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Roshuuto awakes with a start to a dark room, still in the way that comes with haunted ghosts of abortions past. He nearly reaches for the lamp on his nightstand, too wired to simply fall back asleep, but, out of rare consideration for his sleeping partner, he elects to fumble around for his phone and brings it, squinting, to his eyes.
It’s 3:03 AM, and a photo of him and Touichirou Suzuki smile down from the LED screen. Touichirou’s arm is slung protectively around Roshuuto, and he’s making an effort to smile, instead of his trademark supervillain scowl. It’s a poor effort, but he likes the guy nevertheless, bushy eyebrows and all. Roshuuto sighs, flopping the phone onto his chest, before pushing the blanket until it bunches around the gently snoring Touichirou next to him, and getting out to grab a glass of water.
The hallways of the Roshuuto-Suzuki residence are.. modest. Neither would have made it through an interior design degree, that’s for sure. Roshuuto’s seen pictures of Touichirou’s old buildings and he’s pretty sure that they were designed to induce madness even before experimental projects were tossed into those “psychic development” chambers devised by Claw scientists. Even out of prison, Touichirou doesn’t pay much attention to these small details, which is just as fine, Roshuuto supposes. Roshuuto brings nothing to the table himself, save for a creepy clown painting that was hung up once when guests were over just to give the impression of liveliness, which should really be taken down, he thinks, as he passes by the said picture.
The kitchen is much the same as the hallway, so Roshuuto spares it further thought. It’s only a little ways from the bedroom — there’s only so much that a former terrorist-prisoner and basically unemployed griftress (Roshuuto insists on using the informal, feminine of the term — it adds to his “girl boss slay” aesthetic) can afford. Besides, it’s close enough to the government building where Touichirou now works that he can walk over without any issue. There’s a thought that maybe the government isn’t done keeping Touichirou on a leash, but Roshuuto doesn’t care enough to pursue it.
He does, however, think very hard about Touichirou on a leash.
The sound of rushing water overlays his less decent thoughts of his partner when he spies a faint glow coming from the bathroom. He cranes his head to look, and when it appears to move, he shuts off the tap and stands stock still, not unlike a deer caught in the headlights.
Seasoning city is full of paranormal phenomena - perhaps more than the average city, for reasons unknown. Roshuuto knows this in the way that people come grasping at his pant legs for help, the way that the citizens here are easily swayed by his silver tongue and clutch cheap crystal spirit-warding beads to their chest and cry, with tears in their eyes, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” His somewhat-employment with the Rising Sun Spiritual Union has no shortage of stories that would not be out of place among cheap British tabloid magazines, the difference being that the stories here are quite real, even if Roshuuto could never experience the vast majority of them.
Roshuuto slinks up to the bathroom door, and determines that this is the rare minority where he, a fake spiritualist, is the one caught in the crossfire of ghosts, angels, and demons alike.
Sitting in the toilet bowl is the glowing apparition of a cherub, sniffling gently and rubbing their doleful eyes. Their tiny, cream fists paw at themselves, leaving behind smears of particulate in their wake. Its hair, likewise, is ever-shifting, lifted by an angelic wind, and its garbed in similarly divine clothing, draped in a single toga, colored a similar ivory as the rest of its being. It’s actually more a mass of small dust motes, or something, gathered around a glowing core, which he sees in the center of the cherub’s chest. He is reminded of something he saw in a biology textbook once and fails to suppress a shudder.
Roshuuto knocks on the bathroom door softly, and it reverberates around the ceramic of the bathroom. “Hello?”
The cherub stops rubbing its eyes and peers above the toilet seat. “Hello?” they ring out, in twinkling stardust voices, layered upon each other, in a perfectly single-minded crowd.
“Are you a spirit?”
It nods. “Yes. I am the spirit of abortions past.”
Roshuuto blanches. “The spirit of abortions past..?”
“The spirit of abortions past. Come, have a seat next to me.”
Roshuuto isn’t entirely sure if he should take a seat on the toilet, so he elects to sit on the tub edge. His glass of water is still in his hands, but he feels too wired to set it down anywhere, so he runs his long, bony fingers over it as the spirit floats so slightly up to where it can rest its chubby forearms on the toilet seat.
“Do you know why I was summoned, Roshuuto Douzen?”
Roshuuto gulps.
“I’ve heard that you’ve been doing some… particularly… un-Christ-like things to your body, Douzen,” says the ghost. “Let me give you a formal introduction.
“I am the ghost of abortions past. I am the aggregate of all the potential children that you have unrightfully expelled from your womb. I cannot rest, for when I do, I am overwhelmed by the voices of all of them, screaming out for justice, and for life. They all have names. They whisper to me, when I sleep.” The ghost draws out three particles from its torso, and holds them close to Roshuuto’s nose. Upon close inspection, Roshuuto can see that they are tiny, undeveloped embryos, curled up tightly in their amniotic sacs.
“Their names were Hana, Kaito, and Miyoko. Do you think what you did to them was right?”
Roshuuto furrows his brows. “I mean, yeah — I don’t want to take care of some stinkin’ kid,” he says. The ghost bristles.
“They had lives, Douzen. It wasn’t right to take it away from them.”
“It wouldn’t have been right to bring children into a family that can’t take care of them,” said Roshuuto, for once assuming the voice of reason. “Me and Toui can barely afford rent on this place. Uh- we aren’t married. And if Toui and I had a kid… I don’t think the government would hesitate to take them away for testing. Hearing what Toui went through, I don’t want my child to have to go through that.” Roshuuto grips the glass. “I’m just trying to make things bearable in the time that he and I have left.”
