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There once was a boy named Yoshiya Kiryu. He died.
Oh, but that’s not a very good story, is it? Predictable. Banal. Once more, then. Restart the song, turn back the clock, try again.
There once was a boy named Yoshiya Kiryu. He died, and then his life began.
Better. It’ll do.
1
Yoshiya should not care about Shibuya. Of this, he has no doubt. It’s . . . provincial, even now with the modern wonder of the railway connecting it to the city proper. No longer the domain of samurai, of course, not in this new Japan, but as gauche as it ever was. Not a trace of iki to be seen.
Yoshiya knows all of these things. He knows, too, that he does not belong. And still he comes, to sit in Hanekoma-san’s refined little teashop—a hint perhaps of a Shibuya yet to come—and watch the dead.
It’s his gift, or his curse, or perhaps simply his fate, if there is such a thing. Yoshiya has his doubts.
“Can anyone else see them?” He lifts his teacup to his lips, cradling it delicately between his fingertips. A touch of iki, a gift to this town. “Surely, there must be others.”
Hanekoma-san tilts his head with a curious smile. “Somewhere. But not here.”
Yoshiya sips his tea. There are things he has never told Hanekoma-san—that at this very moment, out there in Shibuya, his father is raising his legitimate children; that Yoshiya knows exactly where to find them but never will; that part of him will always wonder what it would have been like to be one of their number—but he suspects that Hanekoma-san knows. He knows many things he shouldn’t.
There is a shadow in the depths of Yoshiya’s soul, shaped by the unavoidable awareness of the unremarkable, unasked for circumstances of his birth, contrasting starkly with his peculiar singularity. It is only here that the bitterness recedes, as he observes Shibuya’s unfortunate dead, the way they struggle for a chance to return to the living world, the elaborate game they have no choice but to play.
He is not alone in this. Hanekoma-san is there, too, pouring tea and watching Yoshiya with eyes that see too much.
Nevertheless . . .
“Won’t you tell me something, Hanekoma-san?” Yoshiya cants his head to meet his gaze. “Just what are you?”
It is a serious question, genuine, but he is not surprised when—
2
—Neku looks betrayed, as Joshua had known he would. He has seen this moment so many times, in tiny pockets scattered across the vastness of time and space. All the infinitesimal differences that bring them here, never the same series of steps twice, and yet one thing is always constant.
The look on Neku’s face. Beautiful desolation wreaked by the revelation that Joshua was the Composer all along and that nothing was ever what it seemed.
All just a trick. A magic trick. The hand is always quicker than the eye and Joshua is nothing if not a master magician.
“It’s the truth,” Joshua tells him, and perhaps there is a universe out there where some other version of himself makes the words sound kind, “and I need you to face it. Megumi and I decided to play this Game to determine if Shibuya should exist or not.”
Ah, but is that the truth, really? The pure truth, no hidden messages or buried agendas? Is Joshua capable of such a thing? Would he even know the difference?
He only half hears himself as he breaks it all down for Neku, pulling back the curtain to show him a trap he never knew he had to look out for. He’s just a boy, in the end, fifteen years old, and Joshua hasn’t been fifteen in so long he no longer remembers what it felt like to be so young. But Neku finally understands that he never stood a chance, and there is beauty in the breaking.
This is the moment, Joshua’s moment, the one he has walked through again and again and again, memorizing the pattern.
One last Game.
“If you win, you decide. If I win, I’ll decide.” He can only smile in the face of Neku’s breathtaking outrage. “Of course, I’ve already decided.”
It’s so close now, an end to the tedium, his chance to halt the drag of entropy before it can destroy his city utterly. They’re in the denouement and the only thing left is a conclusion worthy of the story Joshua has written for them.
Do you hear it, Neku?
“Life’s little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger.”
Do you hear what I’m telling you?
But then . . . ah, but then Neku Sakuraba does the one thing that Joshua, for all his precognition, did not see. He drops the gun, collapses to his knees in grief-stricken defeat, and the world reshapes itself in an instant.
And it is—
3
“—fine, Sanae.” Joshua doesn’t look up from his phone. “The situation is under control.”
