2012 Utena / Penguindrum Fanfic - Seinen Kakumei Utena Part 9b
That night, his sister again returned late in the night, way past his sleep time.
And, as with the past couple of days, her light footsteps gave away the fact that she was again going into the basement, locking the door behind her.
Sneaking out of bed after a few minutes, Mamiya donned his sleeping robe and slippers, slipped out into the unlit hallway, and proceeded to soundlessly make his way to the basement door. Producing the lock pick that Hoshimi had left him, Mamiya carefully opened the door with it, as he then tiptoed down the flight of stairs.
Even as he was nearing the last step, he already could see the fluttery red shades rippling across the wall in front like bloodied waves, and knew to his apprehension that a sizable fire has to be brewing down below.
But even then, the boy still was completely unprepared for what he saw at the turn of the stairs.
There was his sister, standing with her arms outstretched, her feet crossed, completely engulfed in flames so strong, the entire space was basked under their saffron lights.
Mamiya would have screamed, if not for the fact that he immediately saw the pink, glowing book hovering in midair in front of his sister, its pages rapidly turning as if tossed by phantom winds. His sister, while aflame, did not appear to wither under the fiery blaze; rather, she appeared resplendently unharmed, as she chanted in a voice largely defused by the fire’s hiss, with none of her words audible to his ear.
“ . . . what’s that on your left hand?”
Even covered in fire, the familiar-looking rose motif ring was clearly visible upon his sister’s left hand, glowing like the heated metal it was against her luminous, unharmed skin.
“Nee-san . . . ?”
The boy suddenly realized that his sister could neither see nor hear him, so engrossed was she was in whatever magic she was currently working with her now witch-like -
Flump . . .
Somewhat impossibly, the boy heard the sound of fluttering fabrics coming from behind him in spite of the flames’ sound. Turning around, he saw a slim, shadow-cloaked figure in a lab coat, watching him behind coldly glinting glasses, prior to slipping up and beyond the turn of the basement stairs.
Mamiya did not - nor did he had time to - think twice about going after the eerie intruder.
By the time he got up to the living room, the intruder was already slipping out of the front door; Mamiya quickly followed as he gave chase into the night.
The sky was cloudlessly clear - the way it had been since that snowfall from weeks ago, with that same accumulated built up from then still covering the roads in spite of the approaching spring - and the stars were vivid to the point of resembling those from a planetarium’s projections. The winds were the chilliest on nights like this, and he had the foolishness to come running out without winter coat, let alone snow boots . . .
Surprisingly, the frail boy did not so much as shiver in this winter night; strangely, he felt the night wind against his flimsy robe and exposed skin, but none of its chilliness; and there was no slush to hamper his running, as his indoor slippers were tapping smoothly, easily upon the dry wooden ties of an extremely narrow gauge railroad - one that he did not recall having ever seen around the area. The houses were gone, as were the road pavements . . . as was the entire residential neighborhood; all around, there was nothing but the starry, galactic space, with the railroad existing impossibly upon nothing. Up ahead, the figure in the lab coat appeared to be pushing some kind of loaded flatback trolley along the tracks; though it (as Mamiya had since realized that whatever it is not have been human) moved in seemingly languid steps, Mamiya found that he could not catch up to it no matter how fast he thought he was running.
“Who are you?” cried the boy as he ran after the thing, brittle heart speeding hazardously within his thin chest. “What were you doing at our house? What’s happening to my sister? What-”
The entity in the lab coat tossed something backwards over a shoulder in an arc of glittery light . . . and it found its way into his opened throat, giving him no choice but to swallow. It was sweet, crisp, and cool . . . tasting just like a slice of . . .
. . . apple?
And, along with that realization, Mamiya found his surroundings changing with such abruptness, that the boy found himself almost tripping over his own feet.
It still was night, and the stars still were glittering brightly above; but he now found himself in the courtyard outside Ohtori Academy’s research building - a spot he had since familiarize himself with from the times he sneaked out of the house to meet with Hoshimi at school. There was a white-draped long table illuminated by a singular candelabra, upon which a feast of apples, grapes, and pears had been laid out, accompanied by champagne glasses and stacks of empty plates; upon closer look, all the apples had penguin motif stickers upon their crimson surfaces.
