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Dice had never been good at beginnings.
His life, instead, was composed of middles: nights stuck at the slots where the time passed in inconceivable ways, bets where he got himself in too deep and could never remember how he wound up there in the first place, or minutes passed by with stale cigarettes as he tried to remember the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep. Dice had never been good at beginnings, because nothing had ever begun. It was endless monotony after endless monotony, stuffed into the middle of a worn novel to fill space. The prologue had been left blank or torn out, or had never existed in the first place. The next development? Stuck somewhere in the bowels of a slot machine, where Dice had been trying and failing to shake it loose for years.
“Come on, come on,” Dice mutters under his breath, leg jiggling against the stool he’s perched upon and fingers holding a cigarette nearly burnt down to the filter. His eyes droop from lack of sleep, but his gaze is sharp and focused on the rotation of the slot machine in front of him. There’s a click, then a triumphant ding.
Triple cherries.
—
Gentaro has always found himself ruminating on the finer details, no matter the circumstances. Like an unoiled gear stuck in its rotation, his mind stalls and starts until the truth of the matter reveals itself.
For instance, what motivation would the protagonist of his newest novel have that would allow him to entrust his life to a lowly thief? What would make the thief set aside his pride and offer his services to a want-for-nothing king?
Another example might be, why were the curtains of his apartment shifted just so? Or, why hadn’t Gentaro bothered to notice the warm light of a previously untouched lamp before he had entered his apartment?
Details of a bigger picture. One which he was staring at head-on, mouth opening and shutting in a search for words and keys pressed tightly into the flesh of his palm. He can feel the weight of his cell phone in his pocket.
When Gentaro can’t seem to find the right words needed to rectify this situation, the man who has made himself at home in Gentaro’s armchair relieves him of the duty.
“Don’t you recognize me, Yumeno-sensei?” To his credit, the man does seem genuinely hurt by the confession that flits across Gentaro’s features, shuttered away soon after.
“I’m afraid I don’t, no,” Gentaro admits, offering a smile so docile that it nearly disarms the man across from him. For a moment, it’s nothing but the same expression from before, as if Gentaro had dealt a blow to him. Lips parted in surprise, eyes searching, and form recoiled in on itself. That reaction could have been dealt with, soothed and sent on its way.
Yet, from countless hours spent studying others from a street-facing window and from memorizing each new component he had found, Gentaro already predicts what’s coming.
The turn of a tide is so volatile, after all.
“Would you like an autograph? It’s the least I can do for—”
“An autograph?!” The man’s fist slams against a nearby coffee table, rattling the forgotten teacup that had set in its center. “I’ve read all of your novels, attended every one of your signings, spoken with you, memorized every aspect of you and you—” Here, something catches in the man’s throat. Not sadness or grief, but something sharp, like a knife.
“I’m not even worth remembering to you.”
“That’s not true,” Gentaro deflects as smoothly as a butter knife might deflect an oncoming bullet. “Please, sit. I’m sure a cup of tea would be beneficial for the both of us.”
“Why don’t you tell me your name?”
The man relaxes a little, as if too embarrassed to ignore a request from someone he admired. He fidgets slightly, mouth opening to respond in kind when Gentaro’s fingers finally curl around the doorknob, and pull.
It happens in mere seconds, but what comes after will feel as if it might never end.
Gentaro throws the door open in a fit of desperation, feet stumbling over the hem his accursed hakama as he reaches for the apartment railing in front of him. There’s a crash behind him, the crunch of China under the man’s shoes, and then one hand fisted into the back of Gentaro’s hakama, yanking him back into the dim light of the apartment. The other hand is roughly placed over his mouth, fingernails leaving half-crescents against the meat of his cheek.
“Liar,” The man spits out with a venom that Gentaro is unfamiliar with. One that he hasn’t seen from the window of a cafe, or from his usual spot on one of the park’s benches, right beneath the shade of a sakura tree. “You told me— You agreed that we had a connection.”
“When we spoke last,” as way of explanation for the lack of understanding in Gentaro’s gaze, he supposes. “You gave me hope that there could be more. You did that. I was only acting on what you told me.”
Despite himself, Gentaro flattens himself further into the door, as if he might escape the leer that the other man leveled him with. As if he might phase through it entirely, escaping this situation without a scratch on him.
He had always had an active imagination.
“I can make you remember. I know I can,” The man tells him, crazed and wild-eyed. “If I could just— If you could just quit being so fucking stubborn and think.”