“You sure about that, boss?” Sanae’s voice grates and Joshua is tempted to leave WildKat without letting him finish his thought. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Shinjuku isn’t looking very hospitable these days.”
Joshua glances up to find that Sanae’s eyebrows have made contact with his hairline. “Neku can handle it.” He returns his gaze to his phone. “I have total confidence in his ability to withstand hardship and bounce back with aplomb.”
“Well, you would know,” Sanae says dryly. “How long are you going to leave him there?”
It’s already been eight months, Neku tucked away safely—perhaps that’s the wrong word, but he hasn’t been erased yet and isn’t that enough?—in a city that, strictly speaking, no longer exists. Joshua wouldn’t have chosen this path for him, had anyone been polite enough to ask his opinion, but the moment that cotton candy Reaper shot his proxy, well . . .
Needs must, as they say.
“As long as I have to.” Joshua reaches for his teacup, bone china with a handle, nothing like the cups of his long-ago youth. “Really, Sanae.” He smiles at him. “You worry too much.”
Sanae looks unconvinced, but—
4
—There is a stranger in the Room of Reckoning.
Yoshiya tilts his head, studying the man, who studies him in return. He’s foreign, which is vaguely interesting given Japan’s present circumstances, tall and slender with curling brown hair. An Angel, of course, but that’s not unexpected. If anything, Yoshiya is surprised not more have come.
“My answer hasn’t changed,” Yoshiya says, and sits down on his throne. This is, after all, his domain. “Shibuya is mine and I will not relinquish it to the whims of the Higher Plane.”
“Oh, I know.” The man waves a negligent hand. “You’ve caused quite the stir.”
Yoshiya smiles, though it is cold comfort. “Good.”
The man laughs, bright and bell-like. “It’s a rare thing for one to live up to one’s own reputation. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Yoshiya says. “Why are you here?”
In another time, perhaps Yoshiya would have been more hospitable, more willing to play a little game, but he’s tired and his city smolders around him and he can sense loss on the horizon. His chances of success are so slim it’s laughable, failure all but guaranteed, and yet here he sits. The god of his very own ruined kingdom.
“You could save it,” the man says, plucking Yoshiya’s thoughts from him, responding to everything he has not said. He folds his hands behind his back neatly. “The path exists—I’ve seen it.” His smile returns, sly, but his green eyes are sharp and watchful. “All you really need is a little . . . time.”
“Alas,” Yoshiya says on a sigh, “time appears to be at a premium these days.” But if he has an Angelic visitor, he might as well ask a pertinent question: “How long have I got?”
“Not long,” the man says without hesitation. He turns away then, hands falling to his sides gracefully, as he takes in the Room, and for a few seconds it’s as though Yoshiya has ceased to exist. Then his attention returns to Yoshiya’s face with a near-audible snap and he says, “Unless.”
Yoshiya cradles his cheek in his palm, elbow on the arm of the throne, and gives his uninvited guest a gift: “Unless?”
“I could help, if you’re interested.”
Yoshiya stares back at him, meeting the full weight of his gaze. After considering the offer briefly, he says, “Tempting, tempting. But at what cost?”
“Nothing you can’t afford.” He steps closer, narrowing the space between them. “I think you have Potential, and I want to see what you do with it.” He spreads his hands, palms up. “I’ve already voiced my dissent in the matter of Tokyo and I am happy to continue to do so, perhaps rally a few more to the cause.” His eyes glitter. “Sow a little discord, to liven things up. It does get so awfully dull upstairs.”
Yoshiya should not be entertaining this. There are myriad reasons not to. But Shibuya—the city he has cultivated, elevated from the provincial village where his father’s family once lived—teeters on the brink of oblivion. And Yoshiya is not ready to let it go.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Lear,” the man replies, inclining his head politely. “Lear Reeves.” The smile again, a touch warmer this time, approaching something real. “Do you know, Yoshiya Kiryu? I think—”
5
“—You’re impossible.” Neku flicks a balled-up napkin at Joshua across the table and Joshua telekinetically redirects it before it can connect with his cheek. “Unbelievable.”
