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“You want to learn how to use my illusions?” Ramuda blinks up at Gentaro wide-eyed. Of all the things he’d expected when Gentaro had come up to his perch at his workstation, hands brushing and all-too-poised for a difficult conversation, this wasn’t one of them. He waves his free hand around, brushing the problem away like eraser shavings from his sketch. “Just mimic it!”
“But that relies on you taking a verse before mine,” Gentaro points out, rightfully. Ramuda crosses his arms and kicks out his feet, just to be contrary. He knows Gentaro won’t be so easily dissuaded.
“Then you should just let me do it!”
Gentaro stares him down blandly. “I do imagine that would defeat the point.”
Ramuda huffs, taps his pencil against the page. So he wants another skill. Maybe he took the loss a little harder than Ramuda had thought. He hums. Then does it again, louder. In the corner of his eye, Gentaro shifts on his feet. “...Two skills?”
“Is that impossible?” asks Gentaro, who should know very well that it is not. Rare, and practically useless for most people who bother to try anyway. Mastering a skill is putting yourself on display. Baring a soul to the adoring crowds and hoping they don’t read too much into from where that power stems. A second will never be as true as the first.
Ramuda sizes Gentaro up. He is as he always is--searching and earnest. Too much so for someone who knows that the full truth is still far from his grasp. He sighs, immediately defeated. If anyone fits the bill, Ramuda supposes it’s him. “Nope! Though it’s super hard.”
“But achievable?”
Now that Gentaro’s been given his piece of hope, it’s too late to back out now. Ramuda’s basically given him the okay. All that remains is to convince Gentaro never to follow up. And the best way to do that, Ramuda has found, is to immediately cause a distraction.
“Dice couldn’t do it!” Ramuda teases, grabbing a piece of gum from the table and pelting Dice with it affectionately. He intentionally aims wide--trying to skirt just above the couch--but Dice’s hand flies up and snatches it in midair before popping it into his mouth.
“‘M not interested anyway,” Dice says, and flops back down. Ramuda smiles at him brightly, meaning every bit of it. Good old Dice. Accepting secrets without drive to press for their answers. “Though. Seriously. Ramuda? You’re gonna teach?”
Ramuda crosses his arms a second before deciding to point an accusatory finger in Dice’s direction instead. “I’m a great teacher!”
Well. That’s what he’d been told, anyway. Once upon a time, in a world far, far away. By people who have doubtless revised their opinion a dozen times over, and never for the better. Still, Ramuda speaks it as truth. It’s the last thing he’d known, after all.
“Huh. Seriously?” Dice seems surprised, but impressed. “Damn. Shoulda practiced with you more. Gimme tips sometime.”
“Dice doesn’t need tips! Right, Gentaro?”
For a split second, Gentaro seems surprised at the pivot, but he recovers in time to slide Ramuda a sly glance before joining in on the game. “Unless you can provide gambling tips, I doubt he has anything left to improve on.”
“Hey!” Dice shouts, springing up from the couch, head turning between them wildly as he decides whether he wants to process the compliment or the insult first. “Just try and beat me in a game before you go around giving me tips.”
Ramuda and Gentaro don’t bother to hide the grin they exchange. Teaching can wait for another day. Because tonight--they have a gamble to be winning.
Ramuda had been told he was a good teacher, back in a different age. That said, this isn’t quite the same. Pushing someone to find their flow is one thing, but showing someone how to bend their words to sound more like his is something he’d never anticipated having to do. And Gentaro, of course, seems determined to start this off on the right foot.
“So? How do I go about this?”
He holds his mic, but it’s not yet on. Ramuda’s not quite sure he’s ever seen Gentaro quite so unsure of what he’s doing. Not even early on in their team, when he’d been in over his head investigating him but hadn’t quite yet realized to what extent. Though it’s fine, Ramuda rationalizes, because he doesn’t have to succeed this time, either.
“First, you have to decide!”
“Decide?”
“On what you want to focus on first!”
Gentaro levels him that unimpressed stare again. Ramuda grins up at him, trying to remember just how he’d gotten into this situation, anyway. And though he sighs, Gentaro pushes through the conversation doggidly. “What are my options?”
