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The doll is staring at him.
It sits on the high shelf of a curiosity cabinet at Windibank’s Antiques, its baby blue eyes glinting amidst the dim and dust.
Kazuma stares back and wonders why it is that he feels threatened. There is no need. And still he does.
He hears a bell jingle as someone steps into the store from the bustle of Baker Street, and with that he’s able to shake himself, to bring himself back to the present. To London. To furniture shopping with his boyfriend Ryunosuke. To his lifelong dream come true.
It’s not even an exaggeration. Kazuma always wanted to move to Great Britain, felt driven to do so ever since hearing about his great-great-great-great-grandfather’s adventures as a kid. When he met Ryunosuke in his first year of university in Tokyo, it had changed nothing. He’d simply pestered him to come along, until he caved and changed majors from linguistics to law in order to take part in the same student exchange program as Kazuma.
They’d landed in the country only a fortnight ago, and their new home was beginning to look quite nice already. But since Ryunosuke insisted they still needed sideboards and whatnot, here they were. Honestly, it’s not like Kazuma has strong opinions on decor, he’s really only tagging along to make sure Ryunosuke doesn’t impulse purchase the entire catalogue.
The doll is still staring at him, and his eyes are inevitably drawn back to it.
Kazuma has seen such frilly dressed dolls before, in old movies and posh toy stores, but what’s weird about this one is that it’s not a little girl, not even a little boy, but more like a grown ass man.
A pathetic looking grown ass man. It’s even cracked in the face, right between the brows, giving it a permanent frown. Perhaps it is because of that frown that Kazuma swears the doll’s eyes keep following him.
It really is a bit creepy.
“Hey, Ryunosuke,” he calls out, raising his hand to point at the doll, “check out this creepy doll.”
Ryunosuke blinks up from where he is decidedly not looking at a sofa table like he was supposed to. His eyes follow the line of Kazuma’s hand to spot the doll aonthe high shelf of the curiosity cabinet. He blinks again, and to his horror Kazuma realises that he is immediately intrigued.
“Oh,” he says, and yep his voice definitely sounds the same it did the previous week when he dragged home a shrimp tank of all things. Except… not quite. “I don’t think it’s creepy at all. It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?”
“What, no,” Kazuma tries, although he can already tell there is no stopping him now. “It looks pathetic.”
Ryunosuke, who has rounded the mound of sales wares between them, smacks him lightly on the arm.
“Don’t be mean, Kazuma,” he says, and Kazuma wants to point out it is a doll but doesn’t, because he knows it would not make a difference. “He just looks… sad.”
He??? Kazuma thinks and throws Ryunosuke an incredulous look. He does not see it, as he is already calling out to the proprietor, asking about the doll on the high shelf.
It turns out that it is haunted. Because of course it is, Kazuma could’ve told that much without Mr Windibank’s lamentable tale on the numerous times the doll has been returned to the antique store, and how after each time Mr Windibank has decided to throw it away, without ever being able to bring himself to do it ― not with the doll’s increasingly sorrowful expression.
Kazuma looks at Ryunosuke with a smug smirk. See? It is creepy, he means to say, but then he sees Ryunosuke looking at the doll with such unbridled sympathy that it immediately makes his smile drop.
“Aren’t you supposed to be afraid of ghosts?” he asks disbelievingly. Ryunosuke, despite being a huge fan of horror flicks, is the biggest scaredy-cat he knows.
Ryunosuke politely ignores him, instead asking Mr Windibank for the price, and so they exit the store proud ― or, in Kazuma’s case, reluctant ― new owners of a haunted Victorian porcelain doll.
“What are you even going to do with a broken doll?” Kazuma complains as they make their way down Baker Street towards their apartment.
Ryunosuke gives him a look that conveys how he finds Kazuma’s question silly.
“Fix it, obviously.”
It is not silly. It is, in Kazuma’s opinion, the only appropriate question in the situation he finds himself in.
“Fix it how? ”
“Kintsugi,” Ryunosuke says simply.
Were he a lesser man, Kazuma would just give up then. But alas, he will never be a lesser man.
“You’re going to fix the creepy doll you already paid too much money for with gold? ” he asks, utterly exasperated. “Can you even have that done here?”
“I know a place,” responds Ryunosuke, and does not elaborate how he knows a place in London that does kintsugi, of all things, when they have been in the country for less than thirty days. “And don’t worry about the cost. My father will be paying for it.”
Kazuma cannot really say anything to that. Ryunosuke’s parents had neglected him for most of his childhood and, being rich, were now trying to win back their son’s favour by throwing money at him. Not that Ryunosuke really wanted their money, except, for whatever reason, when it came to things like this .
He sighs. “Have it your way… But don’t come crying to me when it comes to life and tries to murder you.”
Ryunosuke laughs. “After everything you’ve said, it won’t be me he wants to murder.”
Kazuma wishes he wouldn’t sound so sure of himself as he says it, but spares him no further comment.
***
Ryunosuke does, as he’d said, know a place. He brings the doll home with him three days later, holding it proudly and carefully as though it were a real baby. Which it is not. It’s a doll.
“His name is Barok,” Ryunosuke says almost offhandedly, while giving Kazuma a greeting kiss at the door.
“You named it?!”
Kazuma wishes he couldn't believe it, but this is exactly the type of shit Ryunosuke would pull.
“No, he already had a name.”
Kazuma’s eyebrows shoot so far up he’s fairly sure they fly off his face completely like a cartoon character’s.
“And how did you find that out?” he asks as he trails after Ryunosuke into the living room. “Did it tell you?”
Ryunosuke does not deem him a response, and Kazuma figures it is a mystery he’ll never know the answer to. Instead he pushes an ottoman, playing the part of the sofa table they still haven’t found, to the bookcase and climbs onto it to gently set the doll atop the shelf. Stepping down from the ottoman he eyes the doll, seemingly satisfied with its placement. Kazuma looks up at it ― at Barok ― and swears it is glaring at him again.
But then he also has to admit that whoever did the kintsugi has done a good job. In place of the miserable crack there is now a cross-shaped scar of gold. It makes the doll’s expression less glowery.
“Doesn’t he look right at home, Kazuma?” Ryunosuke asks and he looks so genuinely pleased, that Kazuma doesn’t have the heart to say anything edgewise. He hums weakly in agreement and follows Ryunosuke to the kitchen for dinner, doing his best to forget all about the creepy doll now taking space in their apartment.
The next morning he wakes up early, way before his alarm, and rolls out from under the blankets yawning. Still half asleep he pads out of the bedroom and is halfway to the toilet when he realises something is horribly wrong.
The doll is no longer on the shelf.
But that is not the worst part.
The worst part is that there is a large man that looks exactly like the missing doll sitting on the living room sofa.
Kazuma freezes, staring at the man as he forgets to breathe. He’s a lot more handsome now that he’s not made of porcelain, his features sharp and shapely, a rugged beauty to his scarred face. The man stares back at him mutely, with the same pale eyes as the doll.
And then he blinks.
Kazuma does not scream, though it is an embarrassingly close call, and darts back to the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him and scrambling to lock it.
“Ryunosuke!” he hisses, panic filling his voice. “Ryunosuke, wake up !”
“Wha―?” Ryunosuke asks groggily, raising his head from amidst the pillows. “What’s wrong?”
“Where did I put my katana?!” He starts pulling open the wardrobe doors.
“Your… katana?” Ryunosuke blearily checks his phone. “It’s six a.m., Kazuma, why are you yelling?”
“There,” he points at the door, “is a man in the living room!”
He continues searching for his prized family sword, which is in all actuality more of a decoration than any use as a real weapon, but he figures it’s better than nothing against the killer-doll-turned-man.
“What?! Shouldn’t we call the police?”
Kazuma finally finds the katana, tucked to the back of the wardrobe, and pulls it out with a hysterical chuckle.
“I don’t know if they’re going to be able to help us with this,” he says, knowing that he must sound completely deranged.
With the sword in hand, he marches back to the door and opens it. Ryunosuke hurries out of the bed to follow him.
There is nobody in the living room.
“Well,” mutters Ryunosuke. “It’s good that I didn’t call the police.” He frowns. “Is this your idea of a prank, Kazuma?”
Kazuma ignores him, cautiously rounding the sofa, his sword at the ready.
The doll is sitting on the cushion, right where the man had been.
“ You― !” He points at it accusingly. The doll seems to have its head cocked almost defiantly.
Ryunosuke, confused, walks to stand by his side.
“Why did you move him?” he asks with a huff, and goes to pick up the doll despite Kazuma’s sputtering protests. “Have you been sleepwalking again? I thought you’d gotten over that.”
