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Of this, Ryoji is unquestionably certain: he is going to die.
Of this, he is even more certain: Minako will kill him. She will not want to. Of course not. But she’ll have to.
Ryoji knows it like he knows the sea’s shoreline blue, the distant whir of a monorail on empty tracks, and the love keeping his heart beating for her. These things are unequivocal truths that he is distantly aware of, and close enough to touch.
It is a chilly November evening. They’re walking home together. Ryoji gets a sinking feeling that time is short, that time is not kind, that time is the maker by which fools become unraveled and remade. That all things which end must do so largely and spectacularly.
At the train station, they hold hands.
“Are you cold?” Ryoji asks Minako, who’s shivering.
“No,” she manages between the chattering of her teeth. Ryoji affectionately rolls his eyes and peels his scarf off, gently wrapping it around her.
Evidence that Minako will kill him: the traitorous flip his heart does, the impossible sunlight in his chest, the way her breath released as mist feels warm. The way her blush when he moves her hair out of the way makes him feel faint, off balance. Either they are soulmates, or one is fated to die at the other’s hand. Perhaps both—who’s to say?
“Thanks,” she whispers. He almost didn’t catch it.
In November, the sun starts to set around four o’clock. This means Ryoji is inconsolable.
It feels as though there is ice curling in his fingertips every time he presses his palm to Minako’s cheek.
They’re walking home from school, again. They always are. There’s little to being a couple in high school, just walking home together and holding hands and stolen glances across the classroom. Ryoji’s declarations of love and meaning, as if he’s discovered something big about being human. As if he knows something others don’t about the futility of it, the dying over and over and over again, the little changes that constitute each fragile death. It doesn’t matter that they’ve only met recently. It doesn’t matter they haven’t yet explicitly called it “dating.” Ryoji believes he has known her forever, and Minako doesn’t pull away when he takes her hand in his.
On the way home, they stop at a park in Iwatodai, just a few blocks from Minako’s dorm building. The park is abandoned and derelict in these early winter months: rust sprouts between the metal of the various structures, frost blankets the grit underfoot, and the slides stand empty and unused. It’s the perfect place for Ryoji’s melancholy. For as long as he can remember—which is not exactly a substantial amount of time, just a month or so—he has been fraught with this grief, a preoccupation with death, a strange sense that time slips away and can never be regained. He’s running out of time; he must be.
Minako buys them canned coffee from the vending machine, and the two of them sit side by side on a bench with their treats. The sky is overcast and dark, making after school feel like twilight. She’s got a long night ahead of her, she tells him, cracking a smile tinged with exhaustion. Someone is dying, Ryoji thinks, or maybe someone is dead. He knows that look in her eyes and he knows it implies loss. And still, he does not have it in himself to let her go.
“Are you happy?” Ryoji asks.
“I think so,” Minako answers. It’s not a lie, per se, but Ryoji notices the way her mouth screws up like she’s confused, like no one’s asked her such a question before. Like her answer is a simple spin of fortune’s wheel. The truth is this: she doesn’t know, and neither does anyone else.
“I was thinking,” Ryoji says, cradling his can in his hands, “that it’s hard to know what it means to be happy. Really happy.”
“I think,” Minako says, “that it has more to do with the people around you.”
“Is that so?”
She looks out over the park, a lord and her ruined kingdom. “You find meaning and happiness through caring for others, and being cared about in return.”
Ryoji frowns. “Don’t people say your happiness should come from within yourself?”
“Humans are social creatures,” Minako says. “I think you can have some happiness being by yourself, but that you find meaning through being with other people.”
“Really,” Ryoji murmurs.
“Am I wrong?”
“No.”
“You’re kinda different when you’re not flirting with girls,” Minako says. It’s not a judgment—it’s a matter-of-fact statement.
“Is that a bad thing?”
Minako smiles at him, pushing back the shadows that creep forward. “Not at all,” she says. “You’re much more fun this way.”
“I feel like I can be myself around you,” Ryoji admits. Then, “I feel like I’ve always been a part of you.”
To someone else, this might seem like typical teen sappiness, but Ryoji knows it like he knows the dark sky holds secrets others don’t know—he knows he’s but a part of her. He’s curled away behind her ribs somewhere, nestled between her lungs and her heart.
Minako doesn’t say much to that. Just cocks her head slightly and smiles.
When it comes to answers, Ryoji has none.