Ramuda thinks a second, then begins ticking them off his fingers. “Weeeeeell? Visuals! The obvious one, right? You make people see things that aren’t there! Or there’s sensation! Making someone feel like they’re falling into the dark. Like they’re hearing all the sounds in the world at once! Or making them feel like they can’t feel anything at all.”
Or like they’re being shot in the head.
Ramuda blinks, and lets none of that thought show on his face. Ultimately, at least, the goal is to combine all of them. To make something more realistic than reality. Something dazzling enough that the victim will never be able to look away, even to what’s right before them. “It’s your choice!”
“Do you have a recommendation for me?”
And yet he won’t choose. Ramuda presses a finger to his lips and hums. The sky above Gentaro’s left shoulder, he thinks, is pretty today. Maybe that’s what he’ll do for his next collection. A whole set of designs all based off the sky. Blue, orange, red, white, black. He’ll call it Stella, and the preorders will sell out in thirty seconds flat.
“Feeling,” he says, finally. Gentaro tilts his head ever-so-slightly, a strand of his bangs fluttering just out of place.
“Ramuda. When all of this is about feeling, you have to be a bit more specific.”
He fixes Ramuda with that vaguely frustrated glare again. Not angry, just aware that he’s being kept out of the loop. Ramuda’s beginning to grow very familiar with it. But he still ignores it, if only because acknowledging it means he has to acknowledge that last little bit of loneliness in it, too.
“Not thaaat kind of feeling! I mean emotion! Happiness. Or sadness. Or anything you can think of.”
“...Is that really useful?”
Ramuda pauses. Just a breath. Not even long enough to consider his next words.
“You’re good at it.”
And for them, it seems that it’s enough.
Or it’s something close to it, anyway. Because for all his enthusiasm, they haven’t hit anything close to results. Ramuda shakes his head. “Not like that. It’s about emphasis! Remember what I said? You need to find words that mean the feeling that you want! Don’t imply to me what I’m supposed to feel. Show me. Directly as you can.”
“My words don’t have enough focus?” Gentaro crosses his arms. The tiny frown crossing his lips is the start of an offended pout. When the journey is half the appeal of his stories, Ramuda bets this is the first time anyone’s told him he meanders too much.
Ramuda tosses him a water bottle and repeats, “They’re not direct enough!”
“It isn’t better to hide your intentions?”
Ramuda laughs. Mostly at him. Gentaro definitely realizes, but is gracious enough not to say anything. “Of course it is!”
“Then why--”
Ramuda waves a finger in front of his nose. “Basics, Gentaro! Basics!”
Gentaro downright pouts. He hides it quick behind a dainty sip of water that’s not nearly enough for the way his throat must be aching, but Ramuda still sees. He tries his very best not to keep laughing, but it’s a losing battle. Gentaro, very kindly, does not comment.
Though he understands the frustration. Gentaro is good at this whole words thing. There’s not a person in the world that would deny that. But this isn’t entirely about lyrics. Ultimately, a mic battle’s about offence, going on the attack and doing your opponents in. It’s just the route that gets there that might vary.
But illusions aren’t about making people hurt. They’re about making people feel.
That’s why this isn’t going to work, Ramuda thinks, though he keeps it to himself. When Gentaro fails, he’s free to blame it all on Ramuda’s slipshod teaching. His curiosity will be dampened, if not sated, and they’ll go on as they always have. For better or worse, this is how it must be.
....
Except there’s a chain around his ankle. Ramuda blinks down at it. The chain hadn’t been there just a moment before. In fact, it had taken Ramuda a moment to even register its sudden appearance. He twists around absently, observing. He jumps up and down--there’s no weight to it. The links rattle, a phantom of sound, then vanish as his toes hit the ground. But just as he does, he feels it. Just a tiny prickle of sensation, a tiny spike of dread. A weight in his chest like a marble in his lungs, clattering against his ribs with his breath. It’s gone almost as soon as he realizes it’s there, but it makes the next breath sweeter all the same.
It’s not even close to enough.
“You did it!” He smiles up at Gentaro with pride that feels far more honest than it should have.
