Chapter Text
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When Toudou steps onto his usual train, the sky outside is gray and dismal, heavy clouds hanging low to the ground in a smothering dark blanket. Inside the train, everything becomes white and distant, illuminated by cold, pitiless fluorescents. It's entirely unflattering to Toudou's complexion. But Toudou takes the train every morning, and some things simply must be coped with.
He takes a pole like he always does, all the seats in the car already occupied by black-jacketed businessmen in their neatly-pressed suits and by fresh-faced students with their earbuds jammed in. The seats are taken, but the car is still largely empty. Toudou is one of the only people standing in the aisle. He waits for the doors to swish closed as they always do, but before they can, one last passenger bursts in from the other end of the car.
They are one of the loveliest people Toudou has ever been lucky enough to see.
It's a fleeting impression, bound up in that eyeblink glimpse of them darting through the just-closing doors, all in one sweeping step from too-long legs. There's a grace to the motion, a lightness of the person's feet that catches Toudou's attention so it holds. For just the instant before they come to a stop, one hand closing around the nearest pole and pulling them in close, their hair flows out behind them like a flag. In the instant after, it falls around their face, a weeping willow curtain fresh as new leaves, shot through between with vivid autumn red.
They're green and gold and blue all over, dressed like a disaster, like one of those tropical birds from the amazon in full mating plumage. Toudou is staring, he knows it, but he doesn't have the shame to even feign looking away. The train surges into motion, and he has to clutch the pole desperately, lest he be thrown from his feet, lest he be forced to avert his gaze.
It's strange, that he didn't notice such a startling someone on the platform. It's unthinkable, that he might not get to talk to them. He'll be doing them a favor, of course, gifting them with the consideration of his "hello." On such a grim day, who wouldn't welcome a smile from someone like him, bright with charisma and beautiful on his dimple-cheeked face?
They're wearing such a dour look, eyebrows drawn and mouth thinly creased. It's Toudou's absolute duty to lift the spirits of someone with such a natural gift for grace, when they're squandering it with looking soured and put-out. He tells himself so, as the train passes first one station, then the next, bolsters himself up with the certainty of his altruism. It's hardly for himself, if he wants to talk to a pretty person on the train. He's making sure they're only in the best of company.
His hand falls from the pole. He slaps it down against the bar across the nearest seat. He pulls himself forward, a step at a time, tightrope-walks his way across an increasingly crowded car toward the beckoning green head at the train's opposite side, even as the subtle rocking from its surging over the track threatens to disrupt the sureness of his steps. They come into the next station, so abruptly that Toudou slams his hand against the pole opposite theirs to keep himself upright.
He flashes them a sunny smile, all white teeth and crinkled eyes.
They shoot him a puzzled look, all scrunched-up brows and pressed-in lips, as the door to the train whisks open behind them.
A hand reaches in, closes around their wrist, and they let go of the pole they've been holding like a tether. Their shoulders shrug, their hair swings, and as they turn from Toudou it only takes one step to send them out into the dreary dim of an overcast Monday.
Through the doorway, Toudou can see the man still gripping their arm, broad-shouldered but head bowed beneath his pulled-up hood. For a long moment, Toudou doesn't know what has happened, and can only stare out of the train car at two figures hurrying across the platform. His fingers are squeezed too tight around the metal pole; his teeth are clenched too firm against the breath lodged in his throat. He's never seen someone be pulled off a train before. He can't believe he's seeing them disappear even now.
The chime for "doors closing" cuts through the air.
Toudou lets go of the pole that's still grounding him in the ordinary, jumps out onto the platform as the doors close behind his heels.
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Everything is quiet, once Toudou steps from the platform. He's never gotten off at this stop before, doesn't know the area, and is surprised by how remote the station's surroundings turn out to be. Trees come in so close to the rails, looming up around him like they're trying to reach the clouds in the sky, and already Toudou has nearly lost sight of the two figures preceding him into the woods.
He remembers PSAs he's seen in high school, about how if you see something, you should say something.
He doesn't usually look, doesn't pay attention to what everyone else is doing on the trains in the morning, trusts the rest of humanity to take care of itself so he can take care of himself as his number one. But he's looking now, walking fast down the gravel path leading up between the trees, and all he can think is that he didn't even get to ask their name.