The setting was that of an elegant evening party - one with no attendee in sight. Nasally male voices, eerily diffused yet still very much audible, hovered adrift over the cool night air:
“The road to the Dueling arena is now open.”
“At last, that is about to begin.”
“And now, Professor Nemuro's duty is finished.”
“From now on, carrying on without him is probably what you-know-who plans on.”
“Surely even he'll lose to someone.”
“We can just leave him by the wayside.”
“Well then, let's open the champagne.”
Pop!
“Ah, Chida-kun,” his nemesis’ voice, sounding very real from behind him, startled the boy into jolting. Turning around, what he saw made him did a double take.
Inoue Tsukiichi, looking drunk on liquor, was wobbling past with his arm around the slim shoulder of Kaoru Yuki - a shameless goat perversely supportive of his mate going after Hoshimi. A trio of dresses - not girls, the feminine attires hovering in midair as if worn by invisible females - could be seen flanking the boys in dramatically coquettish poses.
“Shouldn’t terminally ill little boys be in bed by now?” asked Inoue, snide and completely oblivious to the strangeness surrounding them.
“Are high school students allowed to drink now?” Mamiya asked him back, the dream-like surreal-ness of the moment having lessened his inhibition against petty verbal sparring. The older boy’s derisive laughter came accompanied by peals of girlish giggles - ones the younger boy recognized to belong to the drama club trio who used to hang around Hoshimi all the time.
What did this mean? Were the girls invisible now?
“A correspondence student like you probably don’t know,” Kaoru piped up then, “but we who wear this ring can do anything in this Academy.” The pale-skinned youth flashed his rose motif ring at the boy in a gesture not unlike that of a society debutante flaunting her jewelry.
The reminder that the same ring now was on his witchcraft-working sister’s finger hit Mamiya like a blow to the chest.
Even in his frantic state, the boy noticed the dog collar visible around Kaoru’s neck, one with a red leash so long, it trailed out of view into the surrounding darkness . . . who or what was holding the other end?
“So tell us more, Inoue-kun,” spoke the suspended red dress in Ayako’s voice. “How was you dinner at the Ohtori Mansion?”
“See? We told you the way to courting Hoshimi-chan is through Mr. Ohtori!” squealed Byako, invisible but for her green dress and shoes; the remaining one’s dancing about sent the folds of her blue dress fluttering out like insect wings.
“The girl might act spirited, but she is really little more than a flower in her father’s palm. Soon enough, Inoue-kun, you’d become the next Mr. Ohtori, with Kaoru-kun as the Acting Chairman acting under ya!”
“Don’t forget the ones who made this happen for you, okay?” chorused the invisible trio, as the whole eerie lot of them disappeared off into the ominously unlit distance.
What in the world was going on here?
Looking around, Mamiya saw that the bowls of fruit and the tableware have all vanished off the draped-covered long table; the winds picked up, blowing the drapery up and off, thus revealing the “table” to be a series of boxes . . .
. . . no, not boxes, COFFINS loaded upon flatback trolleys parked together, their wheels set upon the tracks of the very gauge railroad that his feet had remained upon even now.
With baited breath, Mamiya clasped his hands upon a coffin’s heavy lid, and started pulling it to the side-
“It won’t open any further, you know.”
The quite voice, coupled with the cool hand now reaching out from the coffin to clasp onto his, startled a scream from out of Mamiya . . . one that quickly died down, as the boy got a better look at the young child curled up on one side inside the coffin.
“ . . . Watase?” asked Mamiya, recognizing the child genius whom Hoshimi had pointed out to him on his prior visit to the academy. “Watase Sanetoshi-kun? What are you doing in there?”
“I’ve always been in here,” replied Watase Sanetoshi, his longish pink locks obscuring his eyes and much of his expression. “This is the box the world has crammed me into, a device to make me forget.”
“Make you . . . forget?”
“Forget how I’m a chosen one. There are only two types of people in this world, you know? The ones who are chosen and the ones who aren't chosen. To not be chosen is to become nothing."
