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So there he is, gun steaming in his hand, Officer Minamimoto gape-faced for a second while Kiryu Yoshiya looks through the bullet-steam at the boy on the ground. The exit wound mustn’t be pretty, some garish tear through the back of his ribs surely, because he’s bleeding something awful all across the pavement. It slips toward the gutter, catches in the little indents in the concrete, like a myriad of cities too tiny to see, cathedrals and gore.
Minamimoto takes Kiryu’s moment of reverie to make a quick getaway, rocketing toward a Reaper’s wall, toward the back door to Dead God’s Lounge. As a rule he never drinks, just swirls coke in his rocks glass. His coat slaps against the small of his back as he runs, and then he’s turned the corner and is gone. Elsewhere in the city Noise roar, cars slam on squeaking breaks, passersby break the sound barrier with their laughter. But on Cat Street, even the clouds have held their breath.
Nobody is coming because Kiryu knows how not to be found.
Kiryu breathes heavily from his race against Minamimoto, takes a few minutes to swallow enough air to come back to himself.
And the boy, fifteen at most, lies still with the blood multiplying all around him. Kiryu laughs. Minamimoto would like that comparison, blood multiplying, blood spreading into smaller and smaller fractions on the ground, blood pumping its damn hardest all the way out of Sakuraba Neku’s body. Sakuraba looks so small, his head this stoplight orange so shocking Kiryu would wonder at his heritage had he not spent all his hours watching him and his.
Kiryu lets the arm holding the gun fall against his thigh. He releases the trigger. From his pocket he pulls the small, cold Player pin. Under the cold high sun, the skull could be made out of bone itself; the light slides off its little dips and rivets. It’s small as a coin flipped to decide the outcome of a dispute, but there’s very little charm in coin flipping, and no strategy at all besides cheating.
Nevertheless, he flips it gently in his palm, for luck, not once losing control of it. Which is to say, Kiryu Yoshiya, known by the very fortunate as Joshua, never loses control.
He stands by Sakuraba’s splayed feet, where he has no risk of stepping in the blood and soiling his shoes, and he lets it go.
It makes a perfect arc through the air, landing solidly on the collar of Sakuraba’s scarf, where the blood has not yet touched and probably won’t still. Its bone-white design looks up at Kiryu. Dead boy, dead body, dead black and silver leering. If it’s all the same, it’s time to go.
For a moment, the macabre image slips into Kiryu’s mind of police involvement, yellow tape, the shape of the body chalked out across the pavement. Bodies everywhere, in various shades of boring work uniform, heads bent together while they try to figure out what kind of gun the bullet came out.
It’s vulgar, and the idea of poor Player Sakuraba coming across the spot midway through his Game, hearing his name whispered by the living, is more vulgar still. Kiryu has been around this Game for long enough to know that grief worms its way into the dead just same as the living, and also that grieving yourself is essential for any sort of ascension.
But of course, this is Kiryu’s Shibuya, and it obeys his rules. And Rule #1 is that police investigations spoil all the fun.
Besides, no one alive could pin down the gun. Call it custom, and you’re a quarter to the truth. No records, no make of the bullets, no fingerprints, either way.
He imagines the investigation, and then he imagines it gone. It is that easy.
“What will your entry fee be, I wonder?” Kiryu says. His voice is very loud in the quiet street. “What can you show me?”
The boy says nothing; he is dead. A little dribble of blood comes out the left corner of his mouth. It is this that irritates Kiryu the most, more even than the race-against-the-clock chase that left him one bullet short and with a bleeding officer.
But the Game is coming up, and Kiryu has run out of time.
He lifts up his gun and pulls two bullets from the chamber, slipping them into his back pocket. The gun clicks like a bike chain, like a little bell above a little shop’s door, when he slots it back together.
The boy doesn’t stir. The wind tugs at his hair, which, too, is macabre. He is still here, but he will not be for long. His Game, his assured victory, his body on the ground.
Kiryu slips the gun into his pocket. He has things to do.
There is a song that Shibuya is singing which is, in fact, a thousand songs. Busy parents belt out contraltos while little kids fill in the woodwinds; shop doors swing into a percussion beat; the magpies and pigeons bring out the violins. He mixes his metaphors; it’s all the same, every little bit of sound.
The whole city listens, even when it doesn’t realize what it’s listening to. It keeps time. The Reapers listen, though largely they are more concerned with the daily racking-up of points. The officers, those who have seen him and those who have not, those who know his title in whispers and those who know it in their regular voices, hear it too, and they enforce it. They don’t have to know how the writing works, how to draw the treble clef, how to map out melodies from thousands of instruments, or voices, at once. How to walk between the people of Shibuya and shape their songs without giving himself up to it.
And when night falls: the alley cats, the flick of lighters and rip of tobacco pulled into lungs, the clatter of rain-wet footfalls, car horns harmonizing in thirds and cans of spray paint opened and shaken in near-discordant tempo. In this song, there are no rests. There is no breath, and breath is everywhere.
Joshua hears two songs at the same time, one in each of his ears. Looks ten measures into the future, twenty, the whole damn page. Someone has to lay out the tempo, tend to the arrangement, make sure no stray notes remain when his Conductor goes out to show the world what a real symphony sounds like.
It is a beautiful song. In the Room of Reckoning it is the most beautiful thing in the world, a quiet room where even the tapping of his fingers against the arm of his chair is smothered by it. It slides through every inch of air; it coats the buildings; it crescendos with every mouth opening to talk or laugh or scream. The people become minutiae, less individual instruments of the song and more nuisance, a steady patter of noise.
It has been a long time since Joshua knew silence.
He doesn’t sleep well, when he tries to sleep, and most nights he doesn’t sleep at all, waking or kept awake to the tapping of a new arrangement, a continuation from the diminuendo he left the previous day off on. The work chases him into half-realized dreams, into dreams so vivid they threaten to rip him out of his daily life. But he can’t leave Shibuya unsupervised.
If not for Mr. H, it would be unbearable.
And every day the song of Shibuya becomes a little more like yesterday’s, and the day before that’s. Each note lands clunkily. It fumbles before it stands. All graffiti cans are the same, and all feral cats, and all school kids with money stuffed into their pockets and voices louder than any screaming bird’s. Kids grow up, and grown-ups grow up, and people die all over Shibuya, all the time. Most of them don’t wake up again, in the Scramble Crossing or anywhere. It’s not Joshua’s business, though a part of him wonders at the more technical elements of death, secrets not afforded even to him.
He writes the same pages over and over.
It isn’t that the work is tedious, although, after a while, all work is; it’s that the people are. Their little heads spinning in circles, churning out the same thoughts as the day before, their boring mill-running punctuated only by the occasional week of the Reapers’ Game. The song turns sour. The flutes go flat; the businesspeople end up all the same.
