Chapter Text
There’s a bitter, hot-metal smell in the air. Kaneda’s ironing her hair. She likes to put waves in that bob of hers; but she heats that damn contraption to the point of singeing, because Tetsuo’s wrinkling her nose, hypersensitive olfactory receptors assaulted by that burning hair. She remembers how one time a boy Kaneda had been seeing for a while told her she should put highlights in her hair and Kaneda had laughed and said you’re too much and Tetsuo had been glad he was too much because she couldn’t possibly deal with that reeking chemical funk on top of everything else.
“You gonna change?”
Tetsuo’s taken aback by that question, and for a split second interprets it literally- “Into what?”
“Different clothes, dummy. The girls wanna meet up tonight.” So that means noises, lights, smells. The omnipresent throb of the city refracted through her body and pressing down hard. God knows what she’ll be put up to tonight.
“Oh,” Tetsuo sighs out, soft and sullen, and because she’s so bad at scrubbing her emotions from her voice Kaneda pounces on her disappointment with ease. “’Oh?’ Why ‘oh?’ What’s so ‘oh’ about meeting up with the girls?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Tetsuo shakes her head rapidly, dark curtain of hair whipping her skin. Searching for a reason not to go, she says, “It’s just… the clothes.”
“What about ‘em?” Kaneda says. Tetsuo hears the pop of a lipgloss cap somewhere in the recesses of the bathroom.
“They… well, they… I don’t have any that look like yours,” she settles on, which is true. But Kaneda has an answer for everything. “You can borrow some of mine.”
“You’re too big.”
“Naw, that’s bull. Something’s gotta fit.”
“What’s wrong with the clothes I’m wearing?” Apart from her leather jacket, there’s nothing in Kaneda’s wardrobe that appeals to her- hanging gappy off her gangly, underdeveloped body, showing entirely too much skin for her comfort, or simply having textures that prickle, fizz and slither awful and burrowing across her skin.
She can practically hear Kaneda shrugging. “Just figured you’d get tired of sackcloth after a while, is all.” This type of mild insult is so familiar to Tetsuo at this point that she doesn’t even try to fight it. It’s marginally better than the shit Kaneda defends her from, so she figures it’s a decent enough trade-off.
Though sometimes, though she’s never been a particularly devoted student, she wonders about this concept they learned about in economics class. The sunk cost fallacy.
Kaneda breezes out of the bathroom- Tetsuo hears her boots clicking on the tile, who knows what she’s tracking in, but no one ever accused Kaneda of being polite- and stops right in front of her sister, goofy grin plastered on her face, hands on her hips, the stance she’d take to cheer Tetsuo up when they were little, usually right before a tickle attack or some similarly dumb enterprise. Kaneda’s good at hooking a quick laugh out of her, or at least she was. Now it feels increasingly like their senses of humor no longer overlap.
“C’mon,” Kaneda says, with that big disarming smile, a smile that could defuse a bomb. “What’s eatin’ ya for real this time?”
“I’m not…” Tetsuo starts, then stops. Kaneda gazes at her expectantly. “I’m not pretty enough for that.”
“That’s bull,” Kaneda repeats, face crinkling into a frown. “Why do you think that?”
“I…” her voice cracks weakly, trails off embarrassed. She gets defensive, flushing hard. “I didn’t expect a fucking interrogation,” she snaps, but there’s still a warbling tone, a soul-deep lack of confidence that stains her voice no matter how many times she tries to wash it out, followed by a sudden panic at having gotten mouthy at someone higher than her in the social hierarchy, even if it’s only Kaneda. But Kaneda snorts, unbothered, which somehow only makes her more frustrated.
“Ballsy,” Kaneda says, and before Tetsuo can react she’s reaching for her, snaking her hand through that veil of hair to grab at Tetsuo’s chin. She holds her with the firm grip of someone squeezing a fruit at the supermarket to check for ripeness, or like a mother pinching the cheek of her baby. With her other hand, she lightly brushes some excess hair from Tetsuo’s face. She smiles. “I know there’s a pretty girl in there somewhere, I just know it.”
