, without much effect. I could feel the magic burning my skin, heat and pain moving across my limbs and exposed areas. It felt like I could almost hear the magic itself, a low and painful whisper across my ears.
: Have you come to forgive me, or for revenge?
He was not speaking in words. Technically he wasn't even speaking telepathically. It was as if he was taking his thoughts and emotions and forging them, forcing them into a form that could be expressed in his magical aura.
In his own way, he was as impressive as the Blue King. Small wonder that this Yanagi couldn't get over him. I stepped forward, trying to see through the haze of pale blue that filled the room.
By the time we could both see him clearly, we were close enough to reach out and touch his face. He sat in a motorised wheelchair at the end of the room.
His eyes looked up in our direction, but remained completely unfocused. They were blue, with iris and sclera both covered with a translucent filmy layer of white. His hair was darker than his eyes, and shoulder-length and unkempt.
Yanagi knelt down, and took one of Yukimura's hands. “Not for revenge or forgiveness. I came to see you--” and then I heard Yanagi draw in his breath sharply. But I had already noticed.
“How--” Yanagi held up Yukimura's right hand, a fingerless mass of stumps save for an intact thumb. I looked down at the floor; Yukimura was barefooted, and in several places there were crusted ulcers where there should have been toes. “Did you--” He fell silent, unsurprisingly at a loss for words.
: Kill me. Physically Yukimura didn't move, save for the rise and fall of his chest with breathing.
“No.” Yanagi sounded surprised, and then a moment later, with more resolve. “No, Seiichi.”
A sense of desolation, understated and coldly frightening. How long had this Yukimura lived like this? : Please. For Akaya's sake, if not my own. He wanted me dead, didn't he?
“Only once, towards the end. And he didn't want it for long, even then. Seiichi--”
: He should have.
I could tell where this was going, because Yanagi was Yanagi, and Yukimura was Yukimura, and Yukimura always gets what he wants, in the end. The Blue King had gotten what he wanted from me, and I didn't even resent him for it. I would have done it again, killed Yukimura again, except that it wasn't my job, or my life, or anything to do with me, really. My story in my home universe had ended a long time ago, and even the Kirihara Akaya of this little drama had long ceased to play his role, even if the guilt of his memory remained with these two.
They talked for a little longer, Yanagi always using his voice despite the fact that Yukimura could not hear it. He was putting up a better fight than I'd expected. He seemed to become more and more resolute by the moment, until finally he looked Yukimura in the eye (or looked at where Yukimura's eyes ought to be focused) and said: “There are other options. Come back with me, and we'll find Genichirou. Will you not at least consider the idea?”
The aura swirled around Yukimura's body, emanating a sudden sense of helplessness and frustration. : Won't you listen to me? Then I have no choice.
I have no real excuses for what happened next, except that there was already so much aura in the room that my physical and magical senses were overloaded to breaking point. There was a sudden shift in the aura around me, very subtle, so that even a good mage might not have noticed it, and then I was blind, all the blue light around me fading to pure and simple black.
“Seiichi!” The sound of Yanagi's voice seemed to expand in the darkness, as well as the aura in the air, still buzzing in my ears and overheating my skin. My shirt clung to my back, still damp with in lake and sweat; there was a faint smell of unwashed clothes and old urine coming from somwhere in this cottage. “Seiichi, you can't mean--”
Then all of these were gone as well, together with my sense of balance. I might have swayed, I might have fell; in fact I must have. But I had no way of knowing it.
How do you describe nothing?
I don't know how to, so just imagine it for yourselves.
#
Case Report #112, Universe #777, Sector #27. Prepared by Yanagi Renji, Special Investigations Unit:
The title of Child of God is given to the practitioners of a small but justly famed style of mixed magical arts, best known for techniques that work agains the nervous system. Most famous of all is of the Divine Judgment, considered to be that the finishing move of the style. Victims experience permanent visual loss, hearing loss, anosmia, psychosis, depression autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and in the final version of the move, total anaesthesia. Yukimura Seiichi, the 16th Child of God, is known to be capable of passing Divine Judgment upon up to three hundred people at a time. These unique powers, however, come at a price. It is well-known that over time, practitioners of this Divine Style experience a decelerated form of the Judgement in their own bodies, a magico-physical process that is exacerbated and accelerated by excessive use of the technique.
Yukimura Seiichi was serving as a Captain in the Oceanic Special Forces when he committed the deed that eventually resulted in his approaching the Agency for relocation services. Together with a close friend, Lt Colonel Sanada Genichirou, he was dispatched to search for Lieutenant Kirihara Akaya, a relatively recruit to the Specials who had been declared MIA. When they found Kirihara Akaya at a site that was known to be a former terrorist base, a struggle ensued. Despite Sanada's attempts to restrain him, Yukimura cast Divine Judgment upon the Lieutenant, who subsequently went blind and developed paraplegia. Some weeks later Lieutenant Kirihara took his own life.
#
For some reason Yukimura's attack had blocked my magical senses as well. So I had no idea how long I drifted in sensory deprivation, or when Yukimura died, or what his last words to Yanagi were. I can easily imagine what they said, though. Things like that are multiversally consistent, even when the details differ a little.
Later I figured that the complete sensory blackout had lasted no longer than fifteen minutes, but it had felt like an eternity. When the world returned to my senses I was lying on a wooden floor. My shoulders and entire side felt sore and bruised. It was the first sensation I noticed, and let me tell you, I've never been so grateful for pain in my entire life.
Yanagi was bending over me, looking concerned. I pulled myself to a sitting position and looked around. The blue aura had disappeared.
“So you did it.”
He stared at the corpse – slumped over in the wheelchair, neck slashed open in a gaping, cauterised wound – nearly bloodless, as one would expect from the intense heat of an attack of pure aura. “He let me do it.
“Did you do it to save me?” I asked. Inwardly I was smarting at having been overwhelmed so easily. Child of God, Blue King – would I ever be able to surpass Yukimura, in any universe?
“The variation of the attack that he used on you is irreversible. If I hadn't stopped him--”
“Yeah, I really owe you one.” I'd been careless. My Yanagi would be extremely unimpressed come paytime.
