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“I see. Okay.”
Elbow on table, hand cupped around the chin with fingers curled under the mouth. Eyes never moving or distracting from the email on the screen. Long face with rocky sides and straight up hair; A perfect rectangular model, stiff and unmoving. The way he reacted to any news was as clinical and as cold as his pure white over-sterilized room.
“‘Okay’? That’s all ya’ gonna give, Wu, huh?”
A closed mouth vague hum acknowledgement in response, left the asker with a raised eyebrow. Claiming to be off for a cigarette and phone call, the asker wiggled his pint-sized body off and promptly disappeared behind the height of the desk. Little prickles of his spiked green hair waddling with a huff and puff. With the door slam, a silence fell on the doctor left still holding his chin.
Wu’s hand could not hold however and slipped off. Face rolling down his arm until his other hand had to stop it hitting the desK. Dead silence, head buried in his biceps, unmoving. No whines, no heavy breathing, just a collapse. It took several minutes of this position for the doctor to pull together anything. Resetting his position, buzz in for a patient.
“Failure is a sign of weakness. For him to lose is a sign that he had made a mistake. I never lose. We never lose. No rock can lose as long as they remain--”
Repeating his mantra, exchanging the words out to say the same thing over and over again, the nurse brought in the next patients file.
“We never really lose…”
The nurse who was halfway out the door clocked her head back to the stiff rock thumbing through the file, but decided to leave it. Men and their sports teams, she pinned down as. Hope had been high since the miraculous recovery of a few of S-City’s players.She gave him a vague gesture that every season is a new cup run, but left without looking back.
“We were far more than a team, than you’d ever know…”
It was true because the carbon people he would treat, the wives of sports stars who would get implants and facelifts laced with Locacaca were always very human about it. Their stadium, designed by a Rock Human, was build on greenery, destroying what once was Rock Human sleeping grounds, only to be insulted further with fake grass for their sports to be played on top. They had no connection to nature, their sports might’ve as well been played on sheet metal, for how fake it all was.
Urban and Doremifaso Latido, were never like that.
In the winter just passed, he'd seen their proper sport. Up on the cliffs, the old abandoned ways to the ski-resorted mountain that now served as a farm. Devoid of life Urban Gureillia would be in a constant battle there. Churned up concrete, rock and snow, the ball that Doremifaso would chase. The way Urban would jump and bounce off the cliff. Tomoki Wu, when recalling him back because once more he was ignoring Poor Tom’s phone calls, would watch. The way he’d go from gripping the cliffs to gripping the tree, just for Doreimifaso to attack the bottom of the tree, but then for Urban to redirect the falling tree...The strength of what was closest to a warrior of the Rock Humans had an exceptional awareness and stamina. Tomoki Wu would watch and wait for him until Doremi caught the scent and would come to him for a bit of seaweed and a pet across his head.
“Poor Tom has been asking you return..,”
Doremifaso licked Wu's hand and nuzzled it’s snow coated head around and around, constantly crushing the doctor’s right foot with it’s treads. Urban himself, drenched his sweat, dirt and snow himself pulled up his military shirt over his head and used it to wipe his glasses. Wu, who often found himself constantly cold in the hospital, was astounded that Urban could be so brazen in this cold.
“Please stay warm. We do not virus getting on the specimens”
“Well, there’s nuh-one better to see instead”
Ignored completely, Urban whistled for Doremifaso to open, offering Wu a quicker ride back instead of taking the bus. Either option was indignant but, at least in his shard form nobody would talk to him. Laying down his shirt on the snow, Urban waitined for Wu’s Doctor Wu to break apart and turn himself to tiny fragmented shards inside the shirt and dispersed himself with Urban’s shirt inside the top of Doremifaso. Clipping the back of his mask and grumbling that the back stra[s didn’t have another shirt to connect to, climbed into the back of the rock animal.
“Are you comfortable? The wet earth means we can move faster, but the city concrete is still rock solid.”
When Tomoki Wu said he did not want anyone to talk to him it was he didn’t want any carbon lifeforms to talk to him. Urban treated him respect and their differences in knowledge, speciality and physicality was respected. Carbon-Humans would only seee appearances or statuses and be in a constant viollent competition, but as Tomoki Wu snuggled his fragments in Urban’s shirt, enjoying the gentle vibrations of the earth. This was his judgement on the lower shipping ring - they lost their synchronicity, driven by humanity's individualism and competition. They could never lose, as they were always at one from the earth to the heavens.
Wu’s hand shook just for a second above the Rokakaka plant, and the fragile dipstick was shattered against the cabinet. The noise was loud enough that a nurse had entered a part of the outer office, but had not seen the hidden wall to the Rokakaka harvesting tank. For once in a long time, he saw a mere droplet of his blood from the shard. He made no noise, no help, and did not yield to the pain, but his blood was such a deep red. Opposite to the blues and greens of his hair and rocks, disgusting against the sheet white.
Did Urban ever see his own blood? Did it disturb Urban as much as it did for him?.
Rock Humans do not have companions, they are solitary and work only in synchronised squads to mutual survival. It is pragmatic, survival based and a completely different solidary structure in comparison to the humans.
But for Wu, just in that second, the idea that someone he had spent decades with had their blood spilled had made his own spill. He would not hesitate to punish incompetent rocks, and had scolded the shipping ring group.
