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“Kaito, please, I really don’t have anything — ”
“Like hell you don’t! Where the fuck is it all? Where?”
He grips her shoulders and she sobs hard enough for the both of them. This is completely unfair of him. He realizes that fact, as nestled in the back of his prefrontal cortex as it is.
He comes to his senses and loosens his grip before backing away entirely. His sister wipes her glassy eyes with her blazer sleeve as strands of amethyst hair tumble out of her bun.
“It’s all gone. That’s what the doctors told us to do — they told us to get rid of it all.”
“Why?”
She sniffles and staves off another fit of tears. Her voice trembles as she speaks.
“Because if you saw anything you owned from...before, it might trigger your memories of who you were before,” she explains. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it. You have to believe that.”
He runs a hand through his hair and collapses into one of the kitchen chairs. He wills his heart to ease itself. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Kaito...”
His sister looks at him with something insultingly close to pity.
“Yeah?”
“If it makes you feel any better...you asked me to get rid of it all.”
※
It wasn’t real. Not a single part of it was real.
He repeats that fact, churns it slowly, deliberately, in his mind. He digests it every morning upon waking up until it’s time to (try to) sleep.
He stumbles into the bathroom to brush his teeth before his morning commute. He peers into the mirror — he doesn’t look quite as tired as he feels.
Two parts of him, equally formidable, war:
That’s not true. Just because it didn’t happen in real life doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. What are you thinking? Was everything with Shuuichi fake? Was everything with Harumaki fake? Are you prepared to say that? You’re a fucking coward if you are.
Really? Don’t be so damn smug. You were alive for eighteen years and you can’t remember a thing about any of it other than what they fed you. Your sister treats you like a fucking stranger in your own house and Shuuichi — no, Saihara — and Harukawa want nothing to do with you. Because it was all an illusion.
The world seems to swim around him, distorted, dizzying, until he’s bracing himself against the wall to collect himself. That’s right. Get it together, Kaito. One breath, two. He opens his eyes. The world has steadied itself.
He’s still here.
※
His soul extricates himself from his body as soon as he walks through the school doors. Perhaps that’s why he can so easily talk to his classmates as though nothing has happened. He compartmentalizes, conceals. He’s known these people for years, after all — even if he only met them the other day.
※
He doesn’t buy that there’s nothing left. Not for a goddamn second.
When he gets home from school and his sister is still at work, he ransacks their apartment, throwing open every drawer and cabinet, looking under every piece of furniture and in every closet. He throws all of his clothes on the floor, feeling around desperately for any sign of living.
He finds nothing every time. How did his sister manage to scrub the place so thoroughly of his existence? What fucking possessed her to agree to this? Does she hate him that much?
No, that’s not true, and those thoughts are land mines in the vast expanse of his mind.
He finally gives up (temporarily) after a few days, begrudgingly accepting that he may be better off not knowing — for now.
※
He stares long and hard at Shuuichi’s number and finally capitulates.
He sits in the dim fluorescent lighting of their kitchen and waits. Five seconds pass. Ten seconds pass. The dial tone ceases as someone picks up.
“Momota-san?”
The tension percolates out of him at the sound of his voice. Even within the four walls of his house, it’s the sound of coming home.
“Shuuichi. Come to the Ikebukuro station tomorrow afternoon at four,” he says, gripping his phone with extraordinary force.
There is a period of silence on the other end. For a moment, he worries that he has disappeared. After all, that seems to be a recurring theme in Kaito’s life as of late.
“Okay. Why, though?”
“You know damn well why, and don’t pretend you don’t need this too,” he says between clenched teeth.
A sigh on the other end. He expected that much.
“I’ll be there.”
And that as well.
※
He feels the urge to collapse on the spot when he sees Shuuichi shuffling his feet and scanning the crowd in Ikebukuro. Relief this profound is cumbersome, as it turns out.
“Oi, Shuuichi,” he calls out with a wave.
Shuuichi looks up at him, startled. His shoulders slacken as he registers that it’s him and not any other person.
Kaito approaches him, appraises him, grips his shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie, suppressing the urge to do much more. The touch of a human has been something in woefully short supply these days.
“Let’s go somewhere less...boisterous,” Shuuichi suggests carefully.
The August humidity is unyielding and unforgiving as they quietly weave their way through a narrow backstreet in a residential neighborhood. It’s tranquil, devoid of people — ideal. The shade ameliorates the heat, although Kaito can still feel his undershirt sticking to him.
“What did you want to talk about?” Shuuichi asks point-blank.
“Dunno, didn’t really have anything special in mind. I needed to see a familiar face.”
“I can understand that.”
Kaito comes to a stop in the back of a convenience store directly across a small single family home.
“Shuuichi, how are ya?”
He similarly halts as the color drains from his face and he goes waxen. It’s the face of someone who’s seen a ghost or dozen.
“I’m...okay.”
“Listen. You’re too damn smart to keep it inside. Are you really doin’ okay?”
“I am,” Shuuichi assures with a wave of his hand. His brows knit in seriousness. “But...what about you, Momota-san?”
He was ready to ask the question and failed to prepare his own answer. He clenches and unclenches his fist, grinds his teeth together.
“I’m doing my best.”
Shuuichi smiles, as he does.
“You wouldn’t have told me that when we were in the game. You would’ve kept everything to yourself,” he points out.
