Chapter Text
“Buy me a coffee.”
“Cappuccino.”
“Ask for an extra espresso.”
“Or even two."
“And caramel."
Eto Yoshimura never wrote in one message what she needed. Always communicating with her was like a spam attack. Standing on the escalator, Arima Kishou idly watched as more and more messages popped up in the dialog box. Most likely, she was also late. Which means that their whole plan for the day will go wrong.
However, they have known each other for thirteen years, and Arima could definitely predict such a development and plan everything better. He went outside. The morning was cold, unusually cold for the end of September. A trendy coffee shop was found not far from the car service. Maps suggested that the rating is 4.8.
Arima joined the queue and thought out if he needed coffee. He was on night duty and hoped to get some sleep on the way. On the other hand, it has been especially difficult for him to sleep in recent months, and in this case he needs coffee to cheer himself up. When his turn came, he took two coffees and a bento. If he knew Eto, then she hadn't had breakfast since she hadn't had coffee, which meant she would have had to waste time on that too.
Of course she was late. For twenty minutes. He was preparing to wait longer.
“Thank God. I would have died if I hadn't had coffee.” As usual, she didn’t apologize for being late.
They spent more time filling out the documents for renting a car than they had planned — the car service employee turned out to be unusually talkative. He described the advantages of their center a lot and for a long time, great season for a tourist trip, and the equipment of the chosen car. Thank god, Eto decided to take over communication with people and Arima just sat in the waiting room, slowly sipping coffee and drilling his eyes into the corner.
The inspection of the car, Eto also took over, meticulously examining inside and out. About cars Arima didn't understand anything, although he could drive.
“Have a happy romantic weekend.” That's how the employee said goodbye to them when Eto signed the last papers. Arima and Eto looked at each other at the same time and grimaced almost synchronously. A little noticeable, but still.
Eto got behind the wheel, and Arima didn't mind. He settled into the passenger seat.
“Takahashi-san promised to provide everything. It turns out that she is an avid tourist. When she found out that I was looking for a rental of camping equipment, she was directly offended that I didn't ask her. And, surprise-surprise, gives us everything we need for free. Out of friendship.” Eto's voice was cheerful and chirpy. Yes, getting a coffee was the right decision. “So one less expense item.”
“Who is she again?”
“A middle-aged lady who writes very mediocre detective stories. But very good-natured, even trying to impose her help. It's a sin not to use her.”
“Lend out of friendship, yes?” It wasn't that he didn't understand the context, but he felt he had every right to tease her if she didn't keep her promises.
“It's a very sincere friendship on her part. And I don't like to upset people for no reason.”
Considering how often she tried to upset him, it was admirable that she found a reason every time.
Eto set up the navigator and drove out of the parking lot. She caught a radio wave with a road radio on the built-in radio.
“What's the address?” I'll see if there are any shops nearby.
Eto parked near a small private house. He wasn't a professional, but in his amateur opinion, a mediocre detective writer earned more per year than a special-class investigator. However, it's most likely not the quality of the novels, but his work.
A smiling, plump woman with a kind face came out onto the porch.
“I'm going to the store. ”
He made a shopping list in advance, but his pragmatism collided with marketing again. In his personal opinion, the products in the stores have always been structured in the most illogical way. Supermarkets and shopping malls have always been able to make him feel like the stupidest person in the world.
Arima was already putting the goods on the belt at the checkout when Eto joined him. With two bottles of alcohol, juice and some sweets.
“This is not on the planned list.”
“In the evening, when we sit around the campfire, you would thank me.”
“I doubt it.” He rolled his eyes. Still, the alcohol was checked out, and Kishou paid for it. “This is a work trip.”
“So we'll have a drink after hours,” Eto simply summed up. Kishou just sighed, but didn't say anything — arguing when the alcohol had already been paid for seemed impractical to say the least.
They stood in traffic jams an hour and half an — within the city and immediately on the way out of the city. Apparently, many people wanted to go out into nature while it was warm enough to spend time comfortably.
But then they drove faster. They listened to music more than they talked, but still the conversation flared up every now and then, and all the time about abstract topics: Eto retold the plot of some absolutely stupid movie she saw the other day, with antics and parodying voices, so that Arima wanted to laugh out loud several times, but he limited himself to a thin grin. He himself recounted several funny cases from work caused by new and absolutely absurd novelties. Then the conversation would die down, absolutely naturally, dissolving into the music.
