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It’s sakura season.
All around Tokyo, the streets are lined with blossoming trees, a soft pearlescent pink in the spring sunshine. The stores are decorated with plastic fronds of the flowers, celebrating sales and special promotions for sakura-viewing season.
Rei is invited to a hanami party by Azusa and politely attends, bringing a box of carefully decorated cupcakes and a large thermos of green tea. The guests are Poirot patrons and friends, cheerful people used to cheerful Amuro Tooru who always provides service with a smile and is never slow to help out. They ooh and aww over the beautiful trees crowned with their pink splendour, over the petals that fall soft as snow to coat the ground like sugar. Lovely, beloved, and brief as mayflies.
Rei hates sakura season.
Five petals to a flower, five fingers to a hand, five men brought together at the beginning of their careers to form a friendship as strong as the steel sakura on their badges. And now there’s only one left, one single man with his back to the world. One single petal isn’t a flower, it’s nothing but a reminder of what had been.
All around him the sakura fall, dying, dead, and Rei smells the scent of gunpowder rather than the soft floral fragrance.
***
It’s late. Hours after nightfall, the sky crisp and clear. Tokyo in April is cool, clammy, the nights still with just a hint of winter’s crispness lingering.
Somewhere in the darkness, in this empty expanse that had once been an Edo-era village on the border of Chiba-ken, is an undercover agent. A MI6 NOC embedded in the syndicate scented out by Gin’s bloodhounds and now on the run for her life. Rei is a few hours behind her, searching with the vague and unlikely hope of finding her before the hitmen do. The village is nothing but crumbling stone and rotted wood, no buildings anymore, just foundations marking where structures had once stood. The grass is tall and damp, his passage leaving a trail in the thick greenery.
Normally this would be nothing out of the ordinary, neither the danger nor the chance of failure anything to affect him. But normally, he doesn’t have Akai Shuuichi in his ear, nagging.
The FBI agent was the one who originally identified his MI6 colleague, by some route that remains a mystery to Rei, and it was he who realised that the syndicate was onto her. Why he wasn’t the one to come out in the dead of night and try to bring her to safety is something that Rei intellectually understands but emotionally resents with the strength of a thousand suns. Akai lives his life to be a pain in the ass to Rei, a constant pebble in his shoe, rubbing him raw until he’s sore and bleeding. The fact that Akai is completely aware of this and continues to make himself a misery only makes it worse.
“I suspect she’s heading north-west; there’s a small road she could have stashed some kind of transport on,” says Akai in the earpiece connected to his phone. “It runs up past Chiba and into the mountains.”
“I’m not about to launch into an alpine adventure for your shitty NOC,” says Rei.
“She isn’t my anything,” replies Akai calmly. “But she is another chance at pinioning the syndicate.”
“So you say,” mutters Rei ungraciously, unwilling to admit that Akai’s not wrong. “And anyway, I don’t see any kind of road. Just grass and bushes and fucking shadows everywhere.” Tokyo’s night pollution is ambient over the city; out here it serves only to block some of the moonlight from lighting his path. With Gin’s dogs possible nearby, Rei doesn’t dare use a flashlight. Which means he’s stumbling along in the dark, surrounded by enemies. It feels like the story of his life.
Off to the left something snaps, a branch being trampled, and he ducks and freezes, pistol in hand. He’s all in black tonight, a cap over his golden hair, a mirror of the outfit he had worn to confront Akai. That seems like a mistake, now, a repeat of a venture that had failed. Akai lived, avoided a bullet to the brain, and unbelievably even worse is now on Rei’s side. Maybe. Perhaps.
Rei has never prayed for Hiromitsu, never left gifts of food or drink or money, never paid for a sutra reading or a ceremony. None of that has ever seemed important, has ever seemed like anything that mattered. His gift to the departed, his payment was always going to be in blood – Akai Shuuichi’s, of course. The plan had been so simple: lay the corpse of Hiro’s murderer at his grave, both recompense and retribution. And now that Akai’s torpedoed that he has nothing to give.
Nothing could never be enough.
“I’m showing no activity on your GPS,” says Akai in his ear.