Kazuma bristles. “I swear that that cursed thing was not this small when I last saw it!” Ryunosuke climbs onto the ottoman to place the doll back up on the shelf. “It had turned into a huge dude, and he was probably planning on murdering us, just like I told you he would!”
Ryunosuke gives him a look.
“Kazuma…” he says, and Kazuma’s mouth snaps shut.
He’s hurt that Ryunosuke won’t believe him, but then again if it was Ryunosuke claiming this, he would most likely laugh and tease him mercilessly. The only reason he can believe it at all is because he saw it with his own eyes. But still!
“Fine, whatever, don’t believe me then!” he exclaims, throwing his hands up and sitting on the sofa to continue glaring at the doll. He is not leaving it unwatched, in case it tries anything.
Ryunosuke leans down to kiss him placatingly on the cheek. It does not make him feel better.
“I’ll bring you some coffee,” he says and disappears into the kitchen.
Kazuma simply glares harder, and continues to do so even after Ryunosuke brings him the promised drink and goes back to bed.
***
A few days later, Kazuma is no closer to convincing Ryunosuke. He is thus in a sour mood when he finishes his shift at St Synners, a small gay club he’d managed to land a job at to earn some extra money. He honestly does not know that much about alcohol, not one to drink himself, but so far he has found the job easy enough. Mostly he just has to look hot and the customers kept coming back to buy more, not even caring if he messed up their order.
Working there had also led him to meet Gina Lestrade, his mean lesbian co-worker and the only person he’s so far befriended in London. Although, as Kazuma watches her laugh her arse off at his expense, he is rather reconsidering their friendship.
“Stop laughing,” he grumbles, swatting at her with the rag he’d used to wipe the counter. The bar had closed at 2 a.m., and they thankfully had no trouble emptying the place that night, which left just enough time to clean up and check the register before the end of their shifts. “I’ve barely been sleeping, and Ryunosuke refuses to take me seriously! It’s like he is siding with the doll.”
Gina ducks out of the way, only laughing harder. “Ya ‘ave to admit, ‘Soggy, that’s fuckin’ funny,” she says once her laughter has toned down into the occasional snicker.
He makes a face, but does not have time to respond before she continues.
“But, y’know, my girlfriend is into all that occult shite, so I can ask ‘er about the doll, in case it’s famous or somethin’.” She grins. “Maybe it really is haunted… otherwise ya might want to see a doctor.”
Kazuma’s scowl darkens.
“It’s not like I have many other options at this point…”
He leaves the bar at half past, walking home to Baker Street in the cool night air. He truly has been sleeping very poorly since the scare with the doll and is rather missing his bed when he finally makes his way up to their apartment door. In his tiredness, he simply turns the handle, finding the door won’t budge ― just as it shouldn’t.
He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head, digging his trouser pockets for the keys. As he’s doing so, the door opens. He looks up, wondering why Ryunosuke hasn’t gone to bed already.
It is not Ryunosuke.
It is Barok, the doll-man.
For approximately five seconds time stands still. Kazuma stares at him in horror, while he keeps meeting his stare silently, the expression on his scarred face unreadable. Then he opens his mouth, and Kazuma, without thinking, punches him in the gut.
Somewhat surprisingly, his fist collides with a solid, warm body instead of the cold, non-corporeal corpse he half-expected.
The man doubles down, holding his stomach, and a pained wheeze escapes him.
Kazuma does not stay and listen to what sound it might next turn into. Instead, seeing as he cannot force his way inside his own apartment to save Ryunosuke ― hopefully sleeping soundly in the bedroom and not slaughtered and mangled beyond recognition ― he flees downstairs to the first floor, banging desperately at the door of their downstairs neighbour.
It opens thankfully quickly, and in the doorway stands an incredulous blond man, around ten years Kazuma’s senior. He has seen him in the stairway a few times, but not really talked to him beyond the passing hello. His name is something German, he thinks. Herr Lock… Sholmes?
“Good heavens, man!” his neighbour shouts. “It is three a.m.! The house had better be on fire!”
Despite his terror, Kazuma blinks. “What, no―”
“Then what on Earth are you banging at the door for, Mr Asogi?” the man asks, spreading his arms in question.
He blinks again. If he strains his memory, he can recall Ryunosuke talking about meeting their neighbours, so that must be how he knows his name.
“I might have been awake myself, but I do have a ten-year-old daughter!” Sholmes continues. “She needs her sleep to grow big and strong!”
Kazuma opens and closes his mouth, trying to think of a way to explain his emergency, but he is cut off by a young girl’s voice from the apartment behind his neighbour. “I wasn’t sleeping, actually… I was watching Minecraft videos.”
“Iris!” the man yells over his shoulder. “We’ve been over this! No Minecraft after 11 p.m.! Do I have to come there and turn off the computer?”
Kazuma blinks a third time, and then decides to just fuck it. “No time for that,” he says. “There is a man in my apartment!”
“Yes? I am aware of your boyfriend? He came by last week to babysit Iris?!” Sholmes sounds rather more exasperated than Kazuma thinks he has any reason to. “A perfectly fine fellow, unlike yourself.”
“I don’t mean Ryunosuke,” he hisses. “I mean another man.”
Sholmes closes his eyes, and draws to stand upright, holding a finger to his chin. “It is not for me to judge what you do in the bedroom, Mr Asogi, but I do hope Mr Naruhodo is aware of it.”
Kazuma flushes profusely.
This conversation is the most absurd thing that has happened to him lately, and he has just seen a doll turn into a man. Somehow, he manages to drag Sholmes out of his apartment and up the stairs, where they find that the door is still open, but the man is no longer there.
Instead the doll sits on the floor, a mere metre from the sill.
Not again??!
Kazuma stalks inside, careful to not let the doll out of his sight, looking around the apartment. There is nothing amiss in the kitchen, nor in the living room.
Sholmes follows after him, pausing before the doll. “What is the meaning of this?”
That is when Ryunosuke walks out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes drowsily, clearly roused from sleep.
“Kazuma…? What are you― oh!” he yelps as he notices the other man standing in their apartment. “Mr Sholmes?!” He looks between them. “What… is happening here?”
“That is what I would like to know, too, Mr Naruhodo!” exclaims Sholmes, turning to face Ryunosuke with his arms spread wide. He seems to be fond of that particular pose. “Your boyfriend dragged me here yelling about an intruder in your apartment, but there clearly is no one here except for this rather peculiar doll!”
Ryunosuke’s eyes fall on the mentioned doll, and immediately he frowns.
“Kazuma…” he starts in a way that Kazuma recognises.
“He was a man just five minutes ago!” he shouts. “I― I punched him!”
“You punched Barok?” Ryunosuke asks, his eyebrows shooting up. “ Why? ”
What am I supposed to say to that?! Kazuma thinks incredulously, and Ryunosuke sighs.
“Mr Sholmes… I am so sorry for the disturbance,” he mutters apologetically. “I swear we won’t bother you again. Please go back to bed. Iris must be worried.”
“I most certainly shall!” the man calls and promptly spins on his heels to march away. “Good night!” he calls over his shoulder and slams the door shut in his leave.
Ryunosuke sighs once more and walks over to lift the doll from the floor. “Kazuma, I… I really don’t understand what this is about. Like, I get that you didn’t approve of me buying him, but isn’t this a bit too much?”
Isn’t it a bit too much that you keep talking of him as though he were alive, while refusing to believe he is? Kazuma thinks, but does not say anything, because he knows better than to do so when Ryunosuke’s voice gets like this.
“I… wish you would believe me,” he says instead, letting his honest desperation show.
Ryunosuke seems momentarily taken aback.
“You―” he starts. Kazuma stares at him. “You’re really being serious?”
He believes me!
“Yes,” he nearly shouts in his elation.
Ryunosuke seems to consider it.
“Are you,” he starts, “feeling okay? You’ve been working quite a lot lately. Stress isn’t good for you, you know?”
Kazuma’s smile falls.
Great, now he thinks I’m on the verge of a psychic break.
“I’m fine,” he bites out. “I’m―” He thinks about all the things he wants to say, but in the end simply shakes his head. “I’m sorry for waking you. Let’s just go to bed.”
With that he trods past Ryunosuke to the bathroom, to brush his teeth. Through the open door he watches Ryunosuke once again climb onto the ottoman and place the doll on the high shelf. The gold of its scar glints as the light from the bathroom’s slightly quivering halogen hits it, and Kazuma swears it squints its eyes at him, not quite malicious but certainly resentful.
Maybe he shouldn’t have punched him, after all, he ponders, and that night, just like the nights before, he sleeps very, very poorly.