“Yes. No. I think he attacked you in other to provoke me into doing it. I believe – he knew that I would never be able to do it otherwise. Not even after seeing the way he is now.”
He sounded bewildered. I couldn't bear to see him like this, so I said: “Do you wanna know something?”
“If you would like to tell me.” Yanagi's face was shadowed, and his voice hoarse with either grief or shock, but there was attentiveness in his expression.
“I've killed him before. On my own home world. With a lot less reason than you had, actually.” The Blue King had been sane, and pure, and a heck of a lot more deserving of life than I have ever been, when I killed him. This Yukimura had wanted death, needed it really. “There was a great war in our world, and everyone had been fighting for years. Me and him on different sides. And he decided that the best way to end the war would be for me to kill him. It worked. Sort of. The war kept going for a while after that, but there were no great battles anymore. Fewer people died.
“My point is, Yukimura is the sort of person who knows what he wants, and gets what he wants. So don't feel bad about doing what he asked. Consider it the act of a friend.”
He smiled - a Yanagi-smile, admittedly, but a smile. I wondered if the reality of what he'd done would come to hit him later. Then again, what difference would it make? Yukimura had been dead for years, hidden away on this deserted island. “You are Akaya after all.”
“I feel as if I should be insulted by that comment.”
This time he did not smile. He looked at Yukimura's face – the corpse's face, rather, for it was quite irrevocably a corpse. I've always believed in souls, that humans are more than just our bodies, and not just because I grew up on a primitive Class II magical world where this sort of belief was encouraged. People just look different when they're dead, like they're not there, which, mostly, they aren't.
“Do you want to stay here any longer?” I asked.
“The body. Shouldn't we take care of it?”
“Let me do it.” I clambered to my feet, and we went outdoors, Yanagi pausing in the doorway to give Yukimura one last look.
“Walk a little further ahead,” I said, and then snapped my fingers, watching crimson flame spread from my hands and coat the house and begin to consume the walls and roof. The old woman was no longer there, and we stood on the grass for many minutes watching the soot from the fire stain black the laundry she'd left hanging on the clothesline.
“How do you feel?” I asked, when I had had enough silence.
“Are you really interested in the answer?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. Do you have any regrets?”
That made him hesitant. “Only that Genichirou was not here to do it. Seiichi wanted it to be him, I think.”
“It probably didn't matter much. You did what he wanted, and needed. He's free now.”
As free as the Blue King – leaving us who were alive with mistakes to atone for, lives that had to be lived. I watched a wall of the cottage cave inwards, sending up a flare of dark red fire as it did so. I felt like I was already mourning Yukimura, despite the fact that I'd only seen him for a few minutes.
But I had recognised him, just the way I recognised Yanagi, the way I recognise both of them in every universe. My Yanagi was the first Yanagi I ever met, and yet the first time I heard him speak I'd felt as if I'd grown up listening to that voice.
“Come on,” I held out my hand to this Yanagi. “Let's go back.”
Each to his own world, to his own story and past and future.
Characters: Kirihara, Yukimura, Atobe, in order of importance.
Wordcount: 8400
Summary: When Interdimensional Agency operative Kirihara Akaya undertakes a special assignment to a new universe, he finds himself caught up in the story of a life he never lived – and comparing it to the one he did.
Notes: Originally written for
willow_lotus under the title Parallels in Primary Colours. Standalone sidestory to Letters to the Interdimensional Agency, an old and very ongoing collab with aiwritingfic. I nebulously assume that this fic occurs ten to twenty years after the events of Letters, but aside from the universe(s) of the AU itself, there's very little to tie the two fics together. Thanks: To
thephoenixboy, ashesto, and shiorikazen, for beta-reading and handholding.I'd been searching the city for two days when I found Yanagi Renji. Not my Yanagi Renji – just the one I'd been searching for.
It hadn't been an easy task. There were forty million people in this city, and though it had a local branch of the Agency, with state-of-the-art information retrieval services, this Yanagi Renji, like every other version of him I'd met, was good at hiding when he didn't want to be found. My Yanagi knew this, which was why he'd sent me here. I'm good at being lucky, good at being in the right place at the right time. (Or at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's all a matter of perspective.)
So it was only natural that while I was waiting to take the Tube down to the underground level, hoping to meet up with the rogue interdimensional travellers who frequent that part of the city, that a sleek black-and-gold aerial limousine should pull up alongside the platform where I was standing in queue, silently slide open a massive oval tinted glass window, and reveal within one Atobe Keigo, wearing a keenly interested expression.
“You're supposed to be dead,” he informed me. His hair was cropped and silver and his irises dyed a (presumably) fashionable pattern of flecked green and gold. Even his cheekbones looked vaguely wrong; they'd been sculpted, and not to the Grecian ideal that most versions of him preferred. But I knew it was him.
Thing about Atobe is that he always knows. Every single universe, every conceivable circumstance under which I meet him. So when I replied the way I did, it wasn't really as typically impulsive and unthinking and against-the-regulations as it might seem.
I leaned in so I didn't have to shout to be heard over the din of footsteps and impatient, grumbling passengers. “I'm not the Kirihara who's meant to be dead.”
“Is that so?” An entire door slid open. “Will you come in?”
Inside the aerial-limo I belted myself into a soft fur-lined couch opposite Atobe, my back to the driver's seat. The vehicle rose in the air, and then began a lazy and desultory upwards spiral around the airways of the city's Inner Core.
“Soda water? Champagne?” He offered me a fluted wine glass and with his other hand held out what looked like a snuffbox inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Inside was an iridescent powder glittering with all the colors one sees in petrol spilled across a road on a sunny day.
What I really wanted was to be done with my assignment and out of this world, but that wasn't much of an option, so I said, “Pepsi, if you happen to know what that is.”
“I don't, but this does. Take the glass.” I did so and he took a pinch of the fairy-dust, scattered it in the air with a snap of his fingers, and dark, fizzing liquid welled up in my glass. I took a sip. It was the real thing.
