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"Hazuki?" Rindo asks, to clarify, because he's never heard the name in his life, but there's something strangely familiar about it, regardless, like the feeling he gets every day when he sees the visions of what's to come later on.
A soft smile curves across Hazuki's face. He readjusts himself, hands in his pockets, thumbs out, leaning back just so. Rindo could swear it's part of an ensemble he's seen a thousand times — so why can't he break through the fog that's been swirling through his head ever since he woke back up in Shibuya? Part of him wants to believe that it's because he's all alone now. He'd never felt as alive as he did when he was playing the Game with the Wicked Twisters, ironically enough, but now that they're gone it's like he's living a different person's life. As if he's been transposed into an entirely separate reality, even if everything looks the same on the surface.
"Hazuki," the newcomer confirms, "but you can call me 'Haz'."
Which is a silly nickname, but Rindo's heard worse. And honestly he doesn't have the energy to be judgmental about anything right now.
He does look kind of lost... but I'm kind of dealing with something right now. But... it's not like helping him get around is going to stop me from finding my friends, since they're...
Before he can disappear entirely into that maelstrom of despair and self-loathing, he dredges himself up and tries to focus on the task at hand.
If they were here, they would help him around. Well, Shoka would say something about us not having time to waste on people like this. She'd tell him Google Maps is free. Or maybe she wouldn't, now — she's really changed a lot. Still, though... she and Nagi would ask me if this was really necessary. Fret might want to help, but mostly because he would think he's cute. Beat and Neku... well, I don't know them all that well, but they'd probably try and help. They're good people who care about others even when it's inconvenient. Does that mean that that's what I should be doing, too? But Nagi and Shoka aren't bad people; they're just smart about what they expend their energy on. If I—
"Yoohoo! Earth to Rindo?"
Hazuki's waving his hand in front of Rindo's face, getting up real close and personal, the way Rindo has never quite been comfortable with. His face is only an inch or so from Rindo's, and he's studying the other boy's eyes like he's trying to find something there. Apparently, he doesn't find it, because he sighs and backs away, hands slipping back into his pockets as he gazes around at the buildings like he's never seen them before. Like he's never seen any buildings before, quite frankly.
"Sorry," Rindo says, because he's got to say something. "I, uhm, I just went through something really tough. Kind of... dealing with the aftermath of it."
God, if that's not reductive.
Except then he realizes— "Hey, what the hell? I never told you my name."
"I'm a good guesser," says Hazuki, which, like, he has to know isn't fooling anyone. But it's this weird game where Rindo can't really come right out and ask if he was part of the Reaper's Game, and he can't really demand to know how Hazuki knows his name, because he's already made it very obvious that he shouldn't, and Hazuki doesn't care that he shouldn't, so really Rindo is kind of at a crossroads here. Blessedly (blessedly?), Hazuki continues with, "Well, anyway... I'm kind of lost. This place is huge. I haven't been here in what feels like ages. Do you think you could show me around a little?"
No, I can't "show you around a little". I'm kind of busy grieving the loss of my friends? Like, forever?
"Yeah, I guess I could show you around."
"Oh, excellent!" This huge, face-splitting grin makes its way onto Hazuki's expression, and without quite knowing why, Rindo feels a twinge of homesickness.
He'd already been tired — going through the indescribable pain of what he has tends to do that to you — but as Rindo sits under a tree in Miyashita Park and watches Hazuki rolling around in the grass like an idiot he finds himself even more exhausted than he previously thought possible. It's like Hazuki's got an endless fount of energy from which to draw from. He's wide-eyed and staring up at the sky, pointing at this cloud or that cloud, saying this one's shaped like an egg, and that one's shaped like an iguana, and that one's shaped like cotton candy. ("A lot of them look like cotton candy, actually," he says, perplexed, as if he's not only new to the concept of seeing things in clouds but also new to the concept of clouds in general.)
Rindo unlocks his phone in an attempt to create a level of awkwardness between himself and this very weird new person, but he should have known it wouldn't work. It takes all of a quarter of a second after he inputs his passcode for Hazuki to pop his head up and ask, not quietly, "Do you have games on your phone?"
Rindo's heart twists.
He says, "Not a lot. Just this one I used to play with my friend..."