***
Next week Kazuma is so sleep-deprived he is about ready to start believing that the whole doll turning into a man really was some freaky hallucination conjured by his exhausted mind. Except― no, he isn’t . He is not willing to accept that, no matter how convincing Ryunosuke sounds when he suggests it. And so they are left in a stalemate of sorts, with Ryunosuke growing more and more worried about him, whereas he keeps worrying about the doll.
Then, on Wednesday morning, Kazuma gets an email that his lectures for the day are cancelled, the professor having come down with the flu, and so he is faced with the prospect of having the whole day off for the first time in who even knows how long.
Ryunosuke is so very pleased when he relays the news.
“Time for you to relax, for once!”
Kazuma does not quite share his enthusiastic sentiment. Not when Ryunosuke himself still has his study group to go to, meaning that Kazuma will have to be alone in their apartment.
Alone… with the doll.
He shudders as he realises this, and tries to bargain for Ryunosuke to skip his obligations, something he never thought he would do. Unfortunately, Ryunosuke is just as much of a stickler for rules as Kazuma usually is.
“Just… take a nap,” says Ryunosuke, pulling on his coat, his expression resolute despite Kazuma’s pleading eyes. “Watch some telly. Order takeaway. I’ll only be gone for a few hours.”
Kazuma sighs, surrendering to his fate. Of possibly being murdered. By a doll.
“Fine.”
He kisses Ryunosuke goodbye at the door, and watches him walk down the stairs and wave at him one last time before he disappears behind a corner.
Then he turns around, closes the door, and walks to the living room only to see what he most feared would happen. The doll gently slips down from the high shelf, the movement somehow indescribable, and as it falls it morphs, grows in size, its body stretching until it has become the man he has seen two times before already. He hits the ground softly, featherlight despite his size, and Kazuma would scream if he weren’t so very tired and so very, very resigned.
It is not so scary in daylight. In fact, just like the previous occasions, there is actually nothing in the tall man’s demeanour that explicitly suggests bloodthirst. More so, he only looks… confused. Slightly irritated, but mostly confused.
Kazuma crosses his arms and comes to stand four steps in front of him, staring up at his face. He’d noted it before, but the colour of his eyes is exceptionally light, almost that of clear ice across a frozen pond. It’s quite beautiful, he has to admit.
He must be going mental.
As the doll-man fails to once again say anything in a timely manner, Kazuma grows impatient. “Explain,” he bites out, his brows pressing down in a frown.
It is mirrored on the other man’s face, the cross-shaped scar darkening the expression. Even so, Kazuma finds that he is strangely not scared anymore ― not like he had previously been.
“You’re not going to assault me, this time?” comes the eventual response, the words dragging out of his mouth slowly, raspily. His voice sounds out of use, and, well , it really must be. Dolls are not known for being very talkative, after all.
Also, quite a sarcastic thing to say, for a creepy doll-man.
“My name is… Barok van Zieks,” he continues, and then falters, the frown on his face shifting between wariness and confusion, as though he were struggling with something.
Kazuma, however, is sent reeling by the introduction.
He really is named Barok? How the hell did Ryunosuke know that? Did he actually talk to him?
He pouts as he imagines it. Had Ryunosuke been gaslighting him about the doll this entire time? But no, he couldn’t have been. Ryunosuke would never do that, and he had sounded genuinely worried for Kazuma’s wellbeing this entire time. He would have noticed if he were lying. Ryunosuke is an abysmal liar.
“It seems that for a long time I have been cursed to be… a doll,” says Barok finally after a long pause.
He seems to like taking his time to respond. Or maybe he’s just trying to cope with the suddenness of having turned into a human, because who’s to say what being a doll for so long could do to your brain.
Wait ― How long has he even been a doll?
“For so long, in fact, that I can no longer recall how I came to be in such an unfortunate state.”
Ah, well… that answers it. Sort of.
“I only know that when you first walked into that shop, where I had spent the past God only knows how long, I suddenly found myself being startled from the trance I’d fallen into,” Barok explains. “I guess I ought to… thank you, for that, at least.”
He does not sound like he wants to thank him.
Kazuma makes a face.
“I really wanted nothing to do with you,” he says, because it’s true. No matter how captivated he had been by the doll’s staring when he’d first seen it, he would have been perfectly happy leaving it sitting on the shelf of the curiosity cabinet. “You should really only thank Ryunosuke.”
“Yes, your…” The man seems at a loss for words, and Kazuma fixes him a glare. “…partner.”
Well, essentially .
“He is,” Barok says, still searching. Kazuma swears that a hint of a flush, almost unnoticeable, rises upon his cheeks, “quite intriguing .”
He blinks.
Huhh????
“I cannot claim that I am myself unaware of such… passions between men.”
Kazuma stares at him, absolutely dumb-founded, and yep, there’s definitely a blush on that ghostly pale face.
Great, he thinks, the haunted Victorian doll in my apartment is gay and has the hots for my boyfriend.
What were you supposed to say to that?
“Well,” he tries after a while, forcing his mouth to speak even as he struggles to come up with anything meaningful, “why are you a man, now?”
Actually, maybe that is the question he should’ve asked first.
“I truly could not say,” Barok laments, shaking his head as though to shake away his embarrassment. “I suppose it must have something to do with you.”
“With me ?” Kazuma repeats, his frown returning. “What do you mean?”
“You must have noticed by now, that every time I’ve turned back into my original form, it has been solely in your presence. And everytime someone other than you has drawn near, I have reverted to my cursed state.”
That checks out, as much as he wishes it didn’t. It has certainly caused enough frustration for him, what with no one believing him about it.
“So… what? You being a doll is somehow connected to… me? How is that even possible?”
Barok shakes his head. “Regretfully, I do not know,” he says. “Though, you have given me one hint, so far.”
He has?
“I have?”
“Yes, the sword you threatened me with after I turned into my true self for the first time.” That is probably the last thing Kazuma had expected. “I know I have seen it before.”
No― that is the last thing Kazuma had expected.
“What?!”
Because really. Karuma, the katana that has been passed down in his family since ages ago, is somehow connected to the man now standing in his apartment, cursed to be a Victorian porcelain doll.
Barok brings a hand to his forehead, shielding his pained expression. “I wish I could remember more, but it seems that long years as an unthinking object have taken their toll.”
“It’s―” Kazuma thinks of something to say, anything, in the face of the incredible absurdity of it all. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. We’ll… figure this out.”
It’s certainly not fine, but then he sees the look on Barok’s face, not quite grateful but something both less and more than that. It’s as though he’s trying to conceal how very much all this is affecting him, hiding it behind his blank frown, yet Kazuma can see how shaken he is. He has been very alone, hasn’t he? He is, even now, with no one to depend on to solve this mystery, but Kazuma.
The thought of that makes him get a bit hot under the collar, no matter how he tries to instantly smother the feeling.
“First of all, I guess we need to figure out how you became a doll,” Kazuma says, both to distract himself from whatever the hell that was and to snap Barok out of his glum reverie.
Now if only he knew how they are supposed to do that.
Suddenly, he remembers something.
“Oh, right,” he says, “I guess I know who I can ask for help… or more like, I’ve already been offered some.”
Barok looks slightly surprised. “You… have?”
He sounds rather doubtful. Rude.
“I’m not making any promises they’ll be able to come up with anything,” he says, defensive. “But it’s better than nothing, for now.”
“I suppose so,” says Barok, and the conversation trails off into an awkward silence.
And really, Kazuma can only force himself to suffer through that for so long before he simply tells Barok to sit down and stop looking so gloomy. He proceeds to spend the rest of the day ― or at least until Ryunosuke returns ― teaching him about modern life. Such as introducing him to computers. And Twitter.
It’s a good laugh, if nothing else.
When Ryunosuke later steps inside, Kazuma watches Barok morph back into a doll, the sight of his body shifting nigh incomprehensible. It truly is like he had said; for whatever reason the curse does not allow anyone but Kazuma to see his human form.
He feels a bit special, even though it is once again Ryunosuke, who so very lovingly lifts the doll back up on the shelf.
***
“Kazuma… what is this?”
Hearing Ryunosuke’s voice, Kazuma looks up from where he is sitting on the sofa. Gina and her girlfriend Maria are sitting on the floor by his feet. Ryunosuke is standing in the doorway, staring at the scene unfolding in the living room with absolute bafflement.
Kazuma doesn’t exactly blame him for it.
Moments before his arrival, Maria had finished setting everything up “perfectly” (her words, not his), which means that the whole apartment is so full of burning candles that it’s a miracle the fire alarm hasn’t gone off yet. She has drawn a pentagram or something like it on the floor ― for what purpose, Kazuma has no earthly idea and he is frankly a little afraid to ask ― and Barok is placed squarely in the middle. There is also a ouija board waiting by Maria’s side, so far unused.
