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If you were to ask Shishiou Tsukasa who the most important person to him is, he would not hesitate in answering, “Mirai.”
Since the second she was born, Tsukasa has loved his little sister, more than anything in the world. More than the world itself, even. Holding her tiny form in his arms, running a hesitant hand over the soft blankets she was swaddled in, feeling a sense of pride swelling up inside– these are the sensations he first associated with his little sister.
She is tiny– she was still tiny when her sickness began, when the coughing and the shortness of breath and the lethargy made her the quietest one in the child-care centre. Tsukasa remembers a worried look on his parents’ faces, before shuffling past them to play tickle monster with his little sister who was only just starting on her first syllables.
Yet, the first time their parents took her to the doctor without Tsukasa, he was in his first year of school, and Mirai was only a year old. Usually, their entire family would go together– Tsukasa would beg to hold Mirai while the parents talked to the clinician, and so he’d sit cross-legged on the too-short hairs of the clinic carpet with Mirai in his lap, and he’d play peek-a-boo until she laughed so hard tears ran down her cheeks.
From that visit in first grade, however, Tsukasa noticed a shift in his parents that he knew, deep down, was irrevocable. Something had changed, and he was a little scared to find out the reason why.
It wasn’t until two years later that Tsukasa’s entire worldview was flipped on its head.
“Listen, Tsukasa,” His mother had said, settling Tsukasa down at the table after his father had guided a tottering three-year-old Mirai to bed, “Mumma has to tell you something important, okay? But it might make you a little sad, so if there’s anything I can do to make you feel a little better, just tell me, okay?”
Tsukasa nods, uncertain. The tennis-ball yellow socks he wears feel a little too tight on his feet, so he wiggles his toes. It doesn’t really do much.
“Mirai is very sick,” She says, “And we’re not sure how long it will take for her to get better.”
Frowning, Tsukasa eyes his mother warily. “But you go to the doctors every week.”
Tsukasa’s mother’s gaze falls. Tsukasa was only vaguely aware of it then, but whenever he recalls the memory he knows that right there, in that temporal space between words, is where his mother broke under the pressure.
“Tsukasa, Mirai is not well. The doctors can’t fix her. So– so one day soon, she might have to go into the hospital for a bit. Or–” She takes a deep breath, composing herself, “She might not come out of the hospital again after that.”
Tsukasa hadn’t understood then. But it only took a few months of paying extra close attention to Mirai to understand why she’d need to go into the hospital for a long time. She was far behind her peers in nearly every aspect– she could keep up with talking and was even advanced in her reading skills, thanks to Tsukasa eagerly reading to her every night, but she could only walk a few hundred metres before getting so exhausted she was out of breath– she’d struggle to stay focused on tasks the second she encountered any difficulties, too, and the constant need for monitoring was draining on everyone around her.
It was never Mirai’s fault. She just needed a little more help than others– she’d catch up eventually, and Tsukasa vowed to hold her hand every step of the way.
If anyone dared to mess with her, they’d have Tsukasa to deal with first. But what eventually broke his little sister was no bully with fists or adults with cruel words; Mirai’s greatest enemy was her own body.
On a summer evening in Tsukasa’s first year of middle school, Mirai was declared brain-dead. Five minutes later, Tsukasa got to the hospital, broken sea-shells clutched in a trembling hand as his vision wavered and bruises covered every inch of his body.
His parents were not there. His mother’s heart had shattered some time ago, and his father had taken to drinking in the evenings to alleviate his own heartache. So Tsukasa alone took his unconscious sister’s hand in his own, and let himself grieve.
That night, Tsukasa cried until he was hoarse, until nurses attempted to coax him from Mirai’s side to treat his wounds with no luck. He refused to move even an inch, so by the time he had shed all of his tears and left his heart a hollow husk, only then did someone begin to dab at the cuts on his cheek with an alcohol swab, asking what had happened.
Tsukasa never answered. His mind was already made up– If Mirai could no longer fight for herself, then Tsukasa would fight for her.
He threw himself into training, into catching as many eyes as he could, and eventually money, advertising and sponsorship fell into his hands. Any profit he could make was spent on Mirai– toys, books to read to her, accessories, and anything else a little girl could ever want. Of course, those were secondary compared to the decision he’d made to switch her healthcare plan from public to private, but he was making more money than he needed to subsist off of and he had already started a decent savings account for his little sister when she woke up.
