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The timelines are in order and the enemy is no longer present. For good. With the new order of the world, the Time Government retires their working agents in the timelines: the saniwa they have enlisted since 2205.
With their needs met, their human lives can now start anew. To ensure the transition would benefit all and everyone, the Time Government enacts a new order: the humans will lose their memory of their service and receive a brand-new lease of life in the society they saved. In exchange for their sacrifice, the saniwa’s Touken Danshi will retain their humanity and exist the present day in roles suited to their abilities, thanks to their human master’s influence and experience.
Saniwa and Touken Danshi are thus separate human beings, able to coexist without the fears of their past lives holding them back.
With this newfound freedom, some former Touken Danshi will take matters into their own hands.
Nagasone wonders if his now-permanent humanity is causing his mind to play tricks on him.
His former master is standing just feet away from him, partially bathed in the dim light of a nearby streetlamp. He blinks a few times to check if she’s not a memory of his, or just a different person distorted by the shadows of the night. No 一 she’s really there, living the new life that was promised to her. He watches her glance up and down the street, as if looking for something; then she stops, checks her phone, and starts pacing back and forth. After a few moments of this, she goes back to glancing at the street, tapping her foot as she does and scrunching her nose.
Nagasone holds back a chuckle at how cute she looks with her face scrunched up like that. She’s just as restless as he remembers, he thinks, and a warmth springs in his chest from the memory. She was always so energetic in the sparring room with him, and now that energy has to go somewhere.
But she also looks... tired. She seems thinner than what he remembers, and her face looks paler than it should be, even in the half-light of the streetlamp. A new feeling stings the warmth in him as he watches her pace back and forth yet again, and the feeling tastes bittersweet.
She looks up at him. He tries to avert his eyes, but their gazes meet before he can turn away.
“Are you looking for a cab too?” she asks him.
“A cab...?”
Nagasone nearly forgets why he went out in the first place. He looks down at at the plastic bag in his left hand, filled with instant noodles and chips and a bottle of tea, and feels his stomach rumble. The transformation into a permanent human form came with some side effects; in his case, strong cravings at odd hours of the night.
“Yeah, I haven’t seen one so far. If you’re going to get on the train, it’s no use,” his former master continues with a shrug. “The station’s closed for repairs, unless you want to walk pretty far for the next one.”
“I was planning to drive home actually,” he says, feeling for his car keys in his pocket. “Do you want to ride with me? I can take you home.”
The words slip out before Nagasone realizes what they mean. What on earth is he doing? From her point of view, he’s a stranger offering her a ride home in the middle of the night was no one around. He won’t be surprised if she starts running away from him instead.
“Sorry, that just... I...” He shoves his free hand into the pocket of his jeans. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Instead his master walks slowly towards him. He turns away from her but he can still see her from his peripheral vision; her eyes search his face, trying to recognize him. Her hand reaches out to touch him but before she can, she withdraws her arm sharply and jumps back.
He can still feel the ghost of her hand cupping his face from an old memory.
“Ah一I’m so sorry, that was really rude of me!” She gives him a frantic bow and twists her hands behind her back. “Argh, I shouldn’t have done that, I一uh... Have we met before?”
“No...”
“Oh. I thought I knew you from somewhere,” she says. “Sorry about that. I must have mistaken you for someone else.”
Nagasone turns to face her again, and though his master seems to have relaxed again, her brows are still slightly knitted in confusion. “It’s alright,” he says, “I should be getting back home, and you should too一”
“I want to take you up on your offer, actually.”
He looks up at her in shock. He feels his cheeks growing warm, though he tries to control the sensation to no avail.
“If you can bring me home, that would be great,” she says, giving him a wry half-smile. He recalls the same expression from her right before she needs to do something, like send a team out on a sortie or expedition, and he feels the bittersweet sting in his chest again. “I really want to go home already, and... I trust you, for some reason. Dunno why, and maybe I shouldn’t trust a stranger, but... I just do.”
He reaches out his free hand to her 一 then, remembering that it isn’t wise to hold hands with a stranger, lets it fall down back to his side.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take you home safe, I promise.”
