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I’ve Always Thought
Long ago — way way way before he knew about any mystical Yorishiro he’d plot to destroy, before he knew what it was like to command faithful drawling lackeys like Natsuhiko Hyuuga with plenty of feverish-warm corrosive poisoned blood — Tsukasa watched his brother Amane fiddle away with that big clock on the Kamome Academy grounds and imagined what it might be like if it exploded into a zillion tiny unfixable pieces.
Tsukasa’s eyes glazed over. His hands, weaving together a few blades of grass into a little bracelet he would try binding Amane’s slim knobbly wrist with soon enough, moved without his mind. He hummed something tuneless and lonely, knowing there was basically no chance Amane would notice, would hear him, would twist his gear-oil-stained face around to study him with puzzled calculating eyes the same way he studied that stupid old clock.
Amane wasn’t gonna ask, “Hey, what’re you thinking about, Tsukasa?” at times like that. If he had deigned to, though, sure Tsukasa would’ve answered him honestly enough.
“I’m imagining what would happen if that clock you’re trying to fix just blew up,” Tsukasa might have said, breezily, sunshine gold eyes flicking across Amane, looking for a spark. A reaction. A little bit of fire catching in Amane’s stern, tired, closed-off emotional kindling. “Like… would you want to go play with me right now, if the clock exploded? Assuming we didn’t have to rush you to the nurse’s office real quick first. I don’t think it could be that bad… maybe a few stitches. Some bruising. And then you’d be free, right? And then you could finally let whatever the heck you’re trying to do here go. You could focus on better stuff again.”
Focus on Tsukasa, and their promises, and the emotional catharsis and intensity and unraveling all of this was supposed to be building up to.
Don’t think about putting a useless rumor-heavy trinket back together — think about killing me. Whatever kinda control you manage to get over one measly little school’s time isn’t going to change how any of this ends, Amane. Let’s get to the good stuff!
Let’s go play in the ditch by the junkyard.
Let’s throw rocks at birds and collect their feathers.
Let’s perform experiments with tadpoles and mud and squishy worms down by the lake.
Let’s go, Amane! We’ve been sitting by this big clock for hours. Maybe you’ll even kill me today, and I’ll bleed out into the lake and frogs will nibble at the rotting bits of me and flowers will grow out of my skull, roots sunk deep into my brain. Maybe we’ll meet up with some classmates instead, and as long as you follow my lead we’ll have fun with them, kick a ball around until it gets dark.
Of course, maybe Tsukasa also wanted Amane to quit working on Kamome Academy’s big clock because of what might happen if he ever finally fixed it. Shhh.
Of course, maybe Tsukasa also knew his older twin brother well enough to imagine him hunched over all the exploded pieces of that ruinous clock — all the helpless scraps of metal and glass and gears that would never fit back together again, so sad! — still pathetically determined to fix it. Amane might not give up, even if he needed stitches, even if his blood mingled metallic on metallic with the old clock’s gears, even if his job became harder and harder until almost no one would keep at it in all the world.
Except for him.
Silly brother.
Maybe it would just take Amane even longer to fix the old clock, if it exploded. Maybe Tsukasa would get a chance to watch him, awestruck, as Amane shrugged off expectations once again. He could consider it another experiment. Amane was always full of so many entertaining surprises… except when he was being monotonous and boring like this, and Tsukasa needed to pry him back into action, like poking at a snake coiled by the riverbed with a walking stick.
Poke, poke.
What does it say about Tsukasa the Yorishiro, Tsukasa the remnant, Tsukasa the memory, that he will still remember what it was like to stare at that old clock, willing it to explode way back when? Perhaps it will become harder for Amane to imagine him as a stranger, sneaking in and borrowing his dear younger brother’s name, knowing that. Perhaps it will become harder, too, for Amane to forget what it felt like kneeling there, cold stone under his knees and fingers aching with strain, aware Tsukasa was somewhere behind him, aware Tsukasa wasn’t ever gonna let him go.
“Just a few more turns here,” Amane thought. “Just scrape some rust off the gears. Free them. Grease them, and then maybe they’ll turn.”
Just a little more.
Just —
If Your Insides Go Tick, Tick, Tick
Amane watches his little brother Tsukasa as he rips open one third of the First School Mystery’s chest, as he crushes fragile spinning gears in his bony pale fingers, as he barks a surprised laugh at how easy it all is. How easy it was to destroy the big old clock that used to taunt him, in the end; how easy it was to worm his way nice and deep into the Clockkeepers’ Boundary. How easy it is to dig his hands around in the First Clockkeeper’s ticking robotic ribcage, trying to hunt that Yorishiro down without any pretense left. Why should he have ever had to hide anything at all?
Amane is hiding so much, even now. He doesn’t actually call himself “Amane” in his thoughts, to be honest. He’s “Hanako,” you see. It’s safer, it’s easier, it’s better to just be the roguish ghost “Hanako,” after everything. But perhaps it would be safer still to have been a mechanical boy to start with, without Hanako’s remembered bones, remembered lusts, remembered hopes.
If Amane’s heart had been a ticking clock, once upon a time, just like the First Clockkeeper’s, he would have gone truly still after death. How refreshing. How terrible. Does finality like that scare a lingering, mold-sunk-deep shadow like Hanako, even after all this time? He’s been holding on for ages, after all. He’s holding on still, clutching this tiny de-aged version of Nene Yashiro like he might be able to protect her from whatever’s happening next, like soon enough she’ll go back to her true self and confess love to him, and his memory of a heart will pound and pound and pound in his chest like wonder.
Still hoping.
Still wanting.
“Tsukasa! Stop it!”
Come to think of it, how long has it been since Amane’s little brother’s answered when he screams, pleading like this? Amane could think back on how Tsukasa used to throw rocks at birds, cracking their tiny hollow skulls and plucking off their feathers like flower petals. (Loves me, loves me not.) Amane could think back on how Tsukasa used to dig worms out of the mud to see if they’d be able to rescue themselves, dragging their way back into the damp from the sidewalk. Only, you know, Hanako never wants to think about any of that.
The First Clockkeeper can’t last without his mechanical heart, and so he crumbles just like Tsukasa knew he would crumble. When Amane calls Tsukasa to stop, he doesn’t answer right. When Tsukasa calls Amane to play, he doesn’t answer right, either. If they had only ever lived with mechanical hearts, programmed just the same, they would’ve known how to play the same games together. And then they would have been able to rest utterly together, too, when those games were good and done.
Amane and Tsukasa are restless memories of meat. They build and they tear apart; they fix and they plot and they beg. They can’t be anything else, even if it might have been easier. Amane can’t only be “Hanako,” even if he might sometimes want to trade his whole living history away.
He is not a machine.
By holding onto his ghost, he’s rejected stillness and finality with all that he is.
Tsukasa turns toward the Third Clockkeeper. The mortal one with a squishy secret ribcage, the one trying not to panic. The one ready to explore, who might leave an angry stain on the world, much like Hanako’s own, once all his organs have been spilled out on the polished brass floor.
“Tsukasa — don’t do this —!”
“Oh? Do you wanna fight me, Amane?
At least you’re finally turning to face me like you mean it!”