The sun is kinder in Kyoto; not so harsh. It still sets too early for the day to feel like a day rather than a collection of hours, but the sun reflects differently off the river than it does at home—softer, forgiving. Every day he learns something new.
The last night they’re at the hotel, Ryoji sneaks out of his room and into the courtyard. He’s not going far; he just needs some air. That’s what he’ll say if any of the teachers wander out and find him, but it’s late enough that the sky takes on a fading greenish tinge. The clock on the wall above the front desk read two o’clock in the morning.
Minako’s already there.
Lamps low to the ground illuminate the pathways of the courtyard. Minako’s kneeling by a small garden lined with rocks, watching the shishi-odoshi fountain in the center clacking against the rocks in the pool beneath it. A long bamboo stick lays next to her. The scene is positively picturesque: the waxing crescent moon but a sliver of light in the dark sky, the girl he loves in a thin cotton shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, flowers and carefully cut stone surrounding them.
When he takes a step forward, Minako’s eyes dart up to him, her hand coming to rest on the stick. What it’s for, Ryoji can’t say.
“You’re awake,” Minako says. “What time is it?”
“Two or so,” Ryoji says. He goes to sit beside her. Minako’s eyes flit back up to the sky as if she’s gauging the positioning of the moon in relation to the stars.
Then she seems to remember that she’s supposed to be mad, and pointedly does not look at Ryoji.
“Hey,’ he says. “I’m sorry.”
Minako doesn’t respond.
“If it makes you feel better, I only wanted to see you.”
“In the bath,” Minako says.
Ryoji takes a deep breath before confirming, “In the bath.”
“That’s stupid,” Minako says. “You’re stupid.”
“I know,” he says. “Do you hate me?”
She has to take a moment to think about it—a moment in which Ryoji considers all the ways he’s screwed up and how he can best describe this emotion welling up in him, a mix of guilt and shame and respect and love and love and love, and time is always running out for them. He wonders if tonight is that night, when she kills him. He’s reminded that it will happen.
“No,” she says finally. Ryoji breathes a sigh of relief. He’d much rather be killed in love than in hate.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
“I’ll forgive you this time,” she concedes. And she looks at him, finally, with those striking red eyes that always seem to see too much. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I promise.”
“Good.”
A moment passes between the two of them, punctuated by the clacking of the shishi-odoshi fountain.
“You couldn’t sleep?” Ryoji finally asks.
“No.” Minako looks back up to the stars, her eyes flitting between pinpricks of light. For a moment, Ryoji believes the galaxies reflected in her eyes are really there, swimming in a sea of red sky. How beautiful would that be, red sky, death on the horizon, nowhere left to go? How hopeless?
He feels those thoughts drifting away from him, and he reminds himself that his poet’s soul must be contained, at times.
“Me neither,” Ryoji says. When he looks up at the stars he wonders if the two of them are seeing the same things. If the constellations mapped in his head are the same in hers. He wishes they could spend all their time like this, spending time with their friends and learning new things during the day, alone together at night.
Minako glances at him curiously, then back to the stars.
“I feel like,” and when he says this, Ryoji has to swallow back the strange feeling tightening his throat, “all this is a wonderful dream, and I have to wake up soon.”
“You don’t, though,” Minako says. There is something grieving in her voice. “You don’t have to wake up. If your life is a dream, don’t wake up.”
She knows something, the way Ryoji knows something. He’s sure of it. They’ve always been interconnected in some way—having the same dream, maybe, fortunate enough to be sharing in it. Looking at the same moon.
They’ve both lost things, haven’t they?
Career Experience leaves Ryoji feeling like a hot, sweaty mess. His group was assigned as dishwashers and apprentice waiters at the beef bowl shop, so when he wasn’t frantically running around during peak hours to bring people their orders, he was washing dishes. Each day he left with his fingers pruning and his shoulders aching.
Junpei is in his group, and only shows up one day. He stares at the dishes as Ryoji washes them, and is otherwise slow to respond to customers. The boss keeps him in the back paired up with someone else in their group the whole time. Junpei doesn’t perk up once, even when Ryoji mentions a swimsuit calendar he saw at the bookstore the other day.
It all becomes worth it, though, when he calls Minako over to Chagall and she says I’ll be there in a few.
Junpei’s lost someone precious. Of course he has; Ryoji should’ve recognized that look. Maybe he’s not as perceptive as he thought; there’s too much he doesn’t know.
He gets the feeling he’s had to reassure someone of this before. That people die. That life, infinite in its delights, ends suddenly and abruptly, that there is nothing to be done about it.