It was always when she woke up, never if.
Tsukasa refused to believe in anything else.
Of course, he never believed in a ray of light that could turn people into stone, either. Or that humanity’s hope could be condensed into the form of a sixteen-year-old from a public high school, or that he himself could become an attempted murderer.
In the stone world, the rules changed. Tsukasa is the strongest, but at what cost? Becoming the strongest did not save Mirai. The person who saved Mirai was actually–
Ishigami Senku is a force of nature, and yet at the same time can barely survive on his own.
From the second they meet, Tsukasa is enthralled by Senku’s rationality, his wit, and his overwhelmingly positive attitude in the wake of a global apocalypse. He almost died in the moments before Tsukasa’s revival, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He counted non-stop for 3,700 years, and yet is still very much sane.
How he manages to keep his head on correctly is nothing short of a miraculous feat. But, if he were to say as such to Senku, the man would scoff and correct him: “It’s nothing but a bit of science and a hell of a lot of perseverance."
The other times when Tsukasa does praise Senku, he accuses him of scheming or flirting. Tsukasa isn’t sure what to say to that, so he keeps his mouth shut and wonders what Senku’s body would feel like under his own. In every scenario he can imagine, a Senku that gives under his touch is nothing but a dead body, so he eventually stops dreaming and focuses on his work.
In this world of just the three of them, Tsukasa feels useful. Taiju is loud enough to cover the tremors of his wavering heart, and he praises him for doing the bare minimum. Senku, on the other hand, does not hand out praise willy-nilly, but he hides it in his tone, in those eyes of his which are incapable of lying.
Tsukasa, for the first time in his life, wants to be praised by someone.
“Oh, Taiju, you beast! Look at all these shells!” Senku crows, picking one up and holding it like it has very well saved their lives, “Now we’re ten-billion-percent set, hey?”
Senku and Taiju are a perfect duo. Both idiotically optimistic and kind to a fault, and yet Tsukasa still sits and eats with them, still watches as Taiju somehow carries half of an entire tree on his back and Senku cheers him on with his hands wrist-deep in grape juice.
Another thing Tsukasa observes is that Senku is averse to touch, but he doesn’t mind proximity. When he’s anxious, Tsukasa notices Taiju inch closer, and almost like magic does that anxiety dissipate from Senku’s shoulders just by his friend’s presence.
Tsukasa wishes he could do that. He wishes desperately to be close to Senku, but he fears himself almost as much as he fears for the future left in the hands of someone as… volatile as Senku.
Senku is dangerously naive. Or perhaps, he is merely driven. But to revive everyone is impossible, from Tsukasa’s view. There are people who have hurt, and who will continue to hurt others until their final breath, but Senku does not even stop to consider how a society will function after the end of the world. It’s a clean slate– there’s no telling what will happen.
But Senku holds firm in his beliefs, and so too does Tsukasa stick to his ideals.
To protect Mirai, to ensure that the world she returns to is soft enough so as not to shatter her heart, Tsukasa wants to sand down the jagged edges of the world and leave only the pure elements behind. To push humanity beyond the limits of the olden-day science, Senku wants to immediately return to where they left off– and this desire, in the end, is what Tsukasa knows will get him killed.
(He just didn’t expect it to be so quick, and certainly not by his own hands.)
Staring at the body of his first and only friend on the ground, Tsukasa wonders if maybe his greatest fear is losing others. Senku is so very still, and Tsukasa wishes in that instant that they could trade places.
He locks those feelings deep away as he presses a hand to his chest.
For Mirai, he’d do anything. That’s a promise he made to himself many, many years ago. So why, when he’s made a huge sacrifice for her sake, does his heart ache so deeply?
Taiju’s cries of agony reverberate over mountains. Yuzuriha’s body shakes and her eyes are wide, yet unseeing. Tsukasa closes his eyes, and hopes that this nightmare ends soon.
Tsukasa isn’t sure what ‘love’ is to Hyoga, but from his view, it tastes like blood on his lips and sounds like a desperate cry escaping his throat.
