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His head felt like it was chained to iron weights, just like how his hands were locked with sturdy cuffs.
Too bright yet too dim, outlines burning into his retinas as harsh rays. He blinks and blinks again.
Into focus came voices from all directions. A chalk outline scratched on the wooden floor.
“Why did you take Kazuma-sama's life?”
To say Ryuunosuke wished to have never woken up—
Would be quite the understatement.
Yet still, no matter how many times he’d pinch the skin of his wrist or squeeze his eyes shut and think running off the ship would do him any favours. To let himself get shot in the head as worthy punishment for leaving his best friend to die. Still, he kept dragging his feet along.
Leaving this mystery unsolved would be the greatest dishonour to him.
Of course, that doesn’t stop Ryuunosuke’s mind from scattering into so many ideas, but all goes still once he feels the great blade in his hands.
Susato-san gives him a smile tugged with melancholy. He’s reassured it’s what Kazuma would have wanted.
The last of his touch, embedded in smooth iron.
What he would call his ‘soul’, never to be parted from its owner.
It’s bittersweet.
Stealing the shoes of a dead man and filling them in as if he never existed.
But as he runs hand through the ribbon tied, tails slipping between his fingers, part of him feels blood-red staining them—
While another feels an indescribable warmth spreading through his palm.
The two of them were to be locked together for fifty days. Isolation can make one go insane. For fifteen of those days, Ryuunosuke was curled up in the wardrobe. Splitting rations and splitting tales, yet Kazuma wouldn’t tell him a single thing, really.
How much trust did Kazuma have in him? Or rather, how much trust did he have in Kazuma?
Ryuunosuke was aware of what the voyage would bring, but perhaps he truly didn’t think it through. He trusted that their relationship wouldn’t falter over that month-and-a-half, no questions asked. Maybe something like this was bound to happen with the way he was being so careless.
His first set of trials were all back-to-back. Three shocking cases that left him no time to think at all. With his heart racing and Susato-san’s legal jargon flying through his ear, his hand would unconsciously move to Karuma’s pommel. Nothing like a silent prayer, it simply felt natural to do so. By his hip, it would stay firm. Reassurance, like how Kazuma kept his unwavering belief in him during that fateful trial in Japan.
They’re oceans apart now. While Ryuunosuke gets to stand on his own two feet, Kazuma is nothing but ash.
He finds himself kneeling on the bed in the attic of Herlock Sholmes’ suite. He had kindly offered to let himself and Susato-san reside in his flat. The great blade sits in front of him.
The last of his touch, embedded in smooth iron.
If the blade counts, he can at least feel like part of him is there. Running his fingertips over it, he can at least pretend.
A great responsibility for him to carry, one which Kazuma would be proud of him for. Or mock him for. Berate him for. Look away with sad eyes and perhaps berate himself for, because he’s no longer worthy.
Ryuunosuke doesn’t know what he’d think. He can’t peer into his decaying brain, nor into his ashen grave.
The blade. No matter what he does or how many times he prepares his mind, he can’t get himself to unsheathe it.
If even a crack of it opens, he worries he’ll lose control. He will lose control, seeing the edge glisten in the sun. A sting in his gut and a strike of red on his palms, a new fresh scarlet deepening the red of the bandanna. An urge.
When he couldn’t sleep, he’d contemplate. To open or not to open. See if he has the courage or if he doesn’t. Perhaps the gods will give their twist of fate once more and let the iron shavings crumble as soon as the blade is drawn.
He never does. Besides, he knows things would never come to that.
Even if he knows that well and true, when he squeezes his eyes shut, the image flashes through his eyelids.
He’d rather not have Susato-san throw him in the middle of the night, he tells himself.
He’d rather not use what’s left of Kazuma to destroy himself, forever perverting the blade.
(Of course, part of it sounds appealing. A blood brothership done far too late. Bound together as one.)
He opts for leaving it by his side each time. After the initial fear of accidentally driving it into his gut and not by his own will, he finds it quite comforting.
Half his mind claims he’s defiling a sacred object. If the real Kazuma were here, what would he do? The other half, however, believes it doesn’t harm anyone if nobody knows. He can live in his head and think about what could have been.
If he convinced Kazuma to share the bed for that one night, nothing would’ve happened at all. He could have had his hands in his hair and their chests so close he could hear his heartbeat, and nothing would’ve happened at all.
Lacing his fingers through the silky bandanna, stroking the raised edges of the cord wrap, it’s awfully intimate. A tingling feeling goes through his hand.
In the dead of night, when his thoughts stray a little further from reason, he wishes for nothing more than for Kazuma’s presence. To see his smile once more.
But for now, this will do. Basking in the remnants from another time.
Kazuma would bring it up every now and again, how Ryuunosuke would make such a good lawyer. Ryuunosuke often joked back about how the prospect was slim to none.
Yet here he is. A lawyer, despite the current suspension and lack of work.
More times than he would like to admit, he has gripped at Karuma’s handle for answers. He knows the response will never come, but he still asks.
Just what would Kazuma think if he saw him now?
Regret? Disappointment? Perhaps a pat on the back and a quip about his treasonous partner?
Even if he scrapes his memories, all he finds are scraps.
The low tones of his voice have become nothing but empty noise.
His morals that Ryuunosuke stood close by could easily be misremembered as textbook scripture.
It’s horrifying to think about.
As much as he knows logically in his mind that it would be better if he learned to get over it, it gets more suffocating the more he realises just how little he truly knows.
It’s so easy to keep his grip with a shaky hand and think about everything Kazuma could tell him about. Kazuma, the old reliable friend. Karuma, the old reliable blade. He can imagine for just a little moment that they’re one in the same.
“Well done, partner!” “Brilliantly done, partner!” “Expertly done, partner!”
Except he can’t do that any more.
His praise means nothing without the comforting voice behind it. How long until the face of his best friend smudges to paste in his mind next?
Memories, chipping away bit by bit. At first, there’s a shatter of ceramic. He only pieces what he wants to remember. The fragments of dust are left behind, and the binding glue eventually decays.
Perhaps Karuma will decay too. Kazuma was so keen on his maintenance. Blood thumps in his ears and his grip on the handle tightens.
What happens when there’s nothing left?
Of Karuma. Of Kazuma. With not even an attempt of fixing what’s shattered, because even the strongest of glue could never keep his face from turning into that warped state.
The last of Kazuma; every bit of his soul warped or eradicated. More than just the photoprint showing his sleeping face, the grain hiding a rotting corpse. The total destruction of all he’s ever known.
He can’t allow that to happen.
Ryuunosuke picks at where he tied the bandanna. Under his nail, the knot comes undone.
In the odd case that there’s truly nothing he can do, he’ll let himself indulge for this last time.
When Lord van Zieks’ disciple removes his mask, Ryuunosuke can’t help but feel he could tell, deep inside.
Once faced with his partner, alive and breathing, it’s nothing short of a relief, knowing the flashes in his mind’s eye were simple distortions.
He returned Karuma as soon as he stepped towards him. It was always Kazuma’s sword after all. A great work of art that resides with the Asougis.
Each time he glances at Karuma, now returned to its rightful owner, he is reminded of one thing.
He’ll never speak to Kazuma of what he did to that sword.