“Watase-kun . . . if this is about Inoue and his goons-”
Sanetoshi’s startlingly worldly chuckle - one completely devoid of the lightness of childhood - cut Mamiya off like whip’s lash. “They’re nothing that I need to concern myself with. They think they’re stealing my designs, but truth is I’m the one using them to construct my designs; they think they’re the chosen ones, but they’re nothing. The Ends of the World have since chosen me as the one to get out of the box and break the world’s shell, leaving everyone else in the Fate Research to be nothing but living fuel to power the Project’s mechanism.” Releasing his hold on Mamiya’s hand, the child genius swept aside his lengthy fringe to meet the older boy’s wide eyes with his own smile-narrowed ones. “Isn’t it electrifying?”
“The Ends of the World?”
“The one behind the Research, behind the Academy, behind the country, behind the World. You saw it too, didn’t you? The un-chosen ones are all becoming increasingly transparent; soon, they’d get erased completely off the scenery of the world. People can be chosen, and they can make choices . . . it looks like the genius Professor from the other division too, had since made his choice.”
“What about Professor Nemuro?” asked Mamiya, voice cold with dread.
“There is a race between the two research divisions,” explained Sanetoshi, appearing deeply amused, “and only the winning side gets to become something. By choosing not to duel upon the Arena for the sake of reaching Eternity, the Professor is hindering his own research progress. Already, the Project Inspector has lost faith in the Professor’s ability to give her ailing brother timely access to Eternity, and has chosen the power of the Ends of the World over the man to have her wish fulfilled.”
“The power . . . of the Ends of the World . . . ?”
“The power to surpass human limitations and harness cosmic entities - the Castle, the Arena, the Hole in the Sky, the Fate Diary, all these fall under the control of human hands because of this power.”
Sanetoshi paused then, as if solely to study Mamiya’s expression, and the older boy knew whatever his face betrayed would be a sight to behold - his sister, a rational woman with a rational job, now is practicing witchcraft in their basement all because of the Academy’s Research, all of because of this Ends of the World . . .
. . . was she now to abandon the Professor, who had been laboring towards them siblings’ salvation against all odds; all along . . . all alone?
. . . all so her ailing brother could be kept unnaturally alive?
“It’s a power to grasp Eternity, to control Fate . . . a power to Revolutionize the World.” The pink haired child’s pre-adolescent voice turned heavy with darkness that no child should possess. “Left un-chosen after having already surrendered his heart, even a brilliant man like Nemuro too shall become nothing-”
A hand, dark and slender from where it stuck out of a white lab coat sleeve, pushed the coffin lid shut, cutting off whatever Sanetoshi was about to say.
Even without glancing up, Mamiya knew that this was the entity to have led him onto the eerie railroad and all the way here; there was a red length tied around its dark small finger, and the boy realized with a start that it was the other end of the dog leash he saw on Kaoru just moments ago.
Lifting his gaze, he saw that the entity bore the form of a petite girl looking maybe a few years older than he was. With her long dark tresses pulled up in a chunky updo, and her face masked under spectacles, she would have looked like just any nondescript girl nerd around the academy, if not for her dark, exotic complexion. Her smile benignly serene, she reached inside her lab coat (which appeared to be the only thing she was wearing, in addition to her glasses and red shoes), produced an apple from which a slice had since been carved out, and showed to him the word since carved onto the fruit’s crimson skin:
CHOOSE
“Mamiya!”
The urgent, familiar voice shattered the trance the boy had been in for all this time, and he found himself freezing in the windy, slush-covered courtyard where neither rail tracks nor coffins nor any lab-coat-wearing girl were in sight. A soft heaviness slammed onto his chilled bones, quickly enveloping him in much needed warmth - it took him a moment to realize it was Professor Nemuro’s coat.
“Why are you out here alone at this hour? You don’t even have winter clothes on . . . ” Already, the man had lifted the boy up into his surprisingly strong arms. “I’ll get you inside at once!”
Mamiya was shivering so badly by now voice his voice sounded inaudible to even his own cold-numbed ears. “Inoue . . . the race . . . research . . .”
“Did the student assistants do this to you?” asked the outraged Professor, jumping into conclusions as he hurriedly moved the boy back indoor. “I can’t believe them . . . the bastards!”
