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It’s November the 16th, 2024. It’s been one year and 84 days since Kerry’s life imploded. One year and 84 days since Arasaka towers blew up, and Johnny with them. Probably maybe. Officially it’s still a rumour, but Rogue was there. After he bothered her enough she confirmed it. Johnny’s gone.
Kerry’s sitting on a lounge chair on a beach just outside Masbate City. The white sand stretches out before him, pristine, and in the distance are verdant hills. It’s beautiful and he feels nothing about it. He’s rented this massive private resort kind of place, so there’s no one else in sight. If he wants, though, a hot guy can come deliver him drugs and drinks and his gleaming ass at a shout. He doesn’t want. He wants Johnny.
There’s a guitar leaning up against the lounge chair. He has been meaning to write. Johnny always said that’s what helps, pouring all your emotions into the music so you don’t have to deal with them, so they disappear and become art. Something like that. The memory is hazy, seen through a lot of alcohol. But that was what Johnny wanted; to make the feelings go away. Kerry doesn’t want that, he just wants the feelings to be different ones. He hasn’t written anything new in a year and three months.
Last year on this date, Kerry was catatonic with grief. It’s a little easier today. Johnny’s birthday. He would have turned thirty-six today. Now he never will. Last week, Kerry bought a niche for Johnny in the Night City columbarium. Had to bribe someone to get him the one next to Alt. Some random Night Citizen has been evicted post-mortem, or moved to a less prime location. Kerry doesn’t give a shit. Johnny deserves that. It’s her she went after, Rogue says. Her digital ghost or whatever, trapped inside some ‘Saka harddrive or however it works. Tech was never Kerry’s speciality.
There’s nothing in Johnny’s niche right now, but when Kerry goes back there will be. Guitar strings. Picks. A few pills for his ghost to enjoy. A couple of condoms and maybe a bottle of really nice Bourbon. Kerry doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife. Your energy lingering? Sure, maybe, but not an actual ghost, see through and holding chains or whatever. He doesn’t think your conscience lingers, or that your soul needs things, but right now he wants to. The rituals are a little comfort. Like lighting a candle if he for some reason finds himself in a church. He doesn’t believe, but just in case. The thought matters, right? Johnny would call him stupid and sentimental, and he would be right.
He picks up the guitar. Starts to strum, but it’s fallen out of tune. He considers doing something about it, but the simple task feels like an insurmountable obstacle, and so he sets it back down. What’s even the point? All the good music he’s written he wrote with Johnny. He calls the hot guy whose name he forgot the second he told him and asks for another drink. A few minutes later there is a tall glass of something fruity and colourful with two umbrellas, slices of five different fruits and 37% alcohol content in his hand.
“Mr. Eurodyne, that is the sixth one of tho—”
“Fuck off.” He doesn’t say it aggressively. Doesn’t have the emotional energy for aggression any more. Or anger. He is too dehydrated to cry.
“Yes, sir.”
The young man obediently fucks off, and there is just the sound of the waves left, gently lapping at the sand. A few birds circle in the distance. He hears their squawking faintly. It’s so quiet here. He sips his drink.
“Fuck you doing, man?” he imagines Johnny saying. “Sittin’ around, wasting away?”
“I’m in mourning,” Kerry replies. Maybe out loud, he’s not sure. Who gives a shit. “Happy birthday.”
“Day drinking alone? C’mon, sad even for you. You wanna honour my spirit or some shit, at least have a giant party. Good music. Hot babes. Or dudes, whatever. Maybe both.”
The Johnny who isn’t there leans back in the sand, arms crossed behind his head. A cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth, and hey, that seems like an idea, so Kerry sets his drink down and grabs a crumpled pack from his pocket. Lights it. Inhales deeply. Johnny glances at him.
“Yeah, well. I miss your stupid ass.”
“Course you do. Everyone does. Rogue’s gotta be devastated.”
“Know what she said?”
“That no dick will ever fulfil her like mine did?” Johnny suggests with a grin. It’s a happier one than Kerry has seen for half a decade. It makes him look younger. Like in their Samurai days. Fuck, Kerry misses those times.
“Said maybe now we’d get some fuckin’ peace.”
“Ouch.”
“Guess it is peaceful here,” Kerry continues. “Fuckin’ palm trees and quiet.”
“It’s driving you insane.”
“How’d you know?”
“Shit, choom, I’m a figment of your imagination. I can read your mind.” Johnny wiggles his fingers and makes ghost sounds.
“So you’re not haunting me for real?”
Johnny looks at him like he’s an idiot. It feels desperately familiar.
“No, gonk. Ghosts aren’t real. Nothing left of me but ashes or some shit, mixed in with the rest of the rubble.”
“Hmm. Not like you’d pick me, anyway.”
“Y’think there’s anyone else I’d bother haunting? Fuck, man. Know you’re the person I spent the most time with in my life, yeah? Anyone else’d get on my ghostly nerves.”
“I didn’t?”
“All the time,” Johnny says, and shrugs. “Not enough to make me leave.”
“Did you ever… Shit. You ever feel the same way about me?”
Kerry’s grinds the stump of his cigarette out in the sand. Grabs his drink. Some sort of small fly is stealing his blood orange slice. Fucker. He squeezes it into the blood pulp, then pulls it loose and tosses it at the sea. It lands several feet short of the wet sand. When he looks back, Johnny is sitting next to his lounger, arms around his knees. His hair hangs in front of his face.
“What are you trying to tell yourself? I got no answers. I’m just the part of your brain that knows Johnny real well. What do you think?”
“He never saw me like that.”
“Not that he ever said,” Johnny agrees.
“No. Fuck. I thought, once… No. I hoped. I hoped, and I loved him so fucking much.”
Kerry squeezes his eyes shut and takes several deep breaths, gradually slowing. Trying to remember how many seconds his therapist told him to hold it for. By the time the pressure behind his eyes loosens and he looks up, Johnny has disappeared. Back to whatever part of Kerry’s brain he lives in.
Kerry lets out a choked sob.
He calls for another drink.