Get off of me, Tetsuo wants to say, teeth gritting, but she doesn’t. Instead, she says, “You should be looking for Yamagata instead, if you want that.” Kaneda just laughs, but she was being dead serious. Yamagata is prettier than her, it’s a plain fact. That long, glossy hair that isn’t limp and greasy like hers or fried and overconditioned like Kaneda’s or just sort of dull like Kai’s- it’s natural, voluminous, catches the lights of the Haruki-ya and throws off soft little glints. That face of subtle arches, strong cheekbones, even skintone, no acne. Or her limbs, smooth and toned without being scrawny, making up for her towering height (lots of boys don’t like that she’s taller than them). If it weren’t for that horsey gait, that honking voice, that face plastered over with too much makeup, she’d be perfect. Tetsuo suspects the only reason Kaneda’s the de facto leader of their little group instead of her is because Yamagata just doesn’t have the brains for it. She’s every bit as brash and bitchy as Kaneda can be but far less smart.
“C’mere, we’ll try on a little makeup. I’ll prove to you you’re every bit as pretty as Yamagata,” Kaneda insists, seizing her by the wrist and luring her into the bathroom for inspection. Tetsuo’s skin erupts in sweat as every small imperfection of her face and body is highlighted under harsh, clinical light. The drone of the stupid fan makes her feel like she’s struggling underwater, thrashing but never breaking the surface. There are clacking sounds as Kaneda rifles through her makeup bag for various things she doesn’t know the names of- she’s never made an active effort to familiarize herself with this arcane ritual. Kaneda swabs a soft-bristled brush through some sort of brownish powder- “We’ll just start with some foundation-” but as soon as it approaches her skin Tetsuo has visions of black-crawling insects and shrieks and swats it away. Kaneda’s shoulders just slump, disappointed. “Well, fine then, be that way,” she sighs, sounding somehow both exhausted and resolute. “All I’m saying is- people’d probably give you less of a hard time if you just put a little more effort into your appearance.” She sniffs suddenly, wrinkling her nose. “And washed your hair once in a while.”
“Are you saying I smell?”
“I am, ‘cause you do.”
Shame seeps coldly through Tetsuo’s small body as Kaneda returns to her preparations; the type of shame that immobilizes rather than spurs to action. She’s thoroughly lost in her own mind by the time Kaneda comes up to her and asks her something.
“What?”
“I said, are you ready to go?”
“Oh.” Blink. Swallow hard. “Yeah.”
***
Tetsuo is standing with her sister at the end of the world.
That’s not quite true; it’s a matter of scale. She’s panned out way too far, cut out way too much, and left out all the important details. There’s no context to this ancient carnage. She needs background information, B-roll, but the truth is that to her it felt like there simply just was a whir of lights and sounds and colors, the city nightlife and the hum of Kaneda’s bike, and now they’re here- at the blind spot of collective memory, the place where thirty years ago Old Tokyo was erased in a single horrid, beautiful dome of light.
Ground zero.
She’s a little drunk and a lot high and the combination of clumsy sluggishness with an anxiety that seems to be vibrating under her skin makes it very difficult to appreciate the sight that lays below where she perches on the artificial asphalt cliff. It’s not helped at all when Kaneda comes up behind her silent as an owl and puts her hand suddenly on Tetsuo’s shoulder- she’s so disoriented that for one terrifying moment she pitches forward and is certain, certain, that she’s falling to her death- but all it does is cause her to lightly stumble forward, faith in her sense of balance momentarily shaken. Kaneda laughs that laugh of hers, barking and genuine- “Easy, killer, it’s only me!” -but that wasn’t what Tetsuo was worried about to begin with. Her heart is pumping at an insane speed; she couldn’t steady it if she wanted to. She’s nearly mute with this artificial fear.