“I did it,” Gentaro echoes vacantly. He blinks, then reaches up as if to rub sand from his eye. Ramuda nods in understanding. Illusions always leave a line to their weaver like a thread, looped around their finger. It takes time to acclimate yourself to the double vision. And really, Ramuda doesn’t need to be there for that. Not when any old punching bag would do. So he steps back, pockets his mic, and says, “So you can keep practicing, and--”
“Ramuda?”
Step, step, step.
“Mm-hmm?”
Step, step, step.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
Freeze.
Ramuda turns, and Gentaro is smiling. Sly as a fox and clever as one, too. When his next words leave his lips, it’s clear he’s thought exactly about how to make Ramuda stay.
“I don’t think I’ve learned nearly enough. What’s the next thing you can show me?”
It becomes their routine.
They meet at Ramuda’s studio, treat themselves to snacks and a particularly circular bit of conversation before heading to the back alley to practice a while before deciding on dinner, calling along Dice more often than not.
If he hadn’t been making such alarming progress, then Ramuda would’ve said that the entire proposition was just an excuse to spend more time with him. But the thing is. Once he’s grasped the theory? Gentaro takes to things like a fish to water, half-clearing challenges before Ramuda even thinks to present them. The chain becomes a suit of armor, and strength roars like a lion through Ramuda’s heart. Imaginary rain douses the sketchbook clutched in his hands, and sadness wells in his gut even as he snickers at the cliche. He closes his eyes and a whistle rings out like the trains of old, tasting the open air of the platform and aching slowly at the idea of being left behind.
Today, too, Gentaro makes progress in leaps and bounds.
Ramuda ducks his head behind his arm, an attempt to hide the jitter sparking through his gut from showing in his eyes. Gentaro’s words just then--not just his words, but his tone, his flow, the meaning he’d chosen to put to the beat--they’d glowed.
Like each one was spilling from him a river, dancing like the wind about his feet to weave a web between his speakers, threads of gold and green and silver and blue trailing from his fingertips to writhe though the air as galaxies, planetary systems spinning themselves out from the dust.
It’s beautiful, even just in memory.
He hadn’t covered himself to anticipate the attack so much as he’d been dazzled by the vibrancy of the magenta spilling out from his hands a waterfall, inviting him to draw his own influence into the illusion, too. And, simply trusting Gentaro to use it well--he had.
Ramuda opens his eyes, and the last of his breath is stolen away.
He knows this place. He’s never been here, but he knows it as well as a god admiring their handiwork. Moonlit crystals dance before his eyes, glittering dust from the stalagmites like mountains that pierce the abundant skies. Night suits this world; Ramuda tracks down the moon as cool sand shifts under his feet, only to be greeted by two, orbiting each other overhead. They are striking, and just the faintest tone blue.
When he turns to admire the galaxy, his long jacket has turned a color he’s long since vowed never to wear. Its tails brush up the sand around his ankles, pelting it gently against his boots. And though the crystals block his view of the eastern sky, the stars are reflected as captives in their tangents. Sparkling and bright echoes of ancient stars, billions of light years away. Ramuda traces a finger along the crystal and ponders at a dark spot, wondering what new star might dwell out of sight in the blackened sky. But just as he does, the crystals begin to shift, sliding away from his touch. Immediately Ramuda knows what this means--
The dead stars part for their true god.
“Gentaro!”
The nights on such a desolate planet are cold. In this life, Ramuda no longer feels such things. Just another tangential piece of humanity he’d lost in his unending search. But Gentaro certainly must, the way he’s been draped in furs and precious silks embellished with gently swaying gold. They clink together like windchimes at his approach. It’s a beautiful sound. High and clear and enchanting as the one who’d created it.
Gentaro smiles at him, motioning wide as if to show off his home. Ramuda twirls around once more, taking it all in. “So this is how you see it?”
Gentaro trails a finger along a jagged crystal’s edge. Ostensibly, he’s checking the quality of his work. But really, it’s just an excuse not to meet Ramuda’s gaze. “Different than you imagined?”
Ramuda shakes his head, sending his hair fluttering wild through the falling glitter. “Nope! Actually… I think it looks just like what I saw when I read your story!”
Ramuda doesn’t misread the pride Gentaro smiles with, then. Not the satisfaction that lights in his eyes at the reminder that Ramuda had savored every word. That he remembers, and holds them close still. The affection dancing in his expression is palpable as the galaxies reflected around him. Ramuda deflects quickly.