“Fuck off,” says Rei, under his breath. But he straightens and slips off in the direction he heard the snap from. “It’s blacker than your goddamn taste in clothes out here,” he mutters, creeping past a thick bush and along a couple of tall plum trees, the scent of their blossoms faint, delicate. Soft as incense in a church, a chapel, a coffin. Rei rubs his eyes briefly – he’s getting far too morbid.
He steps quickly across an open clearing, nothing but empty grass under the stars, and trips up on top of something creaking, man-made. He frowns, looking down. “I think this is a we –”
The wooden boards, ancient and rotted, splinter beneath his weight and he drops. Falls down, down into darkness, and hits the water so hard for a moment he thinks he’s landed on concrete and shattered his ankles.
Rei sinks into the cold water, shock freezing him for what feels like an eternity but is less than a heartbeat, before he kicks out. He immediately knocks into a wall: hard, cold, wet.
A well. He’s fallen into a well. It’s only a meter wide, the stone walls slick and without handhold. He looks up and sees only darkness above.
“Akai?”
Silence. His phone, like the rest of him, was submerged in the water.
He’s all alone once more.
***
Rei climbs. He climbs, and he falls, and he climbs again.
Again, again, again.
Skin tearing, fingers frozen, hands numb.
Again, again, again.
The splash of water, after seconds/minutes/hours becomes nothing, becomes like air, unnoticed, unheeded.
Again, again.
His head is starting to spin, his lungs aching, his muscles cramping.
Again.
He falls for the twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth time.
Again.
Fiftieth.
Rei coughs and sputters and sinks, barely able to tread water. He tries to cling to the walls but they’re slick as ice. Covered with algae and moss. The air is fetid with their reek.
Again.
He hits the water hard.
Head underwater
Legs so tired, so heavy.
He breaks the surface, gasps for breath, water in his mouth.
No room to float, no energy to swim.
No more strength to climb.
Up above is nothing but darkness. No stars, no dreams, no hopes.
You’re falling behind, Zero!
Rei’s eyes snap open as his head sinks beneath the surface. He kicks out once more, one last time, gasps a single breath.
“Furuya!”
He coughs, sputters. Too weak to call, too exhausted to do anything but tread water for one moment more.
Something falls and hits him in the face, it’s long, slithery.
Rope.
It takes him a number of tries to pass it under his arms. His body is like stone, his hands are numb. He can’t feel anything. All there is is blackness, and the whisper of old ghosts.
Finally, finally, the knot is tied and he pulls on the rope.
There’s a grunt from somewhere above and then, slow as dawn breaking, he starts to rise. The rope cuts into his chest, his arm pits, his ribs. Cuts so tight he shudders, groans, grasps at it. It becomes tight, then aching, then excruciating.
And still he rises. Until finally, there’s a soft grey glow to the world.
A strong hand grabs him and pulls him over the lip of the stone well; he falls into the grass and feels nothing, nothing at all.
“Furuya-kun?”
Something warm against his face, like the touch of sunlight. He closes his eyes and rests his cheek against it. It’s welcoming, comforting. A touch brushes over his cheek, a gentle caress, delicate as silk.
“Furuya-kun?” whispers the voice again. Rei’s too tired to answer, nothing but weight and cold.
He feels himself lifted, his body resting against something firm, strong, as he rocks with the motion of steps.
Darkness falls.
***
He’s jostled towards consciousness at some point, aware of a smell of cigarettes and after-shave, familiar masculine scents close to him. They give him a sense of security and he presses his nose close, feeling warm skin. For a moment the world pauses, and he has a sense of stillness. Then he’s lifted again, bundled up like a package and carried off into darkness.
At the very edge of his memory, like a light on the distant horizon, he remembers kisses that tasted of cigarettes and the feel of silken hair through his fingers, long as a leash, a rope, a lifeline.
Rei closes his eyes and sleeps.
***
He wakes in a bed. It’s a western bed in a western room, sunlight filtering in through drawn curtains. He can see the shadowed outlines of a dresser and mirror, of a bedside table and a dark doorway.
His body is incredibly sore, the whole of it aching. There’s a long knot of pain beneath his arms and over his chest that presses against him whenever he breathes. His legs are cramping and heavy. He feels wrung out, his body weighted down by exhaustion that lies in his bones like concrete. He lies still, tucked in haphazardly beneath a heavy winter duvet patterned with white sakura.