“ . . . selfish . . .” murmured the hypothermia-wrecked boy, feeling completely disoriented as the startlingly athletic Professor raced past the unlit corridors carrying him, “ . . . owe it to you that the castle . . . the arena . . . opened . . .”
“Shhh,” the red-faced Professor now looked to be almost in tears as he practically kicked open his office door (all those people who thought the man “computer-like” should have seen him now). Putting the coat-bundled boy down upon the chair, the Professor quickly turned up the heat as he then fumbled with the phone. “Don’t worry, I’ll call your sister-”
“Eternity means . . . forever,” gasped Mamiya in his brittle voice, his small, cold hand clasping onto the Professor’s, stopping him from dialing, “right? For years, decades, centuries, millennia, eons . . . on and on . . .” Watching the Professor’s face in this frantic moment, Mamiya looked into the man’s wide, unguarded eyes, taking in that pure, unmarred something shining within - that which the man often kept hidden beneath his stoic, stone-cold mannerism. “My life may be just a moment, but...” This shining, brilliant something, which his foolish sister had since left to dim in her desperation to defy fate . . . he will keep it burning if that was the last and only thing his failing flesh could possibly do. “ . . . eternity means that this moment lasts billions of billions of years . . . without end . . .”
“Mamiya-kun . . . ” The Professor looked like he was seeing the boy for the very first time; the boy, for his part, squared his jaws as he made a choice that he hope would keep this special, brilliant man chosen and unfading; a choice that he knew, even then, could cost him his everything.
“I . . . I want eternity!”
End Part Nine
Notes:
Well . . . this chapter has taken me MUCH longer to write than I previously thought it would. Just as I feared, I now have to split the Mamiya-focused “Missing Link” into two parts, meaning that the Touga-focused Missing Link will be pushed back to Part Eleven at least . . . damn it!
The more observant reader will notice how the Nemuro/Mamiya interaction scenes deviate significantly from what is shown in the TV series. This is intentional, as viewers will remember how Mikage’s precious memories have been tampered with (likely by Akio and Anthy). The events depicted in this part are my take on what actually might have happened between the characters during the Nemuro Research Era.
And, as with the past couple of days, her light footsteps gave away the fact that she was again going into the basement, locking the door behind her.
Sneaking out of bed after a few minutes, Mamiya donned his sleeping robe and slippers, slipped out into the unlit hallway, and proceeded to soundlessly make his way to the basement door. Producing the lock pick that Hoshimi had left him, Mamiya carefully opened the door with it, as he then tiptoed down the flight of stairs.
Even as he was nearing the last step, he already could see the fluttery red shades rippling across the wall in front like bloodied waves, and knew to his apprehension that a sizable fire has to be brewing down below.
But even then, the boy still was completely unprepared for what he saw at the turn of the stairs.
There was his sister, standing with her arms outstretched, her feet crossed, completely engulfed in flames so strong, the entire space was basked under their saffron lights.
Mamiya would have screamed, if not for the fact that he immediately saw the pink, glowing book hovering in midair in front of his sister, its pages rapidly turning as if tossed by phantom winds. His sister, while aflame, did not appear to wither under the fiery blaze; rather, she appeared resplendently unharmed, as she chanted in a voice largely defused by the fire’s hiss, with none of her words audible to his ear.
“ . . . what’s that on your left hand?”
Even covered in fire, the familiar-looking rose motif ring was clearly visible upon his sister’s left hand, glowing like the heated metal it was against her luminous, unharmed skin.
“Nee-san . . . ?”
The boy suddenly realized that his sister could neither see nor hear him, so engrossed was she was in whatever magic she was currently working with her now witch-like -
Flump . . .
Somewhat impossibly, the boy heard the sound of fluttering fabrics coming from behind him in spite of the flames’ sound. Turning around, he saw a slim, shadow-cloaked figure in a lab coat, watching him behind coldly glinting glasses, prior to slipping up and beyond the turn of the basement stairs.
Mamiya did not - nor did he had time to - think twice about going after the eerie intruder.
By the time he got up to the living room, the intruder was already slipping out of the front door; Mamiya quickly followed as he gave chase into the night.