“They're just petty drug dealers! Their incompetence will lead a damn paper trail!”
Was Urban right on that?
As Wu covered the chipped part of his finger, he wondered. Poor Tom had connections with the Higashikata elders, whereas Wu barely kept in contact with a married-in woman too drowned in herself to understand. He believed her to even be standless, so of complete ill use outside of the fragments of gossip that trickled through. Poor Tom would not be angry at Urban’s Death, he cannot even muster up anger at a woman who sold his wallet, but Poor Tom always had a backup plan. A weak man, infected with the human’s way of thinking, would acquire the branch and set their course on straight.
It is a shame that Urban would never see the fruits of his labour.
A true person, one with nature. The meetings to hear Poor Tom’s sleazy info chasing carbon suckling escapades would be tiresome. Urban covered his waterings and feedings for the planets multiple times a week. Now that would naturally fall onto Wu‘s hands, as well as the tasks of recording information and archives. Perhaps Urban did not leave a paper trail to Tomoki Wu himself, but a literall paper and work trail that would pile up on his desk. Oh to have someone once more like Urban. Straight and direct as Doremifaso’s tracks. The one who would comment on the humans with him…
They’d be sitting in the cafe for visitors to the hospital, still in their uniforms. Both had their own natural water bottles in hand, surrounded by the thick stench of desperation and coffee. Urban’s gritted face would be telling stories of the weird diets humans have. The amount of people he’d have to send down to have a proper x-ray or need something actually removed that shouldn’t be eaten.
“They like carbon so much! They stick their entire stomachs out!”
Doctor Shimasato’s laugh was coarse and ugly, hit Tomoki Wu like a wet flannel in his face. Doctor Wu would return, with another quip.
“Humans need to expand, never ceases, does it? I have served a woman whose breasts were the size of her head.”
Punctuated with a drink of water followed by a crunch of seaweed, Tomoki Wu waited for Ryo’s laugh to settle down.They’d sit there on the upper levels of the cafe diagnosing and guessing what the Rokaka would exchange with the people coming in and out. Downing immense amounts of water, laugher spraying crumbs of seaweed and oats over the table. Wondering how much yet they could scam off two competing human women, they spied one of Wu’s patients, a short stack woman who would drag her surfer boyfriend ear-first through his consultation room. Ryo was the one who spotted her, eyes as sharp and vigilant as always.
“I want to make a wager. I’ve spied on her before. She’s in the same group of women as Mitsuba of Higashikata. I shall wager a month’s worth of commuting that she will spend more money on her appointment tomorrow than her down there.”
Tomoki Wu looked interested and peered through a water bottle at Ryo, trying to discern how he knew such a wager or what would be his benefit.
“And what if you win? I, Tomoki Wu, never lose and these are my patients…”
Ryo asked for one thing only: access to Wu’s seaweed roll storage. Often locked away underneath his desk stacked behind files and books so no one dare look or touch it. Not even janitorial staff following the crumb trail.
The same janitorial staff who didn’t care that much about either of them, would look and ask if they were gonna eat all day, and sometimes they could! They didn’t need to sleep! They could work through the night in tandem. When Tooru was writing research papers in the upper offices, Wu would be recording his archival and readings in the middle and Urban would be training with Doremifaso in the lower levels. This system, the living organism of the hospital, was a beautiful sight to Wu. He’d compliment Ryo at that table on how his recon work around their test subject at the shrine provided extremely useful insight for him. Then that information
was translated, transcribed with doses and the rock human physiology translated to human physiology by Wu and then finally sold to the world and clients by the younger Tooru.
In sync with nature.
To become in sync with each other.
To become in sync with humans.
This way, they were never swayed underneath a carbon’s thumb like a certain younger Rock Human.
“Tonight Rokakaka feeding is Tom’s…”
Ryo broke their flow to pop out a question, Wu held the seaweed between his mouth with a popped eyebrow.
“You’re working, tonight right? Doremifaso is shedding and rebuilding his casing. I can cover the evening and night.”
Tomoki Wu crunched, with an awkward off balanced bite and didn’t seem to bother to chew either thing around before swallowing it. It was true, neither of them had much of a life outside their work and craft, but that’s because they had already had decades to be wild. Ryo’s love for nature was extensive, never breaking. He could just take a bus to the shrine, or the fruit orchards, or even the meditation pine.
This choice was illogical.
Closing the hidden panel of the Rokakaka tank, Wu’s hand governed over the saved profiles and system identification. Just in case someone took Urban’s thumb, maybe he should wipe the data, or at least hide Urban’s human name of Ryo Shimosato, at least give him that rest, and so no others would ask him. They could pretend like he never existed and their departments were so apart that it was just mistaken identity.
The cut finger curled, though and gave a sharp pain from being outstretched and retracted too quickly. Examining his own finger, Tomoki Wu returned to his desk with the noon sun. Due to the outbreak and spree killing that happened in central Morioh this morning, only the truly selfish and greedy still went to the hospital. The evacuation orders and news updates were being sent to everyone around the hospital in a wild panic. He checked his phone to see if anything had come from Poor Tom. He waited crunching on a new fresh pack of seaweed from his draw....
Mitsuba Higashikata has an appointment tomorrow..
He wondered if Urban’s bet about her surgery would come true.
But since he's at one with nature now….
Tomoku Wu never loses.