“All we’re missing is the ship!”
“I think His Highness may have run off with that one,” Gentaro laughs, waving his hand into the vast expanse. There are no resources left on this planet. It is a desolate place, made of bandits whose only hope is the doomed who crash upon its inhospitable shores. And in this moment, they are the only two upon it. ( I should show him how to make people see phantoms, thinks Ramuda, distantly, just like his name.)
“Then we’ll just have to chase him down and take it back!” It’s just a hypothetical, and Ramuda hardly thinks it through. But Gentaro laughs, the start of a story already spinning its way through his thoughts. It looks good on him, Ramuda decides. It makes him look alive in this lifeless world.
“Indeed.”
He doesn’t feel the cold. He hasn’t been able to for centuries. But when Gentaro takes his hand to switch off the mic still curled in it--certainly, what Ramuda feels then is warmth.
When the illusion breaks, Gentaro still has his hand. They are both warm, now. But Gentaro has always felt more real. More solid. Grounded in reality in a way that Ramuda has never been afforded. It’s nice. And it’s time for it to end.
“Gentaro, you know..?” Ramuda begins, making Gentaro lean in close in anticipation of his words. “I don’t have anything left to teach you!”
“Surely--”
But Ramuda cuts him off with a shake of his head. “Really really don’t have anything left! All that’s left is practice! Lots and lots of practice!”
Gentaro doesn’t bother to hide his frown. Ramuda meets him there with steady determination. There will be nothing else to this. They’re on dangerous enough territory as it is. But this time, Gentaro does not relent.
“Then just one more,” asks Gentaro, just a hint too proud to beg as he brandishes his mic again, “A final verse, to prove to you what I’ve learned.”
Don’t accept. His instincts scream at him to back away--to leave this where it is, to end this battle before it begins. But it’s not a battle, he reminds himself. This is just professional curiosity. Something Gentaro has to do before he’s satisfied. Nothing more.
“Okay,” he says, finally pulling his wrist back from Gentaro’s grip. “Okay, that’s fine.”
Gentaro’s relief is palpable. Though it does nothing for the instincts warning him to retreat, to take back his word, to turn one of Gentaro’s favorite phrases on him and pretend it was all a lie no matter how much that would hurt them, something in Ramuda relaxes, too.
“But Gentaro?” Ramuda says, stepping up on tiptoe, closing the distance between them until there’s nothing left but a gasp and a whisper--”If you’re going to make someone believe in what isn’t there, then first you have to know what they want. ”
Gentaro can’t hide the sharpness of his breath. “What they want, hmm...?”
Ramuda nods, doesn’t pull back an inch. “Mm-hmm. So make me see something fun, okay?”
And only then does he finally break away, skipping back to his place with arms thrown wide, inviting the attack with promise of no resistance. If this is Gentaro at his best, then Ramuda wants to feel that power for himself. It might, after all, be the only thing he ends up leaving behind.
Ramuda knows he’s made a mistake from the moment he opens his eyes. He’s face-up in a land of smoke, a man-made darkness so great that it swallows up the sky as explosions rock the earth. It’s a war zone. Not a terribly realistic one--Ramuda would know--but what Gentaro must imagine one to be. Something in him aches: a pain in his chest, adjacent to his lungs. He’ll be feeling that for a while.
Gentaro might actually have knocked him unconscious. That’s embarrassing. But in a familiar, not-so-distant way, Ramuda can’t help but feel proud. He doesn’t just pick anyone to teach. This is the proof he hasn’t chosen wrong.
His instincts implore him to stay down; for the time being, Ramuda sees fit to oblige. Going any further in is dangerous. If he stays here, he can wake himself up in no time. But. There is a beat in his ears like a heart, like a ticking clock. The mechanical and the organic, woven together in soft harmony at odds with the war in the trenches beyond. It drives him to his feet. And as he stands, he catches it out of the corner of his eye--a hint of purple, weaving between the lines marching off to war.
Gentaro is there.
Something dangerous sparks in him, driving his feet forward one step, then two. His boots hit harsh against the parched, pockmarked land--and then he’s off in a sprint, chasing the line of the damned. The wooden soldiers move so terribly slow, and yet they stand unyielding against Ramuda’s approach. Splinters catch in his palms as he shoves his way though, chasing that hint of a song Gentaro’s left behind.