At the beginning of the third, Eto suggested making a stop, and after another half hour they drove to the gas station, where there was also a store and small tables on the street.
It was nice to stretch and warm up his muscles. Arima took bread, cheese, sausage and vegetables out of the trunk, and took one of the tables and began making sandwiches. Eto came out of the store with two tall cups of coffee.
“It's bitter, but I took the bags of syrups.”
Arima refused syrups — death from diabetes had never attracted him, and watched with quiet horror as Eto did a mix of four syrups in her cup. He wasn't sure if this drink could even be considered coffee.
It was quiet here, and Arima was surprised to notice how fatigue began to let go of him — he didn’t need to waste energy tracking sounds, a huge number of details, and smells. And there were almost no people here.
“It's beautiful here.” He looked around. Apart from the store, the parking lot and the road stretching away into the distance, there are no traces of civilization. “And the air is completely different.”
“You're just getting old.” Eto grinned and loudly sucked coffee through a straw.
"That's beside the point. I've never liked Tokyo. Overly..” He paused, trying to find the right word. “It's just overly.”
Noisy. Deliberate. Overloaded. In a hurry. Bright. And painful.
“This is a city of possibilities.”
Yes. Yes, that's how this city felt in the Sunlit Garden — a cherished dream. Possibility.
“But the possibility is always expensive.” Eto grinned. “It's probably an overestimated expectation. This is what visitors feel — they live the dream of the city, and the dream is always better than reality. Tokyo in my head is better than the view from my window, and I pay a lot for my view.”
Yes, we are both strangers to this city.
“If you could choose any place to live, what would you choose?”
“The village. A small house and a vegetable garden. Not these new-fangled, modern Western style houses, but old wooden Minka. So that the furniture was not beautiful, but sturdy and a large bookcase and a rocking chair with a plaid draped over it. The old man's dream, right?” He laughed at himself, but this dream was too personal to become ridiculous in someone else's eyes.
“No, not at all. I would choose a small town, one where everyone knows each other, and therefore are close. Near the ocean.” She didn't smile, as if she had decided to be serious for a few seconds. “I would come to the beach every day, and there I would write books with a computer. I'd hang a hammock at home. It's funny that we both would have chosen a quiet life rather than rushing to a megalopolis on the other side of the globe.” She threw the cup in the trash
“Will you ask for boiling water at the checkout?” Arima handed her two thermoses.
While Eto was refueling the car, Kishou brewed coffee and tea for the road — it's good to have something besides water, and it's still decent for them to go.
After stopping, they increasingly came across deserted roads, and only near cities did they meet other cars.
Eto switched the radio from pop to rock. They discussed the latest novelties in books — agreed that most are terrible, but disagreed on why. Eto argued that capitalism is to blame for everything — they pay for speed and number of pages, not for talent, and the book should be sold, not cling. Arima retorted that people have simply lost the value of life and think too much about themselves and hardly think about others.
“You're just a romantic and an idealist in everything that doesn't concern your stupid job.”
“I am ready to challenge both counts of the accusation. But in the department, conversations get sillier and sillier year by year. Everyone looks superficially, refuses to notice the obvious and ignores the most important thing.”
“Well, there's clearly a problem with your department. Do you arrange a job interview at all, or do you take everyone?’
“The key thing here is what we take. These people come to us from somewhere. Already like that. Not to say that the department tried very hard to process someone.”
Then they switched to politics, and then to economics — came to the conclusion that the economy was close to crisis, but no one had enough knowledge to develop this topic in any way.
“According to the maps, we are already close. There must be a cove somewhere.” Eto slowed down and they slowly glided along the road.
“The ocean is on the other side. Is there a more specific place?”
“Is it already visible?” Arima just waved his hand into the gap between the trees, and Eto broke into a childish, jubilant smile. “Tatara said four kilometers from Shinano towards Niigata. He doesn’t understand modern technology at all, but he also didn’t guess that someone else could put a point on the map.”
“Either further, or we have already passed. There are more cars, it's too crowded.”
“I'm thinking further.” Eto drawled doubtfully. “However, everyone from Aogiri arrives and will arrive from other points, so ours may not be so secret.”
“There are APB out of Tatara in five prefectures.”
"But not in this one?"
Arima rolled his eyes. This way, they won't come to anything.
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“A hidden boat and there is something that will be useful on the island.” Find the hidden boat in a place without a clear designation, great.