So, basically, Ryunosuke walks in at what Kazuma thinks is exactly the right time.
When he’d asked Gina about whether or not her girlfriend had anything to say about the doll, he never envisioned it leading to this . She really must be “into that occult shite” like Gina had put it. More than into it. He wishes he’d been warned or something, before he let her into their apartment and she started drawing on the floor. He wanted to object but, knowing that she is one of their very few hopes in figuring out Barok’s fate, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do so.
Just like he cannot, now, bring himself to open his mouth to explain anything to Ryunosuke.
“Ya must be ‘Soggy’s boyfriend,” Gina says, saving him from his predicament by rising up from the floor and walking over to Ryunosuke to offer him her hand. He shakes it, somewhat confuddled. “The name’s Gina Lestrade, and I’m ‘is mate from work. I’ve heard lots about ya.”
“Ryunosuke Naruhodo,” says Ryunosuke, offering her a polite if a bit nervous smile. Kazuma can understand his hesitation. Despite being younger than them both, Gina has the air of someone you don’t want to mess with. He looks past her shoulder. “And this―”
“Oh, that’s my girlfriend, Maria,” Gina explains, as though that were the most pressing issue concerning the scene Ryunosuke has walked in on.
“Charmed,” says Maria, her voice thin and high and ghostlike. Ryunosuke swallows.
Kazuma rather finds he shares Ryunosuke’s apprehension.
“And what… are you two… doing here, if I may ask?” His eyes glide from Maria to the doll and finally to Kazuma. He looks disapproving.
“Oh, that should be simple, shouldn’t it?” says Maria, her eerie tone making Ryunosuke jump. “We are trying to make contact with the spirit possessing the van Zieks doll.”
“The… van Zieks doll?” Ryunosuke asks. “You mean Barok?”
He turns back to the doll, sitting politely in the middle of the scribbles Maria had insisted on drawing on their floor, and frowns. He definitely disapproves.
Kazuma brings a hand to rub his forehead. He still has no idea where Ryunosuke had gotten the name from. When he’d asked about it from Barok, the man had been none the wiser.
“Yes… it is quite a famous one,” Maria continues. She had already explained it all before, while messing up their apartment, but Kazuma still listens keenly as she recounts the tale to Ryunosuke a second time.
The doll first surfaced in the 1960’s when it was discovered in the attic of the van Zieks family manor. At that point, the manor hadn’t been owned by the original family for quite some time, having been auctioned off in the late Victorian period. Instead, it had passed from one owner to the next and was in quite a poor condition at the time of the doll’s discovery.
Inspired by the state of the building and the doll’s sorrowful expression, the owner of the manor had transformed it into a haunted house attraction, one that had been widely successful until the late 90’s. At that time the manor had been in dire need of repair for more than a few decades, and was thus deemed a health hazard. And so, in an attempt to make it to the winning side, the owner had sold everything they could, including the doll with the cracked face.
It had been a tragedy, Maria assures them, seeing as by then the doll had gathered a large following in the occult circles, many of whom would have paid more than what had probably been offered.
But that was how Barok had ended up at Windibank’s Antiques, where he had sat forgotten in the storage room for the next decade until being placed on display. According to the tale by Mr Windibank, after that the doll had been bought and returned a few times before Ryunosuke had finally brought him home.
The other buyers had claimed the doll was haunted, though none, so far, claimed it had the ability to turn into a man, as Kazuma claims. Well, more than claims, because he is sure of it. Barok is a real man trapped in a doll, one who desperately wants to break his curse. He is also glaring at Kazuma quite menacingly from where he is sat on the floor.
Perhaps trusting Maria’s methods had not been the best bet, after all.
“I am more than a little excited to be here as we attempt to contact the spirit living inside the doll,” she says, finishing her tale with a slightly worrying gleam in her eyes. “I almost can’t wait to know, is it… vengeful?”
That is not something one should be so enthused about, Kazuma thinks. Also―
“Definitely not,” says Ryunosuke, something he agrees with wholeheartedly, despite Barok’s darkening glower. “Barok isn’t like that.”
From where she’d settled back to the floor, Gina looks up at Kazuma with an expression that speaks volumes. Kazuma meets her eyes with a stare that he hopes will convey his meaning: ‘I told you he’s siding with the doll, didn’t I?’
“Anyways,” Ryunsouke continues before either of them can say anything, “although it has been… lovely to meet you two, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
He pauses to fix his eyes on Kazuma. He swallows.
“There are matters I’d like to discuss with my boyfriend.”
Maria begins to protest, but Gina seems to catch the drift, dragging her up while making chit-chat with Ryunosuke as the two of them gather their belongings. Kazuma is not entirely sure, as he mostly ignores the conversation in favour of getting rid of all the candles, but it sounds like she may end up making plans to meet up with Ryunosuke for darts and a pint at a nearby pub. The door soon thuds closed in the wake of the two women’s goodbyes, leaving Kazuma alone with his unusually silent boyfriend.
And Barok.
Can’t forget about Barok, still sitting in the middle of the devil summoning circle, looking mighty unimpressed.
“Kazuma,” Ryunosuke sighs then, and sure enough, there is that voice again. “What is the meaning of this?”
It is a fair question, considering everything.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s up with Barok,” he says.
Belatedly, as Ryunosuke’s eyes narrow, he realises he’d used the man’s name, something he has not done before. Maybe he should’ve? Maybe that would have made Ryunosuke more likely to believe him? But then again, he rather doubts it.
“With the doll,” he hurries to correct himself. “I’m trying to figure out what’s up with the doll. I’m… not crazy.” With the way he felt necessary to add that to the end, he fears he rather shot himself in the foot. “I swear.”
Ryunosuke does not look too convinced. “You let them draw on our floor?”
“Well…” Kazuma struggles. “I didn’t really ask them to do that, did I?”
It is a weak excuse and he knows it. Ryunosuke knows it. Even Barok, looking up at him like he can’t quite believe him, knows it.
“Well, you’re gonna have to clean it up,” says Ryunosuke and walks closer, scuffing the chalk edge with his toes, before stepping inside the now broken circle.
“Although,” he continues, right as he bends down to lift the doll up, just as he’s done so many times before now, his manner and movements nothing if not caring, “I guess I did enjoy learning more about Barok’s past.”
He dusts off Barok’s frilly clothes, before once more walking to the bookcase, climbing onto the ottoman that had been pushed out of the way of Maria’s pentagram, and setting him in his rightful place. As Kazuma looks up at Barok, the doll’s eyes are shimmering, like the pale shaded light of the moon, almost… adoring.
Oddly, Kazuma feels like he’s about to burst ― even more so, when Ryunosuke climbs down and turns to him, his eyes similarly shining like stars against the darkened sky.
“Thank you for that,” he says, sounding just as earnest as when he first told Kazuma he loved him.
The memory of it heats up his cheeks, and he cannot even begin to describe how he feels, not with both Ryunosuke and Barok staring at him in such a way.
“You’re welcome,” he mumbles.
And then, as Ryunosuke moves to the kitchen to prepare dinner, he trails after him, sparing one last glance at the doll on the high shelf. It looks like he’s smiling, pleased, for whatever reason. Kazuma does not feel like smiling himself. More like―
Honestly, he really doesn’t know.
***
“So what’s it like being a doll?”
Kazuma sees Barok’s eyebrows twitch, but just as usual, there is no dramatic shift to his expression. It’s just the way he is, he figures.
“Excuse me?” he asks, looking up from the kindle in his hands.
A few weeks have passed since Maria’s interrupted seance, or whatever it was supposed to be, and like clock-work Kazuma has seen Barok transform into a human whenever he finds himself alone in his presence. To ease him into the current era, Kazuma has been letting him read through Ryunosuke’s kindle library. Currently, he’s half-way through The Lord of the Rings, which is not really teaching him about the advances of modern lifestyle, but he seems to be actually enjoying it.
His favourite character is, apparently, Sam.
“Like… are you aware of your body then?” Kazuma elaborates, closing his laptop and moving it to the side to turn more fully towards Barok on the sofa. “I always feel like you’re reacting to what’s happening, so you must be aware of your surroundings.”
Barok blinks.
“I… suppose I am,” he says slowly. “Although, for a long time I wasn’t, something I was only alerted to when things changed.” He hesitates. “It is difficult to explain in terms that would be understandable, but in my cursed state, I am not fully conscious like we both are now. It is more as though I were stuck in a bottle, looking at life through a thick glass that inevitably warps everything I see.”
“Hm,” says Kazuma, considering it. “Don’t you get bored?”