“So what brings you here?” asked Atobe. “Business, or pleasure?”
“Neither. It's kind of – a personal assignment.” Yanagi would make sure I got paid for it, and with bonuses, else I was going to whine the hell out of him for months. “Actually, I could use your help.”
He arched one eyebrow, and I noted the ten-inch dagger strapped to his belt, its scabbard decorated in onyx and lapis lazuli. “You're quick to ask favours.”
“Tezuka told me you could be magnaminous.”
That got his attention, as I'd known it would. “Which Tezuka?”
“Does it matter?”
He appeared to think about that for a moment. “Perhaps not. What do you want?”
“Do you know where Yanagi Renji is?”
His eyes met mine, and he nodded. He processed everything far too quickly, even for a neuro-enhanced individual. People say that about me, but I've met versions of myself that are clueless beyond belief. I was clueless beyond belief, when I was young. But even the child-versions of Atobe have this strange integratedness to them. The kind of person who was born knowing exactly what he wants and how to get there. Some people are blessed by cosmic karma throughout the universes.
He said: “Take us there, Kabaji,” and indicated a silver platter that had appeared from nowhere, in midair. “Would you like something to eat? The Dust can do that as well.”
“Thanks. I'm not hungry.” There are things you're not supposed to do with magic, in my home-world, and eating conjured food has always given me me psychosomatic heartburn.
He accepted my excuse, and proceeded to cross-examine me with the finesse of a society hostess and the alacrity of a homicide detective. I tried to answer as best as I could – he was doing me a favour, after all - but in the end I got tired of answering his questions (it's always the same questions, and he always wants to know so much about himself, and Sanada and Tezuka), activated my tertiary communication-implant, and beamed the Agency's tourist brochure over to him.
“Go off-universe and find out for yourself. You can afford a ticket.”
My tone had been brusque, but he didn't seem to notice; his eyes went unfocused as he took in the information I'd sent into his hardware. When his attention had finally returned to his external surroundings, the aerial-limo was already sliding to a stop.
“And we're here. Do you have the same retinal scan as Kirihara? If so, you should be able to activate the elevator.”
“Yes.” Existence is a matter of souls, not DNA, but the Kirihara Akaya who'd died in this universe happened to be an exact physical match for me, aside from age and environmental factors. At least this universe wasn't technomagically advanced enough to have security locks keyed to magical signatures. I wouldn't be able to replicate those, not even one produced by 'myself'.
“Yanagi lives on the top floor, in the westernmost apartment. ” It was Atobe's turn to beam me his contact information: a private calling code, unlisted. “Are you free for dinner tonight or tomorrow?”
There was something funny about his tone, and I checked his expression to make sure I wasn't being propositioned. As far as I could tell, I wasn't.
“It depends on how my work here goes. I'm supposed to be on vacation, so I'd like to go home as soon as this assignment's over.” It was a long-awaited and well-deserved vacation, and I hadn't been happy about putting it off. The things I did for friendship – for Yanagi, anyway.
“Feel free to call anyway.” He looked pensive as I stepped out of the aerial-limo. I wondered if we would see him at the Agency sometime. Atobe in all his incarnations is one of the most intrepid persons I know, but sometimes, just sometimes, he's a little too preoccupied with his own comfort zone to go looking for new adventures.
The apartment building Yanagi lived in had a hundred and fifty floors; a veritable skyscraper even in this city, where the trend in architecture appeared to be up, down, sideways and in fact any direction that would support more inhabitants. Managing the population's water and energy supply was surely some urban planner's nightmare.
Yanagi wasn't home when I rang his intercom, but it was nearly the end of the working day, so I decided to wait, slowly pacing up and down the corridor. The interior décor in this building was immaculate, smooth white ceiling and polished wooden floors with urns and indoor plants tastefully set into alcoves. There was no carpet, but the walls must have been designed to absorb sound somehow; I could barely hear my own footsteps.
I happened to be facing the elevator some twenty minutes later when the doors opened and Yanagi emerged, carrying something long and cylindrical and wrapped in plastic, tucked underneath one arm.
He saw me, and froze.
His eyes were wide and shocked; his skin ashen. It was an expression I'd seen on my Yanagi only twice in twenty years. I took a deep slow breath, reminding myself that it was okay, this wasn't my Yanagi.
Then I wanted to go up to this Yanagi and hug him, or say it was okay, or do anything that would make him stop looking like that.
He spoke first; it came out as a whisper. “Akaya.”
It isn't really my name, or at least not the name I grew up with. But I seem to have held that name in most other universes in which I exist, or some variation of it, and so for many years now it has been a permanent alias, making fieldwork easier for me. (And in fact my real name also has connotations of blood and knives, which goes to show that you never really escape yourself.) At the Agency, I am known as the Second Kirihara, and many of my colleagues do not even know that I had a different birth name, distinct from my other incarnations. Over the years I've heard much of my predecessor, who by all accounts was metaphorically both a sun seen from a close-orbiting planet at midday, and a starship hurtling through space, at the very moment before crashing into an asteroid. The crash eventually happened; he'd died while on assignment in Sector 52. I often spend my coffee breaks with Fuji Syuusuke (of Sector 61, 'verse #000329) talking about cheerful and distracting nothings - mainly we talk past each other, but Fuji does that with everyone, except Tezuka because Tezuka gets frustrated at him – and sometimes he just falls silent mid-conversation and studies my face, and I feel like a ghost is being superimposed upon me. But whatever Fuji is looking for in my features, I don't think he finds it.
This Yanagi was giving me the same kind of scrutiny now, and my thoughts were unsteady as I retrieved my business card and sent it over to his comm-implants.
“I'm Kirihara Akaya from the Special Investigations Unit of the Interdimensional Agency.” I wasn't sure if he was listening, but I pushed on anyway. “Please, call me Kirihara.”
He gathered himself and studied my card – a good distraction from having to look at me, probably. “I see.” Some of the colour returned to his cheeks. “What brings you here?”
I scanned the area to see if there was anyone passing by, but there wasn't, and I wasn't bound by confidentiality anyway. This was a Class V technomagical universe, which meant that most of the population was aware of interuniversal travel, although only four or five people out of every million would get to visit another universe within their lifetime.