They definitely spent forty minutes searching. The boat turned out to be old, all the paint was frayed, but there were no holes and it looked solid. They left the car ten minutes away.
“How much do you weigh again?” Arima turned to Eto. She rolled her eyes expressively. “We have a lot of things, I'm thinking how to distribute them so that we don't turn over.”
“Obviously not more than fifty. What?”
“Are you that light?” Of course she was small.
Things were quickly and briskly distributed along the bottom of the boat. Eto took off her sneakers and socks, rolled up her jeans and walked along the bottom, then carefully climbed off the nose. She leaned overboard, emphasized the water, splashed into him. Just drops have flown to him. Arima just rolled his eyes. He squinted at the water.
“With this current, it's stupid to turn on the engine, we need to row.” And by that phrase he meant that he would row. But Eto argued with him, and he gave her the oars first.
“Is this island coming at all?” Eto looked over her shoulder. Sweat was running down her face.
“The current is heading towards the mainland from the island, we will row for a long time. But we'll go back quickly.”
Then they changed. Arima couldn’t row with the same intensity, he was still physically weaker than Eto, but he was more resilient and could row much longer. They changed twice more.
The heat that appeared in the afternoon began to subside. In the beginning dusk, their boat gently touched the shore. After carrying their belongings to the shore, and dragging the boat into the sprawling bushes and covering it with a tarpaulin, they moved along the coastline.
“Is there no one on this part of the island yet?”
“Nope. Tatara believes that it’s stupid to arrange a massacre near the shore. He wants to be deep in the island so that he can set up ambushes.”
“It's logical.” Arima nodded.
“It seems to be here.” Eto looked around. Tatara gave rather vague instructions, but this place corresponded to the description. And more importantly, she liked this place. An open clearing, a well-visible horizon. Ocean.
“We need to pitch before it gets completely dark.” Oh my god, what a serious tone. She grinned.
Arima opened the bag with the tent and pulled out the parts one by one. When the parts were taken out, he felt around the bottom of the bag with his hand, then looked at her.
“No instructions?”
“Oh, we will cope without it, it can't be difficult.” Arima just sighed heavily.
It doesn't have to be difficult. But when they put the tent together for the third time, and it still didn't look like a tent, Eto was ready to sleep on the bare ground. The connection was working intermittently, so the YouTube video with the instructions was downloading slowly. Arima apparently decided to continue building intuitively. When the video on her phone was half loaded, the fourth version of the tent looked as unconvincing as all previous versions. Arima exhaled slowly and silently stared at the newly disassembled parts. He looked like an annoyed child, and it amused her.
“What do you think the general IQ of all participants of pitching should be in order to make a tent the first time?”
“578.” He answered two seconds later, as if the answer had been ready for a long time and he was just waiting for the question. Eto just grinned.
“That's it. Well, believing the video, we put these long things in these rings.
In the rapidly approaching darkness, the tent was set up for the fifth time. Eto make fast the pegs while Arima fixed the bottom. Then he brought the sleeping bags into the tent and began unpacking.
“There are two options. We can each sleep in our own sleeping bags. Or we can unbutton both, and use the first one as a mattress, and the second as a blanket and sleep together. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and his voice stumbled, as if he had bumped into some invisible barrier. Then looked back at Eto. “Is there any kind of social protocol...?”
He didn't finish, but she read between the lines that he fully trusted her to solve this dilemma. Eto chuckled, but some kind of tenderness slipped between her lips. She liked to find the roughness and chips in his perfectly honed image. And she was always amused by his social awkwardness.
“Let's sleep together. Or are you embarrassed of me?” She winked slyly and laughed. He turned away, rolling out the first sleeping bag on the bottom of the tent. She knew for a fact that he rolled his eyes with a completely blank expression on his face.
“We need to make a fire. We have some logs, but dry brushwood won't hurt.”
“I'll gather it. And you start cooking.”
It was getting dark fast now. Fortunately, her ghoul vision helped her see in the dark perfectly. The island was quiet, peaceful. In three months, it will be covered in blood. Peering into the thin trunks of the trees, she fixed her surroundings. Moths with thin white wings, just beginning to appear. A subtle buzzing. The flapping of wings. Excellent work for writing, but they won't be needed — Eto will publish one book and only one. And yet, there was something fascinating and intoxicating about allowing herself to put everything in the scenery for a while and watch life as watch a performance from the auditorium. She will still have time to feel everything like a living person. Enjoy this illusory peace for the last time.