In Tsukasa’s chambers, Hyoga is a venomous snake, poised and ready to strike. His blood is as cold as ice, his words clipped like a caged bird’s, and Tsukasa isn’t sure if reviving him was the best choice after all.
It’s hard to know, because Hyoga is one-of-a-kind. No-one else stands up to Tsukasa– not since the beginning of the new world, where he alone holds all the power. Yet, when Hyoga slips off his mask as twilight turns to blackness, when he approaches Tsukasa’s throne with a cold glint in his eye and hands snaking up Tsukasa’s chest, Tsukasa is left powerless.
The way Tsukasa loves Hyoga is different to how he thought he loved Senku, different entirely to how he loves Mirai. Tsukasa’s love for Hyoga is contained in breathy whispers, in a pliant mouth and trembling legs, and Hyoga reciprocates with sharp teeth and a steady hand as he kills Tsukasa with gentle touches, over and over and over.
Hyoga marvels at the way Tsukasa allows him to pin his hands above his head; Tsukasa bites his lip and tries not to think about how this should be different, how he shouldn’t force himself to hold values of a dead world when Hyoga mutters his name with a smile. If anyone were to find them like this, Tsukasa’s life in the old world would instantly become thrift.
In this world, there’s a chance to purify humanity; that’s what Tsukasa had said. He had promised to not let himself be held back by the past, so why is this different? Why can Hyoga take such raw pleasure from him when the pleasure Tsukasa takes is tainted with so much guilt and misery that he can barely breathe?
Hyoga does as he likes. Like Senku, he is driven purely by his desire– unlike Senku, he cares not for those who are crushed in his wake.
“Hyoga,” Tsukasa whispers, whilst his wrists are still tender and his knees still throb, “Why do you always wear a mask?”
The glance Tsukasa receives is filled with an emotion he cannot possibly decipher. Perhaps if he had the mind of Gen, their most recent turncoat, then he would understand what that glimmer in those quicksilver eyes meant– but as it stands, Tsukasa is once again in a situation where he doesn’t know what’s expected of himself and can do nothing but swallow down the bitterness on his tongue.
“Well, that’s certainly a question from the man who cares not for looks,” Hyoga chuckles, reclining on his elbows on their bed of straw and animal pelts as he yawns, “If I claimed to be self-conscious of the scars over my mouth, what would you say?”
The silence in the cave is deafening– even so, Tsukasa answers, painfully honest. “For the little that I knew you in the old world, you were never so vain.”
“That’s very true,” Hyoga sighs, “A mask in this world is merely to keep a veil of disinterest around the others.”
The first thing Tsukasa takes from that is that around him, Hyoga is interested; from there, it’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the steel-grey gaze that meets his own, then trails down, down to the bites on his shoulders that his cloak can cover up, and then goes even lower than that, to where Tsukasa wears nothing but a pelt draped over himself to stop from getting cold.
“The others deserve your honesty too,” Tsukasa mutters, but Hyoga merely laughs like a hyena.
“Honesty is a gift, Tsukasa, and none of these people have anything to provide in return,” he says, licking his lips, “And I’m not interested even if they did offer to trade.”
Tsukasa shouldn’t feel so unsettled by that statement. Hyoga has never once expressed interest in anyone save for Homura, perhaps even Ukyo, so to hear him admit it aloud should be far from a surprise. Hyoga is not one– has never been one, really– to get attached.
“Why are you telling me this?” Tsukasa asks softly, uncertainly, “If I decided you posed a threat to my people, then I would have no choice but to kill you, would I not?”
“Most certainly,” Hyoga says, not missing a beat.
“Then…?”
“Hmm,” Hyoga hums, rubbing at the unshaved stubble on his chin, “You, Tsukasa, are indeed properly strange. I wonder how many times I’ll have to take you apart before I truly understand why you have done what you have done, why you continue on when you are so very…”
Tsukasa waits with bated breath to hear how Hyoga will finish, but the other does not return to his train of thought. Instead, Hyoga sits up and rolls over, straddling Tsukasa’s waist and planting his hands either side of Tsukasa’s head.
Here they are again– perhaps both of them fear attachment. Tsukasa looks up at Hyoga, and isn’t sure whether he likes the way Hyoga looks back.
