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Satoru opens his eyes.
His bedroom is dark, save for the night’s natural blue eminence. Tonight, that rich blue is buoyed by a pale gray that sneaks through his bedroom window and reaches for him with arms of fog and fingers of moonlight from the edge of his vision. Like everything else, they can’t reach him.
There’s a knock on his window.
Satoru.
He closes his eyes.
==
Satoru opens his eyes.
The gray has vanished and left a hollower, heavier thing that permits only his chest to move in shallow rhythms. Only because it’s necessary for him to live. Only because it wishes to keep him prisoner for just a little bit longer.
Regret finds its way into cracks and crannies and warps nature itself. From this moment onward, air is fire, water is earth, the insubstantial has rib-crushing weight, and silence is a final laugh threaded with bleak acceptance.
It’s me, Satoru.
He closes his eyes.
==
Satoru opens his eyes.
There’s another knock on the window. So slow, he thinks. Between the last knock and this one the world shattered and reality clumsily pulled itself back together using a single, frayed, golden string. If a moment could feel, then all of the fragile, trembling moments Satoru sees hanging above him would be paralyzed with uncertainty. They’d be thinking, Where do we go from here? How could we be lied to like this?
Time is not a continuous line from start to finish. A night passes in twelve hours and two knocks takes ten years, but three years weaves through ten, thirty, fifty more in small, big, always devastating ways. Reality changes, sometimes violently, but never hopelessly. He wants to explain to all these trembling seconds that they are not the slaves to time they have been led to believe they are. The very fabric of reality is yours to command if you just know where to apply your will.
He wants to say this, but the world is shattering again. The thread that tied everything together dissolves into sand. His ceiling cracks and falls apart. Moments collapse and dissipate into fog. He is left staring at an empty, starless sky.
I’ve come back for you.
He closes his eyes.
==
Satoru opens his eyes.
He gets out of bed. Creamy moonlight spills through foggy windows. On the bottom right panel is a handprint, smeared by dripping condensation. He touches the center of the palm with the tips of his fingers and closes his eyes.
He sees pink spring air and a snowstorm of cherry blossom petals. Like a dream. Like a wish. There’s a boy with a top bun in the center of the cherry tree-lined path. His back is to him. Purpose and hope are built into his posture. Satoru raises his right hand.
Spring becomes summer and the Suguru that faces him is a proud man wrapped in shadow. Purpose remains, but hope has been replaced with fervor. Satoru never wanted to admit it like this, but passion looks good on him.
“Why now?” he asks. Suguru’s head rests between his pointer and ring fingers. “It’s too late.”
Suguru smiles. It’s Satoru’s favorite smile: honest and vulnerable and rare. It makes his chest hurt.
Satoru opens his eyes. On the other side of the window, obscured by his own reflection, is Suguru in his monk costume. He rests his hand on the windowpane, mirroring Satoru. The condensation freezes and holds them both in place. The air by his mouth turns white as he says, “I want to make things right.”
“What does that mean?”
The starless heart of Suguru’s eyes envelops him. “Let me in and I can show you.”
==
Satoru opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember closing them. Then again, he also doesn’t remember leaving his window open. The room is cold, and he hates having to get out of a warm bed, but he still hauls himself up and shuts it. The curtains, caught in an unnatural breeze, continue to float an inch from the wall. Satoru can see his breath when he says, “What are you going to show me, Suguru?”
A pair of chilly hands squeeze his shoulders.
“It took me too long to understand.”
Satoru takes a deep breath. He’s come so far, there’s no reason not to keep pushing. “Understand what?”
“What this,” Suguru says as he slides his hands down from their perch to cross Satoru’s chest, “means.” Eyelashes tickle the shell of his ear. “You never said anything.”
He shrugs, or he tries to. Suguru is both light and heavy; his arms like cement, his breath like late winter air just before the sun rises. Satoru is hampered by him, but he leans into it anyway. “We figure things out in our own time.”
A foreign chuckle rumbles through his chest. “When did you get so wise?”
“One of us has to be.” Arms tighten around him. His own fingers twitch to shake off the building frost. “Do what you’re going to do and get out of here.”
One of Suguru’s hands lifts and is held out in humble askance. “Give me your soul.”
Satoru can’t move. He can only breathe and blink. “Huh?”
“Give me your soul,” Suguru repeats calmly.
“And why should I do that?”
He feels Suguru smile against the back of his neck. “I can show you something you could never imagine.”
“And what would that be?” Satoru asks.
Suguru’s chuckle tickles the soft hair standing on the back of his neck. “Close your eyes, Satoru.”
==
The tropical sun is warm. The smell of sand and sunscreen caress his face. Ocean spray gets caught in his hair. The sound of a young girl laughing as she runs across hot sand – Sand! The ocean! Let’s play beach volleyball! – pulls at his heart.
“We could stay here forever.”
Just from the sound of his voice, he knows Suguru is standing right next to him. Satoru can imagine his sharp, dark eyes following the tail of a long braid.
“We have to go back to Tokyo eventually,” Satoru says. They’re bodyguards. They’re here to give Riko one last hurrah, but at the end of the day, they’re here to do a job. Like all their other jobs, it will end.
“We already have. Don’t you remember? It was a disaster.”
It was. He died for a second. “Your big ploy is to make me relive my own memories?”
