"Inevitable Fate", chapter one
Title: Inevitable Fate
Chapter: 1/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): none yet
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: The first half of this was written as a collab between us, while the second half was written solo by katmillia . The concept, setting, and plot are based on KAT-TUN's Don't U Ever Stop PV, which, in the off-chance that you haven't seen it, can be found streaming here (though you should make a point to see the extended version). Much thanks also go to threewalls for nudging and encouragement, and to bubbly and aoife_hime for looking over this a year ago when I never thought it would get done and was still referring to it as "that steampunk collab". Soundtrack to go up in a few.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon when Kame opened his eyes.
The blankets were tangled around his legs when he swung his feet over the side of the mattress, pushing hair out of his eyes as he blinked in an attempt to right his vision. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so; it wouldn't reach sweltering temperatures until midday- at least not for a few months more. He liked the mornings before the onslaught of heat hit, the lazy way the sun blurred behind the clouds and the way it was just humid enough to make his hair stick to his cheeks and neck.
His soles made small padding 'thwaps' against the floorboards as he made his way to the washroom, and it was oddly comforting- normal. Routine. The water was cool and it helped to wake him up fully when he splashed it over his face, wetting his hands and running them across his shoulders a bit. He needed to replace the mirror hanging above the sink, because there was a crack in one of the corners from when he'd gotten soap in his eye and had banged his fist into the glass grabbing for a nearby towel.
All of these things slipped neatly into his daily life, into his schedule and his responsibilities. He looked at his reflection on the slightly warped surface of the mirror, pursing his lips a few times and pushing errant hair out of his eyes. He was going to need to see the barber, soon, too- his bangs were getting unruly.
Another pass of his hands under the faucet, and he felt alert enough. He reached for the towel folded by the cabinets and pressed the fabric to his face. When he looked back over the top at the mirror again, his reflection wobbled. It sort of shook and trembled, like the glass itself was warping and folding in on itself.
Kame froze.
He closed his eyes, counted to two, and then opened them again, hoping that it was simply the remnants of sleep still messing with his vision and nothing more. For an achingly long second, the image was still once more, and then it twisted as his entire world pitched to one side and blurred. He dropped the towel to the ground and grabbed for the edges of the sink; it was the only thing he had to anchor him to reality. His heart was in his throat, pounding and harsh and shrill, and he couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.
The sensation passed over and dissipated in a few moments, but those seconds felt like a lifetime, and by the time Kame was dressed and leaving his apartment for work, he still couldn't shake the knob of nerves that had lodged itself in his stomach.
--
Mid-afternoon at the market was the busiest time. Kame had a steady stream of bags to fill with rice, label, and clip closed for the row of shelves on the far wall. The second week of the month meant that shopping was available for ID numbers that ended with 3-5, and it seemed to pick up near the middle of the week rather than at either end. He'd never quite been able to figure out that phenomenon. But he continued packing the sacks full of rice grains, measuring them on the scale and twisting the tops before looping the iron through the burlap.
A few of the older women gave him wan smiles as they picked up their monthly allotments.
"You always do such a nice job," one of them told him. "The young woman who works the evening shifts sometimes lets the bags get loose, and then I lose rice when I pick it up."
Kame wasn't sure how to answer that- he knew the woman who took over after him, but he'd never worked with her enough to evaluate her deftness. "Thank you," he settled on, with a polite bow.
One of the men to enter during his shift was the best short stop in the DD3 block, and Kame perked up when Yamada waved him over, hoping for good news.
"Game tonight?" Kame asked.
"At the south most field," Yamada replied. "You in?"
Kame thought about his reflection in the mirror that morning, about how he could still taste the copper tang at the back of his throat. It was obvious that he hadn't slept well- a day amidst the dust and the sharp leather smell of his baseball glove would be a welcome wave of normalcy. "Yeah. I'm in."
Yamada gave him a pat to the shoulder. "Usual time, then. Seeya round."
Kame went back to the large bags of rice near the far corner of the market. When he stuck his hand in the sack, the grains of rice trickled out between his fingers like droplets of water. He watched them slide down and get lost amidst the others that looked just like them; hundreds and thousands of identical twins all resting together in an off-white mound. His throat constricted.
He stared at the grains until everything started to blur again, and when he tried to take a slow breath to fix it, he realized that he couldn't seem to suck in enough oxygen to appease his lungs. He dropped the rest of the rice he was holding and took a shaky step back, one hand flying to his throat. It felt like someone was pressing down against his neck; his vision went red at the edges. There was a roar in his ears that almost sounded like the sound of a train going past him on the tracks.