She came out of the woods. Arima was sitting near a freshly lit campfire, and Eto slowed down, admiring. A man was sitting by the fire. Not god. For once, not in formal clothes, but in a rough-knit sweater, clearly someone's gift. And no matter how much she, as a writer, was fascinated by the figure of the terrible god, it was humanly pleasant to see a human.
She smiled at him, and his lips reflexively parted in a smile, mirroring her. And then he looked at her and the smile became meaningful. We're so ordinary in this forest. The heroes of tragedies are always ordinary people, illusorily elongated and forcibly transformed into convenient images by the proposed circumstances. Isn't it scary?
Streams of fat from roasting meat dripped from thin wooden homemade skewers. The smell is delicious.
“Where to? It's still raw.” Arima intercepted her outstretched hand. Oh, humans, they need to get everything ready. His fingers were soft and pleasant to the touch.
“Okay.”
She took out the iron dishes, laid out the cheese and sliced the vegetables.
“The side dish is ready.” She wasn't very interested in the side dish, but she took a small pot off the fire. There was rice inside.
“When did you manage?”
“Yesterday. At night.” There was a pause between the words, as if he didn't know if he should elaborate.
“We could just buy semi-finished products.” It was a simple and obvious solution, but Arima, as always, avoided simple solutions.
“They are stuffed with food additives to overflowing. I'm not sure if selling them is legal.” Investigators are funny because you never know what their suspiciousness will manifest itself in. “The meat is ready.”
The meat was juicy, slightly sweet and tender. The juice was spreading over her tongue. This is probably the most delicious meal of her life. Not because it's special. But because there is no hope for food in the future prison, and behind bars she will remember this dinner. For many reasons.
Through the flames, she looked at Arima's calm face, not indifferent, but peaceful. Sadness came over sharply. We'll both be dead by the end of this year. There won't be any more of this. If only it wasn't in vain. But there is no guarantee
I think about death every day, I don't want to think about it at least one evening. Is that a lot?
She shook her head, her hair flying over her shoulders. Eto reached forward and took out two iron mugs and a bottle of wine.
“We don't have a corkscrew.”
“It's not needed.” Eto rolled her eyes. The soft kagune flowed down her arm and took the desired shape near her fingers. Two neat turns, and the cork leaves the neck of the bottle. A dark red liquid fills the mugs, looking like blood in the dark.
It's sour, of course, but it's delicious.
“Let's not get drunk.”
Eto just shrugged her shoulders. He can do whatever he wants, but she's going to drink until she's having fun.
Arima stretched out his legs. The campfire smelled delicious. Eto was sitting opposite, smiling broadly, and they were talking, even after a whole day together, easily finding topics for conversation and it was ... pleasant.
He liked and disliked drinking it with Eto Yoshimura. He didn't like, because alcohol destroyed those crumbs of tact that were barely glimmering in her sober mind. Her drunken self felt no boundaries and went ahead. She asked painful questions directly, without subterfuge, and demanded an equally direct and quick answer. She was being impertinent, hitting sore points and joking angrily.
But he liked because he saw how after one or two glasses her shoulders relaxed, and her eyes, forever scanning and drawing conclusions, softened, and Arima stopped feeling like a prisoner of war under harsh interrogation. Sometimes, she switched to herself and without hesitation told the most intimate or most shameful stories of her life, which Arima always listened attentively, cocking his head to one side, savoring like an apple stolen from a tree, and squinted his eyes, only partially envying the brightness of her life.
The bottle of wine ran out, Eto opened another bottle a little less deftly, which turned out to be gin. He tried to prevent this mess, but he didn't really try. He had trouble saying “no” to Eto Yoshimura, and he tried to hide this fact as best he could.
“Could you date me?” The question hit him like a bucket of cold water. “This isn’t a hint. I was just wondering, well, after we were mistaken for a couple. Yes or no?”
Arima looked at her through the flames. He had never thought of her in this way, and now he was trying to force his brain to look at her from a different angle. She is beautiful. He had never thought about it before. In his head, she lived as a bony, loud and defiant teenager, and although Arima had long perceived her as an adult, he still remembered her as clumsy and awkward. And now, he was surprised to find that she had changed in these thirteen years. The face became more mature and lost its childishness, cheekbones appeared. She was still thin, but she no longer looked like tuberculosis in the last spring.
“God, I'm not asking if you could live with me all your life. The question was hypothetical, you shouldn't think so hard.”