A part of him considers it his own failing, his writing lackluster and his sight not as keen as it was when, fresh from the high of bringing down the old Composer, so bright-eyed even Mr. H couldn’t always meet his eyes, he had wrapped the symphony around his fingers and picked up the metaphorical pen.
The rest of him knows better.
So Joshua runs the Game. He pays close attention to the minute changes of the city, hides in plain sight, waits for someone magnificent to put the shine back in the whole affair. Considers his options, charts every possible future.
Even the Game, though, stumbles across its own notes, despite the Reapers’ perfect rehearsals. Shibuya gets smaller and smaller, noisier and more discordant. Sometimes Joshua downtunes to the RG just for the buffer it provides between him and the song. It echoes in his ears in unexpected places.
Shibuya tears itself apart, dissolves into caterwaul and cacophony. Unlike a bone, it cannot be set; unlike a wound, it cannot be dressed.
So Joshua makes a decision. And with the power he possesses, he knows he can see it through.
You shouldn’t go through with this, said Mr. H. This was before Joshua had let his Conductor into his confidence, before Joshua even knew the details of his own plan. Inside the coffee shop, Mr. H had flipped the front-door sign to closed and turned off the overheads. Joshua sat on the counter, his spine resting against the half-empty display case, swinging one foot against the wood. Mr. H sipped a cappuccino.
What are you going to do? Joshua said. May I remind you of our respective positions?
Mr. H took a gulp of coffee so long that Joshua was sure he would drown in it.
I know where I stand, Mr. H said at last, putting his coffee down on the counter.
Outside a gust kicked up a ruined plastic bag; Joshua watched it tumble down the street, gasping and recoiling. A leaf of newspaper caught in a gutter, fluttering.
Mr. H said, And I’m asking you not to do it. Not just as your Producer, Josh; as your friend.
Joshua stared out the window. The wind blew a little harder, ripping the paper in two. Two rectangles of color tumbled one after the other, like children playing the sort of game Joshua wasn’t very good at when he was alive, if only because he was too good the other kids stopped letting him join.
Mr. H lifted the mug, leaving a little ring of condensation beside Joshua’s hip. Joshua wiped it away with the heel of his hand, and wiped that on his jeans.
I’ve taken note of your dissent, Joshua said, languidly. Wouldn’t you say you should let me do it, because you’re my friend?
Instead of answering, Mr. H says, Have you gotten approval from the Higher Plane?
Joshua laughed. Mr. H put his mug in the sink and ran the tap until it overflowed the ceramic.
What they don’t know won’t hurt them. Provided I can trust you, of course. And I can, can’t I? He hopped off the counter and went around it, while Mr. H hunched his shoulders up to his ears like he was regretting opening his mouth. Besides, Shibuya, the way it is… they’d understand. The paperwork, anyway, I’ve done it. Sometimes a place like this just needs to be cleansed.
Josh, said Mr. H.
But Josh went toward the door with his hand gesturing dismissively beside his ear. He pulled open the door and the wind came in, like WildKat was swallowing the world. For a second, it sounded like silence.
He turned back toward Mr. H, his free hand tugging at a strand of hair, pulling it so taut it stung. Tell you what. I’ll take it up with Megumi. Talk it out, you know. And I’ll let you know what we decide. It would be better to have help from on the ground, anyways. Well, as close to the ground as Conductor gets.
If it’s what you think is best, said Mr. H.
Joshua laughed. I do. I’m glad you’ve come around.
Go have your talk, and tell me how it goes.
Will do, will do. Well, I’ll be seeing you, said Joshua. He made a little salute and stepped out the door.
There is a tidy little nuclear family, sans an only son, living out its life somewhere in Shibuya. Last they knew of him they thought he was a daughter, and so when he slipped into the trainslip world of ghosts, easy as pushing open a door, he had very little to lose. There is only so much that raising your voice can do—an old lesson, buried deep beneath his skin.
There is a boy who is wading through ghosts. He is shoulder-deep in them, their singing, their faint little voices laughing and pushing through him like a chilly autumn day. They stick to the fabric of his shirt, stiffen the hems of his jeans. It is slow work. Some streets: Shibuya, ordinary, the living with high color on their cheeks, their busy, bumbling fashion. Others: crowded with characters in red hoodies and the aftermaths of battles, kids holding each other, panting their horror, their relief.
And always, above them all, the sigils of creatures that have no parallels in any of the books this boy has ever read. They hollow out the sky, fill it in with reds and blacks. They slip inside people’s chests, their skulls, their mouths. Inside bodies, they pulse, a red glow, an ember.
The first time he saw them, they looked so terrifying he tripped over his laces to get away, but it was only the first time once. This was long before he heard the song, before he saw its notes in the air before him, before he could lazily reach out and change a minor to a sharp.
Meanwhile the tidy family goes on—makes its dinners, drives to its workplaces, sleeps, and if it ever mourns, Joshua does not want to know. It was easiest to make a clean break, to leave his mouth an eggshell on his parents’ table.
Did he say I’m sorry, stepping out the door one day with his schoolbag and not walking back in? This is a story, this is a song, and if you listen closely, you might hear it.
The things Joshua does not tell Neku are multitudinous.
For instance: sometimes he wonders. Once or twice he’s found himself in the neighborhood, out of a strange and unfathomable curiosity, where his RG form is too familiar for comfort. Out of curiosity—do they put different vegetables on the table, without him?
For instance: sometimes he wishes they were dead, not aging ungracefully while he sits on his unforgiving throne. Dead and no business of his.
For instance: the past is a locked room he is moving away from.
If he has to leave a few sopranos out of the mix, so be it.
The boy wakes up under a perfect blue sky—what else could he ask for? Shibuya creeps toward autumn, toward the busy crush of schoolyard days and the long lonelinesses that accompany them. He wakes up and he knows—everything? Enough, anyway. Joshua’s Conductor is responsible for the prepping of Players, for the news-breaking, the shoulder-holding, the quiet there-thereing. Though Megumi has never been the type for niceties.
Besides, Joshua had taken his own entry fee from the boy, and so it is time to cross his ankles and watch. To witness everything that goes right, and what might go wrong.
The boy stands up, middle of the Scramble but so easy for Joshua to spot. The city moves through him, and he shudders away from each person who folds his body in two. His hands move to secure the headphones over his hair, pressing against them to silence the city’s song.
If he doesn’t know where he is, if that’s just another side effect of Megumi’s entry fee—well, then he’ll have to learn quick.