“Oh, Neku.” Joshua presses a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“I’ll show you wounded,” Neku mutters, but his music is nothing but joy. Joshua could get a contact high just from being in his presence, and Neku has no idea. “Shiki meant it when she sent you that invitation—would it kill you to play nice and show up?”
“An interesting choice of words, dear.” Joshua plucks a fry from Neku’s plate and pops it in his mouth.
Neku rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean, you asshole.” But then his voice picks up a note of sincerity, which is not fair play. “It would mean a lot to me if you came.”
Joshua swallows a sigh. He had, of course, known that Shiki planned to invite him to her next fashion show, but he had underestimated Neku’s desire for him to come. Given all that has transpired, he is far from Neku’s friend group’s favorite person and he had assumed that the unavoidable awkwardness of his presence would outweigh any impulse Neku has to integrate Joshua into his RG life.
Perhaps one day he will stop underestimating Neku Sakuraba, but that day has not yet arrived. It remains a never-ending source of enchantment.
“You realize that they don’t really want me there,” Joshua says mildly. “You’ll enjoy it more without my attendance.” He smiles, bright. “I’ll be there in spirit, of course, if you need the moral support.”
“No. Nope.” Neku shakes his head. “You’re not getting away with that, Josh, not today.”
So he tries another tactic, to save Neku from himself: “I’m shy.”
Neku snorts, which quickly morphs into a laugh. Surprised delight, sweeter than honey. “Like hell you are.”
This should be nothing, really. An invitation to a twenty-year-old girl’s show, to see some art that may inject a little new life into his city. It’s the sort of thing that he has, as a matter of fact, attended before. Art installations and concerts and catwalks—lending his music, Shibuya’s support, to humans with Potential.
And still he hesitates. He had not experienced this sort of uncertainty before Neku. There are many things he had not experienced before Neku.
Then he does sigh—airy, unconcerned. “All right, Neku. Have it your way.”
It’s a little extra effort, a performance tailored to an audience of one, but everything is worth it when—
6
—Shibuya thrives.
Yoshiya looks out at his city, toward Yoyogi Park, where the Americans are beginning to dismantle the base of operations they set up there. The war is long over now, nearly twenty years gone in a blink, and Tokyo lives.
Yoshiya’s city lives.
The truth is, he had wondered, when Lear offered him the gift of time, if it would be enough. If he would be able to coax his city back from the knife’s edge of obliteration through sheer force of personality and will. Shibuya’s living residents, shell-shocked in a badly battered RG, had not had much will left between them, but Yoshiya had seen what the Higher Plane could not, and he had given them everything he had.
“You did well,” Lear says from just behind his left shoulder. “Better even than I’d hoped.”
“Well, you see,” Yoshiya says, “someone had to.”
Lear laughs and his breath stirs the hair at the back of Yoshiya’s neck. “Try to remember this moment later, hmm?”
Yoshiya turns his head to find Lear standing too close and too still. “Obviously.”
But Lear only smiles his strange, knowing smile. “Be well, Yoshiya.”
Then he’s gone, as though he were never there at all. He leaves Yoshiya alone, enveloped in Shibuya’s music, and—
7
“—Neku is struggling.”
“You don’t say,” Joshua says, laying the sarcasm on thick. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Sanae doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he looks at Joshua over the rims of his sunglasses with something that is almost but not quite pity. Skirting the line between what Joshua will and will not tolerate from his Producer.
“Far be it from me to question your decisions, boss,” he says, as though he has ever done anything else, “but the RG’s not the right place for him. He doesn’t belong there.”
Joshua raises his eyebrows and spreads his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “Are you suggesting that I make Neku’s decisions for him? That’s a bit much, even from you.”
But Sanae has clearly decided to ignore every word that comes out of Joshua’s mouth. After all this time—lifetimes upon lifetimes—why does Joshua even bother to come? If he wants to talk to himself, there are a multitude of other options.
“He needs support,” Sanae is saying. “Normally, I’d say leave it alone and let him find his own way, but Neku has been through a lot.”
Thank you, Sanae.
“He won’t break,” Joshua says. He crosses one leg over the other where he sits on a barstool and sweeps his gaze across WildKat’s unchanging interior. The cafe hasn’t reopened yet, but it will soon. Everything once again as it should be, so long as no one looks too closely at the finer details. “And he has earned his reward for a job well done.”