But he wasn't thinking, he was comparing. Arima didn’t allow himself to look at her breasts or hips and looked at her hands. Thin, tenacious fingers, wrists that seemed fragile to him, elegant hands with sharp elbows that, as he knew firsthand, hurt under the ribs. He looked her straight in the eye, although he usually avoided any direct contact, and for a second thought that he was drunk too. Her eyes looked black in the flame. A soft, sucking darkness.
“I'm not sure we could stand each other.” They chuckled almost simultaneously. Eto leaned forward to pour herself another gin. Her long hair fell over her face. And looking at how she tries to fix them with one hand and pour herself a gin with the other, Kishou realized that he had lied.
He handed his mug to her to wash down his own disappointment. It isn’t worth it for a man sentenced to death to think about an intelligent and beautiful woman and wonder if they could have had something.
“What time is it?” Eto asked suddenly, becoming a little more serious.
“It's... two o'clock in the morning.” Arima stared at his electronic wristwatch in amazement. It seemed to him that they’d been sitting around the campfire for no more than an hour, but somehow five had passed. “We have to go to bed.”
They’re going to get up at dawn, and now it doesn't seem possible. Eto began to collect their things to hide in the corner of the tent. Arima got up to put out the fire and felt himself wobbly. He wasn't going to drink, and he certainly wasn't going to get drunk. His head felt all cloudy, but he seemed to be thinking normally. Moving much more carefully and deliberately, he extinguished the flame. Darkness surrounded him for a few seconds, but he just stood there with his eyes closed. He opened them, and indeed, he saw the outline of the tent, the slit of the entrance, Eto. She moved quickly and seemed to be more sober than him. Or she pretended well.
Water. He needs to drink water before going to bed. He gropes for the bottle, unscrews the lid and drinks greedily. And take off glasses, you can't sleep with glasses on.
One good thing, drunk he will fall asleep much faster than sober. Arima climbs into the tent, removes glasses, takes off his shoes. Eto climbs in after him, fastens the entrance.
"Arima? Don't even try to wake me up before eleven, I'll kill you.”
This is the exact opposite of what they agreed on. He exhales slowly. All right, he will solve this problem in the morning.
Arima lies on his side with his arm under his head. Sleep is falling on shoulders, eyes are closing. And when it seems to him that he is almost asleep, the upper sleeping bag disappears. Kishou opens his eyes and sees that Eto has taken it all to herself. He grabs the edge that is closer to him and pulls it towards him, hiding himself again. After a few seconds, the sleeping bag disappears again. This time Arima opens his eyes with irritation. Eto has the whole sleeping bag. Really? He pulls his edge towards himself with all his might. He's not even cold anymore, but for some reason he can't just let go of this situation. Eto laughs.
“Don't you understand what the problem is?”
“You're stealing my legal half.”
“No, you're lying on the very edge, its length is not enough. Move on.”
Maybe she was right. In fact, she was probably right. But what was apparently a drunken frenzy didn’t allow him to simply agree and obey. So he pulled the sleeping bag back on himself.
"Are you serious? Okay, but remember that you refused the compromise yourself.” She pulled it in her direction, but Arima was ready and held his edge in his hands. To be honest, he hoped that she would try several times, fail and go to bed. But it seems he managed to forget who he was dealing with. Because she didn't calm down. She crawled up to him, but instead of lying down, she threw herself on him, tickling him.
Really?
He's been ticklish all his life, and of course, Eto figured it out. Arima immediately grabbed her hands, but let go of the sleeping bag. She broke free from his grip, grabbed the sleeping bag, rolled onto her side and wrapped herself in the sleeping bag like a roll. Seriously, Eto? For a second, it seemed to him that his brain was shutting down and he was ready to fight her. But the next second he calmed down. He wanted to sleep, and he could sleep without a sleeping bag.
He turned away from her, hugged himself and closed his eyes. Laughter came from the roll. Don't react. That's exactly what she wants. It was easy not to react, but it was hard to fall asleep when he was annoyed.
“Pss, Arima, are you asleep?”
Don't answer, it will take several hours.
"Stubborn as an ass, you're impossible.” He heard a noise behind him, and tensed, ready for her new attack. But a warm sleeping bag touched his shoulders, and Eto lay down next to him. Her cheek touched his back, and he jerked involuntarily. “How nervous we are. I hope you're happy.”
Against his will, he smiled.