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There is a man. His hair is light, the colour of the hunting plains after the hot season. No one else in the tribe has hair like that, and Pogo doesn’t know where he comes from, but it doesn’t matter, really. The man is a gifted hunter. They take mammoth down more easily with him along, and then the entire tribe eats well for a long, long time. Anyone who helps Pogo take care of Beru and their sons is fine by him.
Sometimes the man makes strange noises when he sees him. They’re noises Pogo very nearly recognizes, but when he tries to make them back, he fails. They’re too complicated, like the noises made by those hunters he had met while dream walking all those many moons ago.
This man is a dream walker too. Pogo has only ever done it once before himself, but that was enough for the Elder to take him as a student, and now he knows the signs of it. The man’s eyes are distant; not unseeing, but like he’s always looking somewhere else. He never joins the songs or drumming by the fire, and when the tribesmen play their games, he only watches. It’s like a part of him is somewhere else.
He’s a strange man, but a good hunter, and so Pogo likes him. That’s why Pogo decides to help.
One day in the aftermath of a hunt, there is a feast. Before the man can disappear like always, Pogo grabs him by the arm and drags him to the place where Beru and their sons are sitting. The man makes more of his strange sounds, but he doesn’t fight, and so Pogo ignores them. Instead, he forces him to sit and shoves a haunch of meat in the man’s face.
The man stares at the meat. Beru giggles. Like it’s a game, she leans forward to offer her own haunch to the man as well, all while their firstborn chews quietly beside her and their youngest squalls in her lap.
Pogo pushes her hand away. Only Pogo will share. Beru should eat.
The man tries to push Pogo’s hand away as well and Pogo grunts in disapproval. The man clearly doesn’t understand. If a part of him is lost in dreams, then he should eat. He should eat and be strong, be out in the sun with the others and get his blood flowing with music. If he does, the part of him that walks in dreams will grow jealous and find its way back to him again. It won’t come back if the man is too quiet and still.
Pogo grunts again, once more shoving the meat in the man’s face. This time, the man accepts, but he stares down at the haunch as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with it, and so Pogo tears off a piece to demonstrate. Here. Eat, eat.
When the man finally takes a bite, Pogo yowls in pleasure. Beru claps and coos and their youngest gurgles.
The man chews for a while, then swallows. He points at Pogo; at Beru; at each of their sons in turn.
“Aieee?” he asks.
Pogo’s mouth splits into a toothy grin.
“Aieee!” he howls, pounding on his chest. “Aieeeeee!”
And the man smiles back, faintly.
There is a man. He isn’t one of Lei’s students, but she sees him often in the village, and from time to time he wanders by her school. An observer, perhaps, curious about the Earthen Heart style of kung fu. And yet he never approaches her directly, never tries to cross her threshold.
She sees him at a lesson one day. He holds himself apart from the other observers, clearly not one of their number. She knows this batch of students well enough to know he can’t be family to any of them, and yet he watches with a more keenly focused attention than even the most eager of her young disciples.
Once the class is dismissed, he vanishes. But the old man would have pursued him, Lei knows. He never would have let someone so guarded stay walled off, not when he's clearly seeking something.
His footsteps lead her to the bamboo forest. She’s careful to silence her own footsteps as she bounds after him. It won’t do for him to notice her; best to take him by surprise before he can retreat.
The air is thick and hot. The shade offered by the bamboo and the trickle of the mountain stream are tempting, but he doesn’t stop, and so neither does she. He has a destination in mind, clearly, but it’s only when a place she hasn’t thought of in years comes into view that she realizes what it must be—the Temple of the Indomitable Fist.
At once, she’s on guard, and if she’s on guard, it’s only fair he know about it. She drops down from the branch she had been perched on, landing neatly on the path below.
The man turns, visibly startled by the sound. That alone is enough to ease at least some of her apprehension. He might still be up to something, but if he can be surprised so easily, then he can hardly be a mastermind.
“Greetings,” she says with a bow. “I’m Lei Kugo, Master of the Earthen Heart. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” the man replies, bowing in turn. “I know of you and your school, both.”
“And your name?” she prompts.
“I am called ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,” the man replies.
It’s funny. He answers her, she knows he does, but the moment he speaks, it’s like the name slips away from her. But no matter. She doesn’t really care about his name. It’s a matter of respect more than anything, and he did her the honour of answering. That’s enough.
“You’ve been watching me,” Lei declares.
“Yes,” the man agrees.
“And now you’re at the Temple of the Indomitable Fist.”
“The Temple has been shut for quite some time.”