Minako takes his hand from across the table. She looks up at him, and doesn’t smile. He gets the feeling it was her he said it to, all those years ago, that it was him reminding her that people die and there is no following them.
What a joke that is, isn’t it? When he dies at her hand, will she mourn him? Will she fall in love with someone else, see traces of Ryoji in him?
Ryoji doesn’t get to survive this story. He hates that sometimes he forgets.
On that day, November twenty-ninth, Ryoji tells Minako he loves her.
In more words than that, of course. Brevity is not a strength Ryoji is particularly well-versed in. He says you’re the only one there is for me. He says please, stay with me. He says you’re the most precious thing in the world to me…
Even more than my own life.
That’s the point, isn’t it? He loves her enough to let her kill him. He knows it will have to happen. He can only hope that there’s enough love there to make it worthwhile.
Tomorrow is a scary phenomenon. Tomorrow means the ending of today, and a reinventing. Tomorrow means time is passing, means another day closer to their inevitable parting.
It hurts, seeing beautiful things. It hurts to look at the glittering ocean, and it hurts more to look at her, that open expression, that easy smile. She loves him, too. Like two ships on borrowed time. The school roof, the ocean, these memories, all transient.
Ryoji’s afraid if he touches her, he’ll shatter.
“Maybe the next rule we can break is the one where your dorm doesn’t allow visitors at night,” he says. It’s an attempt at humor, and it works. Minako laughs and leans against the tall fence surrounding the rooftop. He doesn’t miss the red tinging her cheeks, and he lets them both pretend it’s from the November chill.
“I’m sure we can make that happen,” Minako quips, her voice light, lighter than he’s ever heard it. In this moment, Ryoji can pretend he’s not doomed, that they’re two normal teenagers in love and alone together after years of yearning. It doesn’t matter that he’s only known her a month; he’s known her much longer, really. Like how he knows without asking that she loves baking, tarot, and music with funky basslines, even though she’s never told him outright.
He wants to kiss her, even though he knows he’ll shatter.
Ryoji leans his hands against the bars of the fence on either side of her—a classic kabedon. Minako angles her face up to him, still loving, still open. He worries if he looks away for even a moment, the world will end.
She kisses him. He’s barely prepared for it, the feeling that his breath’s been snatched from his lungs. It’s a quick, light thing. Chaste. Blood warms his cheeks as she pulls away from him with a cheeky smile.
Of all of Ryoji’s limited memories, this is his favorite.
Of course, happiness cannot last. Good things always end.
Ryoji remembers everything. The night sky is green and coffins line the streets.
He meets Aigis at the moonlight bridge.
Please touch me. Make sure that I exist.
He’s always been a part of her. Even knowing this, he doesn’t stop loving her.
December passes in the blink of an eye. She does not kill him, this time. Ryoji gives her his ring, the one he bought in Kyoto. Something to remember him by; it’s a proposal, too, but he doesn’t know it yet.
“I love you,” he says, when she lets him live. And kisses her again, one last time.
The problem with a being like Ryoji—sorry, like Nyx—is that it can never really die. It has to be sealed away, forgotten, or fought until the end of time. Death of the world is inevitable; it’s only a matter of time.
Nevertheless, Minako tries. She cries when she looks at him, the Ryoji she loved transposed over the Fall. She knows all the people wandering around with Apathy Syndrome, buying into the false beliefs of a cult that wishes nothing but an apocalyptic end, are followers of the boy she loved. She takes the power of the people she cares about and together they strike down the Fall.
Except, not really.
Except she’s not ready to let go—or it’s that she can’t, because so long as Ryoji—sorry, Nyx—is sealed away, it can always come back. Someone needs to be there. A gatekeeper. Someone to push back the End with all the love in her heart, someone to kill it again and again and again, because so long as Nyx is occupied it cannot hurt anyone. Too focused on the girl it loves.
And because she loves Ryoji, because she loves her friends, she is okay with this. Killing him, again, and again, and again.
It makes sense, after everything. Why they were drawn together. Why he looked so familiar. Why she dreamed of Pharos every few nights, why he felt like an old friend. Why death and fortune seem so impossibly intertwined.
In the back of her head, a voice she thinks she knows says, You don’t have to do this. We don’t have to trade places.
But they do, or the world will end, or she will spend the rest of her life chasing after shadows that disappear when the sun goes down.
No more Dark Hour. No more apocalypse. No more apathy.
I love you, Nyx says, as she kills it again, and again, and again.