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The streets were quiet on this day, much unlike its usual hustle and bustle. Shops closed, no kids playing. If it was any other day, Kashima would have been elated. He hated the hectics of the city, always trying to find the quietest corner in the area he could find to try and work through the loads of tasks he’d given himself.
After all, he was not officially employed by anyone at this time. If working for Master X had been official in the first place. Not like there was anything much of a contract in between rogue assassins.
Now that he had been left behind, he felt lost. For so many years, he had given the organisation his all. Their goals, or what he thought they were, had driven him. His life’s purpose. Purpose. That was what he lacked. If they were able to stop Master X, would there be a place for him in this world?
Was there a place for him now?
And so he roamed. Wandering this neighbourhood that he had been starting to become familiar with. The shops that were closed at a current, but where he could still picture the kind shopkeepers who’d greet him as he passed them by, in spite of his strange appearance and the body modifications he’d had before. It was just supposed to be a neighbourhood. One of many. But even ordinary things, as it turned out, could change a man’s world. And this one, average as it was, had changed his in ways he’d considered impossible.
He told himself he was just trying to familiarise himself with his fixed lower body. Testing its functions so he could work out the kinks later. Still, even when he found himself in an overgrown field in the outskirts, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a war waging in his mind. There were a lot of things he could fix. He’d modified the majority of his body, replacing fragile bones with steel weaponry. The majority of his blood vessels with wires, and an ordinary spine with an artificial one. His body could be disassembled and reassembled, bend in ways it shouldn’t, lift objects that could crush a man’s skeleton.
Unfortunately, the one thing he couldn’t fix was his mind.
He’d thought of it before. Perhaps there was a way to replace the brain. Nevertheless, even Kashima had limits.
He lowered himself in the tall grass and allowed his body to fall backwards.
One thing he was glad for, was how he preserved the sense of touch. Feeling things, he thought, was one of the few things that still made him feel human. It was dulled, making it hard to hurt him physically, but the sensations of touch were still there. It was because of this that he was able to spread his arms and let the grass blades tickle his skin. The clouds passed over him so slow and yet so fast. He watched as they slowly, almost unnoticeably, changed shapes. Inwardly, he asked if he could change shape like them too.
Sakamoto Taro had done it.
Asakura Shin had done it, too.
But were the rules all the same for Kashima?
Could a thunderstorm cloud morph into a fair weather cloud?
“Going insane all by yourself, handsome?”
The voice breaking through his thoughts was familiar, and immediately had him on high alert. Even without sitting up, he knew who it belonged to. “I’m not in the mood for your games today,” he said brusquely, frowning as he stared into the sky, wishing it’d look back at him and give him all the answers to all his questions.
There was a silence for a moment, and then he heard a soft thud just inches away from him. The cyborg turned his head, ready to chastise the intruder and tell her to go away.
She beat him to it. “Alright, I won’t get on your nerves today, then,” she conceded, and he was momentarily rendered speechless out of his own surprise. He hadn’t expected her to yield so easily, given how irritating she was on a good day. And today was a bad one. “Anything on your mind?”
Scrunching up his nose, he shifted out of her space just a bit. Like she was contagious, or something. “That’s none of your business,” he sneered, thinking it absurd she even thought he would indulge in her games.
She just laughed softly, airy and without any judgement. “Fair enough.” Then, spoken through a long exhale: “And the reason why you’re not at the fair with the others?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? While everyone was out enjoying the nice summer weather and town festivities, here he was, moping around by himself. What a sorry sight he’d become. As if it wasn’t enough that he’d become useless now, no longer an asset to the organisation he’d be a part of for so long.
“What about you, then? Did you just come here to pester me again?”
Turning her face just barely enough to look at him, in an angle he thought had to be uncomfortable for someone so unlike him — without an artificial spine — she looked about as unsettling to him as she made him feel on a daily basis. “No,” she denied calmly, much unlike her usual demeanour. A gust of wind blew her hair into her face, and she turned away, struggling to untangle it from her piercings. When it was finally free, she stretched her arms above her head and let her back fall against the tall grass lazily, followed by a long, shameless yawn. Since the field was on a slight hill, they could still oversee the town in the distance.