“But who’s to say there aren’t those who would see it open again?”
This, it seems, is enough for him to understand her meaning. His expression turns to stone. “I have no interest in the Indomitable Fist,” he says, voice rigid.
At this, Lei cocks her head, studying him. He’s telling the truth, she decides, but there’s something about his cadence, the harmonics of his voice, that speaks to more than simple honesty.
“Why are you so angry?” she asks.
The man is silent. She can see, now, pale purple shadows beneath his eyes, like subtle bruises.
“You can deny it, if you want,” she continues. “Some might think that doing so is wise—that avoiding anger keeps you from nurturing it. But have you planted anything new to take its place, or are you just waiting for it to die?”
Something in the man’s expression shifts, leaving him looking strangely young and vulnerable, despite the fact he seems about as old as Lei.
“For some, the chance to change has passed them by,” he says.
“It’s never too late,” Lei says firmly. “Not so long as you’re willing to put in the effort. Come to my school and see. I’d be happy to take you as a student. I can help you plant new seeds, just so long as you know that only you can make them grow.”
There, she thinks, feeling smug. Now that sounds like something the old man would have said.
The man bows and says, “I shall consider what you’ve said, shifu.” And though his expression had been hard before, his smile now is soft.
There is a man. On January 3, 1868, he watches the moon.
Elsewhere, troops take their positions at the gates of the Imperial Palace. The Emperor prepares a speech declaring the restoration of Imperial rule. Documents are being written to be sent to foreign powers and affirm the reign of Emperor Meiji.
Here and now, Ryoma Sakamoto sighs in satisfaction as he sinks deep into the waters of a hot spring.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join me?” he asks, voice thick with relaxation.
“I must stay alert,” his attendant answers quietly. “I cannot afford to let my guard down.”
“Because of that Omiya business? You handled that brilliantly, you know. You deserve a reward. You should get in.”
“I will not.”
“I’m your master. I could order you to.”
“You already ordered me to drink at dinner.”
“I only get one order? On my birthday?”
“Only one,” Oboromaru affirms, but he’s smiling under his mask.
Ryoma sinks even lower into the water, exaggerated pout soon melting into a look of purest relaxation. “I could stay here forever,” he mumbles, closing his eyes and leaning back against the smooth rock. “It’s bliss.”
Because it is, in fact, his master’s birthday, Oboromaru does not contradict him. He already knows Ryoma is aware of the impossibility of their staying any longer than a single night. The Omiya Incident was proof enough that their work is not yet done, and that very evening, a messenger from the Enma had come bearing the news that the former Tokugawa shogun is plotting retaliation against the Emperor. Soon, they will have to move.
But for now, the moon is very low and beautiful, and his blood is still warm from what little sake he took at dinner. And so if his master wishes to keep this evening for himself, then his duty is to see that he may do so without disruption.
The shinobi’s attention is a sharp, fixed thing. No sound or movement taking place beneath the scattering of stars above would normally escape his notice. And yet he does not know that behind the wall that separates the baths, the man who claimed to be a messenger from Enma still lingers in a bath himself.
As steam rises from the water, the man watches the moon. Judging from the conversation he just heard, there will be more fighting yet before this country’s dawn can come. But the here and now is peaceful, and the water very warm, and he, too, thinks he wouldn’t mind if he could stay a while longer.
There is a man. There are many men, in fact. Women and children also, all of them waiting on a platform for a train.
“You think we’re being followed?” Mad Dog asks in a low voice.
“Not followed,” the Sundown Kid answers. “Watched.”
“Hell’s the difference? But it don’t matter. If someone’s watching us, I’ll take care of it.”
He says this boastfully, tipping his hat and smirking at Sundown. He never could drop the cocky act, not even after they entered into their partnership.
There is the sound of thunder on rails as a great black beast of a train rolls into the station, spitting smoke and shaking everything with noise, and the crowd begins to push. A little girl tries desperately to cling to her mother’s skirts amid the crush of lawn and calico, but just before she can trip on a gap in the platform, someone catches her.
“Take care,” the man says, and he swings her up onto the steps where a man in black is helping her mother.
“Thank goodness,” her mother says when she sees her. “I’m sorry, Janey. My arms were so full of Pearl I couldn’t grab you. Come along now.”
The little girl obediently follows, but not before glancing backwards. Her eyes fall on a pair of men standing together, one tall and handsome with a fine-fitting coat and well-polished boots, the other older, his face weathered and weary. The handsome man is the one who’d helped her mother, but she doesn’t see the one who swung her up.