He pushes through the line and the scenery shifts, blurs before his eyes in his favored turn of phrase, inverted and warped. And, as if a brush was moving elegant over the page, it snaps to form again. He knows this place. Even more intimately than the dark planet of his dreams. This is Shibuya in all its glory.
The scramble is often crowded; tourists flock to it in droves just as natives traverse its crosswalks with steps gone blind to the marvel of it all. But this is something different. This is a crushing wall of humanity, the world come to celebrate the new year in a breathless lament of noise. Ramuda grits his teeth and presses his hands to his ears, hoping to block out the din if only with the rush of his own pulse. He dares not duck his head. Not when he’ll lose what little height he has.
Where are you? he thinks, thinking to shout but finding his throat closed up with the taste of salt from the ocean waves. Where are you running?
He closes his eyes and strains his ears instead, searching for the beat he’d lost hidden within the white noise. But just as he thinks he has it, his attention is stolen by the sound of rolling thunder from above.
Black static overtakes the monitors, spilling out into the grey of the sky with a noise that drowns out even the screams. It speaks four words, a refrain that doesn't reach his ears-- alone, alone, alone.
Ramuda shakes his head wild, gaze craning towards the sky. There’s a flash of purple, somewhere ahead in the crowd. Gentaro is still here.
Let me through, thinks Ramuda, though his demands change nothing. He digs through his pockets, but they’re empty of anything that could help him here. A path, all he needs is--
As if responding to his thoughts, the passerby dissolve. Great lights burst from their hearts, wooden bodies turning deep red to contain those brilliant stars burning fierce through the center of the scramble.
It is a purified zone, keeping the waves of the crowd at bay. It is, by all common sense, a trap. And yet Ramuda knows it for what it is. The lanterns guide his way. Driven by the beat of his heart, Ramuda runs on.
It is sunrise, drowning out the stars over the 109. The city crackles, but is not yet awake. All the warmth Ramuda feels from it is distant, a blaze growing subdued as it burns through its fuel. He kicks his feet over the edge of the roof, not knowing when he arrived but savoring the view all the same.
There is a phantom at his side, a silhouette buzzing black as radio static. A featureless void. To most, it would be a creature of nightmare. But Ramuda is not afraid.
“Sun should be coming up, yeah?” asks the static shaped like a friend, squinting out at the horizon line. He plops himself down at Ramuda’s side, one leg propped up on the wall with one hanging down over the edge.
“Indeed it should,” Gentaro replies, settling down on Ramuda’s other side as the sky turns a cracked pastel in the Tokyo sky.
Ramuda kicks his feet off the side of the 109 and hums as the daybreak melts away into the dark, the light dissolved down to pinpricks of stars above the shattering sky. In the end, it hadn’t mattered after all.
He leans into the shadow’s side and an arm wraps around his shoulders, echoing with the three words he hadn’t been able to hear before. Whispered into the last moments of dark by a phantom all too real.
He turns his head and Gentaro meets him there, eyes lit by the flames of Shibuya burning below. He can take it, if he wants. Gentaro will allow it. No, that’s not right. Gentaro is waiting for it. But just as he lifts his hand--
Sirens blare out behind them; they leap to their feet in alarm. Hands fall to their sides, track for mics they no longer have. This place has never been Shibuya, the only place a group of misfits could truly find their home. This has always been Chuuou’s outer wall, the last barrier to their escape.
The wall shakes beneath their feet; if it is to erase the evidence of their sins, then they will sacrifice even their last defense against the world ending at their doorstep. But that’s fine. Ramuda has never had much time left, anyway. They turn to him---at the end of it all, seeking the leader they’d never really needed.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says, though they’re words spoken far too late. They’ve long since made up their minds to chase him. “You should’ve stayed behind, where I left you. And then you wouldn’t…”
“Fuck that,” says the shadow, with an echo of laughter Ramuda had never meant to know so well. “We bet on you. And we won the whole damn pot.”
Gentaro smiles, amused by the metaphor. “Indeed.This is the last scene, Ramuda. And we can’t have the main character missing from the page.”