Barok shakes his head. “Time passes differently, then. What feels like hours to you goes by in the blink of an eye.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re so well preserved,” says Kazuma’s mouth before he can stop it.
Barok looks baffled. Well, as baffled as he ever does. Kazuma meanwhile blushes.
“I mean, you’re a good looking guy,” he continues, even though he shouldn’t. What is he even saying? Why? “For being a cursed doll.”
Barok blinks again and holds his gaze for a moment longer before looking away.
As he does, it feels like a tension Kazuma had not noticed creeping upon them were lifted.
“Thank you,” Barok says, and his tone sounds embarrassed the way Kazuma feels. “Though I find it rather hard to believe such an assessment.”
It’s Kazuma’s turn to be surprised.
“What, why?” he asks. It looks like Barok were to draw in on himself, a bitter strain to his expression. “I don’t know about the beauty standards of the time you were born in, but in today’s dating pool you’d have guys falling over each other trying to slide into your dms.”
Briefly he considers if they should make him a grindr profile, but the thought of that makes him grimace.
It also makes him freeze, as something he hadn’t so far considered pops into his mind.
How the hell have I been so stupid?
“Hold on,” he says, cutting off Barok who is just about to respond. “You can tell me about your insecurities later, because I just realised how I can prove your existence to Ryunosuke.”
He shuffles in his place to dig his phone out of his trouser pocket, swiping it unlocked and immediately opening the camera.
“Say cheese,” he instructs, flashing Barok a grin.
“Why?” asks Barok, but he simply snaps the photo.
Tapping on it, the picture fills the screen, and Kazuma’s smile falls.
“You can’t be serious,” he mutters.
He goes back to the camera and tries again, snapping a second one with equally disappointing results.
On his phone screen, in both pictures he had taken, sits Barok on the sofa, though not the man actually in front of him but the doll. Kazuma groans and flops against the backrest, letting the phone fall to the side. He stares up at the ceiling.
Well… that settles it for the grindr profile. Although, people really were into the strangest things ― maybe some would be into dolls?
The thought of that, as well, makes him grimace.
“…what, exactly, were you trying to do?”
Barok’s question cuts through his disturbing musings. Right, he wouldn’t know. He sits up, reaching for the phone to show him.
“I tried to take a photo of you so I could show it to Ryunosuke, but look,” he turns the screen towards Barok. “It seems like your curse is able to affect this, too.”
Barok stares at the picture with a frown, saying nothing for a long time. Then, finally, he closes his eyes and shakes his head.
“You could always use whatever artistic talents you may have to paint my portrait,” he says, and it takes a moment for Kazuma to realise he is, in fact, joking. A startled laugh escapes his throat, and Barok opens his eyes, a surprised light glinting in them.
“You don’t want to see that,” Kazuma assures him. “I might have been at the top of my class in other subjects, but in art I was one of the worst.”
Barok huffs out a breath that almost sounds like a chuckle. “Somehow, I don’t find that hard to believe.”
“Hey,” Kazuma objects, but it’s mostly for show. After all he can’t help the grin that tugs at his lips.
Barok does not say anything to that, and a comfortable silence falls between them.
Barok turns his attention back to the kindle, while Kazuma keeps on staring ahead, his mind marching forward with more thoughts than he can fully comprehend. He thinks about his upcoming exams, about how busy the coming weekend will be at work, about everything and nothing in particular.
And somehow, even more than all the other things whirling in his mind, he thinks about Barok, enthralled by Middle-Earth by his side, and the strange reaction he’d had to being called handsome.
Kazuma really had been a bit insensitive, silencing him before he could explain, hadn’t he?
“So,” he says, his mouth moving before he has time to second-guess himself, “what did you mean earlier, when you said you couldn’t believe me saying you’re hot?”
The fingers holding the kindle twitch. Kazuma looks at Barok’s face to see the earlier strain return to his brow, his eyes glazing over even as he keeps on staring down, pretending to continue reading though they both know he is not doing so.
“You have seen my face,” he says after a pause that feels like an eternity. “That should be answer enough, I’d think.”
That is not what he’d been expecting.
“Huh?”
Barok presses his lips tightly together.
“Seriously,” Kazuma tries. “What do you even mean by that? Have you not looked in a mirror?”
“I’d rather not,” says Barok, his voice far more quiet than before. “Not with how mutilated the features staring back at me must be.”
Kazuma’s mouth falls open.
He had not really thought that could be the issue.
“How did you get that scar?” he asks, once again speaking without thinking things through. He nearly winces, as Barok’s expression visibly darkens.
“I,” he begins, “do not know.” He swallows thickly, his gaze so very far off while his brows continue to press down even lower. “But it must be somehow connected to how all this came to be.”
Kazuma doesn’t respond, thinking instead on how very insistent Ryunosuke had been on fixing the doll’s cracked face. Could that, too, be connected to how Barok is now here, in front of him? Barok certainly seems to believe his transformation was thanks to Kazuma, but he himself feels like, perhaps, Ryunosuke might have had a part in it too.
“Well, however you got it, it doesn’t make you any less attractive,” he says. And then he hears what he has said. The admission hangs in the air between them, heavy.
Barok turns to him, and there is something searing in his look.
Kazuma swallows, his throat dry all of a sudden.
Luckily, he does not need to respond, as that is when he hears the sound of someone approaching in the stairwell, a key sliding into the lock. The door opens, and Ryunosuke walks inside with a softly called out greeting. Beside him he feels rather than sees Barok shifting into his silent form.
“You’re―” Ryunosuke says as he steps away from the door after kicking off his shoes and hanging his coat. His eyes land not quite on Kazuma but beside him on the sofa. He looks back over his shoulder and sees Barok, the doll, Ryunosuke’s kindle propped in his lap as though he were reading it.
Well, he had been doing that.
“He’s just keeping me company,” Kazuma says and pushes himself up from the sofa, walking over to give Ryunosuke a kiss.
“Oh,” says Ryunosuke, and nothing else. Kazuma cannot read his expression and that worries him immensely. It is something both soft and sharp, his eyes keen, the million thoughts flitting through his mind visible in the reflection of his irises.
“How… were your lectures?” he prompts carefully, and luckily that snaps Ryunosuke out of it.
“Oh, you know,” he breathes. “The usual.”
He smiles warmly, if a bit tiredly, and begins to explain. As he does so, he almost unthinkingly picks up his kindle from Barok’s grasp, setting it on the armrest, and lifts Barok up next. He stares at the doll, and Kazuma wishes even more than before that he could understand the emotions behind his look.
Much like he wishes he could understand the ones twisting inside his own heart.
***
Ryunosuke is already standing in front of the library when Kazuma arrives, hovering endearingly with a huge scarf wrapped around his neck, clutching his bag in both hands like a highschool girl in a romantic drama series. It makes him smile, and he picks up his pace to reach him just a little bit faster.
“You’re early,” he says once he’s near enough, and despite having been waiting for him Ryunosuke jumps, turning to him with his face flushed by the nipping November wind. “Did you wait for long?”
He leans in to give Ryunosuke a kiss, right on his reddened cheek.
Ryunsuke makes a sound of demurral. “Actually, you’re late,” he chastises, but his words are warm. “Only a few minutes, though.”
“That doesn’t count,” Kazuma counters. “A few minutes is to be expected.”
“Yeah… with you,” Ryunosuke teases, and chuckles as Kazuma frowns at him. “Let’s go in, it’s freezing.”
Once inside, their legs carry them along the already familiar route to the second floor, to the back corner by the windows, where the nicer chairs are hidden. It’s more secluded there than in the study hall, which makes it a perfect spot for just the two of them.
Ryunosuke sets his bag on the floor next to one of the armchairs and shrugs off his coat and scarf. He sinks into the seat, reaching over to dig out his laptop. Kazuma follows his example, folding his coat on the armrest, before sitting down in the chair opposite from his boyfriend.
All of this is familiar and nice, a part of the routine they’ve already established in the few months they’ve been in London. A study date, one could call it, one of many they’ve had. This time, Ryunosuke has an essay to write, while Kazuma is simply prepping for his upcoming exam.
And so they get to work… for approximately twenty minutes, before Ryunosuke breaks the studious silence around them by clearing his throat a little awkwardly.
“I have something to ask you, Kazuma,” he starts. His tone is guarded, tentative, but also soft in a way Kazuma recognises. He had used that tone back in Japan when Kazuma had caught the flu, while trying to convince him to stay in bed. “It’s for your own good” , he had said back then, in that same voice, gentle around the edges.
He has no idea what it means to be hearing it now.
“Yeah?”
Ryunosuke hesitates. “Are you lonely?” Kazuma’s brows burrow in bafflement, but before he can say anything, Ryunosuke hurries to continue. “It’s just that… well, whenever you’re alone at home you keep taking Barok down from the shelf.”