He traces one sakura flower with his thumb, eyes unfocused, mind drifting.
There’s a knock on the door and he startles, looks up to see Akai Shuuichi come in with a glass of water and a pill bottle.
Rei stares at him for a moment, perplexed. His mind is slow to kick into gear and he’s honestly unsure of how to feel. For once his emotions have been washed away, banished to a distant shore, and there’s just this man and his cool green eyes and his smile soft as the glow of the crescent moon.
“How do you feel?” asks Akai, coming over and putting both water and pills down on the bedside table. Rei stares up at him, and in his sharp face sees the shadow of the man he had been – sees the echo of Rye’s long hair and sultry grin.
Everything – past, present, future – feels so far away.
“Tired,” he says. Thinking is too hard. Feeling is impossible. Everything has been wrung out of him, his body and his heart twisted to dry desiccated pieces.
Akai opens the bottle of pills and shakes two out. “Take these,” he says.
Without complaint, Rei takes them. Puts them on his dry tongue and swallows them down with tasteless water. He doesn’t even ask what they are.
All he wants is to drift back into emptiness.
“You should rest some more,” says Akai. “You’re not yourself.”
“I don’t want to be the person I am,” says Rei, head falling back into the pillow. “This is much easier.”
“You won’t feel that way later,” replies Akai. He reaches out and brushes the bangs from Rei’s face. “Not to worry. I won’t mention this.”
Mention what? thinks Rei, but he’s already drifting back to sleep.
***
The moon hangs high above in the dark sky, its light soft, silvery.
Down below it’s reflected perfectly in the endless stretch of water that lies over the earth, still, unmoving. It’s ankle deep, Rei standing alone looking out into the darkness. It ripples at his feet alone, the water cold and soggy in his shoes.
From above the sakura are falling, petals drifting across the emptiness. The air smells of gunpowder – sharp, bitter.
Away in the distance, four figures are walking with their backs to him. They’re far away but he knows them immediately, knows without doubt who they are.
Rei can feel tears on his cheeks, streaming down his face, his throat tight.
Three of them keep walking, their shapes perfectly mirrored in the water they’re walking through. The fourth stops and looks back over his shoulder, face in shadow.
“When are you going to catch up, Zero?”
Rei breaks into a run, but the water is growing deeper, rising, to his knees/hips/waist, and it’s pulling him down. He can’t catch up, can’t run. He reaches out as the water passes his chest, submerges his arm. “Hiro – no –”
The water floods over him, in his eyes, nose, mouth, cold and thick with the taste of algae.
“No!”
***
“No!”
He bolts upright, face wet with tears, throat so tight the air is struggling to enter his lungs. He flails, knocking the glass of water off the table and smashing it against the wall, rolling off the edge of the bed and falling to his hands and knees on the carpeted floor.
Hiromitsu, Date, Matsuda, Hagiwara.
All gone.
He curls into a ball, fingers tearing into the carpet, breath whistling in his lungs as he chokes on the air.
Footsteps come running and the door slams open. Rei looks up, eyes wet with pain and anger and grief, and sees Akai Shuuichi standing there.
For an instant the world stands still, teetering on a pinnacle, and Rei can sense the two directions of this scenario. Confrontation or retreat. 99 cases out of 100, he would tear into the FBI agent, would pull himself together and give him a lashing.
He turns away, wiping his face on his sleeve – a plain dark yukata, one that doesn’t belong to him – and huddling against the bedframe.
Akai moves in quietly, the swish of his clothes barely audible. He bends beside Rei and, slowly, puts a hand on his shoulder.
“They’re all dead,” says Rei, voice rough with tears and well-water. “Matsuda – Date – Hagiwara – Hiro… I can’t – I don’t want –”
“Don’t,” says Akai, softly. He pulls Rei close, close enough to smell him, to feel the warmth of his chest and his hand and his breath. “Don’t ruin yourself for the sake of those who are gone.”
Rei shivers at the tone of his voice. “You don’t understand.”
“I do. Very plainly. But speaking as a dead man – the living must come first. Or we are all dead and damned.”
“They still call me,” he says, his whisper hoarse.