Joshua puts himself on the ground that day, keeps his aura up so no one comes close and lurks near Hachiko, where there are too many people for the boy to notice him, with his pressed, haphazard shirt, his old jeans, the quiet untidiness of his concrete-blond hair. He draws no attention, by design. Just watches the boy.
His biggest fear lies in the starting: if Sakuraba doesn’t find a partner, Megumi wins by default. Once Sakuraba is in the Game, Joshua has complete faith in his self-preservation instinct, but on his own he is vulnerable. Just an ordinary Player, looking frantically for another person drawn in lines and light as bold as wet calligraphy, a body that screams its belonging.
Sakuraba looks around. His body jerks this way and that. He doesn’t look for Players, doesn’t lurch toward the brightest people in the area, just stumbles away from Noise with those wide, bulging eyes and his hands raised in front of him as though to push everyone near him away.
He is good at running away, but that won’t last him long.
Joshua lets out a long and heavy sigh between his teeth. He has decided not to interfere. Where’s the point in having chosen a Player if Joshua still has to do all the heavy lifting? He digs his hands into the stone barrier behind him, before reconsidering and shoving them into his back pockets, where they clench into fists.
“C’mon, Neku, what’s keeping you?” he mutters. The crowd pushes past in steady undulations, not one person aware of the abundance of Noise, the red-and-black glow of the Hachiko battlefield, the busy neon of the UG. Out of habit, Joshua sifts out the picture of the RG, focusing in on his Game.
If he loses—what? He’ll try again in twenty years? Besides Megumi and Mr. H, nobody knows his intentions, and he plans to keep it that way to the end. No point in sowing panic, and certainly no point in going through the bureaucracy of the Higher Plane, which could set him back six months, or a decade, or a lifetime, when he’s not breaking any rules he knows of.
If he loses, Megumi will be in his throne room tomorrow with cheek on his tongue and backtalk in his glittering eyes, and even though he has never seen Joshua’s face, it will be hard to remain a gracious loser.
The girl, Misaki Shiki—yes, he knows everything, Joshua does, the names and entry fees of his Players being easy trivia—dives at Neku like a bullet, thin and sleek and shining, her hair the dyed pink of new blood. She takes his hand, and the light rises up around them.
While they slip into the Noise Plane, Joshua assesses the quickness of his heartbeat. Embarrassing, truly, to be so invested so early. To put all his eggs on the first encounter.
A part of him wants to stay, wants to supervise, wants to account for Sakuraba’s every move, but he has terms to keep to. He will have time over the next seven days to keep an eye on his Player, and with Neku’s hair, that will be an easy task.
It’s perhaps the first time Joshua truly thought about the stakes. About what it will be like to wait, day after sleepless, singing day, to make sure Sakuraba made it to the morning.
Joshua makes his exit. The Game, and the Game, are in the Players’ hands now. He has chosen perfectly, chosen based on months of research and field work—all of Sakuraba’s bitter pooling in his mouth, in the inches he gets to full-on fistfights, in the scowl he wears no matter who he’s addressing. The trauma only sweetened the pot, a death someone as Imaginative as Sakuraba can’t help but wade through guilt for.
But between 104 and the white room every victor sees before they choose their fate, there are so many things that could go wrong.
Joshua takes the song out of Sakuraba. Makes him quiet as a sleeping train. He erases himself from Sakuraba’s Soul. The heavy bass from Sakuraba’s headphones goes on, filling up Cat Street, kissing the mural. It sounds like Shibuya’s song, but inverted. Someone ought to turn that off, Joshua thinks. He turns his gun into light and it vanishes in his hand. Sakuraba is not his to write, not anymore.
If the boy wants to be a lullaby, he’s going to have to try harder.
Sir? said Kitaniji Megumi, Conductor to all of Shibuya and damn fine one at that. He said it a full five seconds after Kiryu had uttered his last syllable.
Kiryu’s birdfeather body barely wavered. It freaked Reapers out, he had learned, even Megumi, to see Kiryu’s UG body, in its sketches of light, move in its unhuman way. He rippled; he breezed.
Yes, said Kiryu, coldly; and in anticipation of Megumi’s next line, said, I’m quite serious, before you ask.
A little canyon formed between Megumi’s brows. His dark eyes shadowed, even in the dull light of the Room of Reckoning. But Kiryu’s glow fell over him, highlighted the craters in his face, the soft drawing inward of his bottom lip.
But, sputters Kitaniji, you can’t.
Can’t I? I hope you remember whose city this is.
Of course, Sir. And I defer to Your decisions.
Then why the protest?
Because—if I may speak, Sir?
Kiryu tapped each of his fingers against the arms of his chair. He straightened his spine, the bones cracking softly. His voice echoed. You may.
Megumi took a deep breath. With all due respect, I don’t think You appreciate how beautiful Shibuya is. On the streets, I mean. Shifting, changing, growing—it’s everything we’d been cultivating for years. The Reapers have done Your bidding to the letter.
I’ve been to the streets, Kiryu said, coldly. It’s where I’m most disappointed, if I’m to be frank. I’ve considered all sides of the situation, and I’ve come to the conclusion that is best for us and for the world. And I expect you to respect me.
I respect You, Megumi said, his voice not cold at all. Infinitely. But I know the people of Shibuya are more than You’re giving them credit for.
Kiryu steepled his fingers, tapping fingertip against fingertip. What do you suggest I do, then?
Give them one more chance to prove You—
Wrong? said Kiryu, dragging out the word.
I didn’t mean anything by it, said Megumi, but Kiryu just laughed. It fluttered through the room, that sound, and clung to its shadows.
Then I propose a game, Kiryu said. Just between you and me.
He laid out the terms. Megumi watched his mouth move, his eyes shining, or shaking, his palm mercifully, for one last moment, bare.
And, of course, the trouble: the Game is designed to bring a Player to their highest potential.
That’s a fact. That’s what Joshua loved most about it when he first learned its secret.
Under that expectation, there is so much for Neku to become.
From the boy who went to his best friend’s funeral and almost left in the middle to—what? To shake and cry? To throw punches? To sit in the car feeling carved out with his eyes blank while the black suits and dresses watched the dirt fall on the coffin?
Joshua doesn’t know. If he did, he might not need to do this at all.
He keeps this game to himself.
If Neku, of everyone in Shibuya, can change, can grow, can earn his feathers, then there might just be hope for the rest of the city. It’s a silly thought, but Joshua has to consider it; he has to consider every possible outcome.
If Neku walks out the same as he started, Joshua will have predicted right. Because he knows the sort of person Neku is, and he knows the limitations of what the Reaper’s Game can achieve.
He has nothing to worry over. Besides, there’s a rush that sits low in his throat at every little fear, every minute detail he may not have smoothed perfectly out.
