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When Tsuyoshi Shinjo wakes up, he does so to the sensation of the surf dragging him face first over sand and pebbles. He finds that not only painful, but also just plain insulting; what the hell does the sea think he is, a radish to be grated?! He opens his mouth to give the sea a piece of his mind, but all that comes out is a stream of bubbles. His chest burns. Ah. Yes. Water. The sea’s made of water. Humans aren’t supposed to breathe the sea. Fuck.
Shinjo hoists himself to his knees in a frantic surge of effort and a brilliant explosion of water and sun. The gurgling noise that escapes him as he does so is somehow more horrible than any death rattle he’s ever heard at a crime scene; a zombie apocalypse unfolding exclusively within his lungs.
When the wails of the living dead finally dissolve into the worst coughing fit of Shinjo’s life, it feels like mercy. His head spins as he blinks the seawater out of his eyes and takes desperate gasps of air. Every incoming second brings with it new aches, pains and questions. Where the hell is he? How did he end up half-drowned in the sea? Just who the actual fuck did he fight, to have ended up in such a state?
But all his brain can offer him in response is a nauseous static. Fuck, he’s tired. Sure sucks sometimes to be made of flesh and bones, he thinks, even if his are quite hardy by human standards. Ah, what he’d give to have an invincible metal body…
…metal…body?
Wait a second…
There’s something about those words that has air raid sirens going off in his brain.
Damn, the hell’s up with that? Why is–
Shinjo’s eyes shoot wide open in terror. Ice creeps into the marrow of his bones. He stumbles to his feet and rushes over, limping, staggering in the shallows. Oh no…oh fuck!!
Amidst the seafoam and rocking water, blue steel shines unmoving and cold.
“K!” Shinjo gasps, dropping to his knees next to the incapacitated robot. A snippet of memory floats up through the churning fog in his brain, blurry like a distant echo: a ship that was suddenly no longer a ship…had changed, had become something else entirely; a roaring, thundering flash that ripped his perception to shreds of disjointed colors and sounds; metal arms wound tightly around his body as if to anchor him to the world…and then, there was nothing…
K…had saved his life. Perhaps, at the cost of his own.
A horrible sickness wells in the pit of Shinjo’s stomach.
Scorch marks. Dents where bullets and shrapnel had struck but not quite punched through. And worst of all, a web of jagged, splintering cracks in the armor of K’s back that seems to penetrate to the very core of him.
It’s a sight that Shinjo can hardly endure. Horror, guilt and gratitude make a cocktail uniquely caustic; he feels that if he keeps looking it will eat his eyes and pour from the empty sockets.
Fuck, he thinks, it all must have hurt so bad…
Even as the new enemy carved the proof of its strength into K’s body, even as the waves tossed him about like a ragdoll, salt water seeping into vital mechanisms through open wounds - he’d fought his hardest. Just like he always does, dammit…
To bring Shinjo to safety, he’d struggled and struggled until he shut down.
Just a couple meters away from dry land…
Oh god…
…If this stupid fleshy body didn’t wake up in time…if this stupid fleshy body choked to death in a fucking knee-deep puddle inches away from the shore…K would’ve suffered for nothing!!
Shinjo is going to fucking puke. He wants to scream, and punch something far above a human’s punching capacity. The strain it takes to focus on the task at hand is so great that he feels like his head might explode. Still, he persists.
He winds his arms under K’s and, gritting his teeth against the protests of his body, drags the robot to shore.
Once they’re on dry land, Shinjo gently sets him down on his back. Something in his left shoulder makes an ungodly squelching sound as he does so, but he couldn’t care less.
Because K’s optics are dark.
And they’re not supposed to be dark…
One of Shinjo’s ears throbs and rings. The other, healthy one, he presses to K’s chest. But there’s no sign of the usual gentle beeps and whirrs that Shinjo has grown to find so soothing. Instead, something sloshes horribly inside K; a sound that makes the detective feel like he’s drowning all over again.
Damn it damn it damn it damn it all!!
Shinjo’s heartbeat roars in his ears. On pure impulse, before his brain can process any whats or whys, he turns to face the glittering horizon, and yells:
“MOTHER!”