“I came to tell you where the Child of God is,” I said, and watched many emotions pass across his face. Surprise, curiosity, suspicion, defensiveness, the pain of old heartbreak. My Yanagi is not so easily read. “Maybe it'd be better if we talked inside your home.”
Yanagi's apartment was more lived-in and less stiflingly tidy than I'd expected. Carefully chosen furniture in vague colours: grey lounge set, cushions in various earthy tones scattered across the sofa and armchairs. I refused his offer of tea, and sat down opposite him, stacking a bunch of cushions in my lap as I did so.
By now he'd calmed down somewhat, and his voice was almost like my Yanagi as he spoke: “So. He's alive.”
“Yes.”
“And not in this world. That explains many things.” He looked up, and I followed his gaze to the walls, which were lined with maps and calligraphy paintings. The maps were of buildings and continents, towns and labyrinths; drawn in pen and in charcoal, acrylic and coloured ink. Attractive but nothing special, artistically speaking – except for the qi; the nen, the aura, the life-force that flowed through them. The sensory enhancers I was using made the energies in the maps glow a soft white to my vision.
“Is that your specialty? Finding things?”
“It's what I do as a profession.”
“But you're even better at hiding things.” I saw his eyes widen as my words hit home, and I congratulated myself on having read the briefing report before coming to this universe. Forewarned was forearmed. “I spent all of yesterday trying to chase your electronic footprints. There was a period lasting nearly two years, when you seemed to have vanished from existence.”
He studied his own hands, which were folded in his lap, quite still. “Yes, that was what I did at first. But then later I looked for him. He was gone.”
“He applied to us for a relocation three years ago,” I said, confirming what he'd already surmised. “I can give you his exact address right now, if you'd like.”
“No,” he said. “If he hid, he didn't hide from me. And if he wishes to be found, it isn't me he wants to be found by.”
“But do you want to see him?”
He remained silent.
“I've been sent to take you there . Free of charge, and there's no fine print. Let's just say – there's someone who would feel better if all of this was resolved.” Why he wanted it resolved – well, I didn't quite understand. I tried not to think too hard about the whys of my Yanagi.
Again, I had to wait several seconds for his reply: “You must forgive me. This is all very abrupt. Must I give you an answer right now?”
I shrugged. “You can have twenty-four hours to make up your mind. I'll come back this time tomorrow.”
“Please,” he said. I wondered whether he meant please leave, or please come back.
Well, I could do both, even if I've never been particularly good at waiting. I would leave, and I would be back.
“So what is your world like?” In the end I'd taken up Atobe's invitation to dinner; there was nothing else to do in the meantime except sightseeing, and I hate Class V worlds. There's something about all that wealth and knowledge, ennui and post-scarcity, that makes me want to run off to a Class I universe and live with subsistence farmers for a week.
Admittedly, Atobe's penthouse was not exactly the place to be if you were trying to escape opulence and excess.
I casually surveyed the vast array of gold statuettes and fur rugs, oil paintings and marble sculptures that someone with a brilliant sense of visual aesthetic (Kabaji, maybe?) had coaxed into not offending the eye. “A much simpler world than this one. Well, it was when I lived there. I haven't been back in decades.”
“You don't look old enough to be discussing your life in terms of decades.”
“Working for the Agency comes with certain perks.” I was at least ten years older than this Atobe, probably more.
I could tell where the conversation was going to end up, so I said. “The Tezuka in my world was old enough to be my father. I never met him, but I heard a lot about him. He was famous.”
“How very typical of Tezuka.”
“He was a doctor and a poet. He was famous for climbing mountain ranges and discovering magical and medicinal herbs.”
“And writing poetry about the mountains, I presume. Is he still alive?” asked Atobe, noting my use of past tense.
“I have no idea.” I hadn't looked at the news reports from my homeworld in years. “There was a war going on there for a long time, so maybe not.”
I'd revealed too much distaste in my voice for someone like Atobe to overlook it. “Was it a bad war?”
What a stupid tautology. “It lasted for about ten years. By the standards of your world it was small.” I let more of the old pain show through in my voice, to compensate for my blunder. Atobe (in whatever universe) has never liked dealing with other people's baggage, despite his talent for deciphering it. “Your Yukimura Seiichi could probably have won that war single-handedly, with the powers he possessed.”
It worked. He backed off, cooperated with my change of subject. “Yukimura was remarkable even among Special Force soldiers. It looks like he'll be the last of the Children of God, which is a shame.”
Again I congratulated myself on having read the briefing report in advance, since it meant that I actually understood what Atobe was saying. Being prepared was such a great idea; I had no idea why I didn't manage to do it more often. “There are bigger tragedies in wars than losing a martial arts style.”
He looked at me with his strange overdecorated eyes. “Of course. But the existence of great tragedies doesn't make small tragedies any less tragic, does it?”
How old was he; twenty-one, twenty-five? I'd never sounded that cool at his age. But he was an Atobe Keigo.
“Will you fight me?” he asked.
So this was the price of dinner? “Don't bother,” I said. “Don't you know what it means to work at the Agency? You're no match for me.”
He flushed with anger, and I met his glare coolly.
Crimson fire erupted all over my body, rising from my skin and flickering, heating the air around me to near-unbearable temperatures. I fine-tuned the energy so that it did not burn either the chair I was sitting on or the wine glass I was holding, and kept watching him.
My Yanagi or Tezuka would probably reproach me for pulling a useless power-play of this sort, but I felt too grimly satisfied to regret my impulsivity. “Don't fight just because you have something to prove,” I told him, sounding like an old man to my own ears.
“I don't.” He'd regained his composure by now. “But it isn't that why you're refusing to fight? Because you have something to prove?”
Did Atobe always have to have the ability to see through everything? The crimson flames flared out, and I had to breathe deeply to rein them inwards again. I opened my mouth, about to accept his challenge to a fight after all, and then gritted my teeth together in an attempt at self-control. “Thank you for your hospitality. I think it'd be better if I left now.”