“Don’t listen. That’s a siren song, Furuya-kun, and it will destroy you.”
“Maybe I want to be destroyed.”
Akai holds him tighter, Rei half-pulled into his lap, his arms wrapped around Rei’s aching chest. “The Furuya I know has spent his whole life putting others before himself. Serving the country, the public, the government. That’s a kind of selflessness I don’t possess. And I think, some days, it must be very hard to get up with that weight on your shoulders. But the alternative isn’t death, Furuya-kun. The alternative is putting yourself first. Considering your wants and needs, not those of Japan or the PSB, or even your fallen friends.”
“You don’t understand what I want,” he murmurs, still curled, stiff and unwelcoming of Akai’s embrace.
“What could you want that I don’t understand?”
Rei ducks his head low to his chest, digs his fingers into Akai’s thigh instead of the carpet; the FBI agent doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound. “I want them all to burn. Rum. Gin. Vodka. Vermouth. All I want is fire, until there’s nothing left but ash. That’s not justice. That’s not who I’m supposed to be. That’s ugly and selfish and pathetic –”
“Stop,” says Akai, his mouth to Rei’s ear, and the words fall out of his brain. He stops, stills. Akai reaches down and catches hold of his chin, turns his head upwards gently as a man calming a spooked animal, until his green eyes are shining above. “I understand that better than anyone. What I want in my heart of hearts is no different. I don’t think that’s tarnished or pathetic. I think it’s realistic. What I want is gunpowder and flames, the existence of those men and women cauterized from this world. What I can live with… what I can live with is the end of the syndicate in whatever form is necessary to bring it about. You don’t need to be a white knight, Furuya-kun, believing only in purity and beautiful ideals. You simply need to get the job done.”
Rei laughs once, a sharp sound like something breaking. “So to survive, I should become you, FBI?” his words are cruel but his tone is without heat.
Akai releases his chin and brushes a soft thumb over his cheek. Rei turns away, but doesn’t pull out of his grip. Relaxes, instead, and lets Akai hold him.
“I don’t care what you do to survive,” the FBI agent tells him. “I only care that you do.”
Rei closes his eyes. “Typical,” he says.
***
He sleeps again for a few more hours, and when he wakes up he feels fresh and crisp and embarrassed by his collapse. To doubt himself is one thing; to doubt himself under Akai’s roof another entirely. He gets up, drinks some more water (the broken glass is mysteriously absent), and tells Akai he’s leaving.
Akai doesn’t comment or protest; he simply offers him a change of clothes – slightly too big, smelling of cigarette smoke – and offers to drive him home.
“I’ll walk,” replies Rei, tartly. Akai shrugs, unbothered. His apparently lack of concern is irking. “What? Expecting a thank you?”
Akai smiles, just a gentle hook of the lips. “After all these years, Furuya-kun, I certainly know not to expect that.”
“Well, good,” says Rei, a little surprised. “I…” he stops, uncertain what to say. What to admit, what to acknowledge of the past day.
“You…?” prompts Akai, eyebrows raised.
“I’m not going to change, you know. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
The FBI agent inclines his head. “Unsurprising,” he murmurs.
“Well, sorry to be so predictable,” snaps Rei.
Akai looks at him for a moment, then walks past him to look out the window. He speaks to the glass, rather than to Rei, his tone a little distant. “You’ve lost more than me, I think, not that sacrifices can ever be compared. But… but I would hope that you know you aren’t alone, Furuya-kun. If you choose to remember anything, you should choose to remember that.”
Rei stares at his back very hard, but Akai doesn’t turn around.
“I’ll remember what I damn well choose,” says Rei. “See you around, FBI.”
He swivels and marches out, down the stairs and out of the Kudou mansion. He doesn’t look back to see if Akai’s watching from the upstairs window. Doesn’t have to to know that he is.
Sore and tired as he still is, it takes him almost thirty minutes to walk home. The apartment is cold, the lights off and the space empty.
Rei puts the kettle on for coffee and sits down at his table to drink it slowly, staring outside at the sakura tree in the neighbouring park.
He leaves Akai’s clothes on that night when he goes to bed. Wrapped in the smell of cigarette smoke and aftershave, it’s almost like he’s not alone.
END