“I stayed up until four in the morning reading a book — horror by the way, so you might see why I didn’t sleep very much— and by the time I woke up, I was in no mood to socialise, that’s all! But since I want to bask in the sun, I decided to come here. What excuse do you have?”
The cyborg blinked, going between trying to keep up with the rambling of a madwoman (that’s what he duped her as long ago) and following the cloud floating past him. Somewhere deep in the back of the hard drive that was his mind, he recalled vaguely learning about the meaning of the shapes.
It would have been helpful if he could download an operating system that knew how to be an ordinary human being, too.
“I don’t belong there,” he answered finally, already asking himself why he’d even say that to her in the first place before he even finished the sentence. “I’m not a local. I’m not even a person. I’ve done horrible things.”
They sat in silence for a while. The wind carried the sounds of joy, bringing peace to her and even more questions of belonging to him.
“Okay, so you’ve done horrible things,” she acknowledged, fingers with perfectly manicured nails picking at a flower. “What are you going to do about that?”
Dumbfounded, light purple brows furrowed, creases forming in his forehead. “What?”
“We’ve all done bad things, haven't we? Sakamoto was an assassin, you know. What matters most is what you do about it after you’ve come to this realisation. So, what will you do about it?”
That made him pause, so abruptly that she pictured a loading symbol for a second. Under normal circumstances, she might have laughed at the image in her mind, but she figured she had antagonised him enough on a good day. It was rather enjoyable to be amicable for a change.
The problem was, Kashima didn’t know what to do. He’d never done anything other than dirtying his hands, soiling them with the blood he thought others were too scared or selfish to spill. Doing what he thought was right, even if society cast him out for it. Now that the scales had tipped and along with it, his world turned upside down, he no longer held any answers. He thought he’d been rich with wisdom; but if the foundation was rotten, how could the rest of the structure hold?
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted after some time, painfully so — this was the last person he’d choose to have this talk with, but she was here, available, offering herself up on a plate to him. Untrusting as he was, he didn’t have many other options. In Sakamoto’s home, he felt like a fish on land. There was still a little voice in the back of his mind telling him they were enemies, that no person could truly put it all past them after their rocky start — to put it lightly. He certainly wasn’t going to be vulnerable with them.
So, he put his pride aside. Just for one moment. At least, that’s what he told himself. “I have no idea what else I could be in this world. What I am, is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know what I am without it.”
The scowl that painted his face when she laughed was something foul, but she waved her hands dismissively before he had a chance to say anything. “Hold your horses, C-3PO. I just laughed because — do you really think any of us knew that?” she sat up again and pointedly stared back at him. “We’re all just trying to find our place in the world. If you really regret your past actions and want to do something about it, you have to break down every piece of your past self and start back up. Try finding something you’re good at, something you can offer, and use it for good instead.”
She pulled away from their eye contact and nodded into the distance; to the buildings that looked like miniatures from where they sat. “You go out there and try to find yourself. That’s what we all do, every day.”
Languidly, the thorn in his side got up and dusted off her jeans, looking over her back to check if the grass had left any stains. Satisfied, she stepped in front of him and extended a hand. “So? Will you stop moping and come to the festival with me? Or will you stay here and be nothing for the rest of your life?”
Eyeing her hand as if it was something grimy, the odd man with the stitches hesitated and said: “You don’t really expect to pull me up, do you?”
Shrugging, she just shoved it closer to him. “I’ve carried demons heavier than you, don’t worry your pretty little head. Are you coming or not?”
“You said you were tired.”
“Stop making excuses, Mr. Reindeer. Come on.”
Fed up with his stalling, she sighed and forcefully grabbed his hand, throwing her whole weight into it. His high-tech body must have weighed about the same as a small pony, she figured, and she’d wrangled plenty of those before. What was another stubborn mule in the shed?
Kashima reluctantly got up and followed. Only because he didn’t want to be responsible for her backache, he reassured himself inwardly. This was only a temporary partnership. Soon, he would be away from this place, away from her, and from the Sakamoto’s. One day couldn’t hurt, right?
Written by a human in Ellipsus.