“I know you can remember me, Yumeno-sensei. I’ve been there for you all the years and I know… I know you’ve been there for me too.”
Gentaro nods his head, slowly. Non-threateningly. The man pulls back his hand, seeming hopeful.
“I remember now,” Gentaro lies, maneuvering his lips into a smile. “I can’t quite recall your name yet, but I remember your face. Every line, every crowd. You were always there, weren’t you?”
The man nods so quickly that Gentaro is afraid his skull might detach itself from his spine. There are tears prickling the corners of his eyes when he steps back no more than a foot, smiling down at Gentaro with such astonished euphoria.
“Of course I was, Y—”
A foot’s worth of space wasn’t ideal, but it was more than enough for Gentaro’s hands to find purchase, pushing at the man’s shoulders with as much force as he could muster. He had only ever meant to unsteady the man, to find an opening that allowed his escape.
The man’s head hits the coffee table with a resounding crack, scattering the remaining contents of the table onto the floor. Beneath it all, a pool of blood begins to form, seeping its way into Gentaro’s pristine carpets.
Despite his better judgment, he finds himself on his knees, soaking up the better portion of it with his hakama.
Were this a novel, the details would be ironed out and the protagonist would be far more apt to handle a situation such as this.
But it’s not.
—
Most first meetings don’t tend to go quite so awry.
After all, there were a few things wrong with the predicament Dice had currently found himself in, listed in no particular order:
- The car he was driving wasn’t his, but that was neither here nor there.
- The front seat was occupied by a man whose tongue was as sharp as his cheekbones were delicate.
- The man was a famous author whom Dice had occasionally spotted on the corner of the bookstore’s window that was reserved for posters and flyers. His name was Yumeno Gentaro.
- Yumeno Gentaro was covered in blood.
But he was getting ahead of himself again.
This is the middle, it’s time to go back to the beginning.
—
Dice finds himself as he does most days: penniless, huddling into his jacket for warmth, and desperate for something to take the edge off.
A roll of the dice had cost him all of his earnings from the slots, and Dice would have demanded some proof that his opponent hadn’t been cheating had he not already been roughly escorted from the building.
So, here he was, down to his last cigarette and hovering near the entrance of a club he didn’t recognize. He didn’t so much have a plan when he shouldered through the glass doors as he did a want.
It had always been like that with him, hadn’t it? Endlessly searching for something that would never be good enough. Could never satisfy. His greed was bottomless and he had only ever bothered to feed it scraps.
And because of that, when opportunities presented themselves, Dice had typically found it in himself to take them.
That’s how he finds himself draped across the shoulders of two women that had been previously chatting to one another, startled into silence by his sudden appearance. For all intents and purposes, Dice pretends to be drunker than he is (which is not at all), face twisted into mock surprise as he ‘realizes’ that the women weren’t who he was searching for after all.
“Shit, I’m s—”
He’s shoved off in an instant, one woman wrinkling her nose at him with a proclaimed noise of disgust. They turn back to their cocktails once he’s been dispatched, laughing between themselves as Dice scurries off in what seems like embarrassment.
The new-found set of keys jingle with each movement he makes, steps light and grin pulled wide.
—
Gentaro was nothing if not meticulous, but even he had his limits.
Even he came across a problem that couldn’t be solved by his hands alone, or a situation in which he could recall nothing more than a head full of blank space. This, of course, was one of those rare, if not unfortunate, moments.
His hakama clings to his skin where the blood had gathered against its folds, damp against the parts of him that had been pressed against his apartment floor, scrubbing at the bloodied carpet in desperation.
Typically, Gentaro found himself thinking at least three steps ahead, if not more. Now, he couldn’t think at all.
Couldn’t remember what he should be doing in a situation like this, because he should have never been in a situation like this. All of the answers he needed now (which cleaner removed blood stains the best? how do you efficiently dispose of a body? does the guilt last forever?) weren’t ones that typically came up in casual conversation, or that necessitated an internet search.
The blood seems to be stretching further and further across the room, no matter the effort Gentaro puts into removing all evidence of it, and his options are beginning to run rather thin.
In fact, it seems that he is down to two options entirely; the ever familiar fight or flight. Stay and spend all night cleaning up a mess that he would never be able to wholly rid himself of, or free himself of it entirely.
And when faced with the opportunity, a liar almost always chooses the coward’s way out.
—
The car screeches to a halt in front of him, and Gentaro at least has the decency to flinch.
The driver’s window rolls down to reveal a head of notably memorable blue hair and an angered expression that only Gentaro could be the recipient of.