Nagasone has never driven for his master before; he only learned how to drive after he was granted his permanent humanity. But the moment the former saniwa steps into the passenger seat of his car and he closes the door for her, he feels as if he’s done so a thousand times.
The drive home is serene. Hardly any other cars pass them by, and the darkness of the night is interrupted only by the blurry lights of streetlamps and the neon signs of the occasional 24/7 shop. Nagasone rolls down his window to take in the cool air, and his ears are filled with the pleasant whoosh of the wind going against his car. To his surprise, his former master does the same; she leans an arm out the window, her elbow sticking out of the car, and she smiles to herself as she tries to read the signs before she passes them.
He sees her only from the edges of his vision as he focuses on the road, but the brief sight of her relaxing so easily is enough to to ward off the cold sting of the night breeze.
She glances at Nagasone and her eyes go wide. “Oh, sorry! I’ll roll it up back again一”
“No, no, leave it down. The breeze is nice tonight.”
She turns her face back to the streetscape outside, and that serene smile of hers returns to her face. “Yeah, it’s nice and cool.”
It isn’t long before they fall into conversation. Nagasone learns that his former master is teaching PE at a high school in her neighborhood, and she was out late today to have dinner and drinks with fellow faculty and staff. “I almost didn’t wanna go, honestly,” she grumbles. “The senior staff drink too much and they get so rowdy! I had to calm them down before they started shouting at the waitstaff and disturbing everyone.”
“You’d think that if they were seniors, they’d behave themselves,” Nagasone says. “It’s alright to have fun, but it’s not good to take it too far, especially when you’re leading everyone else.”
“Exactly!” His former master throws up her hands. “And all the gossiping, too. It was too much! I got asked three times if I have a boyfriend. ... I don’t have one, by the way. Haven’t really thought about getting one since uh, my last job.”
Her voice trails on the words “my last job.” Silence fills the air. Old memories start to resurface in Nagasone’s mind; he thinks of the way she would complain about Time Government officials conducting unannounced checks on her citadel, or the weekly deliveries of smithing resources always arriving late, or the endless memos that filled the inbox of her saniwa account database. He realizes that when she rants about her new coworkers, she sounds exactly the same: her rising tone of voice, her frustrated little sighs.
He wonders if she looks and sounds the same too when she’s happy, or awed, or in love. As the thought rises to his consciousness, the night air seems a little colder, the streetlights dimmer.
His question is soon answered as his master lets out a relieved laugh. They stop at a red light, and she turns to him, beaming. The same smile she would give him whenever he returned from a sortie, he remembers. Nagasone hasn’t seen her smile like this since they parted ways, and he feels the old feelings bloom in his chest before he can push them down.
“Sorry for ranting so much. Wow, I’ve been apologizing a lot tonight. I just feel comfortable talking to you, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all, aru— miss,” he says, biting his lip at the old title. “You can tell me more.”
“The job’s not all that bad, I swear! I’m in it for the kids, mostly. They’re full of energy and they’re really sweet. Sure, they can get pretty rowdy and their attention’s all over the place, but I think they need the outlet to just do physical things like run around and play games. And when one of them beats their own record or scores a point in a game, and they look at you all excited about it… shit, it’s the best feeling in the world. Do you ever feel moments like that?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve uh... I’ve taught a few people self-defense. Feels good to see them pull off a move and then thank me for it.”
“Oh, that’s cool! And I’m sure you’re helping a lot of people out with that.”
His mind drifts to the sparring sessions he’s had with her. She begged him to teach her how to defend herself should the History Retrograde Army burst through the citadel gates, and he agreed. Even now, the feeling of awe floods him as he imagines her chasing him throughout the sparring room, breathing hard and sweat dripping down her forehead, yet not once losing her footing despite the disadvantage of a human going up against a touken danshi. She blocked him and dodged his blows and danced around to strike him where he wasn’t looking, and at the end of every session she would laugh and smile as if they were children playing hide and seek. The sound of her laughter still rings in his ears, and for what seems like the hundredth time that night, the bittersweet feeling gnaws at him.