One of only two people to have ever bested him, and Hyoga looks at him like he’s either terribly weak or terribly desperate. Tsukasa thinks that both of those are certainly true. A man who is not weak would not allow another to slide their fingers into his hair, would not allow someone who he should be wary of to stroke his cheek with his thumb before wrapping ice-cold fingers around his neck. A man who is not desperate would not bite his lip when Hyoga slips another hand down lower and asks him, “May I?”
A man who is not desperate would not respond with a strained, “Please.”
At some point after his revival, Tsukasa’s eyes fall on Gen.
It is obvious to nearly everyone else that Gen’s eyes are trained on Senku.
Tsukasa can understand– he still loves Senku deeply, even if what was once raw, agonising desire has now cooled to a gentle stream of admiration. Senku is too far, now, and Tsukasa has made his peace with that. As for Gen, however, Tsukasa can still see him, can see the way his words twist like a snake, hidden in a valley of white flowers that he distributes so freely.
The others may not know it, but they are all in Gen’s territory. Gen drifts from group to group, his charisma flowing effortlessly like sweet nectar from a flower’s centre, yet none of them know that biting into the petals will kill them within the hour. Gen knows everything– not like Senku does, not as a walking encyclopaedia but instead knows people, and how to move them to his whim.
Sometimes, though, there’s times that some of the real Gen shines through, and in those moments, not all who witness it recognise the truth. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it phenomenon, but Tsukasa is desperate to witness it, over and over again.
“Ah, my dear Tsukasa, I was looking for you,” Gen croons, and Tsukasa jumps– how the mentalist managed to find his spot out in the forest is an utter mystery, but the surprise is not unwelcome.
“What is it?” Tsukasa asks, as Gen takes a seat down on the grass beside him, “Does Senku need something? Is there a fight?”
Gen laughs, and the sound is intoxicatingly sweet. “Nothing so dramatic, dear! I saw you wander off on your lonesome and thought you might want some company, that’s all. You looked– or should I say still look– rather down.”
Tsukasa sighs. “It’s nothing. You can return, Gen. I’ll be alright.”
“My, how polite,” Gen marvels, “The greatest high-schooler primate is looking out for me, is he?”
Tsukasa levels him with a tired look, and Gen’s gaze softens in response. “My apologies, dear Tsukasa. Have you been sleeping?”
“A little,” Tsukasa admits, and there’s something about the way Gen holds himself that Tsukasa is forced to spill everything on his mind without his consent, “I can’t… I still feel bad about the statues, if I’m honest.”
“That’s a given, isn’t it?” Gen says, his eyebrows raised in surprise, “You thought they were people. Whether they’re able to be revived or not, even just thinking you’ve killed a person is enough to shake you for life, dear Tsukasa.”
Tsukasa is suddenly reminded of his mother, of the tears streaming down her face as she sat in the dimly-lit kitchen, Mirai’s most recent medical report clutched in her hand. He feels a little cold at the thought.
“I suppose.”
“Gosh, you know no-one is holding what you did against you now, right?” Gen says, shaking his head, “Senku and I have been working very hard to eliminate the remnants of hostility throughout the kingdom, you know. Don’t sell us so short!”
Tsukasa blinks. “But–”
Suddenly, there’s a finger pressed to his mouth, and Tsukasa’s words die on his tongue as he looks into Gen’s twinkling eyes and glimpses a knowing smile. “Hush, my dear Tsukasa. You should still be resting.”
“Senku wants to leave for America tomorrow,” Tsukasa says, confused, “And I’ve already promised him I’ll go.”
“You really are dense,” Gen snickers, shuffling closer and sitting himself seiza-style, before patting his lap. “Come here.”
Tsukasa stares. “I’m not sitting in your lap.”
“No, you’ll rest your head there for a bit, and no-one has to know,” Gen says cheerfully, petting his thighs encouragingly, “I want to comb your hair, too, considering Kaseki went out of his way to make me one.” To prove his point, Gen pulls out a fine-tooth metal comb, and Tsukasa eyes the craftsmanship and wonders how on earth Senku managed to find such a talented man in the village of humanity’s last survivors.
“I’ve always wanted to brush long hair,” Gen sighs, side-eyeing Tsukasa greedily, “If only there were someone so kind to volunteer themselves for my sake…”
Swallowing his pride, Tsukasa leans down, and Gen takes the opportunity presented to him to guide his head down onto his lap with a pleased hum.