Oh, thinks Ramuda, and all the world’s sound cuts out. The sirens, the wail of the wind, the familiar yell of women who couldn’t change their ways. It all vanishes, caught in the echo of Gentaro’s words.
The main character.
He’s spent his whole life being reminded at every turn that he is replaceable. That he means nothing. That his existence is a toy, to be disposed of at the whims of a callous child who’s long since deemed him broken.
They think of me as...
Gentaro was waiting for this. He still is. Slowly, as the wall crumbles at his heels, Ramuda reaches out to take his hand. He traces his thumb over fingers writing their final story before slowly, gently, pressing a kiss to them. To the fingers that wrote Stella. To the person who sees worth in him, even knowing the truth. The wall’s shaking grows worse, but Gentaro’s grip only grows tighter as he laces their fingers together. He will not let go. Not any longer.
The shadow watches on with pride before wrapping them up in an embrace, strong arms around their shoulders a promise that they will not part. It is freedom. It is escape. And beneath their feet, the wall crumbles down to dust.
The world ends, quiet on a Monday morning. And as the world burns, as the walls crumble--Fling Posse falls, marbled feathers bleeding from their wings.
When he blinks the stars from his eyes, Gentaro’s gaze is there to meet him. To pin him in place, stifling every threat he could make before he can think to make it.
“Why?” he croaks instead, still tasting the ocean on his lips. It was no illusion, he realizes. Only a feeling. Only what Gentaro’s reminded him he’s capable of.
“Because we’ve made our choice.”
His answer is simple, but he says it with the weight of the world. Of their futures, tied together with red string.
“Even though you don’t know everything?”
“Even then.”
“Even though I don’t want you to?”
Because he doesn’t, is the thing. It will be best if they never know. If no one knows. If the truth never comes to light and Ramuda can spend the rest of his days pretending that everything is as fine as he wants it to be.
Still, Gentaro’s answer lacks no conviction. “Even then.”
Ramuda won’t tell him. And yet Gentaro knows that. He’s only ever only hoped for otherwise. Because what they both know is this: he’s stopped following Ramuda because he thinks it’ll bring him closer to his truth. Now he follows because he can’t bear the thought of leaving him alone.
Ramuda sinks down against the alley wall, propping an arm on his legs and jamming his forehead into his elbow. This is too much. Far, far too much. For the first time in a long while, the only thing he can manage is silence.
Gentaro’s steps break it, softly as they can. His voice rings low with worry. “...Ramuda..?”
He takes a very, very long breath.
“You’re terrible at making people,” Ramuda accuses, all bark and no bite. “Awful! Terrible. Dice didn’t even look like a person!”
Gentaro huffs. But it’s kind. Amused, perhaps, at his own shortcoming in a plan so otherwise perfect.After all. When he’d clearly been practicing with the person in question, he’d never had the opportunity to try constructing him from scratch. “I think I'll be leaving the illusions to you, from now on.”
“Good,” says Ramuda, still lost for quips. But he does lift his head. And though it’s wordless, it feels like an agreement. No. A promise.
Gentaro reaches out with palpable relief in the loose line of his shoulders, offering him a hand back to his feet. He doesn’t need it. He’s more than capable of springing back to his feet, no matter how unsteady he might feel. But he takes it anyway.
Just to say he did. Just because it’s a nice feeling, letting Gentaro pull him to his feet.
“Shall we call Dice for dinner?” Gentaro asks so very casually, as if they’re not about to run into him conveniently on his way to Ramuda’s studio the second they turn the corner. But it’s all right.
Ramuda nods, and rocks on the balls of his feet as he plucks his wallet from his pants pocket with his free hand. It’s right where it should be, and considerably fatter than it has any right to be. “Dice’s treat!”
They’ll have to talk about this, at some point. About Gentaro’s dedication, and Ramuda’s secrets, and how far the end of the world really is before they hit the point of no return. But that’s the future, Ramuda thinks. For now, a hand in his can simply be because he likes the warmth. A promise that you are not alone can simply be a reassurance that there’s still a future for him, somewhere in these infinite worlds. And his offer to pay for dinner with old winnings can simply be a smile and the faintest hint of affection when Gentaro agrees--“Dice’s treat it is, then.”