Joshua loves a good game, especially when there’s a lot for him to lose.
So he waits. He watches from the quiet places in his city, places where none of his Reapers will find him, under overhangs and in the RG and, always, in WildKat. The discordant song roars, relentless, and when his head throbs, Joshua considers finding a pair of headphones himself.
The week spins itself out. Joshua documents growth and declines. He keeps his eyes on Megumi’s plays, and the counterplays of whom he has called, to Mr. H, during one of his long stays in the café, his proxy. It’s a good word, a hefty word.
It implies a terrible amount of trust. Or faith.
Joshua would never have chosen Higashizawa to take over as Game Master—his style a little too vulgar, his plays too blatant. Still, it gives Sakuraba an edge. It happens, and it happens, and Joshua watches all of it Megumi sweeps in with his white room and the final ultimatum: only one of you can live. It’s a good rule, one that Joshua is distantly proud of. It keeps the Reapers lean and hungry, keeps the UG striving, striving. He takes Sakuraba and his partner into the white room, and in the absence of a Composer to run anything by, he starts another Game.
So it is clear that Megumi has pinpointed Sakuraba for what he is. They have both been playing their cards a little too close, Joshua decides. Somebody ought to spice things up.
Megumi gets the first move, but Joshua’s move is better.
Besides, he’s bored of all that watching.
Neku is warm. For the dead, he is practically a housefire. Joshua puts his hands on Neku’s shoulders, his vibe tuned to match with a Player’s, and so Neku doesn’t pass through him. He is solid, and his arms are thin, mostly bone beneath Joshua’s fingers.
The quiet song of the Players, the backbone of Shibuya’s precarious balance, rattles through Joshua’s ears the moment his hands touch Neku’s skin, even with his lowered vibe. Despite Joshua’s entry fee, all Players sound like this. Though it’s fainter than Joshua has experience with, it’s always stronger in the Players with the most vivid Imagination. Joshua takes a moment to let it run through him. To get accustomed to it.
He breathes. Giggles. Calls Neku by his first name, all teeth and crinkled eyes. Neku’s eyes, on the other hand, are wild and darkened, his brows forming a perfect peak in the middle, his bottom lip pulled into his mouth with his teeth. Neku chews it as he turns to Joshua, then releases it. His voice is rough and furious, and, infuriatingly, cute.
Now, that’s interesting. Joshua can work with that.
Joshua lets go of Neku’s arms and offers the pact, opening himself up to synchronicity. It has been a long time since he’s felt the rush of someone else’s Imagination inside him, tugging him toward them, building a sort of power that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Joshua’s Shibuya.
He has to give something to get what he wants.
He hasn’t missed it, but it’s not that bad, either. A bit of a change, like the first spray of a cold shower. It comes back to him. And Neku is a quick learner; he gives himself up. A moment of tsunami-calm, and then his teenage desperation, the fervent melancholy, rush through Joshua all at once.
It’s dizzying. It takes everything in Joshua not to laugh. He inhabits Neku—his vibe, his Imagination—and Neku inhabits him.
When it’s over, a gap in all the Noise spreads out around them. Neku looks at him with his lips pressed together and nods, one waver from a fistfight. His emotive eyes don’t stay on Joshua for very long.
Go easy on him, Josh, Mr. H would say. It’s his second week, after all.
Joshua still has to call Mr. H. There are too many loose ends he need to sort through. Joining in himself a last minute affair, as he’d had no way of guessing Megumi’s curveball—the second week, the new batch of the recently dead, pushing at the barriers of plausibility without consulting the Composer. If Joshua is going to figure his opponent out, he’s going to need Mr. H’s help.
And so another Game begins. There is so much to balance in Joshua’s head—Game Master Minamimoto, who could give up the game with a single reckless word; and whatever Megumi is planning for his endgame—but he has seven days with Neku, who is a handful if anything, high-strung and irritable, Shibuya’s shining light.
Why not have a little fun?
Besides, it’s up to Joshua to put the Game back on track.
There is a family that once had a son, and that son had hair red as new scars, and they do not know that his body fell beneath street art, that it loomed over him, folded itself around him while he lay bleeding out the pavement. For Joshua it was nothing but housekeeping. If neither Neku nor his parents knew who he had been before, there were fewer loose ends to tie off at the end.
It was a vulgar death, clean barrel, clean steam, the hot bullet turning into hot blood.
Joshua supposes someone had to clean all that mess up, but in his Shibuya he does not have time to plan out the things he will be erasing, quick and quiet as blinking, from the whole world’s memory. So there is a family that eats one at each head of the table with no one in the middle. So what? Worse things happen every day. For instance: they remember. Imagine that. Imagine the grief and then—boom, he walks back through the front door without knocking, like it’s still home.
So Joshua tied up the loose ends. Maybe it was force of habit, but it was better to take no risks.
Nevertheless, it annoyed him that he’d done this. Megumi wins and the boy vanishes into starstuff. Joshua wins and no more Shibuya. So long, so sad to see you go.
Joshua was there when Neku found out Shiki’s entry fee, and he was there when the car hit Beat at 40 mph, and he was there when Nao and Sota stuck their arms through the world to get here.
It will be a shame when they don’t make it.
Although, Joshua thinks, while Neku scrutinizes his expression, they don’t quite have it in them to make it all the way through. The Game, which is really a screening process, hasn’t taken its mission with enough gravity in a very long time.
If games were not one of the most serious forms of human bonding, then children would not be so quick to start them up.
And so the mother and father go to work, except they aren’t a mother or a father at all. Life is boring life. The consequences of a little modification like that will only last to the end of the week, and then—boom. Light pouring up through the concrete, the Shibuya River running backwards, all the little counterclockwise turns that will, before anyone realizes it hurts, dissolve the city completely.
He had meant to be clinical—fun, light in the air, his voice as dismissive and grating as he could make it. Every calculated word slipping off his tongue—oops! was that me? He had meant to be like this: surgical masks while performing Shibuya’s autopsy. Sorry, CAT scan. Sorry, fishhook incisions, open heart, gloves on his careful hands.
It’s just that, with Minamimoto as Game Master, it’s getting harder to hold onto the fun. Neku’s outraged face, of course, brings a laugh to Joshua’s lips, but when his back is turned Joshua lets his brows knit, pulls his bottom lip into his mouth.
He knows he is not here to have fun.
There are too many things to do and just one week to do them in. Figuring out Megumi’s plan, keeping Minamimoto silent, keeping all the Games and their complicated transactions in order in his head and not giving one of them up.