"Really? Which one?"
"It's, uhm... it's called FanGO?"
"No — not which game, silly." Hazuki's shit-eating grin doesn't disappear as he elaborates, "Which friend?"
Rindo blinks at him.
"Uh... you wouldn't know them..."
"That's the problem," says Hazuki, and drops back down onto the grass, huffing and blowing some of those long sidebangs out of his eyes. His arms are crossed, and though he's looking back up at the clouds again, his mood has done a complete one-eighty. Rindo feels kind of bad, because he really did seem to be having fun finding shapes in the clouds, but at the same time—
"Oh, oh, and that one looks like a kitty cat — I think?"
...never mind.
Speaking of cats, CAT's mural in Udagawa is the next place the two of them visit, and Hazuki is none too pleased to find out there aren't any actual cats here. Not ones that spend a lot of time socializing in the streets, anyway.
But Hazuki's melancholy over the absence of any cats is soon shunted to the side, because—
"Whoa-ho-ho-ho!"
Rindo watches as his new... no, not his new friend, he can't call him that, because he's not really a friend, he's just someone Rindo is trying desperately to offload at the nearest stop and having a very difficult time doing so... well, whatever he is, he's got his face pressed up against one of the graffitied walls and his eyeballs less than a centimeter from the graffiti itself, his hands steady against the wall to keep himself from falling, because there's no way that a person looking at something that closely has a good sense of balance and center of gravity.
He says, breathless, "This is the yellowest yellow I've ever seen."
As peoples' comments on the walls at Udagawa are usually about the messages CAT sends through his art, Rindo can't deny it's a little bit refreshing to see someone who is finding meaning in some other part of it. Even if the person in question is a complete enigma. He wonders how many yellows Hazuki has seen.
He stands off to Hazuki's side, hands shoved into the pockets of his overcoat, and watches Hazuki study the gigantic splotch of yellow so intensely that it's like it's the only thing in the world that matters at that moment. At least until—
"Ah — no, don't lick it!"
Hazuki turns, crossing his arms and turtling a little into the collar of his shirt. He's pouting, which Rindo can tell would normally be a strange expression on him, except that he does it so dramatically that it fits right at home on him. "It's just, like... when you see yellow that yellow... I don't know, it's like the person who did it took the sun out of the sky or something and put it right on this wall. It's like... things can be that yellow? Really? No one told me things can be that yellow."
As is proving to be the chronic case with Hazuki, Rindo is at a loss for words. He's not even sure what Hazuki is saying, so there's no way he can add anything to it.
"Anyway, I think it's a great yellow. The best ever. It makes me feel like I can do anything I want." He tilts his head at Rindo. "Don't you feel like that? When you look at it? Like you can do basically anything and no one can tell you no?"
Desperate to get this guy off of his case, Rindo says, "Sure."
Hazuki has to know that he's just saying it to shut him up, but he doesn't press him about it. He walks past Rindo, arms still crossed, and then—
He freezes. In one spot.
His face drains entirely of the little color it had.
He uncrosses his arms, and he stares down at the spot he's standing on as if venomous scorpions are going to emerge from it and chew his ankles off any minute.
"This is where it..." he says, almost too quietly to hear, and then he's bolting towards Rindo and grabbing his hand, tugging the other boy along so forcefully that he nearly trips down the stairs, and they leave Cat Street and Udagawa behind — Hazuki without even looking back, and Rindo unable to tear his eyes from the spot that has scared Hazuki so badly, because there's nothing there. Nothing there at all.
Rindo couldn't help but feel bad for the kid — well, he says kid but Hazuki is definitely older than him by at least a year or two, if not more. You wouldn't know it, though, from looking at him. There's some childlike wonder about the way that he takes everything in with those wide eyes and eager expression. Like he's seeing everything for the first time, and Rindo's a little convinced that he is seeing everything for the first time, because why on earth wouldn't he know what a vending machine is? Or soda, for that matter? He popped open the top of the soda can and almost dropped it when it began to fizz. Rindo had to tell him it's supposed to do that. And when Hazuki had taken a long sip of it he'd been so thrilled with the sensation he hadn't known what to do except throw the mostly-full can. It had splashed all over the street; some of it had landed on the shoes of some construction worker on his way to the job site, and Rindo had had to rush the two of them into a back alley before they got their insides beaten out of them.