Sanae tucks his hands in his back pockets, stretching out the length of his spine. “Is that what this is?”
It may be, or it may not. In the end, it makes little material difference.
“Don’t be tedious,” is what he says. “Really, Sanae, aren’t we a little past this? Neku will be fine, once he’s had time to readjust to the RG. It’s what he wants.”
Unless it isn’t. That’s the real question, the ghost in the doorway, hovering just out of frame. A question Neku has not even thought to ask and that Joshua is not in a position to ask for him.
“Whatever you say,” Sanae says in a tone that suggests the opposite. “You’re the Composer.”
Joshua rolls his eyes. “As though I need you to—”
8
“—Tell me something,” Joshua says lazily. He reaches up to tug on a lock of Neku’s hair, coiling it around the tip of his index finger like a ribbon. A prize he’s won.
Neku tilts his head, but doesn’t push Joshua’s hand away. “Tell you what?”
“How you felt when you sent me that first message.”
Neku frowns down at him, as Joshua had known he would. Here, in the bedroom they share, he’s calm and still and breathtaking. Everything Joshua had not allowed himself to see when he shot an angry boy in front of a mural.
Sometimes, when the chips fall just right, it’s such a beautiful thing to be wrong. There are other worlds where he and Neku ended up in a similar place, but none are as perfect as this one. Joshua has combed through them all.
“You know how I felt,” Neku says, brow furrowed, puzzlement without irritation. He doesn’t know where Joshua is going with this, but is curious enough to follow him anyway.
Joshua releases Neku’s hair to wave his hand with a graceful turn of his wrist, gratified when Neku’s gaze shifts to take it in. “Humor me.”
“Do I ever do anything else?” Neku snorts, but then says, “I was nervous. Anxious. Tired. Disconnected. I just wanted . . . oh, I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Do your best,” Joshua instructs, imperious enough to suit the position he somehow still holds. “I have time.”
Neku rolls his eyes and leans back into the pillows to get more comfortable, careful not to dislodge Joshua from where he’s draped across his lap. “I was at loose ends, totally lost after everything that went down, and I guess I wanted something . . .”
“Something?” Joshua prompts gently, when he doesn’t finish.
Neku buries his fingers in Joshua’s hair. “I wanted something I could hold onto.” He smiles down at him. “Something I could be absolutely sure was real.”
And it’s that, that spark of radiant joy, a purity of purpose and energy that Joshua, even at his most human, has never had. That’s what he was after, chasing it like an addict seeking his next fix. That’s all he’s ever after, really. Does Neku realize it? Not consciously, no, but on some level he does understand Joshua’s nature, and accepts it for all that it is and isn’t.
No one would ever Ascend again, if they had even a chance at taking what Neku has given Joshua freely.
“And you picked me?” Joshua hears his own voice saying. “My, my, Neku. You really must have been desperate.”
There was a time—oh, wasn’t there—when Neku would have prickled at that, hackles raised, immature pride getting the best of him, overriding judgment and good sense. Those days are long behind them now, his jagged edges softened by the inevitable ebb and flow of seconds ticking by.
Instead, he dips his head to catch Joshua’s mouth in a kiss and everything about it is—
9
—Perfect.
It’s the only word Yoshiya’s mind can clasp onto—too obvious, lacking nuance, but the best he can do to describe this moment that every other moment since his birth has led to.
It’s perfect.
He’s bleeding all over the polished floor of Hanekoma-san’s teashop, and Hanekoma-san is watching it happen with impassive eyes. Yoshiya thinks it should hurt, but it doesn’t. Everything is quiet here, like a pool of still water, an immaculately kept garden behind impenetrable walls, and Yoshiya is dying, isn’t he?
He’s going to die here, in Shibuya. Not Nihonbashi, not the Shitamachi, not the backstreets and crowded alleyways that defined his childhood. Far, so very far from the clutter and the noise and the people he has known all his life.
He’s going to die here, with only a man who is not a man to bear witness, alone as he has always been alone, poised finally to become something more. To join the game. To do more than join—to take it for his own.
To begin.