And the song, which is always discordant on the ground. Joshua is used to it, of course, with how much time he spends in WildKat, his vibe low enough to be seen by any old Player who happened by. As he passes random people, ducks into random shops, he hears it, each instrument out of tune, his beautiful melody rendered garish and ugly beyond recourse. In a week, provided Megumi doesn’t pull off another play like last week’s, Shibuya will be quiet as the two-second hush at the end of a program, just before the audience has realized the show has ended.
If he alone realizes that ending, if he alone stands to applaud, if the lights go out and the instruments vanish from the stage, it will be a job well done.
All of that depends on Neku’s performance, which, in turn, depends on Joshua’s ability to lead him exactly where he needs to be.
Neku’s hate tastes like sugar on Joshua’s tongue, soft, bitingly sweet, dissolving all too quickly. Sometimes Neku reaches up and adjusts his headphones, sometimes he fiddles with his music player, turning it on and off, on and off, deciding whether to block out Joshua this time. Joshua tends to it carefully, the flower of Neku’s hate. He sinks into the persona, the careless and petulant Player, and it comes easily to him. He is unashamed to be a liar. He is brazen, so much of an open book he loops all the way back to the infuriatingly cryptic. Neku speaks and Joshua shuts him down. Squashes him, carefully, clinically, like one would squash a small spider. It’s part of the Game, part of the careful curation of his victory.
Neku’s hate, his hurt, his absolute determination to win, for the one person he’s holding inside—it doesn’t line up. Megumi must have messed with the terms of the Game, the Reaper’s Game, because it’s not possible that Neku grew that attached to his partner, not the Neku Joshua has been watching.
Because if he had, Joshua’ job has become significantly more complicated. It is easy to plant a seed and arduous to dig one out—you bury your spade in all the wrong places, you break skin.
It’s clear that something has changed in Neku—but where? Was it in his partner, Shiki? In that brash new Reaper? In those sneaky conversations with Mr. H, sliding out of the shadows to put in his two cents? No, of course not; Joshua’s Producer would never go against him. Joshua would know if Megumi had that sort of help.
Still, it’s not an outrageous idea to watch his back from all angles. Joshua can’t afford to have a blind spot. But Mr. H would never betray him. He couldn’t.
This ought to be a bloodless transaction. No pain but Neku’s, carefully tended to, magnified, louder than the whole damn city. Someone has to do that.
So Joshua tends to it—waters it, feeds it with deprecating words, spins out his lies so egregiously that when Neku catches on, all Joshua can do is laugh. He undoes, slowly, the damage done by week one. Beautiful Neku watches him with hate in his eyes, his lips always on the edge of curling. Joshua knows he is obnoxious and leans into his natural instincts, smiling, laughing, brushing aside Neku’s every protest.
There is something about Neku, though, an understated vulnerability that Joshua hadn’t noticed during his research. Something in the soft way his eyes go when he talks about Shiki. You can never know a person, not fully, not truly, no matter how you try, but Joshua had done everything. Neku in school, Neku at home, Neku with his hand against CAT’s mural, his hand curled in a fist. School assemblies, obituaries in the paper, arguments at the dinner table while Neku refused to eat, cat scratches on his arms.
He thought he’d known. He thought it had all been anger.
Joshua introduces Neku to Mr. H. He has to: between the phone conversations, the commissions, and plain old force of habit, Neku gets suspicious. It was unavoidable, what with suspicion being one of the traits Joshua cultivates in him. He never turns soft eyes on Joshua. If they didn’t have to work together, Joshua imagines he’d find himself facing a one-vee-one. It thrills Joshua in a way he can’t name.
Joshua keeps his reservations to himself. He asks whether Mr. H can take care of their phones and sips his coffee and watches.
Trust your partner, he thinks. He wonders when Neku will begin to trust him. When he will trust him completely.
The Game which is not a game but a manner of tallying worldviews goes on. The week, the anticipation, the drone of Minamimoto’s voice through the megaphone, decipherable to Joshua but unfathomable to Neku—whose brows furrowed beneath hair that was, as the weeks went on, falling more or less out of the control of his product, getting softer and then greasier—spins each day out more slowly than the last.
Of course Joshua had meant to be disinterested, deliberate, but then Mr. H took an interest in the proxy. He looked too close at Joshua, too close at his pick. Served them cappuccinos. Spoke at great length.
Joshua keeps his suspicion close to his chest, doubles down on Neku when the door is closed. Gets close enough to ruffle Neku’s hair, the flat of his palm brushing against Neku’s scalp. Neku startles away, his eyes narrowed to pinpricks of light in his face, and with one hand he removes his headphones just enough straighten out his hair. Joshua watches and doesn’t realize he is watching. What he is realizing, instead, is that he has never done something this intimate with Neku, except with a bullet as proxy.
“The hell, Joshua?” Neku says, roughly.
Joshua giggles, airy enough that it might sprout wings and fly away. “Apologies, dear partner.”
Neku’s face wrinkles, so Joshua laughs harder. Under the open Shibuya sky, unseen by the half dozen passersby, there is time for everything. To tip the world upside down, to fall into it. Neku’s eyes, that uncanny blue, watching him, lush with vulnerability he will not, and hopefully will never, speak of. They’re pretty eyes, Joshua decides; that, at least, will be a shame.
Joshua loops his arm around Neku’s stiff elbow. Neku turns toward him in outrage, so Joshua tips his head back, resting his jaw on Neku’s shoulder. Neku’s scarf brushes across Joshua’s lips.
This, too, is part of the game. His shoulder tucked behind Neku’s, the briefest moment of their footsteps falling alongside each other’s, then all at once falling out of harmony.
Joshua doesn’t get to stay there long before Neku pushes him off. Joshua lets him, stands in place while Neku moves one pace, two, ahead. Joshua checks his phone. The sound of Neku’s feet splintering the morning.
Joshua notices a lot. He has to—someone has to tend to the overview, the overall composition, the synchronicity. It’s tedious work, work he can’t escape from in any corner of the UG. He goes to sleep with the song and wakes up to it. He has to listen to it before he rises, before he brushes his hair or teeth or sees his tired face in the shining glow of Shibuya.
Once there was a certain joy in it. The writing, the ruling. He was a kid with ghosts in his retinas and ghosts on his tongue, and the ghosts he met were more real to him than the people who had raised him. His classmates looked at him like he was a ghost, with his dishwater hair and stone-blue eyes, despite his perfect intonation. It was easy to slip between planes, to unreal himself, to reach and reach and end up in a little out-of-the-way coffee shop, homework untouched on his desk and no one calling him home.
Mr. H had been exactly the same, then, as he is now, though he’d changed his hairstyle once or twice in the years Joshua had known him—he is unchanged in the way that all adults, to ordinary children, remain unchanged for half their lives. Mr. H had been an ear to listen, a voice to comfort, a warmth for Joshua to carry with him back out into the RG. He had said, first, You’re thinking about staying, and Joshua, taken by surprise, had said, Is it obvious?