The sky was cloudlessly clear - the way it had been since that snowfall from weeks ago, with that same accumulated built up from then still covering the roads in spite of the approaching spring - and the stars were vivid to the point of resembling those from a planetarium’s projections. The winds were the chilliest on nights like this, and he had the foolishness to come running out without winter coat, let alone snow boots . . .
Surprisingly, the frail boy did not so much as shiver in this winter night; strangely, he felt the night wind against his flimsy robe and exposed skin, but none of its chilliness; and there was no slush to hamper his running, as his indoor slippers were tapping smoothly, easily upon the dry wooden ties of an extremely narrow gauge railroad - one that he did not recall having ever seen around the area. The houses were gone, as were the road pavements . . . as was the entire residential neighborhood; all around, there was nothing but the starry, galactic space, with the railroad existing impossibly upon nothing. Up ahead, the figure in the lab coat appeared to be pushing some kind of loaded flatback trolley along the tracks; though it (as Mamiya had since realized that whatever it is not have been human) moved in seemingly languid steps, Mamiya found that he could not catch up to it no matter how fast he thought he was running.
“Who are you?” cried the boy as he ran after the thing, brittle heart speeding hazardously within his thin chest. “What were you doing at our house? What’s happening to my sister? What-”
The entity in the lab coat tossed something backwards over a shoulder in an arc of glittery light . . . and it found its way into his opened throat, giving him no choice but to swallow. It was sweet, crisp, and cool . . . tasting just like a slice of . . .
. . . apple?
And, along with that realization, Mamiya found his surroundings changing with such abruptness, that the boy found himself almost tripping over his own feet.
It still was night, and the stars still were glittering brightly above; but he now found himself in the courtyard outside Ohtori Academy’s research building - a spot he had since familiarize himself with from the times he sneaked out of the house to meet with Hoshimi at school. There was a white-draped long table illuminated by a singular candelabra, upon which a feast of apples, grapes, and pears had been laid out, accompanied by champagne glasses and stacks of empty plates; upon closer look, all the apples had penguin motif stickers upon their crimson surfaces.
The setting was that of an elegant evening party - one with no attendee in sight. Nasally male voices, eerily diffused yet still very much audible, hovered adrift over the cool night air:
“The road to the Dueling arena is now open.”
“At last, that is about to begin.”
“And now, Professor Nemuro's duty is finished.”
“From now on, carrying on without him is probably what you-know-who plans on.”
“Surely even he'll lose to someone.”
“We can just leave him by the wayside.”
“Well then, let's open the champagne.”
Pop!
“Ah, Chida-kun,” his nemesis’ voice, sounding very real from behind him, startled the boy into jolting. Turning around, what he saw made him did a double take.
Inoue Tsukiichi, looking drunk on liquor, was wobbling past with his arm around the slim shoulder of Kaoru Yuki - a shameless goat perversely supportive of his mate going after Hoshimi. A trio of dresses - not girls, the feminine attires hovering in midair as if worn by invisible females - could be seen flanking the boys in dramatically coquettish poses.
“Shouldn’t terminally ill little boys be in bed by now?” asked Inoue, snide and completely oblivious to the strangeness surrounding them.
“Are high school students allowed to drink now?” Mamiya asked him back, the dream-like surreal-ness of the moment having lessened his inhibition against petty verbal sparring. The older boy’s derisive laughter came accompanied by peals of girlish giggles - ones the younger boy recognized to belong to the drama club trio who used to hang around Hoshimi all the time.
What did this mean? Were the girls invisible now?
“A correspondence student like you probably don’t know,” Kaoru piped up then, “but we who wear this ring can do anything in this Academy.” The pale-skinned youth flashed his rose motif ring at the boy in a gesture not unlike that of a society debutante flaunting her jewelry.
The reminder that the same ring now was on his witchcraft-working sister’s finger hit Mamiya like a blow to the chest.
Even in his frantic state, the boy noticed the dog collar visible around Kaoru’s neck, one with a red leash so long, it trailed out of view into the surrounding darkness . . . who or what was holding the other end?
“So tell us more, Inoue-kun,” spoke the suspended red dress in Ayako’s voice. “How was you dinner at the Ohtori Mansion?”
