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“I’ll be a distant memory one day,” Narumi’s voice slurs with his intoxication, pitching unusually as he waved his cup of sake in the air — gesturing at nothing while he rambles.
“Is that so?” Soushirou hums noncommittally, laughing when the dual tone man glares at him as if his response to… whatever this is matters.
Narumi Gen is the captain of the First Division, the JAKDF’s strongest anti-kaiju combatant, the first and so far only user of Numbers Weapon One. He is not and will not be one forgotten by history, and, whenever he isn’t drunk out of his mind at a mandatory ball none of them want to be at, he seems to know that damn well. He practically never stops talking about how strong he is, and Soushirou has to say that he rather prefers the honest ego to this facsimile of humility. Here stands a monster dressed in flushed human skin, claiming that he , of all the faceless soldiers he leads and even more faceless civilians he protects, will leave no record behind. It’s utterly preposterous, and Soushirou nearly chips a molar with how hard he grinds his teeth.
But he is a good soldier — a loyal soldier, a persistent soldier, a smart soldier for all that no one will take him on full time — and he will not snap at a superior officer. He will shut his mouth, and sit here making sure that the reckless renegade afforded the honor of Shinomiya Isao’s praise and protection doesn’t do something stupid. He and Narumi have never talked, but what does a drunk know of polite conversation or interpersonal relationships? The captain is here because he wanted fresh air, and the balcony he chose just so happened to be the one Soushirou was already on. That, by default, makes him Soushirou’s responsibility. Or god forbid he be flagged for insubordination for not taking care of this walking, talking lesson in the making on the folly of hubris.
“I mean it,” Narumi insists, twisting around to place his elbows on the railing and leaning far enough back that Soushirou’s hands twitch with the need to pull him forward before he falls off. Giggling at the sky. “You don’t believe me, but that’s okay. You don’t have to! You’ll probably be there when I die, and then you’ll see I was telling the truth.”
“That’s…” morbid. wrong. A deeply unusual thought to be expressing to a stranger regardless of how intoxicated you are. Just how much alcohol did he have? “What do ya mean by that, Narumi-san?”
The dual tone man pushes forward to shake his head at him like he’s an idiot, despite being the one babbling on about nonsense. “First Division’s meant to be the strongest, right? We see more action than anyone. And I’ve got the… stupid fucking thing. Means I’m gonna die young. Like. Really young.”
Soushirou grimaces, “okay… well —”
“And then!” The captain interrupts him, waving his arms around frantically. “Someone else, someone even stronger, probably, will replace me. And all the records might remember by name or my age or what kaiju I died to… but they won’t remember me. I’ll be a… what’s that thing? A bridge!”
It’s here that Soushirou suddenly recalls that the retinas of Numbers Weapon One are a permanent alteration — that Narumi Gen’s eyes are, both genetically and functionally speaking, not as they were before his enlistment. They spark to life before him; a kaleidoscope of ruby reds and blooming pinks and unprocessed starlight that can’t possibly be of this Earth and yet sit pretty in the skull of the man before him. They say the attacks of Kaiju No. 1 always hit their mark, and, face to face with the sight that made it possible, Soushirou believes it wholeheartedly. Everything in him is screaming that the force of nature standing before him knows he’s easy prey, and could rip him limb from limb with ease.
It’s beautiful , and he is helpless to the rapture.
“I’ll be a bridge between my generation and the next, better one. And no one will remember that I liked video games or cherry candy or cats or…” Narumi trails off, blinking curiously at him as though now just realizing his numbers weapon has activated. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Sorry? About what?”
“About the… you know what I mean.” He shifts his bangs to cover them up, pressing the heel of palm against his lid to, presumably, help himself deactivate them. Soushirou’s heart pangs.
“It’s fine.”
It’s not.
He wants to see them again. Wants badly enough that he wonders if he’s also drunk.
The interaction seems to sober the captain up, to an extent, and he slumps to the floor with his hand to his chest like he’s trying to force himself to calm down. Nothing makes sense. Soushirou feels like he’s just walked into another dimension entirely, where up is down and the prodigy of his generation is trying to have a conversation with him about the nature of death. The way history blinds itself and its readers to the truth of the people living it, laying them to rest in one-dimensional coffins that can’t possibly capture the extent of the three-dimensional person inside it. And he’s somehow lost himself on another planet entirely, trapped not because he’s been caged but because he can’t bring himself to leave now that he’s landed. What the hell.
“I think ya need to head home, Captain Narumi,” he chirps, or at least he thinks he does because the man in question looks up at him when he thinks he says it.
“Yeah, probably,” he agrees, pushing himself off the floor onto shaky legs.
He staggers toward the door, uneasy on his feet and gaze purposefully pointed toward the ground in an effort to keep from activating his numbers weapon again. Why he bothers with trying to hide them when everyone knows they’re part of the reason why he was recruited, Soushirou can guess… but he can’t say. Won’t say. Narumi Gen and Hoshina Soushirou are strangers. They walk past each other in hallways without so much as a glance, have only ever had the opportunity to work together a pitifully small handful of times, and directly interacted even less. He watches the dual tone man stumble back into the ball neither of them want to be at, and turns back around to enjoy the night sky.
Tomorrow, Soushirou will be the only one who remembers this encounter.