Nagasone falls silent as the traffic light turns green and he drives on, the night winds picking up again. He doesn’t know how he manages to drive safely that night when everything else turns into a blur: the street signs, the remaining shop lights, the lines on the road. The only thing his mind properly registers is the presence of his former master leaning back in the passenger seat, her fingers drumming on the edge of the windshield and singing snippets of a song:
“Yes, I know we shouldn’t go that far
But I could wonder...”
Compared to the vast space of the old citadel, the former saniwa’s apartment building is a modest thing, barely anything more than a grey slab of concrete with square windows carved on the side. It seems to send a grave stare down at the passersby below, and the stark white streetlights of the night only make the stare harsher. As Nagasone steps out of the car and opens the door for his former master, he looks up at it and narrows his eyes. It doesn’t have the sleek chic of the old citadel’s traditional-modern fusion style, nor does it have the rickety charm of the inns and shops of Bakumatsu-era Kyoto.
He accompanies his former master up the building to her apartment door, and as he does, he feels an uneasiness swirling in his stomach 一 at first he thinks it’s just the side-effect cravings again, but the way it feels is different. Less hungry, more... tense. Not because of the harshness of the building, not because of the eerie quiet of the night 一 he’s faced worse conditions while hunting down stray HRA forces. The tension only seems to grow the closer they get to her floor, step by step, up the flights of stairs. The sound of their footsteps echo in his ears.
They climb to the fourth floor. Nagasone glances at his master rifling for her keys in her bag, hears the jingle they make as she pulls them out, watches her expression change to relief as they climb the last staircase to her floor. There’s something beautiful about her when she’s relieved, he thinks 一 and as the sentiment enters his thoughts, the tension in him tightens like a rope being pulled taut.
Oh, that’s where it’s from.
They stop in front of her apartment door. She looks at him with a soft smile. “Thanks for accompanying me up here, you really didn’t need to.”
“Just wanted to make sure that you got home safe.”
“Oh, uh... that’s really gentlemanly of you, actually. Thanks...”
Her voice trails off and she averts her gaze from him, instead staring down at the knob of her door. She presses her hands to her cheeks, but not before Nagasone sees them turn pink.
If he had less prudence, he would have pried her hands from her face, held them close, and kissed them reverently. He would have asked if he could stay with her just a bit longer 一 for another moment, another day, another week, another life. Maybe he would asked her if they could start over again. Maybe he would have admitted who he is, and who she is, and told her all sorts of things that she is no longer supposed to know.
But he presses his lips together in a taut line and says nothing. She’s lucky, he reminds himself. His previous master died an early and unfair death, never seeing the future he wanted to build, but this master has a better fate. She accomplished her mission and saw it to the very end; for that, she is now rewarded with a normal life. A life without the grief of battle and bloodshed. Nagasone himself has been given that same reward, too. Why should he risk taking all of that away and bringing back the grief and pain from her old life?
His former master fiddles with the keys in her hands. Nagasone stands next to her, his hands shoved in his pockets. He doesn’t leave, but neither does she unlock her door.
She looks up at him. Nagasone feels his heartbeat reverberating in his whole body. He can’t read the expression in her eyes: there seems to be confusion, sadness, hope, and everything in between.
At last, she shoves the key into the doorknob and gives it a twist. The door unlocks with a click, but she doesn’t push the door open or go in. Her eyes meet his one last time.
The silence between them is overwhelming.
Nagasone bites the inside of his cheek. He wants to say something, anything, if it would mean a chance of her staying. But with that came the risk of her memories flooding back and the peaceful life she built shattering.
Can I see you again?
Let’s meet up again sometime.
I miss you.
He opens his mouth to speak, but his former master is the first to break the silence.
“Thanks again,” she says, and he swears there’s a gentleness in her voice that wasn’t there before. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Get home safe.”
“Uh, sleep well...”
She turns the knob and the door opens, but her eyes remain fixed on his. Even as the door creaks ajar, she remains rooted to her spot, gazing at him.
Nagasone doesn’t turn to leave either, but allows himself to savor her presence. This could be the last time that he can, after all.