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First there was Despair, and after Despair came the bombs, and after the bombs came the slow decline. It all happened in Hiro’s head first, then it crawled out like a demonic tulpa and became real.
Most of the time he hated being right. The stuff that came true was almost always unbearably shitty. Now they were all stuck facing the end of everything, which was hard.
And that was why he was here, counting the few chickens they had left. It cheered him up most mornings. “Five… Six… Seven!” He straightened up from the pen with a grin. “Everybody’s here! That’s great!” He gazed out over the rest of the enclosed dome. It was mostly empty. Just a few pens and sheds. At the start, they’d all hoped they could fill this place with animals, but animals had gotten harder and harder to find as the air outside became unbreathable. Hiro tried not to dwell on it. He stepped around the chickens and entered the coop, determined to keep a smile in place.
Turns out he didn’t have to try too hard.
“Oh!” He stopped at the doorway. “Byakuya?”
Hiro had to rub his eyes and squint. The guy was dressed in a loose t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair frizzed up like he’d just rolled out of bed. He was hunkered in front of the egg incubator, its lamp brushing him in warm strokes. For once, he looked his age; fresh into his twenties. Young.
Then he glanced over his shoulder and glowered, and the spell broke.
“What brings a layabout like you here so early?” He demanded, as though Hiro had made another dumb mistake.
“Uh, I dunno. Sometimes sleeping is like, really hard. And even when I strike gold and actually drift off, there are nightmares and stuff. So yeah. I like chilling with the chickens when it gets bad.” Hiro wandered into the coop and crouched next to Byakuya. Two of the eggs in the incubator were moving. “Whoa! They’re totally hatching! Awesome!”
Byakuya mumbled, “Stop shouting in my ear, Hagakure.”
“My bad.” Hiro leaned back on his palms. “And dude, Hagakure? Just call me Hiro already. I know you’re not a huge fan of me, but we’ve been through a lot. So… Just Hiro, okay?” Byakuya didn’t answer. He dismissively went back to watching the chicks hatch. “I’m kinda wondering the same thing, you know. Why are you here?”
Byakuya notched up his glasses to rub the grit from his eyes. “I’d hoped to get some peace and quiet; some time to reflect and plan for tomorrow.”
His eyes were heavy around the edges, like his eyelids were stone gates he was holding open by sheer willpower alone. “Byakuya… you straight-up haven’t slept at all, have you. The sun’s coming up, man. Tomorrow’s already here.”
He took this in, then gusted out a sigh. “I see.” He made a move to rise, but Hiro pushed him back down into a squat.
“Nope, you’re gonna stay put and have a moment.” Hiro stood instead. “I’ll be back in a few. Don’t move, got it? Just watch the miracle in front of you happen. They’re kinda rare nowadays, right?”
He meandered from the coop, pulled his filtration mask back on and stepped out of the dome. Nuclear greys and dead greens all around, as far as the eye could see. Hiro didn’t pay much attention to the outdoors anymore. It was too real — how irreversible it all was, like a shattered crystal ball. So he kept his head down, on a mission.
He entered the main complex, went through decontamination and headed straight to the kitchen. Hiro set some water boiling, then scraped up the last bits of instant coffee they’d managed to salvage. He used to do this for his mom sometimes, when the visions first started and the migraines kept him awake. She’d always been grateful, even though the coffee he made probably tasted like crap. Maybe Byakuya would be grateful too.
After filling a couple of thermoses he plodded back outside and into the dome again. Byakuya had actually listened to him, surprisingly. Or maybe he’d just been too tired to move. “Here you go.” Hiro handed him a thermos and settled in next to him. One of the chicks finally managed to puncture the shell with its tiny beak, writhing out into the world, all motion and wetness. It was kind of nasty. A welcome nastiness though, since it was life carrying on.
Byakuya popped the cap on the thermos, sniffing at it. “Coffee?”
“Yep. Coffee.” Hiro took a sip from his own thermos, the acidic taste burning his throat. Painful; a nostalgic kind of pain, where the good outweighed the bad.
“Hm.” Byakuya sampled a taste. He melted into it, shoulders slumping, eyes sliding shut. “Terrible. But appreciated.” His eyelashes caught the lantern-light in snowy scythes, sun on morning frost. Soft and cold and fragile.
Hiro gulped and hastily looked back at the two chicks, one of them already cheeping and unintentionally smacking the slower one with its wings. “That one’s Byakuya Junior, definitely. And the dumb one getting slapped can be called Hiro Junior.”
“Is that how you see us? I’ve been tempted to slap you, but I know better.”
“Uh. Thanks?”
Byakuya took another sip of coffee. He regarded the thermos for a moment. “Is this going to be added to my tab?”