He should call the cops, maybe, tell the proper authorities that he saw someone get abducted off a train and aren't they supposed to do something about that? But when he shoots one glance over his shoulder, the train station has already disappeared behind him. There are only the thick, dark trunks of trees closing in all around him, the breathing silence of nature and the shadowed gloom of too much foliage and too much cloud cover looming overhead. He's in the middle of nowhere. The police aren't going to do anything.
They won't do anything for him, either, but Toudou doesn't think about that.
He's young and fit, his legs carrying him easily onward even as the path grows steeper and the incline more intense, the trees clustering so close that he can't imagine making headway into them from off the designated track. He can't see either of the people he thinks he's following, but there's nowhere else for them to go but on. He thinks he should be able to hear the sounds of birds, or small animals, or even just the occasional leaves falling from the trees. Instead, the only noise he hears grating against his ears is the increasingly ragged sound of his own breathing.
Toudou's chest is heaving, when he climbs to the summit and as the way begins to open up around him once again. He almost doesn't notice. Not right away, not when everything is gray and indistinct even under the open expanse of the sky as the trees thin out and the gravel road banks a wide turn around toward its final destination. Toudou slows his steps, walking more leisurely up toward the end of the road.
On each side of the path, large, mossy rocks are posted like sentries, dogging his steps as he approaches the stone gate waiting up ahead. Its sides are crawling with lichen, green and gray and brown so that it almost disappears into the hillside, the only division between wall and sky consisting of the lighter smudge of dove gray hovering just underneath the heavier storm clouds still waiting to burst their guts over the ground below. In the center of the wall is a gatehouse, looking a little more modern with its wide-paned windows and grass-green shutters, its door a polite white mouth peeking out of the stone building.
It's an entire little town, nestled away in the woods far from ordinary society.
Toudou should feel afraid, alone as he is, but he squares his shoulders and straightens his back, marches up to the place where he's sure his pretty stranger must have gone.
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The gatehouse is white inside, the two front windows leaving dirty smudges of light against the pristine tiles making up its floor. Toudou pushes the door shut behind himself, looking around at the large single room unevenly bisected by a long counter of pale blond wood. Everywhere the walls are lined with shelves and cabinets, stuffed with stacks and stacks of what has to be filing, crammed with enough paper to make a powderkeg of the room.
Half of the counter is done up like a desk, the ink smudge of a person sitting behind it impossible to miss, against the pale backdrop of his office.
Toudou strides right over, drops his palm down on the counter with a dully resounding slap, and leans in to ask, "Can you show me inside?"
The man behind the desk shoots him a poisonous glare, maintaining eye contact even as he reaches underneath the counter to rifle between objects Toudou can't see. He pulls out a small wooden box, thumps it on the counter, and delicately turns the metal crank at its one side until a slot on the front spits out the end of a slip of paper.
"If you could take a number," he says, "I'll get to your request at the appropriate time."
His mouth is smiling as he speaks, but there's a subtle viciousness to it – an underlying sense of spite. Toudou glances around the room for a moment – to one side, and then the other, gaze falling on twin benches, each posted beneath one of the front windows in the lone spaces along the walls not occupied by cabinets – before again looking at the gatekeeper in stubborn consternation.
"No one else is waiting," Toudou says. "Couldn't you just... Let me through the gate without giving me a number?"
"Regulations are regulations," the man says. "Everyone has to take a number."
Toudou snatches the slip out of the slot, stares down at it for a long moment. Printed in red on the paper is a vivid numeral three, and he wonders if each of the people he's following really took a slip as well. He wonders if this happens every day – if this sharp-faced man behind his proper little desk puts in a new roll of tape, if people really come to visit this remote, hidden town.
"How will I know when my number is up?" Toudou asks. "You don't have a sign."
"I'll call your number," is what he's told. "Feel free to take a seat."
Toudou stares for a moment longer, eyes narrowed suspiciously at this person in his neat black coat and tiny white bowtie, hair pulled back in a sober ponytail and looking like some kind of butler more than like a gatekeeper. There's a nametag on his jacket, Toudou realizes – cheap white plastic printed with "Teshima Junta" in vivid red ink. Toudou turns away, seats himself with a flounce on the nearest of the benches.
For a moment he tells himself that at least he has a name, so he can take it up with Teshima's superiors about the man's rudeness. But he doesn't know who those superiors might be, and he knows it's an empty threat, best left to die just as quickly as he'd thought it up in the first place.
