Chapter Text
Soshiro doesn’t have boobs, and if he did, he thinks he would have noticed by now. An unwavering truth - or so he thought. But alas, here he is, standing in front of a strange mirror in a strange bedroom, looking into a feminine face that’s not his, attached to a naked body he does not recognize. And there are boobs.
Sheesh. Must’ve hit my head pretty hard last night.
Another truth, one he's more certain of at present. Last night, Soshiro had challenged Soichiro to a sparring match - usually his brother declines, citing excuses that get more and more ridiculous as time goes on, but this time Soshiro had gotten under his skin. Provoking him in ways he probably shouldn't have, which led to him getting knocked back flat on his ass, his head hitting the ground hard.
Now he's apparently having very realistic dreams. Is that a symptom of head trauma? He'll have to look into it when he wakes up.
(Soshiro dreaming about boobs, for the record, is normal. They’re just usually in his general vicinity, not attached to his person.)
He looks in the mirror again and a girl around his age stares back. She has an elegant face, beautiful from every angle, but there's something in the way her jaw sets, or how her brows seem to be frozen in a downward tilt, that gives her a hardened edge. Her eyes are arresting, a deep abyss of dark brown, almost black, with symmetrical beauty marks under each. She's serious, that much he can tell right off the bat.
Has he seen her before? Soshiro remembers reading about how the people you dream about are people you've seen in real life, whether you’ve met them personally or just saw them in passing. He feels like he'd remember seeing a girl this striking, but there’s a chance she was just a background character on a TV show, or something of that nature.
The air is cool and goosebumps appear down his new arms and legs. He should get dressed, that’s the responsible thing to do, but he can’t stop staring at his new self.
(He tries to ignore the boobs, he really does.)
(He does not try that hard.)
As he inspects himself, poking and prodding things he's never been able to see, let alone touch, during his waking hours, he marvels at how lifelike it all is, how realistic it feels. (Not that he would know from firsthand experience, but still. Skin is skin. Fat is fat. It's only his imagination that's heightening this experience. Surely boobs can't actually be this fun.)
Then, suddenly, a tap at the window - a pebble? - snaps him out of his fantasy as a bolt of shame and guilt shocks his veins. He instinctively covers this girl's chest and privates with his hands and looks around to make sure no one is watching. This may be a dream, but he's still shy and, despite his previous exploration, still thinks of himself as a gentleman.
“Mina! Miiiiina! We're going to be late!”
A boy’s voice calls from outside the window. Loud enough to be heard from the ground level of what looks to be a three-story house, but faded through the glass. Soshiro’s not sure he recognizes it.
Mina, eh? So that's my name.
He rummages through the closet and pulls out an oversized white T-shirt with cat designs along the chest and some forest green sweatpants. The clothes give off a gentle floral scent - jasmine, he thinks - completely lacking in the sharp, chemically recreated perfume scents that detergents are usually known for. He knows this scent from somewhere, but he can't quite place it.
Now adequately dressed, he peeks out the window, crouching in the bottom right corner so whoever’s out there won't know he's watching.
A boy, older than Soshiro and definitely older than the body he's now inhabiting, but not by much. He has spiky hair and a wide face with an even wider grin to match.
“Mina, I see you! Don't think you can hide! Come on, we gotta gooooo!”
Shit.
Soshiro turns and looks around the room. There's a phone on the nightstand, plugged into the charger, with a case that makes it look like a calico cat, ears and all. He reaches for it, the passcode blocking him from accessing the phone itself, but the date and time are still on display. It's summertime, mid-morning, almost afternoon. There shouldn't be any school to be late to, so who is this boy and where are they going? Is he a friend? A boyfriend? Are they going on a date?
Ah, fuck it. It's just a dream, so why bother?
He opens the window where the boy waits below and shouts down at him. “Be right out!”
His voice is soft, fragile like cotton candy, like any amount of pressure might make it dissolve. He's not used to having a voice as gentle as this. One he could break with ease.
He's about to walk out the door when he looks down and remembers: girls wear bras, don't they?
Well, fuck. This dream sucks now.
He looks through the closet, pulls more cat-themed shirts, winter sweaters, and pastel skirts from their hangers and throws them onto the bed. Where would a girl put a bra? Surely in the back? So a weirdo can't break in and steal them? The logic makes sense to him, but the reality isn't aligning. There must be a more logical explanation he's not thinking of, or else his brain would have put them in the closet. This is his dream after all.