There could be people like he was back then, moving through the city without the guts to let go and fall up. They’re not Joshua’s concern, but sometimes he thinks about them anyway.
To be the Composer, you have to see everything, all at once—Udagawa to the Underpass to the carcrash crowds and careful walk signals of the Scramble Crossing. For instance: the staticglow of Noise in every corner of Shibuya, luminescent when they gather around the angry, the hurting, the lost. People bring their troubles with them, carry them like pins on backpacks, glut them in the light. When a Game isn’t on, the Reapers keep the Noise down, because on their own, the people cannot be trusted.
For instance: the ever-present rumble of the River, the latticework of walls and chains, organization he trusts to his Conductor but has to double-check.
For instance: Neku traps his hair underneath his headphones, tucks loose strands back and carefully maneuvers the phones to cover as much as possible. He does this without thinking, while staring into the distance or ruminating over the day’s mission on his phone. He pulls strands inside his mouth, a habit Joshua recognizes from his own habit, unselfconsciously, as though nobody has ever called Neku out on it.
Neku doesn’t smile, but there is an unexpected vulnerability in his features, his kid’s nose, the soft pink of his dry lips. If Joshua looked for long enough into his steady seaspit eyes, he could pull out every last secret Neku keeps close, if, of course, Joshua didn’t already know.
Joshua got lucky with Neku—how often does a kid come along with Imagination enough to knock Megumi flat and a mental blockage the size of a city block?
As a partner, he’s fun, clinging to every vestige of originality, introspective and stubborn, with that little pout that only disappears when he’s thinking about Shiki, and even then, sometimes only deepens.
When Joshua realizes he’s cataloguing Neku, he falls silent, falls a step or two ahead. Pulls out his phone and navigates to his only other contact, pretends to be typing. Closes his teeth around his bottom lip but turns it into a smile.
What’s the point of remembering? he asks himself. Shibuya will be gone and all will be quiet.
Neku talks and talks, and then he gets in his head, and his soft, greasy hair falls over his eyes so Joshua can’t recognize his expression. When they fuse in battle, Joshua’s song goes into Neku and Neku’s into Joshua. Sometimes Joshua doesn’t want to leave. In the Noise-quiet after a battle, just before the Noise Plane fades away and leaves them in the UG, Joshua focuses on his breath, the loudest thing in the world.
When he notices Joshua looking, Neku’s quips are amateur: “What, something in my hair?” Joshua, too, is unselfconscious; he has every right to stare, to study, to observe. It is as if Neku isn’t used to being looked at, despite his fashion sense, his styled hair—when confronted with an unwavering gaze, his voice goes rough, half-violent. Then he catches himself, swallows, says the next thing a lot softer.
“No, no,” says Joshua, and because the lightness of his voice is one of his easiest disguises, he laughs. “Though I might recommend a shower.”
“You too, buddy,” says Neku.
Joshua’s gut squeezes, but it doesn’t mean anything.
Joshua watches Neku on the battlefield more than he needs to. A lower-plane entity wouldn’t be able to see a thing, because the Noise Plane separates partners, but Joshua sees everything.
All Neku’s rough edges are heightened on the battlefield, the violence Joshua hears sometimes in his voice, the coiled energy of him, the self-assuredness that comes out so quick it certainly burns Neku’s tongue. He is confident, cool, attuned to the very rhythm Joshua feels sliding through his veins. He breaks a sweat, comes out of combat with his hands on his knees, breathing hard, and when he looks up at Joshua, his eyes shine. Rising, he brushes his hair out of his eyes, and sometimes when he straightens he lifts his headphones and, keeping them over his ears, he pulls them forward to pull new strands of hair up off his forehead.
On the Noise Plane, Neku is more adept than anyone Joshua has ever observed. His head bobbing to a tune Joshua can’t hear, he zips around the stage, drawing on psychs like it’s no harder than breaking into a jog. His collection of pins grows, glows when he touches them. He lays them out and chooses carefully before each scan, the little tinkle of metal on metal forming a melody Joshua hadn’t anticipated.
It could sound nice. It doesn’t sound like any other melody, self-reflective and focused; it sounds like Neku, in an intimate way that Joshua can’t pin down, like he’s walking in on some personal, half-clothed moment. It could be a ritual, the choosing of pins, that little line between Neku’s brows deepening. Neku looking up and saying, as though worried, as though genuinely interested, “What do you think, Josh?”
Josh holds up his phone. Says, “Afraid I don’t know a thing about pins, sorry.”
“I thought everybody needs psychs,” Neku says. “How do you fight, then?” It occurs to Joshua that Neku has never seen him in action, and so he shows him. Hand-to-hand, breath on each other’s cheeks, Joshua half out of his body while he explains the mechanics of his combat, leaving most of everything out.
He keeps most things to himself. He drops clues, hints, frets about Megumi in the noisiness of his own head, brushes off Neku’s stream of questions. Every game is really two games at once—the one on the board and the one locked up in the head.
And so Joshua keeps the things he thinks about Neku inside his head, too.
He is running out of time.
Here is something Joshua has not let himself think about for five days: the lines of the song that Neku occupies. He is a sweet sound, Joshua thinks, though Joshua has grown so irritated by any sound at all that has taken most of the week to admit it to himself. Being near Neku doesn’t make Joshua want to put on headphones, except when Neku is talking.
Even then, there is an understated charm to Neku’s voice, which is only part of the song. It’s the aura, the presence, that reverberates inside Joshua’s head. It could be its own song, Joshua thinks, with instrument upon instrument, quieter and subtler than that of the city. Joshua has to lean in very close to hear. He finds himself leaning closer and closer, listening.
It startles him. Half of Shibuya’s symphony is haphazard these days, an amalgam of notes and rests, sharps and flats, the pen that draws them irritated and overly swift, but there is something deliberate about Neku, not settled but transcendent.
Joshua has never thought of a person as a whole symphony before.
The truth gets out in fragments, but that’s part of Joshua’s Game, too. Ideally they could make it to Megumi’s white room without him having to say a word, but the world is rarely predictable, and more rarely still is it convenient.
So he has factored in Neku finding out. Not all of it, of course; not the black room and the theatre hall and the quiet ritual of writing, day by day. He takes care of that before Neku wakes up for each new day.
It’s all right to say it now.
He is sick of being Composer.
Officer Kariya Koki, who has taken an interest in their little game of two, and a further interest in what is surely Minamimoto’s Noise—it could only be him, because Megumi would not interfere too drastically—swings down into the Underpass, his skeletal wings catching the light like river water. He adjusts his fists in his jacket pockets, flexes his fingers.