It lasted longer than it had in the bathroom that morning. Kame almost fell to his knees, and caught himself just in time, because he was still at the market- he was surrounded by people, and he couldn't afford to lose it. He had to keep it to himself, because the consequences otherwise were too dire to think about.
He propped one hand against the boards of the walls, a sliver jabbing itself into the pad of his thumb. The pain helped him to gain a bearing on his body again.
"Kamenashi?" his supervisor asked.
"Just a little tired," he managed to get out, and he hoped his voice wasn't shaking as much as his arm was. The answer seemed to appease her; at least she moved away and went back to writing down ID numbers on her ledger as the clients left with their rations. Kame stayed where he was, one hand unconsciously sliding around his side, across the ridges of his ribs, to the base of his spine. When his hand closed over the cool, familiar metal of his transmitter, it didn't help as much as he thought it would. He wanted a mirror, but trying to find a surface to use as one in the market would only arouse suspicion.
He had to calm himself down. His palm against the wall was still trembling.
"Kamenashi!" his supervisor's voice said, sharp and cutting.
"Yes," he answered, and pushed himself back away from the wall, to his heels. He had to keep working; he had to stay calm. "Sorry. I just needed to catch my breath."
For some reason after that, looking down at the rice grains in the sack as he was bagging them just made him feel slightly sick to his stomach, and he didn't know why.
--
It had grown chillier later in the afternoon, and icing his shoulder after a solid five innings was a more preferable pain than the strange feelings he’d been having all day. Focusing on pitching, even in a sandlot game, was something Kame far preferred to the nausea and the headaches from earlier that day. Maybe he was coming down with something. He didn’t want to have to miss work. The last thing he needed on the yearly evaluation form was a reputation as an unreliable member of the trade.
They could probably get in another inning, maybe one and a half before the sun set. Another inning to think back on the pitches he could have thrown faster, the ones where he should have had a little bit more control. Yamada came over and sat beside him on the bench.
“It’s no fun playing with you, you know,” Yamada pointed out. “Nobody can hit off of you.”
“Sorry,” he said, not really feeling all that badly about it. He could be the best at dividing rice, scooping miso paste or unloading the tins of tuna from the supply train, but none of that really mattered. He sometimes wished he’d been apprenticed somewhere else, but he never knew what he’d have preferred. It wasn’t like his friends had any exciting options to envy.
Yamada was almost done apprenticing at the waterworks and would be a master before too long. Aiba was a great third baseman, but he was probably just an average weaver. Ninomiya always had complaints about working at the train yard. So really, what else could he do but play baseball until his arm was ready to fall out of its socket? It was something to pass the time.
He adjusted the small ice pack, and Yamada laughed at him. “You’re going to feel terrible in the morning. Look, my friend’s got an in at the pharmacy in DD6. I can get you some stuff for the pain if you want. Well, I imagine you’d have to cough up some stuff from your warehouse...”
Kame shook his head. It wasn’t worth playing that kind of game, that was for sure. People disappeared for less. “It’s fine. I’ll just take it easy tomorrow.”
Yamada shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, man.”
Their side wasn’t doing so bad tonight, and he watched Aiba run the bases after he sent the ball over the shoddy aluminum wall in right field. He laughed as Aiba pulled off his t-shirt and waved it around his head as he rounded second, the transmitter glowing bright blue at the base of his spine. “What a show off.”
His friend agreed. “Yeah, especially since he’s the one who has to go get the ball once he gets home. We only brought two tonight.”
Well, that had been poor planning, but Yamada fixed leaky pipes all day. He probably had a leaky brain too, but Kame liked him enough. Aiba made it to home and went trudging off again to retrieve the baseball. The game went on, and the sun started to set. As it got lower and lower in the sky, Kame’s mood lowered right along with it.
He didn’t get sick a lot, he never had. Sometimes a bug just went around the area and people missed a day of work. It wasn’t really that big a deal, but this didn’t feel like a cold or something that could be fixed with something from the pharmacy (legitimately obtained or not). This had med center written all over it. And then if they found out he’d been handling food while he was sick...
“Curfew, thirty minutes!” came the cry from the street, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Curfew, thirty minutes!”
“Bishops, man,” Yamada complained. “Don’t they care that this might go to extra innings?”
Kame snorted. “I don’t think they do. And besides, once the sun’s down, we can’t count on the lighting in this shitty block.”
A bunch of foul balls and arguments over the strike zone wrapped the game up at the end of seven, and Kame figured they’d just have to resume the next evening. He just hoped he’d be able to pitch again. Everyone headed for their own apartment blocks, Kame keeping his glove tucked under his good arm as he walked slowly home. The bishops were still shouting the time until curfew, bellowing like a bunch of idiots as their voices echoed throughout the neighborhood.