“Call me any time you like,” he said. Calm face, calm voice – but I could sense the edges of his control had begun to crack. And I'm not good at keeping my cool when the other person has lost it.
Damn it, this happened with Atobe in every universe.
Even as I walked out the door I regretted it, just a little. Beating him up would have felt great, even if in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't have done anything except deplete my magic levels.
“I will accept your offer.” Yanagi was already home and dressed in dark loose trousers and a casual long-sleeved shirt when I arrived. He still didn't look as if he were very certain about his decision.
“You sure?” I asked. It was a throwaway question; I had no intention of giving him any more time than I already had.
“I cannot decide anything until I see him.” He hesitated. I hadn't noticed it the day before, but right now he looked very young. “There are too many questions I want to ask.”
“You need to gather data, huh?” A perfectly Yanagi thing to do. “You won't have a second chance, I'm warning you, so make the most of this one journey.” Then again, if my Yanagi had taken enough personal interest to send me here, he was likely to send me here again if it proved necessary.
“I understand.”
“We're going to need to visit the Agency to do this, or at least find somewhere where the magic spillover won't affect anything.”
“Would my study do? It's completely insulated to magic; I often use it when working on experimental maps.”
“That sounds like it could work. Saves time.”
“Will we need anything? Food, or a change of clothes?”
“You can if you like. I don't usually bother. We should be back in a few hours.” If everything went on schedule, which was a big if for any Agency mission, never mind my Yanagi's special missions. Still, there was no need to tell him that.
He looked at me doubtfully – had the Kirihara he'd known in this universe really been that unreliable? (Okay, probably he had been) - and then went into the kitchen. I heard the sound of a fridge opening and containers and plates being moved around.
I entered the study and tested the magical insulation there, shooting flames at the walls to see whether they would scorch or burn right through. They were all absorbed easily.
He was back in about five minutes, carrying a nondescript grey backpack that had clearly been packed full of things. Now I really wanted to finish this mission fast just to prove him wrong.
“Take my hand,” I said, holding it out.
His fingers closed around mine; they were long, and thin. No calluses on his palms – it'd obviously been a long time since his fighting days.
I called up the space-time-dimension coordinates of our destination from my implants, drew energy from throughout my body, and we shifted.
The place where we arrived was dazzlingly bright, and wet. I landed butt-first on a tree root; about half a second later, I heard Yanagi crash into something that sounded equally painful and unaccomodating. The wind blew through the green canopy above us, sending a shower of raindrops tumbling off leaves and down onto our heads. It looked like proper H20 water.
“Oh good,” I said. “It's a true Earth-like planet.”
Yanagi picked himself up and dusted off his trousers, a query in his face.
“Well, usually the Relocation Department tries to move clients to a universe with similar geographical conditions, but sometimes their idea of 'similar' can be pretty flexible.” I made a face. “Their definition of Earth-like planet seems to change every year. I got sent last year to an Earth-like planet which was populated by metre-long single-celled ammonia-breathing organisms. And they were sentient. Who was smoking what when they called that 'Earth-like'?”
Yanagi gathered up his backpack, which had fallen at the base of a skinny tree with sharp, thin leaves, and looked at me. I put years of experience at deciphering Yanagi Facial Expressions to good use, and deduced that he was bemused and fascinated. “You don't sound like Akaya at all.”
You don't sound like Yanagi either, I wanted to say, but I didn't feel like telling him about my Yanagi, the Agency's Yanagi, and not just because it would make things complicated. I had a feeling that my Yanagi wanted his involvement in this whole assignment as little-known as possible.
Heck, I wanted to be involved as little as possible. This Yanagi was haunted by a lot of ghosts, my dead other self among them, and if there's one thing I hate doing, it's cleaning up baggage that my other selves have left behind. Isn't one lifetime of mistakes quite enough to live with?
I turned my attention to our surroundings. Moderate temperature, extremely humid air, though easily breathable. Beyond where we were standing the trees thinned out and ended in a sandy grey beach at the edge of what was either a sea or a colossal green-watered lake. Above the water the sky was blue, and mostly clear, despite the evidence of earlier rainfall.
“It's beautiful,” Yanagi said. From what I knew of his world, it didn't have many unspoiled natural places left.
I tapped into my implants and called up what I'd been given of Yukimura's whereabouts. Shifting between worlds is a notoriously imprecise process, but I have a reputation within the Agency for being one of the most accurate transporters around.
“Yukimura should be within five miles of here,” I said, as we walked down the beach. “Lemme figure out our exact location first.”
“No need,” said Yanagi. He was already pulling an electronic sketchpad out of his backpack as I eyed him curiously. He sat down on a damp boulder and began to draw. Bright white aura glowed down his arm and through the pencil he was holding.
I wasn't sure whether he needed full concentration in order to pull this off, so I kept quiet while he was sketching. After about five minutes he handed me the sketchpad. A bold red X was marked on a small irregular shape in the centre of the map he'd drawn.
“What's this, an island?” I scowled. “We're going to have to find a boat somehow.” My Yanagi hadn't mentioned this. It was a wonder we hadn't landed in the middle of the lake when we arrived.
“There's a village about ten minutes west of here,” Yanagi said, pointing to a spot on the map. “We might be able to hire one there.”
I fished around in my pockets, and discovered some local coins that I'd remembered to bring along, much to my relief. Stealing a boat was likely to bring the Agency's Ethics Committee down on my head. They'd probably take it out of my salary, too.
“That's a pretty useful gift you've got going there,” I said, as we set off in the direction of the village. “The Special Forces must have been sorry to see you leave.”
“Actually they were glad.” He kept his gaze fixed forward as he spoke. “I think they were eager to say goodbye to everyone who'd been connected with Seiichi. The war with the Coalition was in its final stages by then; we were not as necessary as we had once been.”
I was interested in spite of myself. “So you discharged yourself immediately after Kirihara's death?”
“Seiichi had already left months ago.” There was no change or tremor in his voice or stride. “With both of them gone, what reason did I have to stay?”
The world was tinged red, but he remained blue.