Kazuma’s face goes slack, something heavy suddenly churning in his stomach.
“Initially you were so opposed to me even buying the doll, and now you keep talking and acting as though he were a real person, sitting him next to you on the sofa, giving him my kindle as though to read…” Ryunosuke shakes his head, lets out a chuckle, meeting Kazuma’s eyes with a look of sincere worry. “So I’m just wondering, do you… feel lonely when I’m gone? Would you want to get a pet, maybe? Like a dog, or something?”
Kazuma’s mind reels.
He has no idea what to say, not in the face of Ryunosuke’s earnest expression. But he needs to say something ― needs to explain somehow the strange connection he feels to Barok even though the tables have turned on him, Ryunosuke now in the place of the sceptic.
“Look,” he says with a sigh, no real idea on what is going to come out of his mouth, “I know you don’t believe me, so I’m not even going to try to convince you that the doll is actually cursed and alive.” Ryunosuke offers him a raised brow that speaks volumes. “But… don’t you think it’s weird how you immediately got so attached to him― it?”
Slip of the tongue.
He did not mean to use ‘he’ , because no matter that Ryunosuke himself does that, the same from Kazuma’s mouth immediately makes his chestnut brown eyes widen.
He carries on before Ryunosuke has time to answer.
“I just… want to find out more about the doll and where it came from, that’s all.”
That seems to be the right thing to say to sidestep the entire conversation about his supposed loneliness, because Ryunosuke appears to visibly deflate, nodding minutely, like he is not even aware of the movement. He probably isn’t ― and the thought of that makes Kazuma want to smile, despite everything.
“Well,” Ryunosuke says, drawing back from his lean forward. Kazuma hadn’t even noticed him doing so, both of them unthinkingly drawing closer to one another. “I… can understand that, I guess.” He smiles, and though the smile is small, it reaches his eyes, like the bright twinkle of stars. “What Maria told us was quite fascinating. It would be lovely to learn more of Barok’s story.”
“Exactly,” Kazuma says. And figure out how he became a doll, he doesn’t say, though he thinks about it. He still believes that in order to break his curse they must learn what happened in the past to leave him in such a sorry state.
Actually… He pauses, realising where exactly they are.
“C’mon,” he says, snapping shut the book on his lap and pushing up from his seat. “Let’s go and do that.”
Ryunosuke’s eyes go round.
“What?” he squeaks, like he is wont to do when something unexpected occurs.
Kazuma laughs, offering his hand for him to take, pulling him to his feet.
“Let’s go and see what this place can tell us about Barok’s ‘family history’.”
He makes air quotes as he says it, but he does mean it quite literally.
They make their way to one of the library computers, and Kazuma jostles the mouse to make the monitor blink awake. He pulls up the catalogue search function, typing van Zieks into the search bar. Pressing enter, the page takes a while to load, but then entries upon entries flash in front of their eyes, listed neatly one under the other.
By his side Ryunosuke releases a small breath, and Kazuma grins.
However, it only takes a few moments more for the grin to fall.
“What the hell,” he mutters, clicking furiously from one item to the next, each time faced with the same conclusion. “How―?”
As it turns out, somebody has already borrowed every single book containing information pertaining to the van Zieks family. Most likely the same somebody, seeing as the date all the books are due is the same.
Kazuma grits his teeth, continuing to click away to no avail. He only startles when he feels a gentle but reassuring brush against his forearm. He looks to his right to see Ryunosuke smiling at him.
“It was a good idea,” he says. “But perhaps it’s better if we go back and try to get some actual studying done. It’s what we came here to do, after all.”
Kazuma huffs out a breath that is not as resigned as it is fond.
“You’re right,” he says and lets Ryunosuke pull him back to their seats and then, after a few hours, into the library cafeteria for some dinner. In the end, it is a successful study date, he thinks, more so for Ryunosuke’s laughter when Kazuma complains to him about the inconsistencies of recent legislation, and something bright and hot bursts to life in his chest at the sound.
Something he had also felt while talking with Barok.
He suppresses the thought and focuses instead on listening to Ryunosuke, complaining in turn about his own slow progress in writing his essay, and finishes his tomato soup trying not to think of anything in particular.
***
Returning home, Kazuma cannot help but to grumble as they walk up the stairs to their apartment.
“I still can't believe we learned nothing about the van Zieks family,” he says, frustration filling his voice. “How could all the books about them be out on loan? There were like forty of them.”
Ryunosuke pats him on the shoulder appeasingly. It does not aid his mood in the slightest.
“Excuse me,” a loud voice suddenly booms from behind them, “but did you say ‘van Zieks’?”
They both jump and spin around in sync, coming face to face with their freak of a downstairs neighbour, the grin on his face splitting from ear to ear.
“Mr Sholmes!” Ryunosuke gasps. “Don’t scare us like that!”
The man bends over laughing. “I’m so sorry, my dear fellows, but when I overheard you two talking, I simply couldn’t help myself!”
Kazuma ignores how much he wants to maim the man in favour of simply narrowing his eyes.
“Do you know something about the van Zieks family?” he asks, suspicious.
“Hmm… Well, you could say that it is not I, you should ask,” he says mysteriously, “but rather… Iris!”
That’s ―
“Your ten-year-old daughter?!”
“She’s very smart, actually,” Ryunosuke mutters.
“ Still ,” Kazuma insists. “Why would she know anything?”
Sholmes assumes a very self important expression. It’s almost like he’s posing.
“All shall be revealed, Mr Asogi,” he says, “if only you follow me to my humble abode.”
He turns to gesture at the open door by his side. Kazuma and Ryunosuke share a look. Ryunosuke shrugs.
“Fine,” bites out Kazuma.
They follow the smirking man, and in doing so Kazuma feels much like Alice must’ve felt when following the white rabbit into his hole only to fall into Wonderland. Sholmes seems to lead his life exactly as chaotically as he presents himself outside his absolute mess of an apartment.
“Iris!” the man hollers, walking into a very cluttered living room. “Our neighbours had something interesting to say in the stairway!”
“Oh… were you listening through the door again, Hurley?” comes a girl’s voice from further in ― the same voice Kazuma had heard back when he’d banged on their door for assistance. “You know that’s very rude.”
That certainly explains the way he’d suddenly hopped in on the conversation.
Sholmes leads them into the room the voice had come from, which looks like a mix between a young girl’s bedroom and the laboratory of a mad chemist. Or a mad physicist. Or a mad horticulturist. Or… just any scientist, really, as long as they’re mad.
A girl with surprisingly bright coloured hair looks up at them as they enter, sitting at her desk in front of a large computer screen. She is making a graph of some sort, one that looks rather advanced for an elementary schooler.
“Oh!” she says, and turns the screen off, hopping down from her chair. She beams at Ryunosuke. “Ever so nice to see you, Runo!” Kazuma blinks, and her eyes shift from Ryunosuke to him, gauging him up and down with astonishing sharpness even as she continues smiling. “You must be Kazzie, then. It’s nice to finally meet you!”
He blinks again.
“Hello, Iris,” Ryunosuke says, and his voice is fond if a bit baffled. “Hope we’re not interrupting your… research.”
Kazuma turns to direct his confused stare at him. Research?! The girl is ten!
She shakes her head. “Not at all! I was just finishing my presentation on my family history for a school project.” She grins. “Would you like to see it?”
“Ah… that is―” Ryunosuke starts to say, but is cut off by Sholmes.
“That is, in fact, the very reason they’re here!”
Silence follows his words.
“What… do you mean, Mr Sholmes?” Ryunosuke asks, but from his tone Kazuma can tell that he’s already arrived at the only logical conclusion ― the very same he himself had drawn from his words.
“Iris is adopted, you know,” explains Sholmes. “And her biological lineage is rather fascinating, as it turns out.” He offers them a meaningful look. “She is in fact related to the aristocratic family of… van Zieks .”
Once again, nobody says anything, not until Ryunosuke turns slowly back to regard Iris and smiles.
“We’d love to see your presentation, Iris.”
She seems slightly taken aback. “Oh, alright then,” she says and turns her screen back on, clicking away to open up the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation. It almost looks professionally made and nothing like something a child could achieve.
She begins her tale into the history of the family, starting with how they had originally migrated to England from the Netherlands in the mid-1700s. Kazuma honestly zones out for the first ten minutes or so, because her account is rather more detailed than it needs to be for an elementary school project. He only startles when she gets to the late Victorian period and dramatically states that that had been when everything had changed.