Now, he's sitting outside Modi with crepes the two of them got from the shop right outside Miyashita Park, and he can't fathom how this boy wormed his way into Rindo's space to the point that he's actually willingly spending time with him. Well, not entirely willingly, but, like, he didn't have to show Hazuki where fluffy 'n' sweet was, and he didn't have to put up the money for the crepes (because Hazuki, somehow, doesn't have any, even though he said that he's not from around here and that he had gotten lost here, so, like, did he just get on a train that was going anywhere and end up here without a plan to get back?), but he did, and they could have had finished their crepes at the park, but Rindo had told him that it's much better to eat while you're watching all the people pass by on the street, except he's sort of forgotten he's not invisible and intangible anymore, and so quite a few people he watches end up staring back at him in irritation.
"So, you're sad," says Hazuki around a mouthful of a strawberries and cream crepe.
Rindo is a little taken aback. He knows he's being obvious about it, but Hazuki does not seem like the sort of person to understand things that are obvious to other people. "...uh-huh," he allows, because he wants to see where this is going.
Hazuki makes a frustrated sound and scratches a little bit at his temple and forehead, like there's something inside of his head itching and he's trying to get it out. He says, sounding a little defeated, "That's not how you're supposed to be. Now that everything's better, you're supposed to be happy. Shibuya's safe, right?"
Because no normal person would know that there was any reason Shibuya wouldn't be safe, Rindo is understandably taken aback. He narrows his eyes at Hazuki. Was this guy a Player? But I didn't see him on any of the other teams. I'm pretty sure I would have remembered someone like that. At least his super-weird personality, even if not his face. But there's no way he guessed something like that, right? You can't be that good of a guesser. And he knew my name... same deal.
"Why wouldn't it be safe?" he attempts, just to see what happens.
Hazuki says, irritated, like he can't believe that it's taking Rindo this long to catch on, "'cause He exorcised Kubo. And I'm here. So everything should be all better now, right?"
Okay — Rindo's completely lost here. Kubo? Who the hell is K— and as he asks, he suddenly knows the answer. Kubo. The rogue Angel that was hell-bent on destroying Shibuya. Rindo doesn't know much about Angels — he barely even got the concept of Reapers and Executors over the past three weeks — but he's pretty sure that at some point Kubo made his supervisors pretty angry. Angry enough to step in and do something about it. Something which apparently included erasing any trace of Kubo from the timeline, including the past, and including being able to comprehend the existence of a being like that unless he was reminded from an outside source. He says, "Who exorcised Kubo?"
"See," says Hazuki, "that's the part that doesn't make sense."
That's the only part? Rindo wants to ask, but he's intrigued now, so he remains silent.
"An Angel," is all the answer he gets, though, before Hazuki is back to working on his crepe as if he hasn't just turned Rindo's entire world upside down again for what seems like the six hundredth time in the span of three weeks.
So he goes another route instead. "Why would having you here mean everything is better? Not, uh, not like I'm trying to say you're bad company or anything..." Although, until now, he really just wanted to be left alone to grieve his friends, but now that Hazuki is apparently involved in the Reapers' Game somehow, he can't just let him go off and disappear. "...but I don't even know you." Are you here to offer me a deal? Are you the deus ex machina that gives me a chance to make all of this right again? He wants to ask these questions, but it seems a little forward, and anyway, if Hazuki can't do those things, it would just break Rindo's heart all over again.
Hazuki's face falls. It wasn't particularly high-spirited before, but now he looks like he's about to cry. To Rindo's horror, Hazuki's eyes actually mist a little.
He says, "You don't know me?"
Oh, fuck. If there was some amnesia component in coming back to Shibuya's RG, he's going to feel really shitty about what he's just implied to Hazuki. He's lost an entire day's worth of memories before, completely unaware of anything that transpired during the duration. It's entirely possible that he's met, become friends with, and spent a not-insignificant amount of time with Hazuki and just doesn't remember. "I'm sorry," he says, and he really does mean it. "I, uhm. If we were friends before... I mean, you know what they do in the Game, messing with people, messing with their memories and their free will and all of that... if we were friends before, and I just forgot when I got back here, I'm really sorry. I'm sure we can become friends again." He sticks out a hand in an attempt at a handshake. "I'm Rindo Kanade."