The older man’s eyes fall on her and she quickly looks away.
“You see that?” Mad Dog asks. “Kid flinched like you were the Big Bad Wolf himself. I always said you were no good with the little ones.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m telling you, it’s ‘cause of those old clothes you insist on wearing. You look like a drifter.”
“Watch it.”
“When I finally get sick of you and collect your bounty, I’ll be sure to dress your body up all respectable-like before your funeral,” Mad Dog says cheerfully.
Inside, the seats are soft and plush, with windows wide enough that sunshine can slant through and light up the entire car. They take their seats without much further chitchat. There’s no real need, seeing as how they already know what the job is.
The train is carrying a cache of minted coins back east, something that would no doubt be awful tempting to outlaw gangs like those that have been attacking the rails lately. The Sundown Kid may not care much about banks, but a train like this carries passengers as well, and he’s not about to let no innocents get caught up in the greed of some bandits.
From his seat, Kid catches the eye of a man with straw-yellow hair sitting further up the car. The man looks away almost as quickly as that little girl had, but then his gaze drags back. He looks unsure about something.
Kid tips his hat, and the man lifts a hand in turn.
“You know him?” Mad Dog asks.
“Nope,” Kid replies. The train gives a sudden jerk, rattling and rumbling as it pulls out of the station, and he pulls his brim down low as he leans back into his seat.
It’s true, he doesn’t know him. But he helped that little girl, so even if the man had been the one watching them, he’s fine by Kid. The world could always use more good and decent folks around.
There is a man. He is but a face in the crowd gathered to watch Masaru Takahara’s speech at the banquet for the first-ever competitors in Olympic mixed martial arts.
“I was once the strongest man alive,” Masaru says.
There is not a single person in the audience who doubts him. They have all heard of Masaru Takahara. He is an animal and a machine, pure adrenaline and form, all hard muscle and pumping blood. To simply be in the same room as him is an honour few had ever dared to dream of.
“That title is no longer mine,” Masaru continues. There are some who laugh—while this might technically be true, it’s considered a given that he could take the title back at any time. But he ignores their laughter, going on to say, “It may soon be one of yours. Because the title of strongest is not something you can be given; it’s something you earn. I know that earning it is what every competitor here seeks to do. But there is something I hope you won’t forget in your pursuit of that title.”
He pauses, and a hush falls over the crowd.
“Victory may be sweet,” he says. “I won’t deny that. But that’s all it is. Once you’ve won, it’s over. It’s behind you. There’s something sweeter than victory—that moment before you’ve even started, when all that stands before you is what you might still accomplish. Please don’t forget that feeling. That hope will be what drives you forward and helps you truly become the best.”
When his speech is finished, he sits with the contingent from Japan, where he’s immediately absorbed into laughter and conversation with the athletes and their families. Meanwhile, the man in the audience slips away.
The banquet ends late in the afternoon when the sun is getting low in the sky. Masaru leaves alone. There are coaches ferrying athletes to their respective hotels, but in the waning daylight, he instead begins to stretch. He’s going to run.
That’s when the man lingering by the entry hall catches his eye.
“Hey!” Masaru shouts, jogging through the dispersing crowd. “You look familiar. Have we fought before?”
The man looks bewildered by the question.
“I’m Masaru Takahara,” he adds. “You’ve got good muscles. If we haven’t fought before, do you want to?”
And the man starts to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Masaru demands.
“Forgive me; I had listened to your speech,” the man answers through his chuckles. “But this is how you really are, I take?”
“Well, yeah,” Masaru concedes. “I had to plan all that out beforehand, you know? Speeches gotta sound good. I did mean it, though—nothing feels better than doing your best! That’s why I still fight everyone I can, to keep improving.”
“I do not think I wish to fight you now,” the man says with a smile. “But thank you for the offer all the same.”
“Suit yourself! If you ever change your mind, I'll take any challenger.”
The man waves as Masaru jogs off.
It’s only then Masaru realizes he never answered if they knew each other or not. But when he looks back, the man is gone.
There is a man.
“Why are you here?” Akira asks.
“To buy taiyaki," he innocently replies.
“That’s not what I meant, dumbass. I meant—ah, fuck.” Akira rubs his head, wincing. “Fuck me, it hurts to look at you. Like I’m looking three places at once. Are you really here, or are you a ghost or something?”
“I have no answer that would satisfy,” the man confesses. “I know only that I stand before you.”
“I’m not selling taiyaki for ghost money. You’d better have real cash.”
“How much do you ask?”
“Ten thousand billion yen.”