“What the fuck? You could get hit if you don’t watch where you’re going!”
Despite his anger, it’s concern that finds itself laced in the other man’s tone. Something about that chips away at one of Gentaro’s self-procured barriers, if only by a small portion.
Then, as Gentaro is frozen with his hands placed tentatively against the car’s hood, the other man notices what Gentaro had so stupidly forgotten.
“Wait, is that— Holy shit, you’re bleeding.”
He’s opening the door in an attempt to do something chivalrous, Gentaro’s sure, but Gentaro has the gift of speed on his side this once. In one or two fluid motions, Gentaro has opened the passenger’s side door and shifted himself into a sitting position, forgetting the seatbelt altogether.
The other man stares at him from where he’s halfway out the door, his brain still working to catch up with the situation. He opens his mouth to speak, a frown already forming.
Gentaro cuts him off, “Drive, please.”
—
Dice’s beginning starts with the shift of a gear stick, or maybe it started when Yumeno Gentaro was standing at the hood of his car like a struck deer, glassy-eyed and frightened.
Either way, if this was the beginning, Dice wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful about the ending.
“You never told me where I’m taking you,” Dice mumbles from his spot in the driver’s seat, turning the wheel with practiced motions. In the passenger’s seat, Yumeno Gentaro cages himself into the corner of his seat, gaze following the passing scenery.
His hands are fisted in the fabric of his hakama, white-knuckled to stop the trembling. He’s been so quiet that Dice nearly jumps when the other man finally finds his voice.
“Were you not taking me back to your place?” Gentaro’s gaze is suddenly turned on Dice, confusion written over every inch of his features. Dice finds himself gaping in the face of it.
“Ah, and here I thought we had hit it off so well,” Gentaro sighs, moving a hand to rest his cheek against it in disappointment.
“Hold on, that’s not—”
“That was a lie, though.”
Dice blinks, struggling to maintain focus on the road as he gawks at the small, amused smile Gentaro offers him. Too easy, he already knows.
“Don’t take offense to this, but you’re a real—”
Dice’s insult falls on deaf ears as the car collides with something sturdy and surprisingly human-like.
—
Ramuda feels himself dangerously close to coming undone as he lights up another cigarette.
It’s not the first, second, or probably even the last time that he’s found himself attempting to close the gap between him and — not death, but something more. He always thought he might find it there, whatever he was looking for. Right in that deliciously gray spot between life and death, when he was nearly gone but not quite.
He never did.
Were he the type for admissions, he might confess that he was starting to lose heart.
Instead, he tilts his head back to rest against the lamppost, flicking ashes onto the sidewalk and attempting to ignore the overwhelming buzz of alcohol in his veins and the urgency to do something with all of the pent up energy tucked beneath his skin. To do something worthwhile in a world that had only ever tasted stale when he swallowed it whole.
And despite all of his preconceptions and misgivings, there was something there, he was sure of it. In every moment he teetered dangerously close to some made-up ledge before being pulled back by his own self-preservation. In every moment that he got a taste of something so revolting that he found it hard to pull away.
He had never been one for moderation, after all. If the world had something to give away, then what was the point in taking only a portion of it?
He would have all of it or nothing at all.
—
It’s Gentaro that Dice checks on first, eyes comically wide as he assesses Gentaro’s state for any blood that hadn’t been there previously. That hadn’t been wiped down with a handkerchief that Dice had fished out of the backseat, smelling damningly of perfume.
“Hey,” Dice starts as Gentaro turns to him bleary-eyed, waving off his concern. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“I have a good suspicion that I’ll live,” Gentaro offers up, coughing into his elbow.
“Good,” Dice breathes out before remembering the situation they’re in. He scrambles in an effort to get the door open, stumbling out of the car on unsteady legs. He pauses when he sees the frail form sprawled out on the pavement, pink locks streaked with blood.
“No way…”
Dice rushes forward, only slowing in his urgency when the much smaller man pushes himself into a sitting position, revealing injuries that started and stopped at flesh wounds.
To make matters worse, he has the nerve to laugh.
—
Ramuda hears the car before he sees it.
The rev of an engine that carries from blocks away, all shiny and new. Its tires squeal against the pavement each time it jerks to a halt at stop lights or stop signs, and the windows are rolled down far enough for Ramuda to hear a pair of voices spilling out.
It wasn’t this particular car or this particular moment that defined what happened next.
It was the numbness, really. The pure desire to find something worth chasing, or something that didn’t rot or shrivel after too much exposure.