There’s a credenza on the other side of the room holding a sizable stuffed animal collection. All cats.
What is it with this girl and cats?
He opens the top drawer and immediately slams it shut upon finding rows of bras and underwear. Even though it's a dream, it still feels invasive.
(He chooses to ignore the boob-touching thing, that's DIFFERENT.)
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes before reopening the drawer and pulling out the first bra and pair of underwear he felt. The panties he put on blind, but he had to open his eyes for the bra.
“How’s this thing supposed to work?” Should he unclip it, put it on, and reclip? Or is he not supposed to touch the clip? Are these things fragile? Do they break if you put them on wrong?
“OI! MIIIIINA! HURRRRY! UPPPPP!”
Soshiro whips his head towards the window and shouts, “I'M COMIN’. QUIT YER YAPPIN’.”
The words sound odd coming from this voice, but it gets the job done. No response from the boy. Good.
He decides to put the damn thing on over his head and, for fuck’s sake, why is this so hard? It takes a couple of minutes to wrestle the cups down into place, but eventually he gets them there. He tugs on a black T-shirt and grabs the small, over-the-shoulder purse hanging by the door. Inside there's a wallet - cat themed, of course - some tissues, a plastic wrapped tube thing, and a set of keys. There’s a pocket set aside for the cell phone, but he leaves it behind. Can’t get into it anyway.
Outside, that boy is waiting with his arms crossed and tapping his foot against the pavement. He looks annoyed at first, but then he breaks out into a huge grin.
“It's about time you showed up! The movie's gonna start soon!”
Ah, so this is a date.
Around them is a crowded neighborhood, uniform houses built so close together that you could spit out the window of one house and hit another. Nothing like the neighborhoods back home. But then again, nothing here is like home, what with the city so clear above the backyard trees. Tokyo - he’s never been here, but it’s unmistakable with its tall buildings and clear glass windows shining like jewels in the sunlight.
The boy waves a hand in front of “Mina’s” face.
“Sorry, sorry, I lost track of time,” Soshiro responds in an attempt to be bashful. “Forgive me, will ya?”
The boy cocks his head to one side. “Heh, you're acting strange today. What's with the accent?”
“Oh, uh,” he pauses, not quite sure what to say, but also not sure why he’s going out of his way to pretend to be someone he’s not when none of this is even real. “Isn’t it kinda fun? To practice speakin’ in different accents?”
Luckily, that seems to be the right thing to say. Either “Mina” is the theater type, or this guy’s as gullible as a family dog.
“Yeah, I guess it is kinda fun!” the boy says in the absolute worst Kansai accent Soshiro has ever heard. “Now let’s get movin’!”
~
They weave through the buildings and crowds, the boy a shepherd and Soshiro his aimless sheep. The city is more of a maze than a metropolis, but he read once that most cities are, at their core, a mess of back alleys and dead ends and traffic jams and missing street signs. Concrete mountains and valleys covered in billboard ads and neon signs, every street they turn down looks the exact same as the one before.
Soshiro wonders if this is all the dream is: a voyage to nowhere. Maybe he’ll wake up before he even gets to the movie theater, and wouldn’t that be a laugh? All his dreams have a way of keeping him at arm's-length - a goal in sight, but no way to reach it.
All the while the boy is yapping away about this thing and that - shows he's watching, his neighbor's dog, kaiju sightings on the news, the new brand of cereal he’s tried but doesn't like. There's nothing connecting his stories, just ramblings led by his stream of consciousness, which is somewhat soothing amongst all the honking car horns and crying children on the streets around them. Soshiro quickly learns that his name is Kafka - he counts himself lucky that he happened to end up going on a date with a guy who talks about himself in the third person when telling stories. A strange thing to be grateful for, but today's a strange day in general.
“I swear it's around here somewhere,” Kafka says, looking around.
“You don't know?”
“Oi, oi!” he shouts a little too loudly as a blush creeps on his face. “They just reopened in a new location, don't forget! I'm used to the old building!”
“Oh?” Soshiro asks, lazy and uninterested. Trying to make small talk so time will pass by faster. “Why'd they move?”
Kafka stops short. Turns to him. His stance is rigid, eyes dark. “Don't even joke about something like that, Mina.”
And then he keeps walking, not even bothering to look back to see if Soshiro's following.
Clearly he said something very, very wrong. Was there a clue he missed in all that rambling? Did he forget something important? Guilt knots in his gut. Should he apologize? Or leave it and not make things worse?