"This can't be a very busy job," Toudou says, because he can't find it within himself to sit in patient quiet.
"The job is what it is," he's told. "I'm sure your reason for employment is far more important."
Toudou sniffs, but doesn't answer, because he can't say with conviction that it is. He isn't usually disrespectful toward service workers – there's just something about being kept on edge like he's enduring that smacks of the petty flexing of minor power, and he can't help but dislike that.
"What is your reason for entry?" Teshima asks, after a minute has passed. His voice is sharp in the ensuing silence, words crisp and entirely professional.
"I was..." Toudou starts, realizing all at once how strange this is. "I was coming to meet someone. They just came in."
"Ah," Teshima says.
Toudou has never heard a single syllable more loaded with unspoken meaning. As precise as Teshima is, with his regulations and numbered slips, with his too-orderly, pristine office, Toudou can't quite imagine anyone being forced through his gates. Was he wrong, to worry this much after a stranger?
"You should reconsider," Teshima tells him. "There are better meeting places than here."
"Here is the only place we can meet," Toudou insists.
"It would be," Teshima comments, before moving on. "How long will you stay for?"
"For, for the afternoon," Toudou says, deciding on the spot.
If everything is fine, if they came of their own free will and with no evidence of foul play, he won't need longer. If they didn't... Toudou has a very stern tongue in his head and more than a few words he can say on the matter, and he'll march them back out through the gates even quicker than if he left by his lonesome.
"Be sure about that," Teshima says. "This is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to wear out your welcome."
"I'm not sure it's nice even for that," Toudou sniffs, a little insulted.
"I like to think there's a certain rustic charm to the estate," Teshima drawls. "It grows on you, once you've been here a while. But I wouldn't recommend staying."
"What... Kind of place is this?" Toudou asks, a bit warily, not wanting to make it too glaringly obvious that he doesn't belong. "A tourist attraction?"
"You could say that," Teshima says, and he's smiling again, that sliver-smile with thin lips that isn't entirely kind. "Mostly we get day visitors, so you could call it a tour."
"And what else could you call it?" Toudou asks, suspicious.
"Are you bringing anything in that we should know about?" Teshima asks, bypassing Toudou's question entirely. "Any contraband, liquor, weapons? Any hidden agendas?"
Toudou almost thinks he's misheard the last item on the list. "I'm only bringing in myself to talk to somebody, I don't even have a bag. And anyway, do I look like any kind of smuggler to you? That is ridiculous."
"I won't say what you look like," Teshima says, so that Toudou almost chokes in surprise.
"You could stand to be a bit more polite!" he declares, crossing his arms peevishly over his chest.
"I could stand to be a lot of things," Teshima says. "Though standing doesn't make them true. If you're very much certain about your visit?"
"I am," Toudou declares. "Whenever you're done with this whole inquisition, I'd like to go inside."
"Very well," Teshima says. "Admitting one Toudou Jinpachi, for a meeting to last no longer than the afternoon and with greater duration permitted only at the visitor's own assumed risk, as approved by the house of records."
It's a more formal announcement than anything Toudou is expecting, and for a moment he's stunned into silence. Teshima rises behind the desk, taking a few steps to the side to where a gate is set in the counter. He unlatches it from underneath, letting the narrow wooden door swing portentously open.
"Go ahead and come through," Teshima beckons him.
Toudou rises from the bench, a bit haltingly now that he's finally been given permission. But he's come this far – no matter how strange the proceedings, he's not about to leave until he's seen this entire gamble through to its end. He strides up to the gap in the counter and through it, only for Teshima to re-latch the wooden gate behind him.
"Remember," Teshima says, "no one wants to stay longer than they've said. Be sure to come back through my gate by sundown if you know what's good for you."
"Yes, yes, of course," Toudou says, brushing off the warning. "Where's the door to the town?"
Teshima turns, leading Toudou between two rows of filing cabinets lined up on his side of the desk. From the outside, it may have briefly appeared that the cabinets were a solid bulk arrayed directly along the wall, but this proves false. There's a narrow channel between those cabinets and the next row of shelves, and at the end of this path only wide enough for one person to walk abreast is another white wooden door.
"This way," Teshima says, his hand on the door handle.