The game in Joshua’s head spins itself out. He readies himself for any accusation.
Under ordinary circumstances, Joshua would have Megumi take care of the strange Noise. A private meeting and—boom, the whole thing swept under the rug. Minamimoto reprimanded, stripped of his title as officer, perhaps stripped of his status as Reaper altogether. It would be desirable for Minamimoto to wipe Joshua off the map with one of his Noise, without having to get himself dirty. Without having to put his neck on the line. After their little RG showdown, Minamimoto knows that he’s one confrontation from his own obliteration.
It doesn’t matter. Shibuya will be gone in a matter of days. So what if a few Reapers kick it before then? Life, meaningless, cacophonous life, will always try to hold on. Better to do it before they know it’s coming.
Joshua isn’t worried about the weird Noise, anyway. He could take a herd of any Noise on his own. With Neku’s power in his blood, he could smother them all.
Neku, who doesn’t know any of this, takes a step back.
“You’re… alive?” he says. It’s a whisper in the Underpass, with cars like little earthquakes overhead.
It is a gentler accusation than Joshua had expected. He puts on his most winning smile. He knows how to play this card—it was his truth for years.
In his best drawl, he gives Neku the explanation he wants. He is a living boy with living powers, because loopholes will allow you to get away with anything around here. He is equal parts charming and infuriating. He can take care of the black Noise.
Kariya’s brows go up. All the plays spin out in front of Joshua in little notes; he can see them in the air around them. The stench of exhaust, the screaming of birds on telephone wires, the steady, almost indiscernible hum of Noise waiting to be heard. There are more stories to be told, and more still to keep inside his chest, where secrets live until they dissolve into his blood. There is a scaffolding of secrets inside his body, and hidden inside that are all his truths.
Then again, the truth has never been kind to Joshua.
Don’t you trust me? is what Joshua is asking Neku, there in the Underpass. I saved you. I’m your partner, and you need me. You can’t win this Game all on your own, no matter how powerful you are. All I ask is for your trust.
Neku has pulled his bottom lip inside his mouth and is worrying it with his teeth. His eyes keep going from Joshua to Kariya to the spot where the Noise had just been, where a flash of light had inverted the colors of the world. The afterimage lingers, the sketchy shapes of little cherubs. Joshua hadn’t wanted to show that, yet, but shame doesn’t linger long around him. Minamimoto forced his hand—that’s all.
There’s a little wrinkle between Neku’s orange brows, now. He reaches for his pins and pulls a few out. He rolls them between his fingers, nails catching on the pin backs.
And when Kariya is gone, when Neku is breathing hard from his revelations, the noise of the cars goes quieter—or maybe that’s Joshua’s aura. Maybe he’s giving Neku the silence to think.
Neku stuffs his pins into his pockets and pulls his hands out. For a moment Joshua imagines those hands reaching out for his own, imagines the flutter of contact.
Instead, Neku swings them at his side while he heads toward the sunlight. He says, “Don’t keep secrets like that from me, all right?”
Joshua giggles. He doesn’t say all right back.
The black, liquid void of Minamimoto’s pocket dimension.
The heavy gasps of victory.
The sudden light, light enough to knock the sun flat on its back.
The horror on Neku’s face as he tips back. He stumbles over the lip of the building and begins his descent.
The terror. The broken blue of them.
The rush of anticipatory pain, Joshua’s nerves alight.
The warp in his bones, the tug, the pull, the quiet plea to work, to work, this time.
The image of Shibuya behind his eyelids.
The song of a prayer.
A prayer, answered.
In another world, in an interim, Joshua watches a new Shibuya. He knows all its hidey holes, knows how to keep himself out of sight, how to blur his aura and modulate his vibe until curious eyes pass right over him. It makes him uncomfortable—makes him one step from vanishing altogether. It was a risk, sliding between dimensions—an uncomfortable prickling in his whole being, holding his smile for as long as he could so that Neku would never see him stop, and then the ungraceful deposit of his body, with its awkward limbs and boring repetitions, breath, heartbeat, digestion. All the boring shit. Any time he does this, and he rarely does, he risks his whole self.
It was a gamble, but great risks make for great rewards.
There is a different song in this different Shibuya, one that’s perhaps not so discordant as his own. It’s almost beautiful, in a nostalgic sort of way. It makes Joshua’s temples throb just walking through the streets, so he holes up in the Room of Reckoning, the door closed but not locked, thinking about that last rooftop moment with Neku and Minamimoto, stars in all their hair, stars falling all around them. Neku’s confusion, his flytrap rage, and then the long soft tumble toward the white room and—victory?
Hardly; Minamimoto blasted himself into starstuff, and so Megumi will call another week. Joshua knows him well enough to predict this, at least.
The panic in Neku’s eyes as he fell, neatly, back first, his arms reaching up to Joshua while the light built. The panic and—what? A softer kind of fear. The night reaching up for him while the light reached out for Joshua. The ground was so far away.
Two seconds from utter obliteration, Joshua flickered out. He reappeared clutching his knees, his breath too fast and too hard, on the bright streets around O-East. He figured out the terms of this new dimension over a bowl of noodles at Ramen Don’s, running his fingers through his hair until it stuck up so much he needed the men’s room sink to smooth it down.
The problem: Joshua can’t get back, not without taking on significant risks with unpleasant odds.
So he sends a message to Mr. H, crosses his fingers like a child. He could bite straight through them, sever them like putty, and, when he’s done with that, he could probably put them back. It could be a party trick, a way to show that he’s means business.
The bright world goes on around him. In the Room of Reckoning, Joshua lets himself glow, with no one to observe him. But only for a moment, because the song is louder that way, even muffled as it is by the clatter of the Shibuya River.
Mr. H, as always, dressed to the nines, his vest buttoned neatly, his hair gelled up with fingers and no comb and his chin raised so high it’s practically on another plane, enters the Room noisily, the door shutting behind him. Joshua lounges on his throne, his legs bent and his calves thrown over one of the arms, the other arm digging into his back. Every few seconds he swings one of his legs from the knee, lets it collide with the edge of the chair.
Mr. H raises his eyebrows. “You’ve taken quite the detour, I see.”
It would be so easy to start it, to open his mouth, to snarl, to wheedle, It was you, setting me up to fail, undermining me, turning the tables. But even if he knew that his voice wouldn’t waver, that he would keep his chin up with eyes flashing, there is still a difference in status between the two of them, and Joshua isn’t ready to put all his cards on the table.
Instead he hops off the throne and saunters across the big space, its shining dark all around him.