“Let me ask you something, Shuuichi,” he says quickly.
“Yeah?”
“Those audition tapes were faked too, weren’t they? Shirogane told me that.”
“That’s what Shirogane-san told me, too,” Shuuichi says. How can he, in good conscience, expend niceties on her?
“Huh...”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. It doesn’t really matter now, but I wanted an answer,” he mutters. He can see Shuuichi nodding in his peripheral vision.
They continue walking throughout the streets of Ikebukuro, navigating conversation with varying degrees of success. He drinks in discussion like a man in an oasis, savoring the taste of contact.
This is real, he thinks. This can’t be fake.
The sun begins to set; they have school the next day. They return to the train station.
He swallows hard and turns to Shuuichi.
“You’re still my sidekick, you know. And you can’t give up, now more than ever,” Kaito says with a clenched fist and more conviction than he’s had in weeks.
Shuuichi squares his shoulders and smiles.
“I’m not going to give up.”
He collapses against the side of the train as he careens into his seat. It starts moving and the exhaustion he had been managing to stave off returns with a vengeance.
Is this going to be his life? Tailoring the way he talks, inhibiting himself? Wanting to bask in the freedom of tabula rasa and haunted by the person he apparently once was? Questioning, perhaps forever, if what he sees and feels is real?
He groans and mentally checks Shuuichi off his list.
There’s one more person to take care of.
※
How are you doing harumaki
※
It’s none of your concern.
But it is, i don’t want you to be alone
Don’t talk to me again. You’re nothing to me and I’m nothing to you. Whatever we had was fake.
He pushes his phone away; it might as well be searing hot. It buzzes one more time.
He stands up and leaves for the balcony. There are no clouds obfuscating the sky tonight.
※
Sorry, Kaito.
※
Real question: does no one fucking care what we went through
Read by 1. Read by 2. Read by 4. Read by 6, 7, 8.
You’re all cowards, i can’t believe this
※
The days pass gently, without direction, flowing freely through the tributary of time and into the river of space.
Kaito goes through his days playing his part, because his part is his personality now, and his personality is his part. He fought with Shirogane until he saw the dotted line.
He pants as he does pushups in his room late at night — he refuses to give up this tradition, at least.
The question of what could have driven him to the precipice of desperation gnaws at his neurons, but it’s futile, and Kaito Momota does not like to waste his time.
(He can’t speak for the Kaito Momota of the past.)
※
He finds what he was looking for on a whim.
This was the only place he failed to investigate. Tucked in a pillowcase underneath his sister’s mattress is a wrinkled piece of paper folded several times over. It radiates with the poison of years past and the fallout of the future it was written for.
A tremor racks his body as he plucks the paper from its place and unfolds it. He inhales sharply, willing himself to stop trembling, before reading.
Kaito,
I want to remember you the way you were. I want to remember what a kind boy you are. I want to remember how you took care of Mom and Dad until the very end. You’re so shy...I’m scared of who you’re going to become. I know why you’re doing it, but I can’t accept it. Are you still going to be an architect? Are you still going to go to school in America? Will you remember what happened when we were kids? I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.
Just don’t regret this. Please, whatever happens — don’t regret this.
You’ll never see this. I know the doctors told me to get rid of everything and I did what they told me to do, but I needed something. Just one thing.
I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, Kaito. No, that’s a lie. I could have done more, couldn’t I?
I’m sorry you have such a rotten older sister. Maybe that’s why you’re doing this.
Katsuko
His stomach turns itself upside down and lurches, a sensation not dissimilar from the one he experienced during his death in the killing game. No, he doesn’t need that right now — this letter is punishment enough.
Something is attached with a paperclip to the back of the letter. Gritting his teeth, he yanks it from its place.
He vaguely recognizes the kid in the picture. Someone with similar purple eyes and hair, but in a different style. It hangs over his face, framing it loosely, and is free of any kind of styling. In front of him on the table is a protractor and a compass. A book lies open at his side as he hunches over a whiteprint.
He flips the photo to the back. All that’s written is 12/02. He was wearing his school uniform in the picture — he’s forced to assume that this was taken in February of this year.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he hisses beneath his breath. The trembling has started again and is here to stay, apparently. The glossy photo oscillates between the shaking.
He deftly clips the photo back to the letter and stuffs it into the pillowcase before shoving it under the mattress, restoring it to order.
He walks back to his room and throws himself face down on his bed and sleeps, if only because there’s nothing else to do.
※
The city stretches out before him on the balcony, a jungle of rooftops and telephone poles, all presided over by the heavens. Stars sparkle at him suggestively from their place in the firmament above.
He gazes deeply into the eye of the galaxy. It doesn’t seem quite as inviting as it once did, but he wants to puncture the atmosphere and force his way through it nonetheless. He never thought he’d be the type of person to be motivated by spite, but he never thought he’d be the type of person to give up the way he did just a few months ago. Is this the same spot he would sit in, dreaming of structures instead of stars?
His eyes lower to take in the ground beneath the apartment building. People, small and humble, navigate the streets below. The core under the Earth’s crust burns beneath them all. As he considers it all, he tears a piece of paper into bits and pieces, letting them drift down the balcony and toward the pavement — a premature snowfall in the thin October air.
He thinks of the stars in space and the mantle of the Earth. The people on the streets and the planes in the sky.
There is a place for him somewhere in between.