Hazuki looks really confused, now. "Kweh? I know who you are, Rindragon."
Rindo's heart sputters out an irregular beat in his chest.
He says, "S-Swallow?"
Because, like, it's an easy nickname to get from the kanji of his name, but who would call him that right off the bat and act like he should know why?
A grin spreads across Hazuki's face. "There we go. Only partial marks, though. Think about it."
He says, hardly daring to believe it, "...Fret?"
But that makes no sense. Swallow can't be Fret. He's gotten texts from Swallow while Fret was visibly not using his phone. He'd guess they might have been on a delayed send, but they've had entire conversations while Fret wasn't using his phone at all.
His head hurts. It hurts a lot.
Hazuki says, "It's complicated. But I think you'll get it."
God, what on earth is happening here? Fret, but not Fret? Swallow, but not Swallow? Someone who is shocked he doesn't know him, but who he's never seen before in his life? Someone who doesn't understand why he's sad, and who thinks that his presence here and the safety of Shibuya should make everything better...
Rindo knows who Hazuki is.
His lower lip quivers, and he's thankful the upper part of his face mask hides it, though it ends up being a moot point as the tears fill his eyes and his chest tightens hard enough to hurt. He says, voice breaking, "I saw you die. I saw all of you die."
"Sorry to disappoint," says Hazuki, about to laugh at his own joke, except that Rindo has placed his crepe aside and thrown his arms around Hazuki, squeezing him so tight that for a moment Hazuki is concerned he really might die, like, the real death, because Jesus fucking Christ, Rindo's grip is strong, and exponentially so now that he knows his friends haven't left him but instead are sitting right here next to him, amalgamous as they might be.
"Fret," Rindo squeaks into Hazuki's shirt.
"Uh-huh," says Hazuki.
"Nagi, Beat, Neku..."
"Which is going to make it real awkward for Rhyme and Shiki."
"And... Swallow... Swallow, you're Shoka, aren't you?"
"Took you long enough, loser."
Hazuki lets Rindo cry into him while he pats him gently on the head.
It's a little while later, maybe a half hour or so, and they're sitting outside Udagawa Parfait, on the street, and though it's too crowded of a street for any cars to get down, they'd be in danger of foot traffic if the path was any more narrow. Rindo's got his head in Hazuki's lap, and Hazuki is running his fingers soothingly through Rindo's hair as he lies there, brimming with happiness like a tiny golden sun. Every so often he looks up at Hazuki and just takes him in for a while, a genuine smile on his face, the kind that tells you he doesn't think anything could ever go wrong ever again. And Hazuki is happy to meet that smile with his own, because he wasn't sure what he was looking for until he saw Rindo there by Hachiko, and he knew him immediately even though he was soaked with despair, because how could he not know Rindo just by the sight of him, and everything just fell into place after that. Which was why he was so confused when he found out how truly upset Rindo was, because how could that sadness live in the same place as the greatest joy Hazuki's ever known?
"Does it, uhm... does it feel weird? To all be in the one..." Rindo doesn't know how to phrase it — unsurprising — so he trails off.
Hazuki shakes his head. "No, it's not a bunch of different people up here. Just me. Hazuki."
"Oh," says Rindo. "But, uhm, you have, like, the memories...?"
"Of everyone? Yeah. Don't worry, Rindude. No one's gone. I'm gonna stick around until you get absolutely sick of me. And then I'll stick around even longer than that."
This is apparently enough explanation for Rindo, who's as happy as a clam. God, it's so nice to see him positively beaming. He spent so long keeping himself shuttered away that watching him spill his heart to the people he cares about, opening up like a flower in bloom in front of him, is wonderful precisely because it's so out-of-character for him in the best way.
It's going to take both of them a lot to get used to this new way of living. But Shibuya's safe, and Rindo's friends are here, and Hazuki really likes existing so far. As he thumbs at Rindo's cheek, he can feel him smile even wider and subconsciously lean up into his touch, and he thinks that it doesn't matter how long it's going to take them to adapt, because he could take on anything in this entire world as long as Rindo's by his side.