“It was completely unavoidable,” Joshua says.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Josh.”
Joshua scoffs. “Low stakes are boring. Besides, it’s hardly like I wanted this outcome.”
The unsaid things accumulate; the room fills up with them. Mr. H’s face is pinched; in the dark he looks exhausted, skeletal.
“It was an in-the-moment decision,” Joshua says. “There’s just no predicting Minamimoto.”
“I don’t think it was,” Mr. H tells him.
Joshua closes his eyes as though that will make the whole train of thought dissipate, like he could open them again and Mr. H will have just walked through the door, smiling in relief at Joshua’s miraculous survival. He curls a few strands of hair around his finger.
He says, opening his eyes, “I knew I could get away safely, and Neku couldn’t. That’s the whole story. Now, are you here to drive me home or should I phone an interdimensional taxi?”
Mr. H looks at him inscrutably for a few seconds. “I’m worried about you.”
Joshua waves a hand. Passing Mr. H, he reaches the door and pulls it open; from the other side, he can see traces of blue light from Dead God’s Lounge spilling down the corridor through an open door, very far away. Mr. H turns slowly to keep Joshua in his line of vision. There is so much magic in this room, it coats Joshua’s tongue, goes down like candy. He has to get out of here.
He says, “Well, don’t be.”
“Are you happy with your choice?” Mr. H says, softly. There are so many things he could mean—Are you happy that you chose Neku? That you entered the Reaper’s Game? That you gave Megumi a fighting chance? He probably means all of them.
Joshua’s voice goes stern. “Are you getting me home or what?”
The next time he sees Neku, Neku is harder. Colder. He is not alone. He put a black door in his white room and walked through it hand-in-hand with his partners. Misaki Shiki, Bito Daisukenojo. The only partners who mattered to him. Joshua, who has kept himself hidden during Neku’s long trek up the Shibuya River, watches his series of battles. After every one, he reconsiders his pins. Beat points and rifles through them the same way, and at the end of the decision-making, Neku pins them in a row across his scarf. Even now, it’s cute.
It will be a shame, to dissolve him, without so much as taking his hand on purpose. As knowing what his mouth tastes like.
Shibuya sings, incessantly, and Shiki and Beat’s bodies sing too. Their sweat sings. Their shining eyes sing. They are euphonic, getting louder and louder the closer they get to the Room of Reckoning. That is where they are going; Shibuya’s struggles are the Composer’s responsibility. That is what everyone has led them to believe, and usually it’s true.
Joshua feels the responsibility, but it is much smaller than that of the sweet light of annihilation, of the hundreds of thousands of lives he, more than anyone on this Plane or any other, determines the fates of.
It will be quick, he has decided. Quicker than Minamimoto’s flare, quicker than a bullet to the heart. Boom. Just like that, but quiet. No one will have time to feel afraid.
He will be a merciful god.
Whatever the Higher Plane wants with him after that, he will know that he has been merciful.
He wonders if Mr. H is here, too, observing from the inside from a higher frequency, the sort even the Composer cannot see. The thought makes him shiver. Mr. H, he is sure, wants him to fail.
It is hard to hear underneath Beat and Shiki, their crying and their yelling, but the song that is Sakuraba Neku goes on and on. It snakes through Dead God’s Lounge, it seeps under the door of the Room of Reckoning. On his throne, Joshua puts his hands over his ears, then plugs his ears with his fingertips. The sound gets in, familiar and sweet. Joshua realizes he’s biting his lip.
Instead of a gun, he materializes a pair of heavy headphones over his skull, made of feathers and light. They are warm, soft. They muffle the sound. They muffle everything. They make Joshua feel vulnerable. Neku could be at the door and Joshua wouldn’t know until it swung open.
He lets them dissolve into feathers, which gather around his feet. While the noise comes in, he rolls his shoulders. The beginnings of a headache throb painfully at his temples, behind his brow.
They have moved past Konishi, now, toward where Joshua knows Megumi is waiting in the neon underwater of Dead God’s Lounge. If he doesn’t take them down, they are coming for him.
This story ends with someone dead on the ground in a black room with the music too far away to touch them. This is how the story always ends. Joshua standing over his predecessor, just a body smaller than any body should look; Joshua turning his hands into fists while the song entered him. He could practically see the notes rising up from the old Composer. He reached out and they rearranged themselves before his fingertips. He could feel death settle cold and heavy in his gut, but the magic of the symphony had already gotten into his lungs.
It was one thing to see dead people and another to see a person, dead.
Would he give Neku his body on the floor, blood everywhere or burns across his skin or his chest neatly concaved? Would he give Neku, burn-sweet Neku, tremulous Neku, that satisfaction? Infinite symphonies inside him?
Neku sees him. The hardness in his eyes gives way to a watery sort of resolve.
“You’re… alive?” he says. And then, before Joshua can so much as quirk his lips, Neku says, “You’re alive!” He sounds like a little kid. He sounds like a separated lover. He sounds so relieved that the song stops. It goes quiet in Joshua’s head, for just one second, and then Neku is stepping toward him and Joshua has a Game to finish.
The Game, in the end, was easy. Two guns weighed much the same as one, light and feathers in each palm. Neku’s eyes were gunpowder blue, cold and flat when Joshua caught his gaze. After three Games, Neku knew how it had to end. The Composer, in his simplest form, with fingers familiar on the trigger.
Neku hefted the gun like it weighed as much as he did. He slid his finger across the trigger, gently, barely touching the cool surface, thin as a knife. He fiddled for the safety, so Joshua shifted his hand to mime for Neku what to do. Under kinder circumstances, he would hold Neku’s hand on the gun, would feel the tension in his joints as he pulled the trigger, but Neku had to stand or fall on his own.
Besides, trust went both ways.
Neku held the gun with both hands. He shuddered like a drowning man. He met Joshua’s eyes like he was looking for the trust in them, and his eyes welled up as if he hadn’t found even a hint. He slid one foot a few inches, lowering his stance.
He lowered the gun to point at the floor, releasing the trigger. Joshua, who saw this all as though a bull’s eye had been painted in the air around Neku, a bull’s eye made of staves and endless rests. Joshua could see them all around him, multiplying like Noise.
When Neku looked up, he was smiling. He was crying. He was holding out a hand.
Joshua fingered the trigger, thinking, taking in Neku’s face. All around them, Neku’s song and Shibuya’s song and the quietest song of all, the song that made up Kiryu Yoshiya, boy god, rose together, the sweetness of Neku’s melody making sweet all the sounds that came after. Joshua looked at Neku and saw, for the first time, how to write that melody.
Neku took a breath, his whole body rising with it.
Against the trigger, Joshua’s finger twitched, hard.