Nothing.
Only the cries of seagulls overhead.
Heh. Of course. What the hell is he even doing, thinking that any voice but K’s own could reach her?
Pacing back and forth in the soggy sand, Shinjo sucks in deep breaths; a frantic effort to ward off the mounting panic. Here, it’s just them and the sand and the rocks and the sun beating down on their already beaten bodies. In the worst case scenario, they’re stuck on a deserted island - one out of literal thousands. If that’s the case, help won’t be coming any time soon. He can only count on himself to save K. Under no circumstances is it forgivable to just sit down and fall apart. But what can he do, stuck on this weird empty beach hell knows where, injured hell knows how badly, with no means of communication anywhere near him? Even after racking his foggy brain for ideas, the best thing he can come up with is “try first aid”. First aid?! Really, Shinjo?! As if that would be of any use! He’s only ever been trained in human CPR! He doesn’t know SHIT about robots!
…but the alternative is to just leave K lying there, with no indication of how much time he’s got left, if there even is any. And Shinjo finds he just…can’t live with that.
So he decides to do as he’s been taught, even if it’s just a coward’s escape, a retreat into his own automation. He runs through the instructions of CPR in his mind. 2-3 rescue breaths, 15 chest compressions, alternate until cardiopulmonary function returns.
A sad little laugh escapes Shinjo. Chest compressions?! K was built to withstand missile blasts! That would be like trying to move a mountain! He wouldn’t be able to compress shit! Oh god, just what the hell is he thinking?!
Shinjo blinks harshly against the blurring of his sight, swallows down the scream welling in his throat. Concentrate, dammit! Rescue breaths, then chest compressions!
He kneels beside K’s chest, tilts the robot’s head back, inhales deeply, and seals their mouths together.
Seals…their mouths together???
Cold bony fingers worm their way between Shinjo’s ribs and crack his chest open like a photo album.
The rescue breath collapses into a muffled sob against the robot’s lips.
K is dead, isn’t he?
Well and truly dead.
Shinjo’s no stranger to death, but the fact that it’s K (K!!) who had to go this time feels so profoundly, gut-wrenchingly unfair, it’s like his first time losing someone all over again.
K, who cared for others with reckless abandon.
K, who wrote sappy poetry, built birdhouses, and had a particular talent for comforting crying kids.
K, with his shy dandyism, and his indomitable will, and his boundlessly kind, beautiful heart!
All of those things Shinjo now realizes he’s loved dearly since hell knows how long ago - gone, irreversibly gone.
Salt water drips down the grooves of K’s face as Shinjo squeezes his eyes shut in furious anguish. No longer can he bear to look at a world that has simply swallowed this screaming injustice and kept on turning.
And all that remains is the splash of the waves, and the cries of the gulls, and the discordant beat of the shards that were once his heart…
Wait a second…
Human hearts couldn’t literally break to pieces, right?
Then why did it suddenly feel like two unmatched heartbeats were fluttering behind Shinjo’s ribs?
Unless…
A tiny sliver of hope stings like a splinter in Shinjo’s chest. He angles his head a bit, so his healthy ear is closer to K’s chassis. Indeed, there is sound coming from the inside of the robot’s broad torso, a sound of rough, industrial property. A click and a thud and a hiss, a click and a thud and a hiss, not quite a heart, but a heavy-duty pump of some kind, chugging away with great vigor indeed.
Then, with a groaning screech of metal on metal, the layered armor of K’s torso flares outward and slides apart. Shinjo stares, stupefied, at the countless little lights blinking to life in the gaps between panels and plates. A starry sky. Contained exclusively in the chassis of this one robot - a universe…
The next moment, he is doused with a veritable fountain as K’s body shunts out all the unwelcome seawater in a single violent burst. A starfish comes flying out of a vent in K’s upper chest and slaps Shinjo’s cheek, like one last “fuck you” from the ocean.
Shinjo yelps, flinching away. He sits back on his haunches and doesn’t know what to say or what to think. He notices that his lips feel weird now that they’re no longer locked to K’s. He brings up a hand to touch them. He imagines his brain wobbling; a jello salad inside his skull.