“And yet you would not even give them single fighting chance? To existence?” The ghost pinches its brow and shakes its head. “Douzen. How would you feel if your mother had aborted you? Where would you be without that gift of life?”
The ghost gestures towards its body, leaving more spirit babies in its wake, until the bathroom is a night sky of tiny, aborted, embryos. “Let me tell you about one of the children you were supposed to have.” The particles come together in some bizarre drone show.
“Hana was an artist. She spent her preschool years doodling on the walls. You and Touichirou would always find it irritating and tell her off for it, but the next day, she would find a new sketchbook and colored pencils on her desk, where she was free to express her artistic freedom.” An image of a young toddler lying on the floor and drawing various ghosts, monsters, princesses, and knights with crayons materializes.
“She continue drawing all throughout school, and though she came from a poor family, through love and admiration, you and Touichirou would raise enough money for her to go to art school. She would excel, and go on to become a talented animator.” The particles swirl into fluid animated motions, guided by the hand of an older “Hana.”
“In her free time, speaking from her experiences with her dads, she would go on to pioneer the transmasc yaoi mpreg genre of doujinshi, becoming an important figure in the LGBT+ movement in Japan.” A picture of two men kissing nearly emerges, before Roshuuto waves it away, irritated.
“I fail to see how this is relevant. Your RPF kidfic argument is going nowhere.” He slaps his legs like an American mid-westerner about to leave a social function. “I’m going back to sleep.”
The cherub sighs. “Okay. Maybe you didn’t like that. But let’s focus back on existence,” it says. “To be a person is what anyone desires - isn’t it, Douzen?”
Roshuuto pauses. To be a person. The only thing that he has ever desired in his life, the phrase that repeats in his head in his quietest moments - the ghost that haunts him, looms over his shoulder, in every business interaction, in all the ways he tries and tries to get with more power to pay attention to him. The way that even just being near Touichirou gives him a sense of accomplishment and importance when one of the most powerful espers in the world looks at him with those beautiful blue eyes.
A person. He wants to be real. Roshuuto tries not to let it show, but the way the ghost quirks up a corner of its mouth shows that it’s got him on a line, hook and all.
“Yes, a real person. You would not have been afforded this opportunity - this gift! if you had been aborted. Would it not be fair to pass this on to someone else? I know you have more empathy than you let on.”
Roshuuto tries to open his mouth, but it’s dry. There are no words in this moment. He can’t even bring up the glass to drink from it.
“And oh! your relationship with your dear, sweet, Touichirou. Aren’t you afraid of losing him? That he, without finding anything interesting about you besides the… service you provide, would leave you at the drop of a hat? Wouldn’t it be prudent to take some precautions? To make sure that he is yours… forever?”
“…Are you saying that I should babytrap him?”
The ghost smiles. “That sounds like something Roshuuto Douzen would do, doesn’t it?”
Roshuuto shakes his head to clear it from this insane conversation, but the thought sticks. He wishes he had psychic powers. He wishes that he had any redeemable quality. He wishes that he didn’t make so many mistakes. He wishes that he was loved. He wishes that he was a **person**.
He has one last argument, one that he knows is true from listening to feminist podcasts to impress women (only to have been rejected anyways). It’s been his justification for Hana, Kaito, and Miyoko, even as blood and flesh dripped out of him, into the toilet where the ghost was sitting.
“It’s just a clump of cells… there’s nothing to prove that they are a person yet. They didn’t have a consciousness. They didn’t even have a heartbeat, when I… I don’t.” He sniffs, and looks into his glass, and the way it refracts the light of the apparition. “I don’t know why you care about them so much.”
The ghost just grins, and Roshuuto feels sick. “It’s just a clump of cells. Is it? Is it **really**?” The spirit finally levitates above the toilet, and stretches an accusing finger toward Roshuuto’s stomach, and Roshuuto’s gaze follows.
“Or is there a **person** - you and Touichirou’s child - growing within you right now?”
Roshuuto feels faint, and the next thing he knows is a shattering sound as the glass drops out of his hands and scatters, diamonds, across the bathroom tiles. He’s being lifted by strong, masculine arms, up, off where he was slumped over into the tub, and he opens his eyes to see Touichirou furrowing his hair brows, which quickly melt into relief.
“Douzen. What happened?” His voice is deep and curt as always, but nearly a year with the guy has taught Roshuuto that there’s more behind him.
“I-”
Despite the believability of the spirit, somehow, Roshuuto doesn’t think that Touichirou needs to know about this encounter. Be a person. Be your own person, he thinks. He swallows thickly.
“Toui, please don’t freak out.” Touichirou nods, and puts his hands on Roshuuto’s shoulders. He probably knows what this is about, and probably even has some expectations about what to do, having had this conversation thrice before. He can feel Touichirou’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t look - not yet, and Roshuuto opens his mouth.
“I, I’m pregnant.” He shifts. “…Again.”
Roshuuto looks up, and blue, startling, icy blue eyes meet deep, unknowable black. They hold each other, and they are a family in the room on that beautiful night. It’s the right decision, Roshuuto tells himself, even if other people don’t understand it, even if all of the arguments don’t actually make any logical sense at all, and Roshuuto was, for once, right to begin with.
“I’m pregnant.”
He smiles softly.
“And this time, I’m keeping it.”
END