The man has no idea how to count that amount. When he sees the suspicious iridescence in Akira’s eyes, he wonders if the number even exists. In the end, he simply slides a handful of bills across the counter, hoping that will appease.
“Good enough,” Akira grudgingly concedes before shoving bills into the register. “You get one. Gimme a minute.”
The man watches with mild interest as Akira squeezes batter into a fish-shaped mold. The grill sizzles on contact and the scent of baking batter fills the air.
“Where the hell’d you get that much money from, anyway?” Akira asks, snapping the grill plate shut.
“Perhaps the coinage I once held was changed, incarnating anew when crossing time."
“You get automatic money conversion when you time travel? That pisses me off.”
Pulling a wooden stick from under the counter, Akira pokes at the edges of the taiyaki. Seeming satisfied, he grabs a folded cup from a shelf and slides it inside. “Here,” he says, whirling around and shoving the cup in the man’s face. “You don’t get change.”
The man stares at the fish-shaped cake in his hands.
“You’re supposed to eat it,” Akira says after a moment.
“No one has seemed to know me, save for you,” the man says. “I wonder if your gift is why you can.”
“That’s what’s bugging you? Not figuring out why you’re even here?”
“‘Tis not a mystery to me.” The man opens his mouth, taking a small bite. He chews, swallows, and with something like surprise, he says, “It’s good.”
“Course it’s good,” Akira answers with a smirk. “I make damn good taiyaki.”
The man lingers by the stall while he eats. Other customers come and go, but Akira doesn’t tell him to move along. He wonders if that would qualify as kindness. He wouldn’t have expected it from someone so sharp-tongued.
During a lull, Akira says, “So you’re probably not a ghost, huh? You wouldn’t be able to eat that if you were. At least, I don't think so. I'm not a ghost expert or anything."
“What else but a lost spirit could I be?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the one with the time powers. That’s not exactly normal, you know.”
“A bold remark from someone with your gift.”
The man takes another bite. The taiyaki is like nothing he has ever eaten before. It’s hot, but not too hot, the red bean filling sweet and creamy, the cake enveloping it soft and buttery. He wants to savour it.
“You’re lucky either way,” Akira continues, rocking back on his heels and bracing himself against the countertop. “Most people only ever get one chance at life. I guess your chance was fucked up enough that God felt bad for you. Better not fuck it up again.”
“Is God the one who bracketed my life, not with the quiet of eternity, but visions of a world I cannot join?”
“You’ve joined it enough that you’re eating taiyaki right now, aren’t you? Don’t be so dramatic. Most people don’t even get that much.”
The man pops the final golden piece into his mouth, considering.
He’d been imagining himself as drifting along a current he cannot see. Now and then, he solidifies, becoming a presence, but always he returns to drifting, returning to his role as one who stands apart from time and space alike. When unrecognized by those he almost knew once, he’d assumed it to be because he wasn’t meant to be here to begin with—a fitting punishment for his ill-spent, misshapen life.
But how much of a punishment has this truly been, in the end? After all, he got to try taiyaki.
“We’re not friends,” Akira say when the man tosses out the paper cup. “But so long as you got money, I sell the best taiyaki in town. Just saying.”
There is a man, and were his presence close enough for Cube’s biorhythm sensors to detect it, they still may not have noticed him. They are busy, after all. They are helping their father choose a tie.
Cube loves their father very much. They know this to be true because of the definition of love that had been entered into their database after they had first inquired into the subject. Love is a set of emotions and behaviours characterized by intimacy, care, and trust. Naturally they are close to their father; naturally they care about and trust him. They are happy to hold his ties for him as he examines them one by one.
“Thank you for your patience, little one,” he says, taking a red striped tie and holding it up in front of the hotel mirror. He frowns at his reflection before turning back to Cube and picking up a blue one. “I’m sure this must seem silly to you—”
They chirrup. They don’t mind.
“—but the Calvin Award is one of the most prestigious honors in robopsychology, and—oh, I’m getting nervous again. I’m terrible at things with people. I just know I’m going to misspeak, or trip on stage, or—well, I want to at least look proper, yes?”
There’s a sharp knock at the door and Kato nearly jumps out of his suit. “That must be Darthe,” he breathes, placing a hand to his chest as if to steady his palpitating heart. “Could you get that, please?”
Cube wheels to the door. When they open it, it is indeed Darthe. Cube beeps their approval; he looks quite nice in his formal attire.
“I don’t think you’ll need that many ties,” Darthe says dryly, eying the multitude draped across Cube’s casing. They gesture back towards their father, who’s still standing helplessly before the mirror.