In the 1880’s, a strange tragedy had befallen the family. Following a string of gruesome murders in London, the younger heir of the family had suddenly disappeared, followed shortly by his brother, Klint van Zieks, confessing to being the culprit behind the killings. He had, apparently, been coerced, but was nonetheless hanged. His brother, however, was never found.
After that, the family’s reputation had of course been irreparably ruined. Klint’s surviving wife had sold the van Zieks manor and left London with her daughter, Iris’s namesake, remarrying elsewhere.
“Wait―” Kazuma interjects then, before the girl can move onto further detail on the family’s later phases. “The brother who disappeared… Did you learn what his name was?”
“Iris Senior’s uncle?” asks Iris, as though there had been any other disappeared brothers in her story. Ryunosuke still nods eagerly, and she brings a finger to her chin. “It wasn’t mentioned too many times in my sources, but I think it was… Barok.” She nods. “Yes, I’m sure of it. Barok van Zieks.”
Bingo.
By Kazuma’s side, Runosuke releases a barely audible breath.
“Thank you for teaching us all this, Iris,” he says, then. “It was truly remarkable.” He offers her a smile, and she seems to glow with the praise. “How did you even find out all of this?”
“Oh, it’s all thanks to these.” She points at a pile of books on the floor next to her desk that is honestly as tall as she is. “I borrowed them from the library!”
The very same library they had visited earlier in the day, no doubt.
“That is… very thorough of you.”
“Thank you!” She throws her hands together, nothing but delight upon her face. “I hope it will be enough to get me a good grade.”
Ryunosuke laughs. “I’m sure it will, Iris.”
Kazuma clears his throat then. “I think we should get back home now,” he says. “Your presentation was… intriguing.”
Iris fixes him with a knowing look.
What could she know?! he thinks, but then again, he isn’t sure he could put anything past her after this.
“That’s alright,” she says. “It was nice of you two to visit. Please drop by for tea, anytime!”
Promising to do so, they bid her farewell, exiting her room and similarly saying their goodbyes to Sholmes. They head upstairs to their own apartment, not much conversation passing between them as they make dinner and eat, both preoccupied with their own thoughts and Iris’s earlier revelations.
After his shower, Kazuma looks up from the bathroom door at Barok, sitting on his shelf as per usual, and wonders whatever could have happened before his disappearance. Whatever did must be the reason he is a doll now.
He feels like they must be close to the answer.
***
Kazuma is lying on the grass in the shade of a citrus tree on a field not too far from where he grew up. Ryunosuke is there too, sitting by his side, watching the clouds pass by across the blue sky. It must be summer, though Kazuma can’t really feel the heat of the sun, nor the cooling breeze that rustles the leaves above them.
“Here, Kazuma,” Ryunosuke says, smiling, and offers him something.
He twirls the four leaf clover between his fingers, careful not to crush its delicate stem, and wonders what fortune now awaits him. It is a blessing, isn’t it, to be given such a gift?
He turns back to Ryunosuke, meeting his smile with his own. The expression on his face is open. Irresistible. There is nothing he can do but climb up and lean towards him, lids fluttering shut as he captures his lips in a kiss. They’re pliant under his own, parting for his tongue to dart between them. He isn’t quite sure what Ryunosuke tastes like, but this close Kazuma can catch the scent of his shampoo ― lavender, same as his own, though, curiously, as he continues kissing him the scent begins to change, morph into something else, until he realises it smells nothing like lavender anymore.
Instead, it smells like orange blossoms.
He pulls away and blinks his eyes open.
Barok’s eyes stare into his, their clear blue almost iridescent, and Kazuma cannot breathe .
He jolts up from his bed with a gasp, the picture of the perfect summer day melting away, replaced by the sleepy dimness of his bedroom. He heaves for air, staring at the wardrobe door in front of him, not really seeing it. He cannot shake the vision of Barok looking at him, cannot stop his heart from beating like a drum as heat floods his face.
“Mmh― Kazuma?” comes Ryunosuke’s voice, bleary with interrupted slumber.
Hearing it only makes Kazuma’s flush deepen.
What the hell was that?
He cannot believe himself. There must be something wrong with his brain to be dreaming of such a thing.
“What’s the matter?” Ryunosuke continues, his words clearer, more awake. “Did you have a nightmare?”
He wishes he could say he did, but it surely isn’t fear that has his pulse through the roof. He avoids looking at Ryunosuke, and a small sigh of realisation falls from his lips. It only makes Kazuma turn further away, trying to hide the reactions of his traitorous body. Ryunosuke lets out a laugh.
“Why are you embarrassed?” he asks teasingly. “Usually you get so… excited when you have sex dreams.”
Kazuma’s brain very nearly short-circuits at the word.
“It wasn’t a sex dream,” he hisses, mortified. “I just kissed him!”
That… was the wrong thing to say, wasn’t it?
“...him?”
Ryunosuke’s question is so very soft, like the brush of a feather against his skin.
“I mean―” Kazuma swallows. He has to think of something to save himself. “I only did that because it was you at first.”
Great, like that’s going to explain anything.
Ryunosuke huffs out a slightly exasperated breath, shuffling closer to him on the bed. His body is warm beside Kazuma’s, even through the blankets. A small comfort amidst the turmoil of his raging thoughts.
“Kazuma… I’m going to need you to start from the beginning.”
He takes a shuddering breath and does, explaining the dream as well as he remembers it, the details of it slipping further away with every waking second.
“…and then I kissed you, but in the middle of it you turned into―” He hesitates, not knowing how to phrase it without sounding like an utter lunatic. “―someone else.”
He wishes Ryunosuke wouldn’t ask, so of course he does .
“Who?”
Kazuma falls silent, unable to admit it.
“…it was Barok, wasn’t it?”
He spins his head to stare at Ryunosuke in shock. Ryunosuke stares back, his eyes almost black in the darkened room. Kazuma cannot be sure, but he thinks his gaze is affectionate ― not accusing, like he’d half-expected.
“Aren’t you mad?” he blurts out.
Ryunosuke blinks. “About… what?” he asks. His voice is definitely gentle.
“About―” Kazuma cannot bring himself to say it, his cheeks burning. This is worse than when he’d flubbed a speech during his first year in university, the day he’d first met Ryunosuke. “You know,” he finishes lamely.
Ryunosuke shakes his head, smiling.
“It was just a dream, Kazuma.”
“No, but―”
It wasn’t.
The words die on his tongue before he can let them out, breath catching in his throat.
Oh fuck, he thinks, his mind spinning suddenly as his cheeks heat up further with mortification. Because the truth is that it wasn’t just a dream ― it was a wish , a longing he realises has been building inside of him for a while now.
A thoughtful hum from Ryunosuke breaks through his spiralling thoughts.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier,” he starts, lowering his eyes from Kazuma’s, as though bashful. “About how I was instantly fascinated by Barok.”
That is probably the last thing he’d expected him to say in this moment.
“In the beginning, I really thought you were just making fun of me, trying to scare me or something by claiming he’s cursed and all that,” Ryunosuke continues, twisting the edge of the blanket in his hands. “And then when you kept going, I really wondered whether the stress of everything was getting to you, but―” He pauses, drawing a breath that sounds as warm as his expression. Amused. “―that isn’t it, is it?”
He lifts his eyes to Kazuma’s.
“I… think I might believe you, after all,” he whispers. “That Barok… is actually real .”
Kazuma stares, mouth fallen agape, and Ryunosuke grins.
“I don’t know if it’s weird, but… I’d really like to meet him.”
“I want you to meet him, too.” The words bubble past Kazuma’s lips before they’ve even fully registered in his brain. “Ryunosuke, I―”
He falls silent, not knowing how to continue ― not with the burn of emotions in his chest, too fierce, somehow, for him to fully comprehend. Ryunosuke lifts himself up from the mattress then, bringing his palms to cup Kazuma’s face.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says, his voice sure and full of promise. “Together.”
And Kazuma can really do nothing more, but to let him pull him in.
***
The next day Kazuma purposefully hurries home ahead of Ryunosuke, though in front of their closed front door he stalls, hand hovering above the handle. Somehow, he isn’t sure what he’s going to say or do when he sees Barok, though he knows he must see him. The need to do so flares inside him like something lit aflame.
He decides it’s best to not think too much and pushes inside.
Closing the door behind him he feels the shift in the air, the telltale sign of Barok’s transformation. Shrugging off his coat, he walks into the living room to meet him, to see him brushing down the wrinkles of his decorative clothing.
They should really get him something more comfortable to wear, he thinks idly, imagining how he would look in something more modern, like jeans and a hoodie. It’s difficult to picture it. Barok doesn’t really feel like a person who would wear something so casual. More likely, he’d dress in a three piece suit or something.
A vision of him in a tight white button up and nothing more flashes to his mind.
