Chapter Text
“It would have been better if it hadn’t been found.” Aqua sounded out, morosely.
Under the light of the sole lamppost by the bench where he had sequestered himself away, it felt like the long shadows could hide anything that the deafening silence could not. His murmurings to Akane were cryptic, round-about, an admission chock-full of dramatic irony that couldn’t have possibly made sense to her in the slightest.
Akane was smart for a teenager, but that was all she was. A girl. A human.
Her humanity - and his, for that matter - had slapped him in the face the moment his corpse had been uncovered.
Ever since he had learnt that his father was dead, and that he had been set free from his quest for vengeance, he had been acting more recklessly. That didn’t excuse this. When he had asked if the body could still be found - ‘I had a pet that I lost 15 years ago, do you think I could still find its corpse now?’ - he had been filled with an odd sense of relief when Akane had replied with a negative.
But to have Akane and Ruby come across it anyway– to see the shattered looks in their eyes when they returned– he’d acted too thoughtlessly, and this time he didn’t have his desire for vengeance to burn away the threads of what remained of his morals clinging to him.
“Akane,” he said hollowly, “thanks for finding it for me.”
There was a poignant silence. Then - “I see. So that’s who he was.”
Whatever conclusion she’d come to, it was undoubtedly incorrect, but Aqua stayed silent. No matter how convoluted the premise she had thought up, reality was even more so.
“But I didn’t do anything.” She said next, quietly. “We just found it by chance. Ruby was more shaken up than me.”
The reminder of his sister only made him feel worse. Despite Ruby having a few more years under her belt than Akane, neither had deserved to come across his rotted and long-decomposed corpse. The two of them belonged in the starlight, under the harsh beams of spotlights and on dazzling stages - nowhere near the darkened cave where his corpse had ended up. As a former doctor, he’d seen his fair share of bodies, but Ruby and Akane?
They hadn’t deserved to see such a haunting sight.
“I’m sorry for your and Ruby’s loss.” She said softly. “The two of you must have been close to him before his disappearance.” And death went unsaid. She was distraught when she recognised him.”
Aqua only hummed. Then, he froze.
“She – what.”
Ruby recognised Amemiya Gorou? How was that even possible? He had died the night that Hoshino Ai had given birth to twins. It was, quite literally, impossible that Hoshino Ruby had ever come into contact with the person he had been in his past life.
But before… but before…? He didn’t know who she had been before she had been Ruby. Their past lives had been something that had never come up beyond the basics - age, gender - and who Ai had been to them. To think that he might have known her in their past lives was a staggering realisation, yet one that he was surprised that he hadn’t thought of earlier.
He didn’t know how reincarnation worked, and given its lack of any scientific basis, he hadn’t bothered to figure it out. It went against everything that he had learnt in medical school, against the basics of neuroscience and biopsychology, and it stood to reason that the rationale behind his reincarnation as Ai’s child would be lost to him as well. But perhaps distance had played a role? Closeness to Hoshino Ai at the time of his death?
Who then, might Ruby be?
Abruptly, and almost as if possessed, Aqua rose to his feet. He wasn’t too out of it to leave without saying anything, but his words were brief.
“I’ll speak to her.” He muttered, waving Akane off and speeding up when she attempted to follow him. “I’m sorry.” Turning around to see her, an arm stretching out but her legs slowing to a stop when she caught the expression on his face. “I’m sorry, just… this last time, let me…”
He saw her shaking her head, murmuring something softly melancholic under her breath that the wind stole away. Seeing her raise the arm to her face, rubbing at her eyes, he turned away before he could be tempted to stay.
The guilt of it tore at his heart, weighed upon him and threatened to pull him apart, but this time would be the last. He swore it to himself. Two loose ends had been tied; his father, his corpse, and this last one, Ruby’s relationship to Amemiya Gorou, would be the third and final one.
Then, he promised to himself, he would make it up to Akane.
But first he had to find Ruby.
–
She was alone in her room when he found her. The door was shut and when he knocked, Ruby had startled and shrieked before he called out to her.