“See? We told you the way to courting Hoshimi-chan is through Mr. Ohtori!” squealed Byako, invisible but for her green dress and shoes; the remaining one’s dancing about sent the folds of her blue dress fluttering out like insect wings.
“The girl might act spirited, but she is really little more than a flower in her father’s palm. Soon enough, Inoue-kun, you’d become the next Mr. Ohtori, with Kaoru-kun as the Acting Chairman acting under ya!”
“Don’t forget the ones who made this happen for you, okay?” chorused the invisible trio, as the whole eerie lot of them disappeared off into the ominously unlit distance.
What in the world was going on here?
Looking around, Mamiya saw that the bowls of fruit and the tableware have all vanished off the draped-covered long table; the winds picked up, blowing the drapery up and off, thus revealing the “table” to be a series of boxes . . .
. . . no, not boxes, COFFINS loaded upon flatback trolleys parked together, their wheels set upon the tracks of the very gauge railroad that his feet had remained upon even now.
With baited breath, Mamiya clasped his hands upon a coffin’s heavy lid, and started pulling it to the side-
“It won’t open any further, you know.”
The quite voice, coupled with the cool hand now reaching out from the coffin to clasp onto his, startled a scream from out of Mamiya . . . one that quickly died down, as the boy got a better look at the young child curled up on one side inside the coffin.
“ . . . Watase?” asked Mamiya, recognizing the child genius whom Hoshimi had pointed out to him on his prior visit to the academy. “Watase Sanetoshi-kun? What are you doing in there?”
“I’ve always been in here,” replied Watase Sanetoshi, his longish pink locks obscuring his eyes and much of his expression. “This is the box the world has crammed me into, a device to make me forget.”
“Make you . . . forget?”
“Forget how I’m a chosen one. There are only two types of people in this world, you know? The ones who are chosen and the ones who aren't chosen. To not be chosen is to become nothing."
“Watase-kun . . . if this is about Inoue and his goons-”
Sanetoshi’s startlingly worldly chuckle - one completely devoid of the lightness of childhood - cut Mamiya off like whip’s lash. “They’re nothing that I need to concern myself with. They think they’re stealing my designs, but truth is I’m the one using them to construct my designs; they think they’re the chosen ones, but they’re nothing. The Ends of the World have since chosen me as the one to get out of the box and break the world’s shell, leaving everyone else in the Fate Research to be nothing but living fuel to power the Project’s mechanism.” Releasing his hold on Mamiya’s hand, the child genius swept aside his lengthy fringe to meet the older boy’s wide eyes with his own smile-narrowed ones. “Isn’t it electrifying?”
“The Ends of the World?”
“The one behind the Research, behind the Academy, behind the country, behind the World. You saw it too, didn’t you? The un-chosen ones are all becoming increasingly transparent; soon, they’d get erased completely off the scenery of the world. People can be chosen, and they can make choices . . . it looks like the genius Professor from the other division too, had since made his choice.”
“What about Professor Nemuro?” asked Mamiya, voice cold with dread.
“There is a race between the two research divisions,” explained Sanetoshi, appearing deeply amused, “and only the winning side gets to become something. By choosing not to duel upon the Arena for the sake of reaching Eternity, the Professor is hindering his own research progress. Already, the Project Inspector has lost faith in the Professor’s ability to give her ailing brother timely access to Eternity, and has chosen the power of the Ends of the World over the man to have her wish fulfilled.”
“The power . . . of the Ends of the World . . . ?”
“The power to surpass human limitations and harness cosmic entities - the Castle, the Arena, the Hole in the Sky, the Fate Diary, all these fall under the control of human hands because of this power.”
Sanetoshi paused then, as if solely to study Mamiya’s expression, and the older boy knew whatever his face betrayed would be a sight to behold - his sister, a rational woman with a rational job, now is practicing witchcraft in their basement all because of the Academy’s Research, all of because of this Ends of the World . . .
. . . was she now to abandon the Professor, who had been laboring towards them siblings’ salvation against all odds; all along . . . all alone?
. . . all so her ailing brother could be kept unnaturally alive?