Contrary to everything else, Ramuda was made up of endings. The end of something that wasn’t meant to last between the four of them, the end of Jakurai’s patience when he had long since grown tired of nurturing Ramuda’s vitriol, and the end of whatever was left of Ramuda’s idealism, had there ever been any in the first place.
Despite this, Ramuda had never been searching for an ending.
In fact, at this moment, he had only been looking to cross the street.
—
Ramuda sits up to find his hands bleeding from where they had scraped against the pavement, his head throbbing from where it had collided with the curb, and an unfamiliar man making his way towards him with purpose.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?! You saw us coming!”
Ramuda blinks, a perfect facade of innocence that the other man couldn’t hope to penetrate.
“Eh? I did?”
“Wh— Of course you did! You looked right at us.”
“Mmm, I don’t remember that.”
The other man’s patience had clearly reached its limit, the tell being the balled up fist at his side that was becoming more and more white-knuckled with each addition to the conversation.
It’s soothed by a simple, “Dice,” from a man a few feet back, features nearly impassive as he regards Ramuda with what seems to be piqued interest.
“Are you alright?”
Ramuda examines each of his injuries, pulling together a total of too many scrapes, a few bruises, minor bleeding, and the surprise of no broken bones.
“Hmm…” Ramuda tilts his head, assessing the two men before him with careful consideration, his eyes lighting up with each new aspect he discovers (the blood splattered across one man’s hakama, or the meaning behind the mismatched car and owner).
“That depends! Can I get a ride?”
The two men exchange similar glances.
—
Gentaro is grateful for the distance between himself and Ramuda, whom Dice had exiled to the backseat in a resigned huff. Despite what little interactions had occurred between the three of them, somehow Gentaro already knows that Dice could have spent all night sat against the curb arguing and Ramuda would have still gotten his way.
From where he sits in the passenger’s seat, glancing out the window in silent contemplation as his companions bicker between themselves, he feels an insistent tug given to his seatbelt.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear at your side, leaning over the shoulder of a car’s leather seat and smiling far too hungrily.
“Did he hit you too?”
“Wh— Shut up!”
Ramuda waves Dice off with the flick of a hand, already far too comfortable in between the two of them than Gentaro would have liked.
“It’s just that,” Ramuda pulls the lollipop he had been talking around from his mouth, using it to gesture to all of Gentaro. “You’re, like, to~tally bloody. So I figured it was a common occurrence!”
Dice starts to counter when Gentaro cuts him off with a raised hand.
“He did,” Gentaro says solemnly as Dice balks at him. “Tragic, really. Who would have thought that Dice would wind up indebted to two victims of his negligent actions?”
“Hey, quit! Don’t go spouting shit like that to him, he’ll believe it!”
“Of course, that was a lie,” Gentaro relents, nodding in Dice’s direction. Dice, in turn, lets out a petulant huff, fishing into the pocket of his jacket for a cigarette.
From somewhere behind them, their newest companion lets out a bright laugh, smile full of promises as he studies the two of them with an eagerness that Gentaro has yet to comprehend.
“You two are really interesting!”
—
The hangers clatter as Ramuda stands on tip-toes to drape the garments over the dressing room’s door, as cheerful as he is demanding.
“Try those on next, okay? And show me this time!”
As Gentaro pulls them from their perch and begins to sort through them, he realizes with unmistaken disappointment that they’re all the same as the last pile Ramuda had tossed at his feet: as fashionable as they are form-fitting.
Perfect, were it not for their intended recipient.
“Ramuda,” Gentaro breathes out in soft exasperation, examining the least offending articles he could manage to salvage.
“Aw, come on,” Ramuda whines from the other side of the door, undeterred. “We’ll find something waaay better later! Besides, you’re not really in a position to complain, you know.”
The worst part was that Ramuda was right. Any argument he would have made would have fallen on deaf ears, and for good reason. After all, Gentaro couldn’t exactly go wandering around in a blood-stained hakama for the remainder of his days. Dice’s jacket had done a decent job of concealing him long enough for Ramuda to wrangle him into a dressing room, but that wouldn’t last forever.
If he was going to continue on like this, there were concessions that needed to be made. Parts of himself that he might have to leave behind, or that might be born anew.
Gentaro wrinkles his nose as he slips a sweater over his head, with a looser pair of trousers in tow.
When he opens the dressing room door, it’s to Ramuda’s critical gaze and insistent hands. He spins and turns Gentaro with little regard for the other man, hmm’ing and ahh’ing until he steps back with a satisfied grin.