That only maddened me more. When I entered the battle-rage I did it in order to lose myself, to be stronger. Everything around me faded into one colour, into one need, one narrow pinpoint focus. My advisors had warned me that he might be some sort of exception, but I was furious to discover it anyway.
He parried my blows easily, letting me close in and then sending me sprawling to the ground with a violent twist of his blade. I was up again immediately, for a mere fall was not enough to overcome the battle-rage.
He had not closed in for the kill, but stood with his sword loosely grasped by his side, a silhouette of blue hair and eyes and armour against walls the colour of blood. He was smiling. And he was as strong as I was.
I circled him, looking for openings, but could not find any. He watched me with a small smile on his face. There was no urgency in his movements. “Have you waited for this a long time, Red King?”
I glowered at his use of the hated title. “I have a name.”
He deflected my attack smoothly. “As do I. But who we are doesn't matter much in this war, does it?” His sword flashed blue in the sunlight coming in through the castle windows, even though to my eyes the sun itself appeared crimson-red. “Only what we are.”
“Who cares what you are? You'll be dead soon enough.” I tried fire this time, throwing it at him in a maelstrom of power, but he broke out in a flame of his own: focused, translucent and blue. My flame could not consume his. I spat. The world grew darker and redder.
“Then kill me, if you can. It must either be me or you, or this war will not end.”
Up till that moment, I had not thought about what I would do after he was dead.
I lashed out, and my sword tore a jagged line down his arm, bringing with it a spurt of blood, red, as red as my eyes.
His gaze met mine for an instant, both of us startled. Then he smiled again.
Cool blueness flooded my senses, and I screamed in outrage.
I paid the woman in silver, more than enough to buy her little rowboat thrice over; I had a feeling that we wouldn't be returning to this shore. (Partly because of my intention to port straight back to Yanagi's apartment once his conversation with Yukimura was done.)
“How did you manage to speak her language?” Yanagi asked. He sat in the prow of the boat. Despite my sense that he was easier to read than my Yanagi, I couldn't tell what was really on his mind right now.
“Communication implants. To be honest, I have no natural aptitude for languages at all.” I swung the oars, trying to steer the boat north, water splashing into the boat as I did so. It'd been years since I last rowed a boat. When I'd finally got the thing to cooperate and we were moving steadily towards the centre of the lake, I noticed that Yanagi was smiling. “What's so funny?”
“Akaya didn't like foreign languages very much either.”
“You always have characteristics in common with your multiversal counterparts. It's one of the principles of multiple existence.”
Yanagi being Yanagi, he was all attention now, inquisitive and alert and wanting to know more. “What sort of characteristics?”
“Physical and genetic, most commonly. Personality traits. And events and relationships. If you did a study of any person's multiple lives, you'd find that over and over again they make the same friendships, fall in love with the same people. When I was in university one of my professors said it was because souls aren't designed by the universe as individual entities; instead, they're created in tandem, as a web.”
“Does that mean I know you in other universes, then?”
I looked out at the water, which was translucent and tinged green from underwater weeds. Each time my oars hit the surface of the lake they sent small waves rippling outwards, in slow motion. “Yes. Although not in mine.”
My Yanagi had never known, never met, a Seiichi or an Akaya in his own world. Sometimes I wondered if that was what made him so remarkable to me. I suppose, in a way, we're each other's replacements.
“There was a Sanada Genichirou in my universe – with a different name, but he was genetically the same. He died when I was just an infant, saving me from drowning in a river.” I did not want to talk about the Blue King.
“He died rescuing you?”
“There's a certain poetic resonance to it, huh? Given what happened in your universe.”
“Yes, there certainly is.” He looked into the distance rather dreamily, eyes nearly closed. “Seiichi used to say that poetry, rather than mathematics, dictated the running of the universe.”
In my world, I wanted to say, he said that fate determined the universe.
Not that there's all that much difference between fate and poetry. In the end, they're both incomprehensible and best ignored.
The island was just large enough that you could imagine one family living there quite happily, and by the time we were within three hundred meters of it it was obvious that there was someone with a lot of aura there.
“No attempt to contain his own magic at all. Is it because he can't, or won't, or doesn't need to?” The question was directed towards no one in particular, except maybe secondarily towards Yanagi because he was the only one there.
“It won't be can't, with Seiichi,” he said, but he looked troubled.
“You know, everyone who applies to the Agency for a relocation has to have a full health assessment done with us. I heard that the psychologist who saw Yukimura diagnosed him with some sort of magic-induced psychotic disorder.”
I was watching Yanagi to see how he would react, but he seemed unsurprised. “It's the curse of the Children of God. He was the youngest ever to succeed to the title; it's no wonder that he began to suffer the side-effects so early.”
“I really don't get why your military recruited him. Seems like none of the mess between all of you would ever have happened if you weren't in the Special Forces and forced to strain your magical powers to the breaking point. Like, you might not have even met each other.” Unlikely for the trio of Yanagi and Sanada and Yukimura not to meet, in any universe, but still. It was possible. “I mean, you're a post-nuclear society. It seems like you'd have enough in your arsenal that any individual's special techniques would be pretty negligible in the long run.”
“Not even if he could use them on hundreds of soldiers at a time? He was the most powerful Child of God in recorded history.” I'd begun to fall in love with the way Yanagi's voice sounded when he talked about Yukimura, as if there were six different emotions all tussling and clawing at each other for dominance. Was this why Fuji and Yanagi liked asking me questions about the Blue King? “Hopefully he will be the last.”
Despite his words, he seemed as if he was mourning already, for the loss of a magical school, a technique, a set of knowledge that would irrevocably depart from his universe. Well, that was true of any Yanagi. In the past I'd occasionally wondered what would hurt my Yanagi more, the death of a friend or the destruction of his library.
I wanted to talk some more, but we had already arrived, the rowboat beaching on what seemed like the island's northern shore (based on the position of the sun, and depending on how genuinely Earth-like this planet was). I pulled up the oars, stacked them on the floor, and then jumped out into the shallow waters, soaking my clothes through in the process. Then I grabbed the gunwales and pushed the boat further upshore, shaking my head at Yanagi when he asked whether he should get out and help.
