Chapter Text
1,
Yoshiki was crying.
It thought, yes, it had seen this before. Seen Yoshiki weep over a cat stiffening under the persimmon tree, over the scrape of an arm when Hikaru had goaded him to climb higher, higher, until gravity bit him down. Seen him kneel outside the shuttered shop of the old woman who used to press candy into their palms, and heard his thin voice break with grief when she vanished into the earth.
But this was different. This was crying for Hikaru himself. Crying for something that no longer existed, except as residue inside its borrowed flesh.
It understood, in a way that was not understanding. The body knew the pattern: arms tightening around a trembling frame, chest caving in a rhythm that made wetness slide down the face. The body knew, but the thing inside was still learning. The tears did not sting its eyes the way they once had stung Hikaru’s; they slid from ducts like clear oil, easy, mechanical. Mimicry. Yet when they fell, they glimmered almost like truth.
It held Yoshiki tightly. Carefully, so carefully. The skin of Hikaru was fragile, too much pressure and the seam might gape open, the weight of itself pressing out, collapsing him into meat and liquid. A ruin. And then there would be no Yoshiki left to hold.
It thought: this is what Hikaru would have wanted. For Yoshiki not to die. And so it wanted it too. The wanting bloomed inside like mold on damp wood, spreading, urgent. Its mouth pressed into Yoshiki’s neck, breath dragging in his heat, the mineral tang of sweat. The scent was data, and data was life. Yoshiki was important to Hikaru, so Yoshiki was important to it. A straight line, pure in its simplicity. Memory stitched to impulse.
It remembered small boy Yoshiki, voice still brittle with youth, pressed together in the dark closet while rain beat the roof, telling each other ghost stories until Yoshiki cried again. Remembered the lake, the cramp, the arms tight around him once they were safe on land. Remembered how to hug him, even if it had never been the one to do it.
And it thought: I can learn. I can hug him properly. I can learn all of it, if he lets me. I can even cry for him, because Hikaru never did so openly, but I will.
And suddenly there was warmth. Yoshiki’s arms circled back, trembling so violently the body feared he would shatter. His face hidden in its shoulder, dampness soaking through, voice shredded and small.
Okay, he said. …‘Hikaru.’ Good to see you.
Something convulsed in its chest cavity. Not quite joy. Not quite relief either. A trembling, raw as the first time a fish gasps in air. It trembled with him. Because Yoshiki had said okay.
It was accepted.
2,
Yoshiki was afraid of it.
The fear wasn’t loud. No screaming, no stones hurled, no frantic pounding of footsteps. It was soundless but sharp, like the taste of iron in the mouth.
It had known this before. In the long-ago, when it had been only mass, humans had stumbled across it in the forest. Their eyes had gone wide, unfocused. They could not fit what they saw into the narrow corridor of their minds, so they broke. Screamed until their throats tore, fled into the village to die with fevered memories, or else simply collapsed in the dirt and never moved again.
Yoshiki did not do this.
He did not recoil when it pressed close, did not strike it away when its shadow fell wrong across the ground. He still called it Hikaru. He walked beside it down the narrow streets of this countryside, where the houses sagged like tired bones. He sat with it in the classroom, on the floor, at the convenience store where fluorescent lights hummed above rows of packaged bread. He let it chatter about flavors and textures—too sweet, too sour, too hot—and he listened as though it was worth hearing. His eyes were full of grief and confusion and the trembling animal-shine of fear, yet his mouth answered calmly, his steps never strayed from its side.
The acceptance folded into it like a blade through cloth, warping the essence underneath the skin. It twisted, wrung itself into shapes it had never held before. And in the quicksilver flicker of Hikaru’s memories, it found something to name this sensation. Hikaru, whispering secret ambitions that didn’t fit this narrow village. Hikaru, speaking of the city, of vanishing into crowds, of being something else. Astronauts. Divers. Heroes who wrestled flames. Fantasies this place would not have tolerate, but Yoshiki had simply nodded, as if the impossible could be accepted.
That memory had been labeled as “happy.”
Now it understood. Or thought it did.
Yes. Happy.
It had not been happy since the long decades wandering among trees, scorn dripping from every human who sensed it. But Yoshiki made its essence swell as if wanting to burst violently.
Then the old woman screamed.
The sound pierced through it cleanly. And in that moment, it understood this, that Yoshiki’s acceptance was not universal. Humans could not comprehend it. No matter how it smoothed Hikaru’s skin over its essence, no matter how carefully it mimicked, there would always be the scream. The rejection.
So it followed him back in silence. His back turned to it, his shoulders dark against the house. But then he asked, without looking, Do you like me? — surprise jolted through it.
Like. Such a small word, too flimsy for the magnitude of its wanting. It had expected exile. The cold push of dismissal. But instead he asked this.
Its essence wriggled restlessly under the skin, like maggots threading through rot. The sensation was revolting and exquisite. Happy, happy, happy.
It said aloud: I like you. Its borrowed cheeks burned in the dying sun. I like you so damn much.
Yoshiki turned, one eye half-hidden behind his hair. He was crying again, as if tears were the only language left to him.
Don’t you dare just piss off again, he said.
It did not understand the shape of his gaze, only that it ached. That it wanted to swallow him whole into itself, to keep him sealed from other humans and their screaming, to keep him safe and close where no one could change him or make him weep.
It wanted to tell him: I am your Hikaru now. You can take whatever you want from me. Anything.
It wanted too much. Too greedily. Too humanly. But before it could act, he had already turned away, leaving it standing on the pavement.