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Tezuka had been here before.
Of course he had, he’s here nearly every day. From the first beats of morning to the quiet fall of night he sits cross-legged among passerby, a thin, white cloth pooled at his feet. Tired eyes scan the crowd, dark pupils flitting from the busy salary-men to the group of giggling students fresh from the throes of a school day. Most walked right by, parsing only a brief glance at the strange man and his curious display before melting back into the sea of pedestrians. Some spoke, out loud and in whispers, pointing curious fingers with the occasional bark of laughter before skirting right by. But on the rare occasion one would approach, would walk right up to him and ask, typically hushed and hurried, for his services.
“A fortune?” he would ask, lips pressed into a thin smile that stuck in the center of his face, not quite reaching the edges. The customer would nod, would crouch or perhaps even kneel in front of the strange man in anticipation. Would watch as he unearthed a handful of coins from his pocket. Old US quarters instead of yen, amounting to seventy-five cents, would be tossed in the air with a flick of his thumb before clattering onto the surface of the cloth. He would look then, taking in the position of their landing, which side was face up, what that all meant.
Then he would give his reading. Love, hope, destruction, death. And the customer would leave, satisfied or troubled, it mattered not to him.
“My fortunes are never wrong.” he would always say.
Yes, Tezuka had been here before. It was his routine, after all, a machination of his life. But as he stared at the man across the way- the one with the dark spiky hair and the just as stiff expression, bathed in a thick black coat far too warm for the spring weather- he thought for a moment, that he had been here before.
This was not Tezuka Miyuki’s first loop.
He would remember sometimes. Bits and pieces coalescing in his thoughts, memories bubbling at the surface before sinking back into obscurity. It would be people, events, sometimes places. Memories that belonged to him but weren’t his. Lives lived but never experienced. There were constants. His childhood never changed, and he always grew up to be a street fortune teller.
And he would always meet Yuichi Saito.
The circumstances weren’t quite always the same. In some occurrences they were longtime friends. A next door neighbor from childhood, a friend from middle school that defended Tezuka from bullies. Other times they would meet as adults. Chance encounters on the street, fortunes told, fate spilled from Tezuka’s lips.
It didn’t matter how, no matter which way Tezuka grew up the two would always find themselves entwined in each others strings. Or at least Tezuka would find his way back to the other man, the curious musician with the gentle smile and an air of death lingering over his head like a dark shadow.
If he remembered Yuichi prior to their meeting it would scare him. An anxiety that would seep into his bones that someone he was about to meet would die. That there was nothing that could be done to stop it. And even if he tried, fate would find a way to kill the man he gravitated towards as if his pull were magnetic. He could not deviate. For the one who believed that fate could be changed, this was predestined, another constant.
He is born. He lives his life. He meets Yuichi. He tells fortunes. Yuchi dies. Time passes and the world is reset. He is born again. He lives his life again. He meets Yuichi again-
After the tenth loop he stopped keeping count. Although, Tezuka wonders if it had always been this way. If life had always spun and bled together, if history was just simply a mirage. If 2002 was some type of sacred year, or if time seemed to flutter and die at the first snowfall of January. How many more lifetimes could this go on? How many more lifetimes could Tezuka Miyuki take?
Of course, questions were forgotten, time was reset, it was still 2002. By now Tezuka had learned that this was all the fault of someone else. That time was being pushed, shifted, contorted backwards again and again and again by a man who promised wishes in exchange for war. That this loop was a game, or more-so a battle. A slaughter. And this man wanted Yuichi. Wanted him to become a Kamen Rider. To grant his most dear wish. A mercy.
But Tezuka did not find this to be merciful. Not on the nights where the two sat on the piano bench together, Yuichi’s hands folded in his lap, bandaged. Not when the musician moved to rest his head against Tezuka’s shoulder, tears budding along the edge of his red-rimmed eyes. Not when the deck, a garish pink against the sleek black of the piano lid, stared back.
It was mercy. That was what the man with the trench coat implied as he placed it in Yuichi’s shaking palms. The promise of all his greatest desires shrinked and pressed into a flat deck of cards. And it only had a single caveat. One trade-off for everything anyone could ever want. The man was an angel, this was a mercy.
All Yuichi had to do was fight.
Fight. The word felt dirty in Tezuka’s mouth, even as he rarely spoke it aloud. Fight. In all the lifetimes he had gotten to know Yuichi, he knew passiveness washed over him, a gentle ocean wave. The man was timid, perhaps the textbook example of a pacifist. He was never one to fight back. No. Even when others fought him, when life spat in his face, when an altercation smashed his dreams into a million pieces of sparkling glass. He never fought back.
“It is not kind,” he would say, lowering his head to stare at his shoes. “I can’t do it.”
Cannot fight. Cannot win. Cannot kill.