“There we are, dear Tsukasa. Not so hard now, was it?”
Tsukasa’s heart is thrumming and his words have all clogged up in his throat, so he chooses to say nothing as Gen gets to work parting his hair and sliding off the remains of petrified stone that Tsukasa coils his hair through. He’s never bothered to comb his hair with more than just his fingers– it gets in the way, otherwise.
“Your hair is such a pretty colour, dear Tsukasa,” Gen coos, “It suits you.”
The way Tsukasa’s name rolls off of his tongue is dizzying– there really is something special about Asagiri Gen that, as compared to others, is alluring. “My hair is a normal colour,” He says, “But how is yours dual-toned?”
“Now that’s a good question,” Gen says, his voice lilting as if to continue; Tsukasa is surprised when he falls silent, beginning to comb at the tips of Tsukasa’s split-ends of hair. The little tugs are nice, with the added bonus of being immediately grounding. Tsukasa knows that if he isn’t careful, he may very well end up falling asleep to this.
“You’re far too gentle to be an attempted murderer, Tsukasa dear,” Gen mutters, the non-sequitur rather jarring, “Why, you’re practically just a child.”
“I’m turning twenty-one this year,” Tsukasa says, scoffing lightly, “Old enough to drink in every part of the world now.”
“Indeed. We should drink together sometime in the future. I’d love to see what type of drunk you are. My drago is on you being overly affectionate.”
“Ridiculous,” Tsukasa says, “You say the strangest things.”
“They’re not all that strange if you keep responding to them, are they?” Gen counters, and Tsukasa huffs a laugh as he feels a flower fall into his hair, “Besides, you’ve heard weirder things from Senku’s mouth, I’m sure.”
At the thought of Senku, Tsukasa pauses. Even just his name is a painful reminder that he very nearly rid the world of its brightest mind, and he feels sick. “I really am glad I revived you so quickly. Without you, I…”
Without Gen, Senku never would have gotten the support and information he needed to break past their defences without a single drop of blood. Without Gen, both he and Senku would have suffered dearly for it– and their combined little community would most likely be significantly more divided. Who knows? From what he’s heard, without Gen’s negotiation on treasure island, all of them, and consequently including Tsukasa, too, very well may have died.
“Now, now, dear Tsukasa,” Gen chides, drawing Tsukasa’s hair away from his face, “No point dwelling on what-ifs, because they won’t help us, will they?”
“I suppose not.”
“But goodness, your hair is wonderfully long and silky. You’re just like a real-life tarzan, aren’t you?”
“Ta… Who?” Tsukasa asks weakly, and Gen snorts.
“Oh, nevermind.”
“Wait, Gen, you should tell me–”
“Ah, ah, a magician never reveals his secrets. You should know this!”
Tsukasa clicks his tongue, seeing no merit in putting up a fight. “Fine.”
A beat of peaceful silence passes between them, and Tsukasa is reminded of just how quiet this new world is. It’s almost too quiet.
Gen’s hands still, and he takes a deep breath. On the exhale, he mumbles, “I’m glad you revived me so soon, too,” He admits, voice impossibly soft, “I think that, without Senku to take care of, I probably would have walked off into the forest and you would have never seen me again.”
It takes a moment to click, but once Tsukasa grasps the weight of what Gen has just said, his eyes widen in shock. He is floored for many reasons– but the admission that he would have rather killed himself than stay in this world is one that shakes Tsukasa to his core.
“That’s worrying,” Tsukasa says, in lieu of anything else his mind thinks of, “I wouldn’t want you to die.”
“Apparently, the people I surrounded myself with in the previous world thought differently,” Gen chuckles, as if what he said doesn’t make Tsukasa tremble with rage, “But I think I’m much happier here. Not content, but certainly happy. Are you happy, Tsukasa?”
Tsukasa closes his eyes and takes in the feel of the world– grass tickling his legs, fingers guiding a comb through his hair, and his head resting on the lap of an achingly generous man. Everyone Tsukasa cares about is alive. Everyone alive cares about Tsukasa in some way or another, and Tsukasa is eternally grateful for it.
“Mm,” He hums, his breaths easing, “I think I am.”