At last, the gushing streams of water slow to a trickle. The robot detective’s body creaks, armor plates dragging themselves tiredly back into place over dents and dings of every conceivable kind. His optics flash brightly once, twice, and then stay that way. He gives his head a shake and moves to get up, quietly groaning his discomfort in a static-laced voice, and that sound is what finally snaps Shinjo out of his stupor. His heart squeezes painfully behind his ribcage, and his body moves, as if on autopilot, to pull K into a hug.
“K! You’re alive!” he gasps, wet cheek pressed to scorched metal.
With a creak of his joints and a hesitant tremor to his hands, the robot detective returns the embrace.
“Detective Shinjo…” K’s voice is hazy and worn, “Oh, thank goodness!”
And for a while, holding each other is the only thing they can do. The past, the future, any fortifications of the heart - the sea has dissolved and swallowed it all alike. Washed up in its wake, there remain just two men - one of flesh and the other of steel, both battered and drenched and half-mad with breathless relief as they hug against the backdrop of blue skies and glittering waves.
“You almost died, dammit!” Shinjo yells hoarsely once he is capable of thought again. His hands shake as they scramble for purchase on the slick metal of K’s back. His finger catches on the edge of a crack and he blurts out a frantic apology as K shudders in pain, but he just can’t help it. Some dark, sticky part of his mind keeps insisting that any second now K’s gonna slip away, that the sea will take him again, this time - for good…
”The hell were you even thinking back there?!” Shinjo rambles, bitter words that he instantly comes to regret gushing out like sick, “Guys like me are a dime a dozen, but you’re irreplaceable! Did you forget that if you go down, BAD’s gonna have the run of the whole fucking world?!”
“I’m very sorry I worried you, Shinjo-san…But I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” says K, his words soft but resolute. “Nothing about your existence is replaceable. You are a unique human being.”
The next sentence is almost a whisper, but Shinjo can feel it deep in his bones.
“One whose company I hold…uniquely dear.”
Something about having heard those words turns Shinjo’s legs into half-melted candles. And, if the heat of K’s plating is anything to go by, a similar effect has resulted from saying them.
“I’m sorry.” Shinjo mutters miserably, hanging his head.
They hold each other in silence, sharing a worldless “please don’t die” and the quiet sorrow of being unable to promise it.
When they finally ease apart, there’s a tinge of pink blending into the sunny yellow of K’s optics.
“Shinjo-san.” he says quietly, “That…mouth-to-mouth technique, from earlier…it was first aid, right?”
Ah. So he’d awoken right in the midst of it.
Even with his clothes already sodden, Shinjo feels distinctly sweaty.
But then again, what the hell? They’ve both just nearly died, and with their luck, they aren’t out of the woods yet! Might as well not hold anything back!
He gulps, throat lined with sandpaper.
“Would you rather it weren’t?”
There is a sound like TV static mixed with microphone feedback. K freezes ramrod stiff, optics flashing a vibrant fuchsia. Hot air blasts from his chest vents with enough force to sweep back Shinjo’s wet hair.
“Oh shit, I broke him.” echoes in Shinjo’s head. He sighs. Real smooth, dumbass.
Then, with a screech like a rusty door, K nods.
He moves to wrap his arms around the human’s shoulders. His hands are shaky and far too warm, but a stark, gentle determination gleams in his optics.
Shinjo is weak in the knees as K gingerly pulls him forward.
It’s certainly the hardest and saltiest kiss of Shinjo’s life…not that he minds it or something. His heart is so full of emotion that he feels set to explode. He runs his hands over K’s cheeks, his neck, his shoulders, smoothing his fingertips against the ridges in the warm metal. K fumbles around a bit, not quite sure what to do with his own hands while kissing, and eventually resolves to just hold Shinjo tightly, basking in the warmth of his life and the relief of having protected it.
They make it last as long as they’re able, committing each other’s existence to memory with desperate eyes and desperate hands and desperate lips. But eventually Shinjo has to stop and brace himself against K’s shoulders, breathless and even more dazed than before.