Hiro chuckled. “Don’t you remember? I waived everybody’s tab after the whole Future Foundation thing. The attack. The end of it. Whatever you wanna call it.” He tucked up his knees and folded his arms over them. “Money probably won’t be worth anything again, so I’m gonna have to find a new way to charge people for my services. Any ideas?”
“I’d rather not give you any.”
Hiro’s mouth pulled in a weak attempt at a smile. “Yeah. Guess that makes sense. Wouldn’t really benefit you at all.”
Byakuya’s glasses glinted as he turned his head, contemplating Hiro with something other than annoyance for once. “You’ve changed.”
“I mean, how could I not?”
Byakuya mulled this over, then gave a shallow nod. He turned his attention back to the animals and said, “You’ve dealt with hatchlings before. What is the next step here?”
Hiro was taken aback. “Oh, well, once they’re ready we gotta move them to the brooder area where it’s warm and cozy. But we can’t do that until they’re all fluffy and stuff. And it’s best to wait until most of the other little guys have hatched too. At least, that’s what that farming book says. The last batch of dudes took over a day, so I’ll probably be popping in and out to check on things.”
“I see.” Byakuya took another sip and receded into thought. His icy barriers were smoothed out, frictionless as divining stones, like water polished by the wind. He reminded Hiro of a place where he used to go on smoke breaks. It was a reservoir behind the old parlor where he’d run his head ragged reading palms and cards, where endless tomorrows were blown out through a crystal lens. In winter, the reservoir went quiet, black and still. It was the best place and time for a cigarette; a place where only the present moment could reach him. No past. No endless mazes of futures. Just life as it was supposed to be.
“Hey.” Hiro spoke up, “If we both have a shitty night again, let’s meet up in the garden next. If you want.”
“Hmph.” Byakuya pushed up his glasses, forcing a frown. “If you insist.” He finished off his coffee, and the scowl crumbled away. An almost invisible smile took its place.
His face in profile, geometric yet gentle…
A vision crashed over the coop. Hiro froze, prepared to see something awful.
What he saw was himself; red-faced, mouth angled into a crooked, dopey smile. He seemed weirdly easy to love. And he knew he wasn’t, yet the person looking at him clearly thought as much. Somehow. Impossibly. It’d been so long since he’d seen something nice, or even something neutral, that Hiro teared up on the spot.
A future existed where Byakuya Togami saw him that way.
But the good futures never came true, so that was that.
“Hagakure.” The current Byakuya turned to him. “You saw something just now. Another disaster.”
“No, it’s… Ah, damn it.” Hiro ducked his head into his sleeve to wipe at his eyes, everything from the neck up burning with embarrassment. “It’s no big deal, man. Not anything bad. It was good. And it’s been so long. You know?” He gathered himself together and peered up from his sleeve. “If you wanna know what I saw, you’ll owe me about a hundred cups of coffee. Dunno where you’ll find enough coffee beans, but that’s the price.”
“Fool.” Byakuya rose to his feet. “Your visions aren’t even worth one.”
Hiro stroked the stubble at his chin. “I guess I could give you a discount. One cup of coffee. Deal?”
“Ha. Hardly.” And with that, he strode from the coop, energy in his gait. Hiro stared at the doorway, lit by an ever-brightening dawn, and for the first time in a while he thought that maybe this life wasn’t so terrible after all.
In those early hours, whether it was in the dome or the garden, a different person slipped into Byakuya’s body; a being free of the pressure to win, and win, and win. He eased into someone common. A peasant, blind and contented. A pest, fat with blood and satiated. He wasn’t proud of his morning self. But what good had his pride ever done?
Hiro was hovering by the apiary in the garden this time. Like every other occasion, the weight and pressure evaporated, a loosening in Byakuya’s chest, shoulders and spine. He breathed in the fresh greenery, the scent of honeysuckle. The grow-lamps droned like the last songs of late summer cicadas.
“Yo! Morning, Byakuya.”
Byakuya joined him next to the wooden structure. It was quite possible this garden contained the last colony of bees on Earth, and they were dying off. Yet another failure, one out of countless others. “The queen is still sluggish?” He asked.
“Yeah. It’s a huge bummer.” Hiro watched one of the bees drunkenly bob to and fro in a directionless stupor. “They kinda remind me of you.” When Byakuya arched a brow at this, he went on, “At first they’re kinda scary, ‘cause all you can think about is if they’ll sting you or not. But then, when you look closer, you realize they’re all soft and fluffy, and that their stinger hurts them more than it hurts you.”
