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It has been another two years, and I have done little.
I’m not very helpful, really. Inukashi helps more people in a week than I have in my life, probably—then again, Inukashi probably wants to spread their will to survive. I, on the other hand, occasionally dress in drag and spout Shakespeare. It’s a wonderful use of my time, I assure you.
It has been another two years, I have done next to nothing, and yet somewhere in me, I have found the nerve to return to the place we used to call No. 6 and seek out the person I thought I left for good.
No. 6 is not in ruins—not so much as I’d like it to be, at least. It’s still better than the West District, but the walls have come down, and with them came down the glamour of being a utopia, which is something I think about a lot. I want to know if the people inside were really, truly deceived into believing they were living in paradise. It’s a little hard to be a paradise when just down the street, there’s a place housing the evidence of another holocaust—but they didn’t know that, did they? I hate how much they didn’t know. How much they still don’t know. I hate how much I still don’t know. Am I still wanted by the authorities? That’s a good question. Maybe I’ll ask.
I had a nightmare last night, which was strange, because the correctional facility almost completely annihilated my brain’s ability to dream. But it was, at the same time, not strange at all, because honestly, I am terrified.
I am terrified. I say it to myself over and over again as I walk through the streets, lit warmly by twilight and distantly familiar. I’m worried that if I am not constantly slamming reality into my head, I’ll fall into a panic about what I’m truly feeling. See, I’m not that used to being afraid. Not very good at it, you might say.
I never want to be good at being afraid.
He’s waiting for you, I remind myself. He’s waiting for you.
I stop, physically, and amend my statement. He’s probably waiting for you.
I force myself to keep walking.
I assume he’s waiting for me—after all, I sent a message. I can’t imagine, given what we’ve been through, that there’s even a possibility that he won’t want to see me. But I’m not a computer, I can’t calculate that sort of value. Or maybe I am, and I’m taking everything too literally. Maybe I don’t understand his emotions any more than I understand—or even like—my own.
I am terrified. I am terrified. The word ‘terrified’ is beginning to sound like nonsense.
I turn a sharp corner and nearly trip as my feet encounter a stone stairway; the steps are shallow and wide, which is I think what threw me off. Half of me wishes I’d fallen flat on my face and broken my nose so I’d have to go home. The other half of me is very glad I didn’t though, because when I look up, I see him sitting a few steps below me outside the bakery door. His back is turned, but he’s glanced over his shoulder to see what the commotion and swearing is. It’s me.
My mouth is very dry now, and I think my entire body must’ve gone through some sort of malfunction right about then, because when I blink, I’m suddenly sat next to him on the stairs.
“What do you think?” Shion asks me. He gestures to our surroundings vaguely.
I command myself to speak, like I’m one of Inukashi’s dogs. “About what?”
“The city. What’s left of it.”
“Well, there’s an awful lot left of it.”
He looks at me and tilts his head slightly. He looks older now, which I guess is to be expected, since he is. The red marks haven’t faded. “You’re still angry.”
I marvel at his blatancy, at the brazenness of this statement, and find that I can’t possibly respond in any logical manner, because he’s right.
His gaze returns to the horizon, the west, so he can watch the spreading darkness but still feel the dying sun’s heat on his back. “You need a new passion,” he remarks. “I’m surprised you didn’t lose yourself when you lost Number Six.”
I swallow and bite the inside of my cheek. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “You were fueled by your hatred of it, and now that it’s gone, you haven’t got anything to do.”
“I act.”
He cracks a dry grin, and I fight a bizarre desire to laugh—good thing, too, because he instantly falls serious again.
“That’s not what I meant, Nezumi,” he says. “Everything has changed.”
Changed. The word reverberates in my skull, bounces against faded echoes of terrified.
“What about you, Shion?” I ask. “Have you changed?”
He hesitates, and in that moment, I know he hasn’t. “You still know me,” he says. “It hasn’t been as long as it was the first time, and you knew me then.”
“Yes,” I agree, “but, as you say, more has changed.”
He glances at me, and the slight furrow of his brow and the almost-hurt-but-mostly-just-confused expression he’s wearing are painfully ordinary. “Are you testing me?”
This time, I do laugh a little. “No,” I assure him. “I’m an actor. Melodrama is my specialty.”
Now he smiles, a genuine smile that makes my chest hurt so much I feel like I might die, and grabs my hand out of nowhere. I’m surprised, but not surprised enough. I remember how Shion sometimes moves quickly and unexpectedly like this, even more so than I do. He is both exasperatingly predictable and frighteningly not.
“So, Nezumi,” he begins conversationally. “How was your life?”
“My life?” I repeat. “What, are you God or something?”
He gives me A Look.
I forcefully tell myself this isn’t funny—what is wrong with me? “It was lovely, thanks,” I say. “I got kicked out of utopia and then secured a job as a part-time drag performer and taught a stupidly optimistic parasite survivor how to dance.”
Shion laughs, and that is permission for me to laugh with him. He looks happy, so happy I can almost believe it. It is silent for a few moments after, while we listen to crickets and evening songbirds. Finally, I speak.
“How are you?” I ask softly.
He thinks for a second, before deciding firmly, “I’m well.”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“Slightly terrified of bees,” he admits, only half joking, “but well.”
I can almost believe him, but I won’t let myself—I care too much. “But what about…?”
He frowns, and I flounder helplessly for words. I can’t bring myself to say it, not while I still remember what happened to him in the correctional facility. “What about…”
It only takes him one guess to get it. “Safu?” he suggests.
I nod, feeling tongue-tied and vaguely ill.
He looks at his feet. “I don’t think I ever won’t be sad about Safu,” he tells me, “but when something takes up space around you for two years, you sort of forget what it was like without it.”
I swallow. “‘Takes up space’?”
“It’s like there’s this part of my mind that is constantly filled by her,” he explains. “It’ll never go away, so I’ve learned to function with less mind, I guess. Does that make sense?”
“I—yeah.”
I suddenly can’t look at him any longer, so I glance away and put my arm around him instead, my other hand reaching around to the back of his head to hold him against me—but he flinches, and I jerk my hands away. It was minimal, but it was there.
“Are you okay?” I ask, almost panicking.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he assures me quickly. “I just—here.”
I am the one who flinches now, but only in surprise, because he moves over and slides under my arm into the same position we’d just snapped out of. I stare at him, perplexed.
“You used to do that a lot,” he clarifies, “with your cloak. Whenever we were in a threatening situation, you’d pull me under your cloak like that…I just got used to it being a sign we were in danger.”
I blink once, then twice; he’s right. I begin to list the occasions in my head: when we jumped out of the car during the rescue, in the alleyway during the manhunt, when we were being dumped out of the truck into the correctional facility… There are quite a few. I look at him with an emotion close to awe, awe at how normal his reaction was, now that I thought about it.
You are so human, I marvel, weakened by the force of how sheerly unexceptional this is. Flesh and blood and fallible and human.
“But it’s alright,” he promises as if he hasn’t noticed I’m in a sort of trance, and from the tone of his voice I know he’s sincere. “I don’t have anything to be afraid of anymore.”
I lean my head against his and stare out into the dark blue sky, recalling vaguely a time when I thought he might not want to meet me, or that it’d be better to break my nose and go home. I think about where I’m sitting right now. The word terrified is not in the equation.
“Yeah,” I agree quietly. “Me neither.”