“See? Not so bad, riiight?”
Gentaro makes a noise that could be described as ‘dissatisfied.’
However, Ramuda approaches Gentaro’s demonstration of a particularly petulant child as he does most things: he pays it no mind.
Instead, he shoves Gentaro’s forgotten clothes into his bag and loops his arm through Gentaro’s as if they had been best friends all their life.
Gentaro has long since abandoned the energy to recoil from any action that Ramuda might take. After all, he’s learning that it’s not the snake itself that he should be watching out for, but its bite.
“Well, I’m sure Dice will like it at least!”
He feels Ramuda’s grip tighten against his arm, urging him to react.
“One can only hope,” Gentaro comments as Ramuda weaves the pair of them through a department store he’s unfamiliar with. “I couldn’t bear to face rejection from Dice, after all.”
Ramuda’s grip loosens, but his smile is sharper than ever.
—
Dice leaves the two of them alone with the excuse that he’s going out for a smoke, turning tail to leave Gentaro in the pit of vipers once more. Not that Dice, as earnest and as genuine as they come, had any idea.
Ramuda twirls the hotel key around his finger in a mesmerizing motion, guiding Gentaro up staircases and down concrete balconies until they’ve reached the room that matches the faded number on the key’s tag.
Ramuda is busy fiddling with the lock when a shoulder brushes against Gentaro, an apology falling short in the shared space between the two of them. The man seems to jerk to a halt, eyes narrowed as he gives Gentaro a cautious once-over. Then, recognition sparks.
“You’re that author.”
Gentaro’s blood runs cold.
“I’m not sure who you’re referring to,” Gentaro lies, knitting his brows together in what he hopes is a convincing imitation of confusion.
“The one on the news,” the man continues, this time with more conviction. “The one they’re looking for.”
“I’m sorry, you really do have the wrong—”
It’s then that Gentaro feels the man’s fingers encircle his wrist, and not for the first time in the past few days, Gentaro finds himself cornered in every conceivable way. Behind him, the balcony’s railing presses into his back uncomfortably.
“Let go, please,” Gentaro insists politely, attempting a weak tug of his arm.
“Hey!” The man’s calling out to no one in particular, voice frantic as he tries to attract the nearest passerby. “Someone get me— Dammit, someone get me a phone! Call the—”
Gentaro happens to free himself at the most opportune moment.
There’s a sudden unsteadiness to the man’s movements, and then he’s toppling over the railing, hands grasping at air. The result is something between a thump and a crack.
Ramuda stands where he once stood, arms partially outstretched and gaze following the body’s trajectory. When Ramuda's eyes lift to meet Gentaro’s, he finds nothing but a hall of mirrors. One emotion reflecting another emotion reflecting another.
Gentaro has yet to discover which of them is authentic.
“It was an accident,” Ramuda says far too pleasantly, arms falling to position themselves behind his back.
Somewhere behind Gentaro, a set of footsteps come to a halt.
“I know,” Gentaro says carefully, turning to meet Dice’s gaze.
To his credit, Dice stomachs the situation far better than Gentaro could have hoped. His expression is nothing if not horrified, but he has yet to go running for the hills.
After a moment, Dice exhales a breath that he seems to have been holding for some time.
“Yeah,” he murmurs in disbelief. “It was an accident.”
—
The car stinks of rot.
Whether it was Gentaro’s long forgotten blood-stained clothing, the guilt of what had transpired, or some nearby roadkill, he had yet to surmise.
In the backseat, Ramuda has positioned himself near the open window, pink locks cupping his cheek as he leans halfway out the window, laughter spilling out in response to Dice’s various (and rather loud) complaints.
Gentaro is unable to look away.
Of course, Gentaro has quickly learned that Amemura Ramuda has a natural aptitude for matters that should rarely concern him. So of course he’s caught, stuck between pride and self-preservation as Ramuda’s gaze snaps to meet his, smile stretching around his lollipop; a Mesphistopheles facsimile.
Before Gentaro can offer a segue, Dice speaks up, his fingers anxiously tapping away at the leather of the steering wheel.
“You never told me where we’re going.”
“Hmm, well…”
Ramuda leans forward, settling himself between the two of them as comfortable as can be. And Gentaro supposes he is, because he and Dice have found themselves shying away less and less with each passing moment.
He pulls the lollipop from his lips with a punctuated pop, meeting each of their gazes with one that’s full of promises.
“Let’s bet on it.”