Even through the soot of battle, K shines resplendent in red and yellow and blue; sea, earth and sun crystallized into precious burning life.
To Shinjo, it’s a sight so soul-gougingly dear that it almost brings him to tears.
“I love you.” the man gasps, because to say anything else in a moment like this feels like spineless betrayal.
A lightness. It feels so natural, the way these words fall from his lips. Like his mouth and his throat and his lungs have been forged for this purpose alone.
Shinjo closes his stinging eyes, and mourns not having realized it earlier. Countless battles, countless instances of huddling body to trembling body in quarries and trenches under BAD fire, countless brushes with death ago…
Even so, he reminds himself, things can still be ok. As long as they’re both alive, there is time.
“Shinjo-san…”
Two wet trails cut through sea salt crusted on steel.
“I…I’m not sure if I’m worthy of such momentous words…”
An explosion. Somewhere deep deep inside Shinjo, myriad pieces of jagged shrapnel.
“Shut up!!” he all but wails. “Who told you that?! Who the FUCK told you that?! I’ll p-punch ‘em! I’ll beat the shit out of ‘em! Even if it’s old man Shiba! No, ESPECIALLY if it’s him!”
K looks into Shinjo’s eyes, equal parts shocked, determined and wrecked to pieces. Shinjo pants, sniffling pitifully, wanting nothing else but to mend the robot’s body and heart, to staunch the flow of his soot-tinged tears.
“Then…” K says, an electronic warble to his voice. He takes Shinjo’s hand, and puts it on his chest. He bows his head, gripped by an emotion so intense it physically hurts and so multifaceted it’s probably gonna take eternity for his electronic brain to parse.
“Please accept my feelings as well!”
At that, a sudden burst of giddy and strangely nostalgic joy wells within Shinjo, as if his blood’s been replaced with orange soda from a glass bottle whose label has long since faded and bleached in the sun. He wants to sing and dance and grab K and twirl him around. He tries to do the latter but finds he no longer has the strength to lift up the robot. There’s a sharp, stabbing pain in his foot. He bites back a yelp, not sure if he’s broken something or stepped on a sea urchin. His perception of pain feels muted, as if cordoned off by a wall of invisible glass. He thinks about how close he must be to either dying or going cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Then, he decides that’s irrelevant.
“I love you, man. I really do!” He repeats, pressing their foreheads together. “Don’t you ever forget that…please!”
His scratched-up face stings from the salt of his tears and the pull of his grin.
“Shinjo-san,” says K, and his optics are like two soggy sunsets, “Thank you. I don’t think I remember ever feeling this happy before. I…love you too.”
He lets out a wistful sigh, and sags against Shinjo in a manner so organically boneless that it scares the crap out of his human. He mutters a static-laced apology as the detective stumbles under the sudden increase in weight.
“Holy shit!” Shinjo exclaims, heart jumping in his chest “Are you ok?! Your wounds aren’t fatal, are they?!”
“Oh, I assure you, this is nothing serious.” says K in a weary whisper. At a closer glance, the pink and yellow hues of his optics have now arranged themselves into a most trippy swirl pattern. “But either because of the damage I’ve taken in battle…or because I’ve fallen so thoroughly head over heels for you, Shinjo-san…”
“Oh god…” babbles Shinjo, face hotter than the surface of the sun.
“...there seems to be a malfunction in my gyroscope. My sense of balance is shot.”
“Oh, it’s okay!” exclaims Shinjo, slinging K’s arm over his shoulders, “I’ll help you walk!”
“But do you feel alright yourself? You’re hurt, and you need food and water!”
“It’s fine, I’ve felt worse -whoa!”
Ah. In the midst of all those capital E Emotions, he must’ve forgotten that he was a fair bit brain-rattled himself.
They sway, like two drunks stumbling out of a bar.
Somehow, Shinjo is totally sure this is gonna become a precious memory.
“...Now, how are we gonna get out of here?” Shinjo finally says once the warm fuzziness in his brain has faded back into an annoying headache.”In fact, where the hell are we?!”
Leaning against a rock, K moves to pry open a hatch in his chest. Inside is a screen with a detailed map of Japan in green vector graphics. Amidst a gaggle of tiny islands stretching out far into the Pacific, one’s marked by an X.