“I learned more about your past,” his mouth says before he lets himself get too distracted.
Barok looks at him, eyes keen. “Pray, do tell,” he beckons, and so Kazuma does.
He tells him about the van Zieks family, doing his best to summarise everything Iris had told them the previous day. At the mention of Klint van Zieks, Barok suddenly looks pained, his gaze glazing over.
“Klint,” he repeats the name. “I remember him.”
Kazuma perks up. “You do?”
“Only faintly, but yes,” Barok says slowly. “Our parents died when I was young, and I was mostly raised by him.”
That doesn’t really relate to how his curse came to be, but it’s still more than he’s managed to recall before. Kazuma continues the tale, and learning of Klint’s confession Barok’s expression scrunches further in on itself.
“So, based on all this, it’s safe to say that however it happened, you were turned into a doll in 1886,” Kazuma finishes. Saying it aloud tickles something in his mind, thoughts previously unconnected colliding. “That’s… around the time when my great-great-great-great grandfather was in London.”
Barok startles from his remembrance, and their eyes meet.
“You said you had seen my katana before?” Kazuma asks, and Barok nods.
“I’m certain of it.”
He hums and rises up from where he’d sat on the sofa, walking to the bedroom to fetch the sword. He brings it in, holding it out for Barok to view. Looking at it, the man goes even paler than he already was.
“That sword,” he starts, and then abruptly clutches his head, “is what caused my scar.”
He rubs his temple, and Kazuma lowers the sword. He wants to reach out and touch Barok’s face, soothe his obvious distress, but resists the urge to do so.
“How?”
“I… remember now,” says Barok, slow and trailing, his voice dripping with anguish. “My brother was friends with a Japanese detective named… Genshin Asogi.”
That’s ― !
“The case of the serial killer, the Professor,” he continues, struggling to get the words out. “Genshin was solving it, as was my brother, for all I knew back then.”
He shakes his head, heartbreak clear in his eyes, even as his expression otherwise remains passive. Kazuma cannot imagine how he feels, learning now that it was actually his brother, behind such cruelty, no matter that his hand had been forced.
“One night after the fourth murder that had shaken London, Genshin Asogi came by the manor.” Barok looks faroff once more, no doubt seeing into the past in a way he has not been able to do in a long while. “By chance, I myself came by later, and the staff told me that Klint had ordered for no one to disturb them.” He swallows. “That worried me, so I went to look for them.”
His breath hitches then, his eyes widening slightly. Kazuma cannot hold himself back anymore and reaches out to touch Barok’s arm. It seems to comfort him.
“I found them in the ballroom, in the midst of a duel.” A pause. “I did not think. I threw myself between them, pushing my brother out of the way as the sharp edge of Genshin’s katana, the very sword you’re now holding, swung down.”
The haze in his eyes clears then, and he meets Kazuma’s questioning look.
“After that, I can remember no more,” he says, holding his gaze. “I guess… I should have died, but somehow I didn’t.”
“You… turned into a doll?” Kazuma asks.
“That’s all I can surmise.”
His thoughts spin like a whirlpool.
“So, it was my family’s sword that cursed you, but then, a century later, seeing me made you aware once more,” he recounts, thinking back on everything they know. Barok stares at him, his eyes shimmering with cool blue. “In that case, there must be something I can do to break the curse, but what?”
Immediately after the words leave his mouth his mind provides him with the obvious fairytale answer:
A true love’s kiss.
He flushes as the memory of the dream fills his mind, the vision of Barok staring at him, just like he’s now doing, his expression unreadable. He thinks of what Ryunosuke had said, of wanting to meet Barok, and how he himself truly had meant it when he’d responded that he, too, wants them to be able to meet ― properly, as they both are.
He turns away for a moment, setting the sword on the sofa, and faces Barok fully, stepping close into his space. Barok looks down at him, his brows pressing down in confusion.
“What are you―” he begins, but cannot finish the question, not before Kazuma pulls him down by his lapels into a kiss. Barok lets out a sound of surprise, muffled by the press of Kazuma’s lips against his, and then submits to the touch, letting Kazuma set the pace.
He means for the kiss to be short, and it is.
Well… the first one is.
He pulls away afterwards, blinking his eyes open to meet Barok’s. The look in them is scorching , and seeing it Kazuma’s throat immediately goes dry, his mind completely blank, and as such there really isn’t anything else he can do but to crash their mouths back together, devouring the moan that releases from Barok’s throat. He kisses him again and again, lets his hands curl around his neck and twist into his hair, forcing him closer until he is sure they’re going to melt into one another.
Swept up in the feeling, he fails to hear the sounds coming from the stairwell, the approaching footsteps and the clatter of keys, until finally he is alerted to the door being pushed open as the man he is still kissing begins to shrink, his body morphing right before him. He throws his hands up to grab a hold of him, to catch the doll in his arms before it falls to the floor.
“Kazuma?”
With wide eyes he turns towards the sound of his name, curiosity written on Ryunosuke’s face.
“What… are you doing?”
Immediately, he feels himself flush with embarrassment. And guilt .
What, indeed?!
“I kissed him,” he blurts out. He needs to say it right now.
Ryunosuke’s expression goes from curious to bewildered. “Is this about the dream again?”
He puts away his coat, stepping into the living room and closing the distance between them.
“No, I mean right now,” Kazuma replies, aware of how hysterical his tone sounds. “I― I didn’t mean to.” Well… “I mean I did, but only because I wanted to try if it would break the curse.” His eyes snap from Ryunosuke down to the doll in his hands and back up again. “It didn’t.”
“You kissed Barok?” Ryunosuke asks, as though to confirm it. “As… a man, right?”
He doesn’t sound angry, nor betrayed, Kazuma thinks. In fact, he sounds―
Actually, he doesn’t have the slightest idea on how he sounds.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have.”
Ryunosuke shakes his head. “No, it’s alright,” he says with a smile, and if Kazuma’s eyes were blown wide before, they must now look as wide as saucers.
“It is ?”
Ryunosuke’s smile grows, and he looks down at Barok, reaching to take the doll from Kazuma’s unaware grip. He holds him up, staring into the icy blue eyes.
“We’ll be even after this,” he says and then presses his lips against the doll’s porcelain face, right in the middle of the golden scar.
Oh, thinks Kazuma, his mind going blank as for a moment everything stands still.
Then there is a blinding light, and Ryunosuke takes a step back in surprise, the doll lifted from his hands.
It levitates in the air before them.
“Kazuma?” Ryunosuke asks, glancing at him, his eyes as round as Kazuma’s own.
Pulsating with the golden energy, the doll’s form begins to grow, his body extending slowly, gradually, until with a soft tap his feet touch the ground. The light dims away, and in front of them both stands Barok, his eyelids fallen shut, his scar no longer golden. He draws in a breath and blinks open his eyes.
“Oh,” breathes Ryunosuke.
His voice, somehow, does not sound surprised in the least.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he continues and smiles, bright and genuine.
“Likewise,” says Barok, and there is something meaningful in his expression, a depth to the gaze he shares with Ryunosuke.
Kazuma is reminded of the time Barok had called his boyfriend intriguing . Clearly so, as he cannot now seem to pry his eyes away from Ryunosuke’s face, much like Ryunosuke cannot seem to look away. He wonders, briefly, if he should feel jealous, but the truth is that he doesn’t. Instead he feels light. Happy.
He lets out a breath, the corners of his lips pulling up in a grin.
“See,” he says, gesturing at Barok. “I was right, all along.”
Ryunosuke’s smile widens.
“Yes, Kazuma,” he whispers, and when he glances at him, his eyes sparkle with a teasing joy. “You were.”
Kazuma looks at him, then, before turning to Barok, meeting the simmering emotions in his eyes. And after that, there is really nothing more to do, but to grab them both and pull them along into the bedroom. Ryunosuke laughs, and Barok lets himself be led willingly, and although Kazuma feels very much like he’s going to burst he also thinks that everything will be alright.
And strangely enough, in the end, everything is. In the days following Barok’s transformation back into a human, reality shifts around him, adjusting to his existence like nothing were amiss. Weeks pass, and Barok learns how to navigate the modern world, aided by Ryunosuke’s gentle guidance and Kazuma’s merciless teasing. Months go by, and he slots into their lives as though he was always meant to be there alongside them ― and in a sense, Kazuma feels like he was .
And then, one evening, as Kazuma finds himself curled against Barok’s chest, with Ryunosuke pressing onto him from the other side, he thinks back to how obsessively he’d wanted to come here, to London, and figures that surely it had to have been for this .
Feeling blessed, and not at all cursed, he snuggles closer to the men surrounding him and closes his eyes.