Apologize. It's the right thing to do. At least he hopes it is.
“Hey, uh- Kafka,” he starts, keeping a light jog to keep pace at his side. “Wait.”
Kafka stops and turns again.
“Look, I'm sorry for askin’ that back there. I wasn't thinkin’ and it slipped my mind.”
Kafka looks down at him with an eyebrow raised, scrutinizing what he sees, and sighs like an old man. “You're acting really weird today, Mina.”
“Sorry. Again. I-”
“It's fine,” he cuts Soshiro off with a small smile and a pat on the head. “We all have our off days.”
If only you knew.
Kafka continues to lead them down a series of side streets and wrong turns until they end up in a residential area consisting mostly of gray apartment buildings and shared parking lots. At this point, it's clear that they've missed the beginning of the movie, maybe even half depending on the time, but neither of them are willing to say anything about it.
Shadows begin to shift and grow as the sun lowers on the horizon. Kafka balls his fists and pouts, gaze never leaving the ground.
“I'm real sorry for getting us lost, Mina. I'll make it up to you, I promise.”
Soshiro holds his hands up in front of him in an apologetic gesture. “No need to worry about it, big guy. We'll catch that movie some other time.”
Kafka looks up at him. “‘Big guy?’ You really are taking this accent thing to an extreme, huh?”
Soshiro gives an evasive chuckle and points in the direction they came from. “Maybe we should start headin’ home before it gets dark.”
Kafka hangs his head and mutters a defeated “I guess.”
As they head back, kicking pebbles and stepping on especially crunchy-looking leaves along the way, they pass a parking lot half full of cars, probably belonging to one of the apartment buildings on the street. And that’s when they feel it. A low rumble.
“An earthquake?” Soshiro asks hopefully, looking around to Kafka who’s frozen in place, beads of sweat gleaming on his face, his eyes somewhere far away. That alone tells Soshiro everything he needs to know.
Ah, shit.
Kafka grabs hold of Soshiro’s wrist and breaks out in a run, dragging his much smaller female frame along behind him. “We gotta get out of here! NOW!”
But it’s too late.
The earth beneath the parking lot erupts and the shock of it sends Soshiro and Kafka flying. They collapse on the street, Kafka landing with his head under the exhaust pipe of a parked car while Soshiro rolls into the middle of the road. Even from here, there are new massive cracks in the pavement, but before Soshiro can turn to get a look at the kaiju that caused it, Kafka is already up and running again, grabbing Soshiro along the way despite the deep cut in his forehead, blood flowing down into his right eye.
A shriek echoes behind them, piercing in his ears, and Soshiro can feel the hot breath of the kaiju even from here.
The kaiju takes a step towards them, the force of which nearly knocks them over again despite the distance between them now, nearly two blocks. That thing, whatever type of monster it is, can probably catch up to them within seconds if it wants to.
And it most certainly wants to.
“MINA! KEEP RUNNING!” Kafka's crying, tear droplets trailing in the air behind him. “DON'T STOP!”
As if he’d do anything but sprint as fast and as far as this new body can carry him.
But fate seems to have other ideas.
Another step from the kaiju, heavier this time, followed immediately by another of equal power, and combined they do succeed in knocking Soshiro and Kafka over. Falling face first on the ground, face lined with scrapes and dirt and chipped bits of pavement, Soshiro feels his ankle buckle and twist beneath him. He tries to get up, to push through the pain, but he can't. His ankle won't support his weight and the kaiju keeps getting closer.
The pain is so unbearably real that Soshiro almost forgets that this is a dream.
“MINA!” Kafka's already up again, already rushing back towards Soshiro trying to lift him up, to drag him along.
“Kafka, my ankle! I can't!”
“You have to!”
More footfalls. More waves of fear and unsteady ground. It's getting closer and there's no time left to spare.
Kafka picks Soshiro up and lifts him on his back. Soshiro wraps his arms around Kafka's neck, albeit reluctantly. Even in a situation like this, he doesn’t want to be the one in need of rescue.
“Hang on tight, Mina!”
Kafka breaks out into a run, but with Soshiro on his back he can't move as quickly as before. Soshiro turns his head, hoping for a glance of the kaiju so he knows what they're up against, but there's nothing there. Either it's hidden behind a building, or it went back underground. Neither option is particularly good in the long run, but hopefully it will buy them time to escape.
“Is it following us?” Kafka asks. His breaths are choppy and he's sweating from every part of him, but he does not slow his pace.