“Not now, onii-chan!” She hissed, her voice laced more with pain than with vitriol. Her voice sounded scratchy and worn, as if she had spent a while crying out all the tears she had. “Go away!”
Aqua leaned against the wall by the door, his own emotional weariness mirroring hers. He wished he were anywhere but here - back on that bench alone, perhaps, alone with his thoughts - but this was one mystery that he couldn’t let rest.
All through his search, he had wondered just how Ruby had recognised the body, decayed as it was. The credit card had only been uncovered when the police arrived and went through the remains methodically, and any facial features were long gone, the flesh eaten away by decomposers. He had eventually narrowed it down to two possibilities - she had been one of his colleagues, or she had been one of his patients.
As for which was the answer…
“Akane told me that you recognised the body.”
Her voice, through the door, was muffled. “So what if I did?”
“Amemiya Gorou died the day we were born. How did you know him?”
“How do you think? I knew him before.” Caustic. Their past lives had always been taboo topics, more out of awkwardness at first, and then it had become habit to omit all but the basics. Who they had been had mattered less and less, too, with the distances between them and their lives as the Hoshinos narrowing as time went on.
“...You know that’s not what I meant. You lived here in your first life, didn’t you?”
Ruby huffed, so forcefully that it could be heard even with the door between them. “Don’t know if you could call it living.” Her tone was dark. “Go away !”
“No.” He said, simply.
There was the rapid sound of footsteps getting closer and closer before the door was flung open. Ruby’s eyes were dry, but they were red and swollen, and she was hugging one of the terrible inn cushions to her chest. Her fists were clenched tightly shut. When she looked at him, her gaze was full of such fury that he instinctively began bracing to defend himself.
She looked him up and down, as if sizing him up, taking in his defensive position and carefully-manufactured apathy. Then, all the fire drained out of her.
“You’re not going away.” Ruby said, defeated.
Aqua shook his head. “Not until I learn who Amemiya was to you.”
“You–!” She clenched and unclenched her right fist. She reached out, and Aqua flinched, but all she did was grab him and pull him into the room.
Slamming the door behind him, Ruby moved past him and threw herself back onto her bed, settling herself on top of the sheets cross-legged as she glared at him. “Why are you so– so insistent?! At least have the grace to come back tomorrow, or next week - if you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of going through something!"
Standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, he pushed back the instinctive self-consciousness that rose in his chest and leaned lightly against the wall. “Amemiya Gorou was alone when he died. He had no close friends in the countryside and no family who mourned his passing. So why is it, Ruby, that you seem nearly as upset right now as when Ai died?”
Ruby’s reaction was instantaneous and incandescent.
“Shut up!” A few of the tears gathering in Ruby’s eyes fell even as she tried to blink them away. “Stop saying that nobody cared for him! Sensei was loved – how could you say that nobody mourned him?! Stop talking about him so carelessly!”
“That’s not what I said.” Aqua raised his voice a little so that he could be heard, but kept his tone placating. At the same time, his mind was running a mile a minute, the honorific a clue as to who Ruby could have been.
While he kept people at a distance by using their names, Ruby was more fond of familiar terms. She had been the one who had been comfortable with using ‘mama’ to refer to Ai, even given their individual pasts as fans of ‘Ai the idol’ before she became ‘Ai, their mother’.
Who, in his previous life, had referred to him as sensei? And would still refer to him as such sixteen years later?
Even as his mind raced, his heart pounding in his ears, he knew the answer.
Most of the patients and the interns at the hospital had used the honorific with ease, but he hadn’t been close to too many of them. His path as a gynaecologist had been for his grandparents’ benefits more than his own, and though he cared deeply for his patients, he hadn’t shared the same fervour for the speciality as the rest of his colleagues, creating a distance between them. That left only the patients.
In a town like Takachiho, narrowing down the patients who passed through the hospital who fit the criteria was a simple matter.
And there was only one patient he knew who had adored Ai as much as Ruby did, who had called him ‘sensei’ with such affection… and who had died early enough to be reincarnated as Hoshino Ruby. Only one.