It was mid-afternoon by then. After the boat was safely high on the beach, positioned upside-down so that the wood could drip dry, we stood on the sand looking at each other. I tried to squeeze salty water (I'd gotten a taste of it when I leaped overboard) out of my shirt-sleeves onto the sand. The magical presence we'd sensed for the last ten minutes was still there, and so strong it was almost overwhelming.
Whoever was giving off that aura was clearly located at the center of the island. “Is it him?” I asked. We were close enough by now that anyone familiar with the the magical presence would recognise it, surely.
“It is him.” I watched as Yanagi closed his eyes, took one slow silent breath, gathering his resolve. “Let us go see him, before I become afraid to do so. I'm a coward when it comes to reunions.”
“I don't think you're a coward,” I said, as we began walking. “I mean, wouldn't it be weird if you weren't at least a little bit worried?”
There was no established track through the tiny forest that grew on this island, but there was plenty of space to walk in between the trees, and we were certain of our direction. The land sloped upwards for about a hundred yards, until plateauing out at what looked like the highest elevation on this island, a piece of grassy land well exposed to the sun.
There was a wooden cottage with a thatched roof there, and outside it an old woman, tiny with age, hanging laundry on a clothesline. She didn't see us until we were mere yards away from her, and then she turned, saw us, and let out a cry of surprise.
I barely heard her scream, that was how preoccupied I was by now with the presence of Yukimura – and that was like a scream in itself, protracted and excruciating, audible only on the extrasensory level. Quite a mage, this Yukimura Seiichi was. But that wasn't what bothered me.
He felt like the Blue King. They were the same person, surely as this Yanagi was the same as my Yanagi, and the Kirihara who had died at Yukimura's hands three years ago was myself.
It really bothered me, and I wanted it not to, else my Yanagi would find out and refer me on to Human Resources and I would be sentenced to more sessions of self-awareness training and possibly a refresher course in epistemology.
The old woman put up her hands as I walked closer, wary and definitely a little frightened.
“Does a blue-haired man live here?” I asked.
She scrutinised me with suspicion and made a looping gesture with her fingers, probably a sign to ward off evil. “You're here to see the leper?”
For some reason my comm implants had trouble processing her language, so that it was a full second before I processed the sentence. When I did, I felt dizzy.
“What did she say?” asked Yanagi, noticing my expression.
“That he's inside,” I lied, turning away. He followed behind me as I went up to the solid oak door of the cottage, and reached for the handle.
“Let me do it. It might not be safe.” Yanagi-style understatement.
“Do you think I'll get hurt? I'm not as weak as your Kirihara was.” I flung the door wide open, to a world filled with magic gone wild.
Aura flooded the cottage, the mild colour of its glow – the shade of cornflowers – belying the magnitude of its power. If you've ever walked into a magical storm – like the ones you find at abandoned technomagical research labs, or former war zones turned to wasteland by mage-weapons – then you'll know what it felt like. The brilliance of the aura forced me to shield my eyes, without much effect. I could feel the magic burning my skin, heat and pain moving across my limbs and exposed areas. It felt like I could almost hear the magic itself, a low and painful whisper across my ears.
: Have you come to forgive me, or for revenge?
He was not speaking in words. Technically he wasn't even speaking telepathically. It was as if he was taking his thoughts and emotions and forging them, forcing them into a form that could be expressed in his magical aura.
In his own way, he was as impressive as the Blue King. Small wonder that this Yanagi couldn't get over him. I stepped forward, trying to see through the haze of pale blue that filled the room.
By the time we could both see him clearly, we were close enough to reach out and touch his face. He sat in a motorised wheelchair at the end of the room.
His eyes looked up in our direction, but remained completely unfocused. They were blue, with iris and sclera both covered with a translucent filmy layer of white. His hair was darker than his eyes, and shoulder-length and unkempt.
Yanagi knelt down, and took one of Yukimura's hands. “Not for revenge or forgiveness. I came to see you--” and then I heard Yanagi draw in his breath sharply. But I had already noticed.
“How--” Yanagi held up Yukimura's right hand, a fingerless mass of stumps save for an intact thumb. I looked down at the floor; Yukimura was barefooted, and in several places there were crusted ulcers where there should have been toes. “Did you--” He fell silent, unsurprisingly at a loss for words.
: Kill me. Physically Yukimura didn't move, save for the rise and fall of his chest with breathing.
“No.” Yanagi sounded surprised, and then a moment later, with more resolve. “No, Seiichi.”
A sense of desolation, understated and coldly frightening. How long had this Yukimura lived like this? : Please. For Akaya's sake, if not my own. He wanted me dead, didn't he?
“Only once, towards the end. And he didn't want it for long, even then. Seiichi--”
: He should have.
I could tell where this was going, because Yanagi was Yanagi, and Yukimura was Yukimura, and Yukimura always gets what he wants, in the end. The Blue King had gotten what he wanted from me, and I didn't even resent him for it. I would have done it again, killed Yukimura again, except that it wasn't my job, or my life, or anything to do with me, really. My story in my home universe had ended a long time ago, and even the Kirihara Akaya of this little drama had long ceased to play his role, even if the guilt of his memory remained with these two.
They talked for a little longer, Yanagi always using his voice despite the fact that Yukimura could not hear it. He was putting up a better fight than I'd expected. He seemed to become more and more resolute by the moment, until finally he looked Yukimura in the eye (or looked at where Yukimura's eyes ought to be focused) and said: “There are other options. Come back with me, and we'll find Genichirou. Will you not at least consider the idea?”
The aura swirled around Yukimura's body, emanating a sudden sense of helplessness and frustration. : Won't you listen to me? Then I have no choice.
I have no real excuses for what happened next, except that there was already so much aura in the room that my physical and magical senses were overloaded to breaking point. There was a sudden shift in the aura around me, very subtle, so that even a good mage might not have noticed it, and then I was blind, all the blue light around me fading to pure and simple black.