The veil of dissociation lifts slightly and she has her scene transitions back- blurry, damaged footage but still there. She remembers, vaguely, meeting up with the other girls; the pop of the lid of an orange bottle labeled YOSHIDA KAISUKE, ADDERALL 20 MG and then Kaneda pushing fistfuls of yen into Kai’s open palm, buying Tetsuo’s portion because she forgot her wallet. More dimly, Kaneda haggling with Kai about the price and Kai firing back that her prescription meds aren’t cheap and she’s not about to have her friends get her labeled as drug-seeking. Then they’d been off to the Haruki-ya like normal, knocking back a few beers (she hates the taste and always has, but she’d never hear the end of it if she ever refused) and then Yamagata and the bartender going back and forth like they do every week about how young girls like you ought to be more careful in this part of town and screw yourself old man, we know what we’re doing. Throughout everything, the low burble of gossip- Kuwata said she couldn’t come tonight because she feels sick, I keep telling her to get a pregnancy test but she won’t do it... She doesn’t remember shoplifting anything this time, which is good, because even sober she’s no good at being a convincing distraction, too stilted and awkward to lie convincingly and too shabby-looking to play the Good Girl Card, which she isn’t sure she’s ever gotten the hang of anyway. Then Kaneda had gotten some wild hair up her ass- some brilliant drunk idea- and rather than it being anything of the hot-blooded stimulatory ilk Tetsuo expected of her, it was simply to drive out to the very edge of the city; not to the docks, but to the old city. And the trip would have almost been peaceful, were it not for the breakneck speed at which Kaneda had driven.
So now she’s here. Kaneda, Kai, and Yamagata are here, too, but nobody else wanted to come, so they’re all sitting around, boredly nursing beers. Kai pitches a bottle over the edge of the road-cliff, vintage skirt flaring, and Tetsuo flinches at the sudden movement, the tinkling crash of the glass as it smashes on the hard infertile earth.
“S’it everything you wanted and more?” Yamagata snarks, a low chuckle in her voice, that practiced, melodic voice, husky but not too husky. The kind of voice that makes boys completely overlook it when she mixes up her words trying to sound smart, though to be fair, everything else probably helps. She fiddles with the ruffled strap of her tank top, a vivid shade of violet that matches the smears of heavy, shiny eyeshadow that she seems to think make her very attractive but that Tetsuo thinks make her look like a tanuki more than anything else. Kaneda shrugs in response, looks- for a rare moment- a little defeated. “Honestly don’t know what I expected,” she says.
“Gotta be something to do out here,” Kai grumbles, fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. All of them have such well-coordinated looks, Tetsuo realizes, flushing with the awareness of this sudden knowledge. Kai got kicked out of prep school awhile ago but stubbornly refuses to give up the look, all sensible cardigans and modest skirts and Mary Janes with bobby socks, but all in brighter, more inventive shades than her bland former uniform. This particular outfit is all soft greens, a sea turtle stitched onto the skirt. Then there’s Yamagata, always wearing something cropped, showing off a sliver of her toned belly, the polar opposite of Kai but equally confident, not breaking a sweat over the numerous times she’s gotten demerits for violating the dress code. And Kaneda- Kaneda needs no elaboration, she simply is her clothes, seems to embody that everlasting red jacket even better than her fellow-Capsules. Tetsuo just goes through a rotation of long-sleeved shirts and drab skirts that doesn’t really change with the seasons, and for the first time she understands how much visually she must stick out.
Yamagata sits for a moment, looking as if she’s processing something, then has an epiphany. She leans over to Kai to whisper in the much shorter girl’s ear, and Kai grins. “Oh, now that’s something alright…”
“What?” Tetsuo asks, in genuine curiosity, and immediately regrets what she’s just invited with that line of inquiry, for Kai and Yamagata both sprout smiles that seem to bear a tinge of malice. Yamagata gestures down at the crater, a sharp jab of her index finger toward that violation of the land. “We can’t get any closer to there than this,” she says. “But that don’t mean one of us can’t go out in the old city and get the others some kinda souvenir.”
It takes a long, long time for Tetsuo to process the double meaning of that statement- she’s so bad at reading these coded messages in otherwise innocuous speech, though the chemicals flooding her system probably aren’t helping matters. “You mean me?” she says, pointing at herself, then feeling stupid and obvious for having done so. “Why me?”
Yamagata shrugs. “C’mon, we’ve all gotten in much worse trouble with the law and gotten away with it. Remember that time Kai managed to get some jewelry out of the case at the store without tripping the alarm?”