There was something bittersweet in realising that Ruby had outlived her first life and then some.
“Of course.” He murmured, catching the pillow that Ruby hurled at him after seeing that he hadn’t been paying attention to the tirade she’d launched into. Her passion was flattering, but ultimately misplaced. “Of course it would be you, Sarina.”
Ruby – Sarina – who had been winding up for another rant, halted in her tracks. “Hu– huh?”
Aqua slid down the wall, sitting down on the floor so that she would be looking down, rather than up, at him. He lightly tossed the pillow back at her, and in her bafflement, it bopped her on the head before falling to the floor between them.
“Hey! Wait, onii-chan, what did you just say?” Her fury hadn’t yet melted away, but it was tempered for now, kept at bay by her sheer confusion.
He smiled softly, slightly overwhelmed by the irony of it all. “We never talked about our past lives, did we?”
“Well– well, there was a reason for that .” She grimaced, making a face.
Knowing what he did know, Aqua winced. His life hadn’t exactly been pretty, but Sarina’s had been downright miserable. Less than a third of patients with anaplastic astrocytoma survived, and given that Sarina had been bedridden even before her death, Gorou had known that she was unlikely to be one of that third.
Sarina’s life, for all that Gorou had tried to comfort her, had been a far cry from the rich and lively one that Ruby had lived thus far.
“But you said–” She cut herself off, mouthing the words ‘my name’, as if not daring to say it aloud. “You knew who I was before?”
“I knew you , before.” Aqua corrected gently, deciding to stop beating around the bush. “Although I didn't realise until just now. You,” he grimaced, pointedly, “came across my corpse today.”
A beat.
Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “WHAT?!”
“I know this might come as a surprise," he started, crossing his arms, "and believe me, I was shocked too. It's been sixteen years since I died - I thought nothing would have remained of my body. If I had known… Well, I’m sorry for letting you see such a disgusting thing on our trip the countryside.”
Seeing Ruby struggling for words, he continued.
“However, this does raise a few questions that I had put to rest. I had initially assumed that the only thing we had in common was our love for Ai before our first deaths, but we both died around the hospital here in Takachiho as well. The proximity and that the myths surrounding this town… perhaps it would be best if I looked around to see if I can find anything while the three of you shoot your music video.”
He thought back to what Akane had asked him earlier - do you believe in the occult? - and his partial reply. His first life dedicated to keeping up with scientific advancements had predisposed him against believing anything supernatural, but when faced with his present reality, scepticism could only go so far. Could there be any clues as to why the two of them had been reincarnated in Takachiho?
“You’re– you’re sensei?” Her tone, indiscernible, was like looking through shimmering heat waves in the air. Hope… intermixed with clear conflict. Aqua settled for a simple nod.
“But– how– I–” Ruby stammered. “Prove it! If you’re really sensei, what were…” She stumbled momentarily, choking on the words. “What were the last words I said to you?”
“You told me to take care of your gashapon keychain as if it were you.” Aqua said, quietly. Time and the emotional distance of living a whole new life separated the current him from the doctor by a dying girl’s bed like a yawning chasm, but there were pieces of that day that it could never tear away from him.
“And… you said that you loved me. I’m surprised you remember that much. Sometimes when a patient is dying, they lose awareness of who they are and where they are long before their heart stops. It can be both a blessing and a curse to remain aware until the end. But… I’m glad I was privileged enough to be there for you on that day.”
He closed his eyes briefly at the reminder, the image of Sarina on her deathbed replacing that of Ruby sitting on the bed in front of him. Ruby’s fervour and dedication to becoming an idol made much more sense when reframed as the dying wish of a girl who’d pulled the shortest possible stick in life.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself with an armful of his sister – his dear patient.
“Hey, the floor can’t be that comfortable, surely–”
She just squeezed him tighter, her chin digging into his shoulder. “Sensei–!”
Slowly, Aqua raised his arms, awkwardly returning the hug. He couldn’t see Ruby’s face, but from the sound of her voice, she was struggling to keep it together. With their proximity, too, he could feel the way that her breaths became hitched and grew shorter and shorter as she cried.
