Chapter Text
Hajime’s automobile pulled up to the old opera house with a stuttering halt. Once full of life and color, the place seemed dull now, muted under gray skies that never seemed to clear. Everything that had happened there all those years ago seemed like a dream. Or rather, some sort of hellish nightmare.
With some difficulty, Hajime’s nurse and driver helped him from his seat into his wheelchair. They tucked his frail legs into the wooden foot rest, and off they went.
The inside of the theater wasn’t in any better shape than the outside. A layer of dust and cobwebs covered every surface, the lights so dim everything seemed to be in black and white. A scattered group of people stood around a make-shift podium, where an auctioneer was selling a poster for the theater’s production of Hannibal.
Up next was a strange little music box. On top of it sat a monkey in Persian robes, holding cymbals that tapped to the beat of its haunting tune.
Just like Tooru had described.
Hajime wondered if the music box would still be playing when the rest of them were dead.
He immediately signaled to his nurse to raise her hand, offering twenty francs for the music box.
“Twenty? Very good sir. Do I hear twenty-five?”
Before Hajime could respond, a woman standing across the stage raised her hand. Their eyes locked for a moment, widening in recognition of the other. Stray orange wisps colored her otherwise-white hair, but other than that she didn’t seem to have aged a day since Hajime had last seen her. She seemed other-worldly, all-knowing, even more so than she had back in the day.
But still, Hajime would be damned if she beat him to one of the last things that could remind him of his late husband.
At thirty-five francs, he won the bid. As they were leaving, he heard the auctioneer announce the last object- lot 666, a broken chandelier.