“What irritating nonsense. Are you trying to make me leave?” Byakuya grumbled, not sure if the heat he felt was anger or something else. “Here.” He handed Hiro a thermos of coffee. They hadn’t had coffee for months now. When the scavengers had come back with a fresh supply, Byakuya’s core had twisted with strange eagerness, born from strange days and restless nights.
“Heck yeah! Thanks, man.” Hiro bumped their shoulders together and took a generous sip. The circles under his eyes were particularly dark this morning, despite his usual cheer.
“Another nightmare?” Byakuya inquired.
Hiro’s grin faded. “Yeah.” He gazed down into the thermos, warming both of his hands on it. “Sort of a two-for-one this time. Had this dream that made me really miss my mom. Then there was one… about Sakura. I still think about her all the time.” Straightforward as ever. Byakuya found himself at a loss when Hiro spoke his heart like this. He’d never been close enough to anyone to offer real consolation — one of many skills he lacked, an emptiness that he knew made him inferior, deep down.
So he tried. “I also…” He struggled, glaring at the flowers winding up the apiary. “I have dreams about Chihiro, on occasion. Even before the killing game, I was…” Hollow. He’d had no respect for life until it was all but gone.
In his blurred peripherals, he caught the sympathy in Hiro’s glance. “I think I get you. Sometimes I look back on when I could go outside, and there was sunlight, and grass, and all that good shit, and I just can’t help thinking one thing: Why was I such a bastard? Why was I like that when everything was awesome?”
Byakuya’s insides clenched again. “Yes. You seem to understand.” He swallowed back the urge to add something disparaging, for it would be dishonest. By this point, the lines separating who was superior and inferior had been washed away, like scrawlings in the sand drawn by a careless child.
Strange days indeed.
He gestured to the drink in Hiro’s hand. “I’ve paid you now.” He said, “I want to know what you saw back then.” Hiro’s brows shot up. “Or have you forgotten?”
“No. How could I? Uh. Jeez.” He fiddled with his ear, cheeks suddenly flaring. “Listen: Can you promise not to get mad at me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ugh. Then can you at least promise you won’t hate me?”
Byakuya couldn’t see how that was possible now. “I’ll consider it.”
“Fine. That’s the best I’ll get, isn’t it.” He fidgeted and fiddled, the blush traveling to his ears and neck. “Okay, so, like… I’m pretty sure I saw you falling in love with me.” His eyes lifted to meet Byakuya’s, his mouth tugging into a sheepish smile.
As soon as he made that face, it materialized.
“Pretty wild, right? As if. Still, as dumb and impossible as it is, it kinda made me happy. The whole ‘feeling loved’ thing. Like I said back then, it was nice.”
Byakuya didn’t believe in otherworldly energies, or auras, or in any type of magical nonsense. It was biology and circumstance. Logic should have put a comforting veil over what he felt, yet it worked nefariously against him here: He felt good when he was with Hiro. Serene. Safe. The facts were insultingly simple. “Damn it.” He hissed.
“See? I knew you’d get mad.”
“I’m not.” He uttered, defeated, “I’m not angry.”
“But like, you totally just swore angrily? I’m confused.”
Byakuya let himself laugh. It felt like letting light into an old, dusty vault. “You’re always confused. What else is new.”
“Hey! Rude!”
Before he could sulk and pout too much, Byakuya straightened out his shoulders and faced him fully. “Hiro. I have a task for you.”
He crossed his arms. “Dude, for real? I can’t think about work right now when I’m all flustered!”
“I want you to kiss me.”
Hiro went silent, then swiftly scarlet.
“Well?” Byakuya made fists before his hands could tremble. “Don’t just… stare. Or I’ll—!”
Warm pressure killed the rest. Byakuya surrendered, closed his eyes and felt him. The scratch of his stubble. The taste of coffee on his lips. The scents of essential oils rubbed into his clothes and skin: Sandalwood, lavender, sage. The heat of his hand over Byakuya’s shoulder, the way it roved up his neck to cup his cheek.
The only other time someone touched his face was when Asahina had slapped him.
Hiro withdrew. He was as pensive as he was luminous. “Was that okay? Or is this the part where you sting me?”
“You tell me. You’re a clairvoyant, are you not?”
His eyes sparked in their depths. Byakuya could almost see the vision travel through him, a flash of light. His face softened into bittersweet tenderness. “Maybe…” He rasped out, “Maybe the good stuff can come true, when it’s you. Only with you.”
Byakuya went in for more. It couldn’t be helped.
Through Hiro, he’d learned that anything could be used as a divining tool: Cards, clouds, sticks, bones and tea leaves. But as they kissed in that place of ruin where the last flowers grew, he thought of adder stones — meaningless until the world hollowed them through.