Maybe he should have been a bishop, Kame thought. They got to stay out past curfew, although for what? To catch stragglers and escort them home? To report the rare theft? To shout until his voice gave out every night? Probably not worth it.
He passed a messenger girl on his way into the building, stepping aside quickly as she rushed off to beat the curfew. Whatever the message was, it hadn’t been for him, he thought, seeing his empty mailbox.
He took to the stairs, listening to the familiar creaks as he headed for the third floor. He’d been living in this building for nearly six years, and tonight it felt somehow different. Some kind of change in the air, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. Everything was so much more intense than it usually was. He could hear the buzzing of the light bulbs, could smell that someone had burnt their dinner, could feel the wooden railing under his fingertips as he climbed. Everything was happening at once. He was noticing everything at once. The strange sensation from earlier in the day washed over him, almost like someone had suddenly dunked him into ice cold water.
He sat down on the landing, dropping his baseball glove at his side. The smells and the sounds were too much. He had to get upstairs to check his back, look in the mirror and make sure he was just as bright as Aiba had been rounding the bases. Normal, just like everyone else. His breaths were coming in short, hitching gasps. He was normal. He was a normal person with a normal trade and a normal group of friends. He just had to be.
There was noise from the street, people returning to their buildings in an awful hurry. People didn’t hurry. Nobody ever hurried, even when the bishops were in the neighborhood shouting about curfew. It was something worse then, Kame realized, hearing people in the apartments around him shuffling their feet and opening windows to look out into the street.
Everyone opened their windows at times like these. Everyone wanted to watch. Everyone needed to know it wasn’t them. And with the way Kame was feeling, there was a pretty good chance he was the target. This propelled him off of the steps quickly, abandoning his glove and racing for his apartment despite still feeling woozy.
He fumbled in his pocket for his keys, shoulder screaming. Nobody ever shouted, nobody ever said anything. The panic was all in the windows opening and the feet pacing the floorboards. He got the door open and nearly stumbled inside, shutting the door behind him and turning the lock. He shakily jammed the metal chain in too, not like it would stop them.
Kame made it over to the window, yanking the curtains aside to stare out into the darkened street. He could see across the way, seeing a person at nearly every window peering out, looking to see what direction they were coming. Where were they? The street was emptying. No stray bishops, a few people running back and entering their buildings without saying a word.
He stared across to the building opposite, meeting the eyes of a young woman briefly before stepping back. He had to check his back, going into the bathroom and pulling up his shirt. His shoulder was still very displeased with him, but he ignored the pain long enough to turn around, craning his neck. If it was blue and glowing and normal, he could relax. He could go back to the window and see where they were going, if they even came down his street.
It was flickering.
He found it with his fingers, keeping his shirt up with one hand and feeling the familiar metallic bump at the small of his back. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he mumbled, tapping it, wondering what the hell was going on. He was young and healthy and in good shape. Sometimes when there was an older person in the neighborhood, there was less panic. Because it made sense then. There was less shuffling and less standing at the windows when it was predictable.
They were coming for him, he realized, seeing how faint the light was, seeing it blinking slowly like one of the light bulbs in the hallway of his building. But people from the electric trade replaced those. There was no replacement in Kame’s case. Nobody came back. But he wasn’t dying. He couldn’t be dying. He’d gone to work and pitched so perfectly it had pissed everybody off.
And now he’d locked himself in. That wasn’t going to work. No, there had to be some kind of mistake here. Maybe he’d hit his back funny or there was a problem on their end. Because he was twenty-four years old and he was not dying. He’d never felt more alive. No matter how much his head was hurting or his limbs were shaking, he was alive.
He could still hear windows opening as he undid the chain and unlocked the door. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for them to get there first. He wasn’t just going to let them take him wherever they took people. Nobody who had ever seen a rook had been around to tell people what they were like. Even the bishops steered clear. Kame wasn’t terribly interested in finding out what they looked like either.
He grabbed a jacket and a hat, better to put another layer of fabric over his flickering transmitter and to conceal his face. Nobody really knew how they found you. But if there wasn’t a Kamenashi Kazuya in Kamenashi Kazuya’s apartment, then it would confuse them, wouldn’t it? He headed for the end of the hall, going out the side exit onto the fire escape.
He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t let whatever was wrong with his body slow him down. Everyone would be watching the street, so he went down the metal staircase, hearing his sneakers clang on each step. Maybe he should have brought food. Maybe he should have brought water, he thought as he hopped off the last few feet to the ground, asphalt under his soles as he headed for the alley.