“Darthe, can you help?” Kato asks. “I’m not used to…occasions.”
“I wonder if the presenters know their guest of honour seems to be approaching the ceremony as one might an execution,” Darthe mutters, but he still goes to join Kato, bending forward to study the ties he’s holding.
“Little one, you’ve been helping me so much since we arrived,” Kato says with a glance down at Cube. “Perhaps you’d like to explore a bit? Just for a change of pace? The dinner starts at 5:15, so be back by quarter to or so."
Cube spins happily at the suggestion. They deposit the remaining ties on the bed, then wheel out of the room with a little wave goodbye.
The hotel they’re staying in was designed in what Cube’s database identifies as an early 21st century “modern” architectural style. There are ten floors with 225 guest rooms and suites, two restaurants, a fitness centre, pool, and approximately 14,866 square feet of meeting and event space.
However, since their time aboard the Cogito Ergo Sum, Cube has had very little interest in what can be found indoors. Indoors can be comfortable, of course, but there’s so little for them to learn there. A place like this has such a standardized layout that their internal map was very nearly automatically completed just by their entering.
Of far greater interest is the hotel gardens, where Cube is going now. They take the elevator down to the main lobby and wheel outside with purpose, pausing only to whirr politely at guests who exclaim in surprise upon seeing a robot unattended.
The hotel garden consists of approximately 12 acres of land, including a kitchen garden, rose garden, and wildflower meadow. Cube follows stone pathways past manicured lawns and fountains in search of the meadow. Their database supplies images of gently waving grasses, of sweetly-coloured flowers, of fat lazy bumblebees, and they roll faster in anticipation.
They would have expected their biorhythm sensors to notify them of the presence of any other guests in the vicinity, but somehow, they don’t notice the man lying in the field until they’re very nearly right on top of him.
They stop just in time, whirring in panic, and the man hefts himself upright. And then, he and Cube are staring at each other.
Cube knows this man, they realize with a trill of shock. This man is [FILE NOT FOUND].
[FILE NOT FOUND]. [FILE NOT FOUND], the man with the sword, the man who’d brought them to that strange facsimile of Earth where Cube had travelled with six humans out of time, the man whose cries for help were closer to a scream, who’d disappeared so suddenly and sadly. How can he be here now?
“Do you know me, little one?” the man asks, and Cube beeps. They do, they do, he’s [FILE NOT FOUND], they know him, they know him. Even with something in their logic matrix threatening corruption, they can see the silhouette of what is being blocked from their perception, recognize the shape formed by its absence.
Cube rolls close, maneuvering carefully over the grass to ensure they don’t get stuck. They settle in beside the man and nestle in. He seem surprised by their doing so, but they are simply happy, characterized by pleasure, contentment, joy, because the last time they had seen him there had been such overactivity in his limbic system, such imbalance in his neurochemistry, such a thudding of his heart. He had been in such acute distress, barely able to even stand as apologies had raked out of him, but here and now, he looks simply calm, even peaceful.
They may not understand how he’s here, but to them, it doesn’t matter. Every day that Cube has been on Earth has been a miracle, and for this man to be on Earth and not forever on that mountain with its rust-red sky and fetid air must be a miracle as well.
To them, the world is full of miracles, and so it’s easy to accept another.
Chirruping and whirring, Cube begins to gather flowers. And as the man begins to gather flowers too, their beeping turns to singing.
Later, when Cube returns to their hotel room, they will offer their father a flower from the garden. Smiling, he will tuck it into his lapel.
And somewhere in the meadow, there will be a mound of flowers, half woven into clumsy crowns.
There is a man, and it was not a lie that his magic as the Lord of Dark had waned. Yet he had lived for centuries alongside bitterness and grief, and though he may have chosen to relinquish hatred’s draught, perhaps his soul had still been scarred by it. Perhaps within those cracks, the power lingered.
It had been tempting to believe that he was not allowed to die—that he would always remain tainted by the things he’d done, and that for all he'd fought and broken free of hatred’s influence, there would always remain something broken and malformed about his heart; something that needed to be punished before it could be purged.
But perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps his lingering was meant to be a mercy. One that could disappear at any moment, but until then, something to be grateful for.
For now, for all that he may have once forgotten the shape of a world worth caring for, he finds that in every era, there are nothing but reminders. Small joys and kindnesses and triumphs—things he may have once been blind to, but now cannot imagine a world without.
In his next life—wherever and whenever that may be—he hopes he will remember that.