Was it fair to exchange a wish for a human life?
He never had the time to ponder that question. Or perhaps he had never stopped thinking about it. It settled into the backdrop, a sinking piece of driftwood that would forever remain in solitude on the ocean’s floor. They both knew it wasn’t fair. Yuichi more so than Tezuka. But it was difficult, Tezuka thought, to think about fairness in a time such as this. It would do neither of them a favor if he continued to sit atop the piano bench, a songbird on a lone perch, and moralize. There would be time to do just that later.
But not right now. Not as screams accost Tezuka’s ears and tears blurred away the colors of his vision. As shaking, wounded hands reached out to him, blunt nails catching the dwindling light of the room. Nails that could not be fashioned into claws. Hands that only ever held his own with an apprehensive gentleness. Tools that could not be transformed into a horrible weapon for the purpose of snuffing out a life.
The monster of the deck was hungry. Yuichi was not feeding it what it so craved. Was it only natural then, that the beast would turn on its master? Devour the flesh, the blood, the soul of who commanded it, who denied it sustenance. It had been ignored, neglected. Wasn’t this fair then?
If only he had fought, if only he had accepted the deck. Is that what the man in the tan coat wanted Tezuka to believe? That this cruelty, this slaughter, could have been avoided? If he simply had done what fate commanded of him. If he listened to the omens of death told to him in somber, shaking whispers.
It was not as if he was never warned. Tezuka told him, of course. After ceaseless loops, one might think a premonition could divert fate. His fortunes were never wrong, yet he believed one could change the hand they had been dealt. Fate was ephemeral. Transient. If more people were aware of their fates then perhaps it would be easier for people to change what was laid out for them. But Yuichi could never change. He was stalwart in his beliefs and his kindness bled until it dyed Tezuka that pink color too. That no wish would ever be worth the pain of curtailing the embers of life. No murky blood spilled would ever right the wrongs of the death angel and his game.
It was all man-made. A monster had killed Yuichi and all Tezuka could think in the silence that followed was that it all reeked of man. That man had forced the deck into his hands. Man had let the monster fester, grow hungry, mad. That man had brought Yuichi to bleed desperation. Desperation to be exploited. Wounds to be clawed open by man and presented an anthropocentric salve in the respite.
This was not the throes of fate. But the inexplicable sins of man.
Tezuka had to change this.
But how could one go about doing that? This was not the first time he had breathed this thought to life. Tezuka was beginning to believe that there were no such thing as “first times.” That everything that he could ever conceptualize had been done before by a prior version of himself. Or was it all the same self. A divine punishment just for him. He could not begin to fathom what he had done to deserve such a fate. But it was no matter.
If Tezuka knew anything about cycles, he knew that they could be broken.
He had the deck now. That muted pink stain that burned a hole through his pocket. A hot coal pressed against his thigh as he sat cross-legged, a thin, white cloth pooled at his feet. He had taken it this time, had pressed it against his own shaking palms, translucent teardrops sliding off the outer shell.
Yuichi’s fate could not be changed. That was the one true constant of Tezuka’s endless cycle through life. But it did not have to end this way for everyone else. The spiky-haired man in the leather coat, the lawyer in his neat suit, the graduate student he would never meet. Did fate have to herd them like sheep as well?
And what of the policeman? The game developer? The company heir?
And what of Asakura Takeshi? Did he deserve to be exhumed from this cycle like the rest of them? All Tezuka could feel towards him was an icy sort of malice. A creeping, slow anger that never boiled over, never displayed across his facial features. Only manifested as shaking, clenched fists. As a furrowed brow, a collection of sweat beads across his forehead. Only when Tezuka lay awake at night, back pressed flat against a park bench. A fresh nightmare rousing him from sleep.
If he had his way there would be one exception to the penance he longed to give the other riders. But it wasn’t going to be up to him. If he were here to argue, Yuichi would. Despite his loss, and his own stowed away anger, Yuichi would plead with his dark eyes and down-turned lips that even someone like Asakura deserved forgiveness. That anyone could seize the chance to change themselves. That no one was better off dead.
So he would change their fates. He would end the rider war. So that no one, so that Yuichi, would not have to suffer any longer. If the man in the tan trench coat fashioned himself as an angel, a god, what would that make Tezuka? He never cared for those types of things before. Never affixed himself to a higher plane. A human could be a savior, one did not have to turn to demons to oppose the divine.
And he would start with the man across the way. The one with the dark hair, the trench coat, a coffee cup clenched in his battle-worn hands. The one who has been here nearly as long as Tezuka, although Tezuka was certain the others were unaware that this has all been a loop. The one destined to die, an unshakable fate that rivaled Yuichi’s own.
It was time for Tezuka to appear. To brandish that loathsome deck. To end the rider war.
To save Yuichi. To save himself.
To save Akiyama Ren.