“I don't see it,” Soshiro replies. Not a good thing, not a bad thing. Just an unknown factor that could go either way.
“I'll turn down this street,” he says, nodding towards an upcoming side street to their left. “Maybe we can lose it. If it went right, that is. Did you catch which way it went?”
“We would've felt its footsteps if it was still above ground,” Soshiro reminds him. “It's probably beneath us.”
“Running in a straight line won't help us, then.”
“Agreed.”
Kafka turns down the street and comes to an abrupt halt upon realizing it's a dead end.
“Shit,” he says under his breath. “Mina, we gotta turn back.”
“Yeah, looks like we have no other choice.”
With tears and sweat running down his face, Kafka runs back to the main street, Soshiro heavy on his back, and pumps his tired legs forward until he reaches a convenience store a few blocks away.
Kafka sets Soshiro down gently on the bench out front. “Don’t move. I’m going to call in the kaiju and then we’re going to keep going, okay? Shout if you see it again, I’ll come back out for you.”
Soshiro nodded and Kafka disappeared into the building, leaving Soshiro alone on what would otherwise be a completely ordinary evening. He didn’t realize it before, but the area is full of people - students lying on the grass across the street with their pens and notebooks out in front of them, parents walking home with their hyperactive children, dog walkers stooping down to pick up a mess - all of whom are completely unaware of the looming threat.
Soshiro opens his mouth to shout, to warn them, but he quickly realizes just how sore his jaw is from the fall on the pavement. He touches his face and it’s wet and stings all over, especially around his nose. Since when was he crying? Are those tears or…? He pulls his hand away to see the blood, crimson and thick and sticky on his fingers. He wipes it off on his shirt, but it doesn’t help much.
A few people glance his way as they pass, some look concerned while others confused. He can’t even imagine what he must look like right now: a high school girl with a bloodied face, maybe a broken nose, cuts and bruises blooming all over her arms and legs, torn clothes, and a swollen ankle. There’s a lot to be concerned about with an image like that.
A middle-aged woman with short gray hair freezes in place across the street, assesses Soshiro’s condition, and begins to approach, already pulling her cell phone out of her purse. But before she can say anything, Soshiro points in the direction they came from.
“Kaiju. That way. My friend’s callin’ it in now.”
The woman’s eyes are round as plates. “Oh dear, we should leave for cover. Do you need a ride, sweetie?”
“No, I’m all set here,” he says before adding a small “thank you” at the end.
The woman looks at him for a moment, opening her mouth and then closing it again, but then turns and rushes off. Soshiro lets out a sigh.
Vaguely, he can hear Kafka shouting in the convenience store. Whether it’s at the employees or into the phone, he has no idea. He can’t make out the words other than “kaiju.”
Kaiju kaiju kaiju kaiju kaiju.
The word’s a stain in Soshiro’s mind. He didn’t get to see it, but based on the vibrations, it must be on the larger end of a miniature class. Had he had his blades, he could have taken it out. He’s been training day in and day out for a moment like this, to get his first kill, and yet the only time it comes is…
In a dream.
Right.
Soshiro's about to get up to go into the store and see what's taking Kafka so long, despite the shot of pain in his ankle that has spread up his leg. But then it happens.
The ground in the street just a few feet away from him crumbles, opening up for a mass of black scales and a single, piercing eye.
It's here.
Soshiro opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out, not even air.
It crawls out of the hole, its eye wide and locked on him, with steam from its flesh traveling to Soshiro and making him dizzy.
So dizzy.
Vision blurry, head heavy.
Poison?
“MINA!”
Kafka's voice. So far away. Is he still in the store?
Soshiro feels something grab his shoulder, but that, too, feels far off.
The kaiju roars, its breath the last thing he feels before…
~
Soshiro wakes suddenly covered in layers of sweat, breaths heavy and fists balled tightly into his sheets. He looks down in the pale morning sunlight and sees a body he recognizes as his own.
Why would he expect to see anything else?
Every part of him is damp, even the sheets under him have stains in the shape of his body, to the point where his bed looks like a bloodless crime scene.
What- what was that?
His mind is hazy, the previous night's sleep slowly releasing its hold on him as the details of his dream begin to slip through the cracks. He was… in the city? No, or maybe it was the suburbs. He thinks there were cats, but he's not sure. There was a girl, though. He remembers that much for certain.
He forgets about her by noon.
~
A fair distance away in Tokyo, Mina wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of how she got there. She only remembers a boy and a sword, but those memories fade before the day is up.