“It’s a power to grasp Eternity, to control Fate . . . a power to Revolutionize the World.” The pink haired child’s pre-adolescent voice turned heavy with darkness that no child should possess. “Left un-chosen after having already surrendered his heart, even a brilliant man like Nemuro too shall become nothing-”
A hand, dark and slender from where it stuck out of a white lab coat sleeve, pushed the coffin lid shut, cutting off whatever Sanetoshi was about to say.
Even without glancing up, Mamiya knew that this was the entity to have led him onto the eerie railroad and all the way here; there was a red length tied around its dark small finger, and the boy realized with a start that it was the other end of the dog leash he saw on Kaoru just moments ago.
Lifting his gaze, he saw that the entity bore the form of a petite girl looking maybe a few years older than he was. With her long dark tresses pulled up in a chunky updo, and her face masked under spectacles, she would have looked like just any nondescript girl nerd around the academy, if not for her dark, exotic complexion. Her smile benignly serene, she reached inside her lab coat (which appeared to be the only thing she was wearing, in addition to her glasses and red shoes), produced an apple from which a slice had since been carved out, and showed to him the word since carved onto the fruit’s crimson skin:
CHOOSE
“Mamiya!”
The urgent, familiar voice shattered the trance the boy had been in for all this time, and he found himself freezing in the windy, slush-covered courtyard where neither rail tracks nor coffins nor any lab-coat-wearing girl were in sight. A soft heaviness slammed onto his chilled bones, quickly enveloping him in much needed warmth - it took him a moment to realize it was Professor Nemuro’s coat.
“Why are you out here alone at this hour? You don’t even have winter clothes on . . . ” Already, the man had lifted the boy up into his surprisingly strong arms. “I’ll get you inside at once!”
Mamiya was shivering so badly by now voice his voice sounded inaudible to even his own cold-numbed ears. “Inoue . . . the race . . . research . . .”
“Did the student assistants do this to you?” asked the outraged Professor, jumping into conclusions as he hurriedly moved the boy back indoor. “I can’t believe them . . . the bastards!”
“ . . . selfish . . .” murmured the hypothermia-wrecked boy, feeling completely disoriented as the startlingly athletic Professor raced past the unlit corridors carrying him, “ . . . owe it to you that the castle . . . the arena . . . opened . . .”
“Shhh,” the red-faced Professor now looked to be almost in tears as he practically kicked open his office door (all those people who thought the man “computer-like” should have seen him now). Putting the coat-bundled boy down upon the chair, the Professor quickly turned up the heat as he then fumbled with the phone. “Don’t worry, I’ll call your sister-”
“Eternity means . . . forever,” gasped Mamiya in his brittle voice, his small, cold hand clasping onto the Professor’s, stopping him from dialing, “right? For years, decades, centuries, millennia, eons . . . on and on . . .” Watching the Professor’s face in this frantic moment, Mamiya looked into the man’s wide, unguarded eyes, taking in that pure, unmarred something shining within - that which the man often kept hidden beneath his stoic, stone-cold mannerism. “My life may be just a moment, but...” This shining, brilliant something, which his foolish sister had since left to dim in her desperation to defy fate . . . he will keep it burning if that was the last and only thing his failing flesh could possibly do. “ . . . eternity means that this moment lasts billions of billions of years . . . without end . . .”
“Mamiya-kun . . . ” The Professor looked like he was seeing the boy for the very first time; the boy, for his part, squared his jaws as he made a choice that he hope would keep this special, brilliant man chosen and unfading; a choice that he knew, even then, could cost him his everything.
“I . . . I want eternity!”
End Part Nine
Notes:
Well . . . this chapter has taken me MUCH longer to write than I previously thought it would. Just as I feared, I now have to split the Mamiya-focused “Missing Link” into two parts, meaning that the Touga-focused Missing Link will be pushed back to Part Eleven at least . . . damn it!
The more observant reader will notice how the Nemuro/Mamiya interaction scenes deviate significantly from what is shown in the TV series. This is intentional, as viewers will remember how Mikage’s precious memories have been tampered with (likely by Akio and Anthy). The events depicted in this part are my take on what actually might have happened between the characters during the Nemuro Research Era.