Ignoring the way that his legs were gradually becoming number, he lifted a hand to pat the back of her head gently. “You know, Sarina, if anyone deserved to be reborn as Ai’s daughter, you’d be at the top of the list. I’m… I’m glad you’re the one who’s here with me, even with everything that’s happened since we were reborn.”
Ruby didn’t respond, busy trying to control her voice. “I thought you were dead .”
“I did die, yes.” Aqua responded dryly, but reached into his pocket to offer her a packet of tissues.
She punched him lightly, but mercifully released him from her grip and sat back, freeing his legs as well. “You’re such a jerk! I can’t believe that– you. You . Of all people.”
Despite her words, her posture slumped in relief as she leaned back against the bed. Accepting the packet, she wiped her tears and blew her nose, though more were still gathering in her eyes. Inevitably, some still fell.
They remained there wordlessly for a while, Ruby gathering herself while Aqua waited patiently. He had sat through more than his fair share of crying patients - and people - to be comfortable waiting for her to calm down. Giving her time, he waited until she was ready to speak again.
“I can’t believe that it’s you.” She repeated, her voice wobbly, through the tissues.
Suddenly, she startled at a thought, the hitching breaths stopping as she wheezed a dry laugh.
“What was that for?” He raised an eyebrow.
“You know, you’re a terrible person, sensei.” Ruby shook her head, a wry grin on her face, still streaked with tear tracks. “I’m finally sixteen, you know? But after seeing the kind of person you are, I think my dreams have been crushed.”
Of course. He’d almost forgotten about Sarina’s crush on his old self, so caught up in his delight at her having a second chance at life. “Well, I can say that I’m not marrying you now, that much is for certain.”
Ruby laughed; sharply at first, in genuine mirth, but then it grew softer.
A sad smile stretched across her expression. She raised her left hand, opening it palm-up. “We both know that you weren’t going to marry Sarina.” In her palm lay the Ai keychain. “My body was always going to fail me.”
She… she must have retrieved that from his corpse, Aqua thought, staring wide-eyed down at it. By the time he had heard of the body’s discovery and gone to take a look, it had been cordoned off by the police and looking for the gashapon keychain on it would have been ‘interfering with the investigation’. Ruby had to have come across it when she first happened upon him.
His heart clenched at the sight that it conjured up. Perhaps Ruby hadn’t known that it was him at first, but he had kept the keychain in his hospital lanyard on him at all times. The sight of it would have been enough to clue her in as to who the corpse was. Had she been confused, disturbed, even, at the sight?
Had that confusion turned to despair when he saw the keychain amidst the wreckage of who he had once been?
Aqua shoved the grim thoughts away. They weren’t relevant; Ruby was here, now, in front of him. He refocused on her words, sombre and self-deprecating.
“Maybe I did lie, but does it matter?” He asked, honestly.
A few lies to a dying girl – the only comfort she could cling to. He would lie all over again if he found himself in the same situation, knowing that a false promise was infinitely more comforting than the harsh reality.
Ruby’s expression twisted. “I guess not. When my parents abandoned me, you being there for me and cheering for me meant that I kept my will to live. And-” She flushed, closing her hand and gripping the keychain tightly, her volume lowering. “It was because of you that I wanted to be an idol so badly.”
Ah, he had inadvertently doomed himself, hadn’t he?
Aqua raised a hand to his face, covering his eyes at the realisation. All that time spent sabotaging Ruby’s attempts at becoming an idol because of what lay behind the curtains of the idol industry, and she had been pursuing it with such vehemence because of him .
He had encouraged her before because the comfort was all that he could offer her, but now– Ruby had her whole life ahead of her. Maybe she didn’t see it, having died at the age of twelve before, but his experience in both lives had taught him enough.
The brighter the star, the darker the shadows it cast.
Ai had fallen victim to their grasp. He couldn’t - now more than ever - let Sarina do the same.
“Right… Ruby, I think we need to have a talk about that.”