“Dude, don’t say that out loud,” Kai retorts, frowning.
“Sorry. Anyway, uh, whenever we’re at parties and shit all you do is just sit around with this weird look on your face. Dontcha want a little bit of excitement? ‘Specially if you get away with it. High time you did something truly heinous.” She grins, showing misaligned teeth. Tetsuo can feel herself scowling before she has the chance to stop it and prays that the curtain of her hair hides the worst of it.
“But why does it have to be me?” she pleads again, frustrated and knowing full well the answer, knowing that it’ll only take Kaneda saying something to get them to back off because her word is not good enough, never good enough, on its own.
“What’s this now?” Kaneda, cutting in, intervening as always. Tetsuo bristles at that too, creating an added layer of irritation surrounding her growing anxiety- everything around her seems so sharp. Once again she’s not sure if it’s the effect of the drugs or if it’s just something within her, but whichever one, she hates it.
Yamagata gestures, sloshing her beer. “Just trying to convince your kid sister to lighten up a little,” she says.
“And I don’t want to,” Tetsuo retorts, venom in her voice. There’s a heavy, uncomfortable drift of silence, before-
“Yamagata dared her to go out in the ruins,” Kai pipes up. The sharp feeling in Tetsuo’s chest compresses into a tight little ball in her center; a shiver rumbles out from it. Blood rises to her face, a burning mask.
Kaneda looks off into the distance, squinting, then turns back. “Go out there and do what?” she asks, as if Tetsuo’s frustration didn’t even register. It probably didn’t, she thinks sullenly, and that adds to her prickling, ever-growing rage. Yamagata shrugs abruptly. “Didn’t put that much thought into it, to be honest,” she mumbles, scratching her chin. “I just thought, y’know, I bet she could find us somethin’ cool out there and bring it back.”
“Why can’t you do that yourself?” Tetsuo snaps suddenly, and a silver flash of fear runs cold through her gut. The ghost of a scowl momentarily appears on Yamagata’s face, but she beats it back, unfazed. “’Cuz you’re much shorter! You can get into more places!”
“If that were true why aren’t you sending Kai?” Tetsuo spits, the name of her friend a snarl. Kai looks flustered and singled out by that remark; good, Tetsuo thinks. Let someone else feel embarrassed for a change.
“’Cuz I don’t want Kai to drop her pills out there!”
“Then have her leave them with you!”
“Nuh-uh, I can’t be trusted with em, you know that!”
“Guys, guys!” Kaneda breaks in, throwing up her hands with a bright shout. “That’s all this is about? Seriously?”
For a brief, idiotic moment, Tetsuo’s spirits lighten- maybe Kaneda will tell them to back off. (Of course, though, there’s the shame that would bubble up immediately thereafter- always having to rely on her big sister to pull her out of difficult situations…) But this is not the case. Kaneda says, “Tetsuo, can I talk to you for a sec?” and Tetsuo struggles to read moods often but knows with instinctive, bone-deep clarity that she is being singled out. There is no hope of rescue here.
Kaneda flings a leather-clad arm over the span of her sister’s shoulders, practically frog-marching her to the edge of the road, and the pressure on Tetsuo’s upper back burns like a brand. Kaneda talks to her in a hushed voice; she glowers in response. “What’s got you all worked up, huh?” And Tetsuo’s brain instantly branches off in several different directions- the drugs? The fact that we’re here, of all places? You?- but of course she can’t say that. Instead, she spits, brittle with dull anger, “Be more specific.” Kaneda’s vagueness has always driven her up the wall.
There’s a high-pitched squeak of leather as Kaneda shrugs. “Why dontcha wanna go out in the old city?”
“Why’s that any business of yours?”
Kaneda spins her around to face her, fixes her with a firm but ambiguous stare. Says in full earnestness, “I’m your sister. Any business of yours is business of mine.” That alone causes heat to creep up Tetsuo’s chest, neck, color staining her face. She actively suppresses the urge to roll her eyes, but can’t stop her lips from crumpling into a grimace.
A look of dim realization washes over Kaneda’s face. “You’re scared.”