The map flickers and shuts off after about ten seconds (for which K apologizes profusely), but Shinjo has seen enough.
“Shit! So we ARE marooned in the middle of fuckballs nowhere!”
“I’m afraid that’s true.”
“Oh, damn, K…” Shinjo groans; the headache is getting worse. “Don’t tell me your comms are malfunctioning too!”
The robot only sighs in response.
“Shit, how do we send a distress signal then?”
To that, K responds with a detailed instruction on how to repurpose his body into a giant flare gun.
“No way. Shut the fuck up.” replies Shinjo. “I’m gonna try building some signal fires. Some boat’s gotta be passing by sooner or later, right? Got no matches though, shit…Do I smash rocks together? Use the glass from my watch as a lens? Does that even work, or is it just adventure novel bullshit?”
His stomach groans like a dying walrus, and he pitches to his hands and knees as a wave of dizziness steamrolls his body. Damn. Signal fires his ass.
“Fuck.” he says. The reality that he’s marooned on an uninhabited island has never felt more clear.
“Just a second.” says K. He opens the hatch on the other side of his chest. Three live sardines - one skinny and sharp, one chunky and lumpy, and the last one average and kinda sad-looking - spill out into his palm with some leftover seawater.
“...Are you shitting me?” Shinjo inquires professionally.
“What a rude thing to say, bucko! There are kids watching, y’know!” the big sardine replies in Kansai dialect.
Oh.
So he really is losing it. No wonder. With all this battle damage, exhaustion, hunger, thirst and emotional upheaval, it was bound to happen sooner or later. But man oh man, he really should have been stronger than that…
He decides to leave the sardines alone for the time being. Sitting up, he watches the sky sway, shimmer, and finally bloom with a kaleidoscope of recursive flowers. What a shame, he thinks, that he has no talent for poetry.
Just when exactly has he crossed the line between reality and hallucination?
He really hopes it’s after he told K that he loved him.
The robot’s blurry form hovers over him. He’s saying something, but it’s as if both of Shinjo’s ears are now filled with water. He reaches up to grasp K’s hand, and squeezes it with the last of his fading strength. Thank god, he can still discern that it’s warm.
His fingers still interlaced with K’s, Shinjo crumples in a dead faint.
What comes to him is an empty road, stretching off into the distance amidst fields of bleached-out dead trees like the hands of polydactylic skeletons wondering if it’s a bird or a plane. His nostrils tingle with the smell of hot asphalt, syrup-sticky under his feet. The sky over his head is a long, cruel triangle; Pinocchio’s nose, Damocles’ sword. He gets up - wait, wasn’t he already standing? He knows that he has to keep moving forward, but the idea of forward does not feel reliable. The sun has risen out of the sea - wait, since then was there a sea?- and looms overhead, looms monolithic and warm. He’s floating in the sky, suspended by a beam of bright orange light. K floats by his side and, basking in the soft gleam of his armor, Shinjo is once again filled with fizzy sun-whitened joy.
The barren island that has tormented them so is now growing ever smaller amidst glittering waves.
The beam slowly lifts them further and further up, towards a hatch in the giant robot’s midsection.
Even through the heavy haze of delirium, Shinjo can still tell that the hatch is shaped like a heart.
Later, when his grip on reality is firm once more, when an invisible pickaxe is no longer mining his brains right out of his skull, when he’s mostly rid of his mess of bandages, bruises and stitches, K will lie by his side in one of the endearingly cramped beds of Mother’s hospital module, warm and shiny from a fresh polish, his striped flannel pyjamas smelling of some funny sci-fi detergent with echoes of lavender. They will hold each other with almost reverent gratitude as K serenades his human with sentimental romantic poetry, in a voice so overjoyed that it’s as if his words are shining…
Loathe to let that shine scatter and fade, Shinjo will seal it in with a kiss.
Outside, the sea will rumble and roil. The assembly lines of death will keep on churning out their ghoulish product. The future will loom overhead like a great bloated thundercloud.
But no matter what storms may await, neither man nor machine will face them alone.