“Not quite.” Suguru’s fingers slip between his own.
“Oooh,” he coos. “Handholding. So sexy. Are you gonna give me the second button on your uniform jacket, too?”
“You can’t see it?” Suguru asks.
“See what?”
“Open your eyes, Satoru.”
He opens his eyes for what feels like the millionth time during this infinite night and stares at a pitch-black abyss. The walls and floor and window and sky and sea and sand are nowhere to be seen or felt or heard. Riko’s laughter is barely a memory. His hand hangs limply by his hip.
“Suguru?”
He whips his head around. Nothing. Nothing. Empty nothing. “Suguru?”
Satoru echoes through the void and brings him to his knees. “Suguru? What is this?”
The voice rumbles through him once again. The jelly in his eyeballs quakes. Find me and I’ll tell you.
“How?”
Open your eyes, Satoru.
“They are open.”
Are you sure about that?
==
Satoru opens his eyes. He’s back in his bed, but the bed isn’t in his room. It’s on a jagged piece of glass reflecting a time when he and Suguru got testy with each other during a study session. Suguru was frustrated by how Satoru was explaining – or not explaining well enough, apparently – some math problem, like, seriously, it was egregiously simple, and he should’ve figured it out by now.
He sits up. Scattered across the void are similar pieces of glass reflecting similarly mundane moments. Meals at cheap restaurants after missions. Covering for Shoko’s frequent absences. Training exercises that went a little too long and left them wiped out on the common room floor. Satoru lording over a first year before Suguru swoops in and deflates him. Juvenile arguments that flame out as quickly as they arise. All the things he didn’t know he was going to miss.
Nothing but context connects these glimpses. Some are close enough to touch. Others are more than twenty feet away from their nearest neighbor. Some stand still, while others pass by like leaves barely keeping afloat on rapids.
Satoru swallows. Cold air brushes his fingertips. The hair on his arms prickles and stands up. “Something I could never imagine, huh?” he mutters to himself. He closes his eyes.
There’s an iridescent gray path flowing infinitely before him. It's a fragile, crystalline thing that bows under his weight when he makes his first, cautious step on it. He hears a creak and a crack, when he leaves the moment he woke up on. He doesn’t know if it was the bridge or the glass or his last tether to his self-preservation finally breaking away. The bridge holds together, so he continues.
As he walks over the other shards, the sounds and sensations of those memories brush up against him, tempting him to stay where the chords of a ten-year-old pop song he hadn’t thought of in forever synched with the rhythm of utensils against cheap ceramic plates; or, where every step he took in a late-summer school hallway released the all-too-nostalgic smell of cleaning supplies and floor wax; or, in a Spring that was slow to warm up, much like his underclassmen and the cherry trees and this icy path that becomes narrower the longer he walks. Soon, he’s holding his arms out as he balances on a section that’s barely wider than his shoe.
At the very end of the line he sees nothing but void and hears the sad drip drip drip of his only clue melting underneath him.
Find me.
Satoru swallows and steps forward.
==
He opens his eyes and finds himself staring up at the blank, mustard yellow cover of a book. Peeking above the book is sleek black hair pulled into a loose bun. Beyond that is a cherry tree ready to bloom. There’s a hand raking the bangs from his forehead. It’s nice. Satoru thinks he can fall asleep like this.
As if he could hear his thoughts – and, really, by now he probably can – Suguru closes his book and smiles down at him.
“Did you have a nice nap?”
Satoru stretches and yawns just to be annoying. “You could say that. Had some weird dreams.”
“Oh?”
“You were there,” he says playfully. “And so was Toto and our old hag of a neighbor.”
Suguru taps his forehead. “Don’t say that about Mrs. Fujino. She actually tolerates you.”
Satoru holds Suguru’s wrist. He feels his pulse in the crease of his thumb. “Seriously, though. You went rogue and I had to kill you. After I did, you started haunting me.”
Suguru’s expression is as complicated as it is dry. He blinks like he’s been caught in some lie, but his forehead is as flat as when he’s ordering coffee. “Sounds like a nightmare.”
“It should be,” Satoru half-agrees, “but it wasn’t. It was…sad.”
Suguru sets his book on the ground next to them and rests his palms on Satoru’s cheeks. His fingers are dry, and the center of his palm is warm.
“You were going to show me something,” Satoru says.
“Before or after you killed me?”
“After.” He touches the thin skin on the top of Suguru’s hand. “You kept giving me the run around on that one.”
Suguru hums. "That must've been my revenge."
Satoru turns his cheek into Suguru's palm. A thumb runs down the right side of his face, smoothing down a sideburn and finding the edge of his cheekbone. “You also wanted my soul.”
“Really?”
“Do you still want my soul?”
This makes Suguru break out a smile. It’s not a good one. Just a silent confirmation. Oh well. He has plenty of time to make him smile for real.
“Is this a formal offer?” Suguru asks.
“Only if you ask properly,” Satoru says. “I’m not some hussy who hands his soul out to just anyone, you know.”
Suguru laughs. The casual sound of it makes Satoru’s throat flutter. Suguru closes his eyes and bends down to whisper, “Satoru, may I have your soul?”
Satoru closes his eyes. Suguru’s lips are so soft.
“Yes.”
==
Satoru opens his eyes.
The sun is out.