The anger snaps, sharpens with cold embarrassment. “I am not!” Tetsuo exclaims. “Don’t say that shit so loud in front of them, are you kidding me?”
The insightful gaze blooms into a smirk. “You are,” Kaneda says, playfully grabbing at her sister, who darts backward, offended. “There’s not even anything to worry about! Everything out there is dead. Maybe some rats, but there’s rats everywhere.”
“I don’t want to go. I don’t. I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Tetsuo insists, becoming increasingly convinced she’s talking to a brick wall. Kaneda’s got the color for it, anyway. Then Kaneda hits her with something unexpected- “Look. I know you’ve had a lot of trouble with the girls lately, yeah?”
“What are you- what are you talking about? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Kaneda starts fiddling with the lapels of her jacket. “I just think… I dunno. I think you’d have an easier time fitting in if you took it on. Show ‘em you’re not a baby.”
Kaneda’s always been so good at this- these well-aimed strikes, pouncing on Tetsuo’s deepest insecurities. It’s like being hit with a lead pipe- the pain stabbing, radiating and red through her chest, drowning out all other sensations. But the real humiliation always comes after- when she’s made to do whatever it is Kaneda wants anyway, to limp off after her with her ribs cracked open. Always forced to obey. Always the shamed dog, tail between her legs, heeling at Kaneda’s cues.
Tetsuo sighs, the sound fast enough to become a hiss. “Fine.” Kaneda smiles, licks a thumb, paws at Tetsuo’s face again, and while she roils in anger at the gesture she’s not swift enough to stop Kaneda from smearing her damp thumb along her cheek. “You had a smudge of something,” Kaneda says as she rubs it out. Tetsuo’s face burns.
Kaneda turns away from her, peers down into the void below. Seems for a moment to be studying it intently, scanning it like a soldier. Tetsuo has a brief, absurd vision of her mapping it out, standing at the ruins’ edge with an artist’s easel. A cartography of the damned. Then Kaneda speaks: “I think you can get down from here.”
“How?” Tetsuo blurts, throwing up her hands. “It looks like a pretty sheer fucking drop to me. I’m not breaking my neck for you.”
“You won’t break your neck,” Kaneda replies, waving her off with a dismissive little hand motion.
“Then I’ll get a concussion.”
“You won’t get a concussion either! Did I say anything about jumping?” Kaneda whips around to face her again, matches Tetsuo’s scowl. “Look. There’s like, a little shelf of rock down there. You can climb down.”
“That ain’t rock, dipshit, that’s rubble.”
“Whatever! You can climb, can’t ya?”
Tetsuo folds her arms over her chest defensively, but it’s no use. She’s already lost. Huffily she crosses over to the edge of the asphalt cliff, crouches down and slowly begins to shuffle her body over the side, arms twisting with the strain.
“Wait,” Kaneda says suddenly. Tetsuo glares up at her, hairs askew, face shiny with sweat. “That piece looks really jagged, let me steady you.”
“I don’t need your-” But Kaneda’s already at her side in an instant, palm outstretched. Impossible to refuse. Tetsuo hesitates for a moment, wiry with resentment, then claps her own hand into Kaneda’s with a percussive slap. It echoes distantly on the shells of bomb-razed buildings. And long as she lives, Tetsuo will never admit it, but it is easier to get down the slope with Kaneda’s support.
Eventually, though, the distance is too great. The cord is pulled taut, about to snap. Kaneda’s flat on her belly now, arm stretched to the limit. Her knuckles are white, palm glued to Tetsuo’s own with sweat. A low wind has kicked up, stirring the cloud of her hair. Maybe a storm is brewing.
“You think you can make it down by yourself?” Kaneda says, raising her voice slightly over the wind.
“Yeah,” Tetsuo replies, failing to add I could the whole time, you bitch though she’d really like to.
“I’m gonna let you go now, okay?” And slowly the cage of fingers unfolds, the flesh connection severs. Kaneda’s sweat leaves an imprint of cold and salt behind on her sister’s skin, an invisible stain.
With little fanfare, the leader of the Capsules, sixteen-year-old Kaneda (first name unknown) drops her sister into the dark.