He pulls it open, and Toudou can see past him to the stone cobbles of a previously-concealed street. It's still gray outside. Teshima is still standing in the way, just enough to one side that Toudou could squeeze past him, if he chose to ignore polite rules about personal space. Standing so close to him, Toudou realizes that he and Teshima are almost the exact same size, the exact same height.
It's only after the door has been shut behind him that Toudou recollects Teshima's announcement, and the fact that he hadn't ever given Teshima his name.
-
The town is just as gray as everything else that day.
The streets are old-fashioned cobbles, uneven underneath Toudou's feet as he slowly walks down the main thoroughfare, away from the gatehouse and with the low bowl of the sky hovering dismally over him. He passes little cottages on each side of him, gray-faced like they too have been hewn right out of the stone and thatched on top with equally dull-looking straw. Toudou wonders for a moment where anyone harvested wheat enough to keep the thatching fresh. It's a lot of effort, for the old-timey, impressively European look.
Everything looks very much the same – the buildings lack variety, and as Toudou makes it farther into the little village, even the people on the street are remarkably identical. It's a dreary day, constantly shadowed by the specter of rain, but the clouds haven't yet opened up. There's no reason for everyone Toudou passes to be wearing their hoods up, nor for them to all be wearing the exact same hood.
It's also quiet, so deathly quiet, just like the woods had been on Toudou's way up the mountainside.
There's no sounds of animals, or footfalls, or breathing, beyond whatever minimal noise Toudou makes himself. Cloaked figures pass him on either side, each with their head bowed and hood pulled close over their face. Toudou can see why Teshima warned him that he wouldn't want to stay. Toudou has never encountered so many rude, self-absorbed people at once in his life.
He's fuming about it, at the impossibility of so many people not even deigning to give him a look of acknowledgment or the minimal greeting comprised in the nod of a head, when his gaze falls toward the feet of the person walking slowly in front of him. The edge of their cloak swings as they move, casting a shadow down on the pavement stones, but a shadow is all there is. There are no feet. The figure is floating over the cobbles like a ghost.
Toudou jogs forward, running past them to walk abreast with the next person moving up ahead. It's another apparition. He sees no feet, no shoes, no indication of what might be propelling it along. He walks in front of it, stepping backward so he can stare into its face, but there is only the shadowed overhang of the hood – Toudou isn't certain he sees anything inside of it.
The figure just keeps approaching, even with Toudou standing right in front of it, as if it might crash right into him if he only dared himself to stop and wait.
Toudou reaches out, and yanks back its hood.
There's nothing underneath. Just shadow, coalesced into amorphous but tangible form, globbed together into shape enough to fill out the cloak. When Toudou stops walking, it sways around the obstruction, continuing to perambulate down the thoroughfare as if nothing had changed at all. He feels lost.
None of them are real. Toudou stands where he is and the figures move around him, making him the pebble dropped in an unceasing tide. He disrupts the flow of their movement but doesn't stop it, until he's maddened enough to reach out and pull back another hood, and then another. The figures don't even react. The fabric droops around their suggested necks at a single pull and Toudou is left to stare at the inky vapor of all of them.
Toudou doesn't know where his lovely mystery stranger has gotten off to, and he's fighting through a sea of ghosts. He hadn't noticed traffic getting thicker at first but it is, too many figures all crowding around him in a bottleneck on the road. They move less surely now, building up into a confused knot like they're trying to navigate past each other and getting into each other's way. Toudou pulls back a few more of their hoods, for no reason better than to prove to himself that this is reality.
He wants to stick his hand through one of their approximations for a head, just to see what will happen, but doesn't quite have the nerve.
Toudou reaches for the next hood in a fit of pique, yanks harder than he knows he has to. He thinks that's why the fabric snags – he was overzealous – but then an arm comes up, and a hand clamps firm around his wrist. He freezes, but it takes him a long moment more to realize that he's not staring at a vague, blackish blob.
He's staring at a closely-cropped head of black hair, in the proper shape and on a proper human form, and as the hand grasping his pulls his fingers away from the man's hood, the person turns so that Toudou is staring into their sober, expectant face. They don't even reprimand him. Just drop his hand, so that he can safely yank it back.
As Toudou is clutching his hand to his chest like the man has burned him, the man pulls his hood back up just far enough to overshadow his forehead, and Toudou realizes all at once that he's the other stranger from the train.
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