“Seiichi!” The sound of Yanagi's voice seemed to expand in the darkness, as well as the aura in the air, still buzzing in my ears and overheating my skin. My shirt clung to my back, still damp with in lake and sweat; there was a faint smell of unwashed clothes and old urine coming from somwhere in this cottage. “Seiichi, you can't mean--”
Then all of these were gone as well, together with my sense of balance. I might have swayed, I might have fell; in fact I must have. But I had no way of knowing it.
How do you describe nothing?
I don't know how to, so just imagine it for yourselves.
Case Report #112, Universe #777, Sector #27. Prepared by Yanagi Renji, Special Investigations Unit:
The title of Child of God is given to the practitioners of a small but justly famed style of mixed magical arts, best known for techniques that work agains the nervous system. Most famous of all is of the Divine Judgment, considered to be that the finishing move of the style. Victims experience permanent visual loss, hearing loss, anosmia, psychosis, depression autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and in the final version of the move, total anaesthesia. Yukimura Seiichi, the 16th Child of God, is known to be capable of passing Divine Judgment upon up to three hundred people at a time. These unique powers, however, come at a price. It is well-known that over time, practitioners of this Divine Style experience a decelerated form of the Judgement in their own bodies, a magico-physical process that is exacerbated and accelerated by excessive use of the technique.
Yukimura Seiichi was serving as a Captain in the Oceanic Special Forces when he committed the deed that eventually resulted in his approaching the Agency for relocation services. Together with a close friend, Lt Colonel Sanada Genichirou, he was dispatched to search for Lieutenant Kirihara Akaya, a relatively recruit to the Specials who had been declared MIA. When they found Kirihara Akaya at a site that was known to be a former terrorist base, a struggle ensued. Despite Sanada's attempts to restrain him, Yukimura cast Divine Judgment upon the Lieutenant, who subsequently went blind and developed paraplegia. Some weeks later Lieutenant Kirihara took his own life.
For some reason Yukimura's attack had blocked my magical senses as well. So I had no idea how long I drifted in sensory deprivation, or when Yukimura died, or what his last words to Yanagi were. I can easily imagine what they said, though. Things like that are multiversally consistent, even when the details differ a little.
Later I figured that the complete sensory blackout had lasted no longer than fifteen minutes, but it had felt like an eternity. When the world returned to my senses I was lying on a wooden floor. My shoulders and entire side felt sore and bruised. It was the first sensation I noticed, and let me tell you, I've never been so grateful for pain in my entire life.
Yanagi was bending over me, looking concerned. I pulled myself to a sitting position and looked around. The blue aura had disappeared.
“So you did it.”
He stared at the corpse – slumped over in the wheelchair, neck slashed open in a gaping, cauterised wound – nearly bloodless, as one would expect from the intense heat of an attack of pure aura. “He let me do it.
“Did you do it to save me?” I asked. Inwardly I was smarting at having been overwhelmed so easily. Child of God, Blue King – would I ever be able to surpass Yukimura, in any universe?
“The variation of the attack that he used on you is irreversible. If I hadn't stopped him--”
“Yeah, I really owe you one.” I'd been careless. My Yanagi would be extremely unimpressed come paytime.
“Yes. No. I think he attacked you in other to provoke me into doing it. I believe – he knew that I would never be able to do it otherwise. Not even after seeing the way he is now.”
He sounded bewildered. I couldn't bear to see him like this, so I said: “Do you wanna know something?”
“If you would like to tell me.” Yanagi's face was shadowed, and his voice hoarse with either grief or shock, but there was attentiveness in his expression.
“I've killed him before. On my own home world. With a lot less reason than you had, actually.” The Blue King had been sane, and pure, and a heck of a lot more deserving of life than I have ever been, when I killed him. This Yukimura had wanted death, needed it really. “There was a great war in our world, and everyone had been fighting for years. Me and him on different sides. And he decided that the best way to end the war would be for me to kill him. It worked. Sort of. The war kept going for a while after that, but there were no great battles anymore. Fewer people died.
“My point is, Yukimura is the sort of person who knows what he wants, and gets what he wants. So don't feel bad about doing what he asked. Consider it the act of a friend.”
He smiled - a Yanagi-smile, admittedly, but a smile. I wondered if the reality of what he'd done would come to hit him later. Then again, what difference would it make? Yukimura had been dead for years, hidden away on this deserted island. “You are Akaya after all.”
“I feel as if I should be insulted by that comment.”
This time he did not smile. He looked at Yukimura's face – the corpse's face, rather, for it was quite irrevocably a corpse. I've always believed in souls, that humans are more than just our bodies, and not just because I grew up on a primitive Class II magical world where this sort of belief was encouraged. People just look different when they're dead, like they're not there, which, mostly, they aren't.
“Do you want to stay here any longer?” I asked.
“The body. Shouldn't we take care of it?”
“Let me do it.” I clambered to my feet, and we went outdoors, Yanagi pausing in the doorway to give Yukimura one last look.
“Walk a little further ahead,” I said, and then snapped my fingers, watching crimson flame spread from my hands and coat the house and begin to consume the walls and roof. The old woman was no longer there, and we stood on the grass for many minutes watching the soot from the fire stain black the laundry she'd left hanging on the clothesline.
“How do you feel?” I asked, when I had had enough silence.
“Are you really interested in the answer?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. Do you have any regrets?”
That made him hesitant. “Only that Genichirou was not here to do it. Seiichi wanted it to be him, I think.”
“It probably didn't matter much. You did what he wanted, and needed. He's free now.”
As free as the Blue King – leaving us who were alive with mistakes to atone for, lives that had to be lived. I watched a wall of the cottage cave inwards, sending up a flare of dark red fire as it did so. I felt like I was already mourning Yukimura, despite the fact that I'd only seen him for a few minutes.
But I had recognised him, just the way I recognised Yanagi, the way I recognise both of them in every universe. My Yanagi was the first Yanagi I ever met, and yet the first time I heard him speak I'd felt as if I'd grown up listening to that voice.
“Come on,” I held out my hand to this Yanagi. “Let's go back.”
Each to his own world, to his own story and past and future.