They weren’t going to find him. They weren’t going to take him away.
--
There had only been one time that Kame had been out past curfew- it had been a mistake, an oversight, but he remembered feeling anxious as he made his way back towards his apartment. It hadn't been a particularly strong feeling, but one that he'd noted nonetheless, curls of it stretching up his chest from his stomach. He'd made it home that day without any problem, but he'd always sort of known in the back of his head that he'd been a little lucky. Reprimands for staying out past curfew weren't terribly severe, and yet he'd been relieved at having avoided getting one.
The slight nerves from the last time he'd been out past sundown were nothing like the knots in his stomach now as he made his way through the poorly lit alley that snaked between buildings and rotting wooden fences. There were no flutterings of fear- it was everywhere. His entire body was trembling and shaking, throat clogged and tongue dry. Every sound was something waiting to jump out and grab him. Every noise was a rook or bishop hot on his tail to take him to wherever they take the people whose transmitters grew dark- nowhere.
When he'd been younger, he'd heard stories from the other kids in the bunks at school. They had been nothing more than whispers after the lights were turned out designed to scare the younger ones, and it had worked, but now they felt terrifyingly real. They'd said that when the rooks came for someone, that everything was over. Some claimed they took people somewhere else and performed horrible magic tricks on them. Others had said that they took people past the city limits, past the metal doors covered in rust. None of the options were good- and Kame couldn't help but believe that all of them were true, and that each and every story was going to happen to him if he didn't get away fast enough.
His heartbeat was pounding against his ears. He'd never felt it throbbing so strongly before.
Kame swallowed hard and turned a corner, and then there was one of them, at the end of the dim lighting. It was just a shadow against the only brightness there was, outline of its hood blurred and too soft to be correct.
For a split second, everything in Kame's vision went red, and then black. He surged to the left without thinking, and his ankle rolled a little when he stepped on something he couldn't see in the darkness. He just kept moving, kept pushing his body forward, even though he could barely catch his breath. Behind him, he could hear shuffles, like the soles of shoes against pavement in uneven, jagged steps; it just made everything that much worse.
He ran into a fence, unable to completely stop the anguished noise that bubbled up from his throat. They were coming for him- they were coming for him.
There was a pile of discarded crates and trash cans near the wall, and Kame used them to propel himself up and over the fence. The unfinished wood from the top spikes dug into his palm and he could feel the hot sting of blood drawn, but even the pain wasn't enough to keep his mind in control. He landed with a thud and stumbled forward, and then just kept moving. If the rook was still behind him, maybe the fence would slow it down a bit. He didn't know how mobile or flexible they were; no one even knew who they were.
And then, from his transmitter, there was a spasm of pain. It ran up his spine and down his legs, clenching his muscles, and he tripped. He tripped because his feet would no longer respond to the movements he was directing to them. He fell forward and caught himself on the side of the building just in front of him. All the air was gone from his lungs. He couldn't decipher which way was up.
Everything was bright- sharp. All the edges of the forms around him were piercing against one another, jagged pieces that didn't align. There was the almost overpowering scent of grime and oil from one of the train warehouses, so thick that it made him even dizzier. He'd never smelled anything so strongly, never felt the air so keenly against his skin.
He sucked in a deep lungful of air, as much as he could manage to get down.
There was the sound of something moving behind him, trash cans being knocked over. If the rook was following him, it had toppled the pile he'd used to get over the fence.
"Oh god," Kame gasped. He thought he was going to be sick.
There was only one thing to do, and it was keep moving. He could barely make his legs obey, but somehow he did. He stumbled forward, one foot after another, keeping one palm against the wall in the desperate hope to stay upright. He couldn't hear anything behind him anymore, because all he could hear was the roar of sounds flooding his senses. The chug and whir of the train past the next bend. The buzz of the dim lighting above his head, hung up on strings between rooftops. The sound of the pebbles crunching beneath the soles of his shoes. Everything was louder than he'd ever experienced it before, pounding and swirling together into a din he couldn't discern a single individual thing from.
His shoe splashed in a puddle of something- oil, maybe, leaked out from the barrels stored behind the train yard.
Kame got around the next building, towards the yard entrance, and then he bypassed it- he didn't want to go somewhere that the rooks would think to look for him. There was an abandoned building just inside the next block that had been closed down because it needed repairs to the roof. He knew the direction it was, and he was propelled by terror stronger than anything he'd ever felt in his life.
Halfway there, he stopped being able to get oxygen into his lungs at all. He had to pause, wheezing, one hand rising involuntarily to his throat. He choked and fell to his knees. Crimson blossomed over his vision, unfolding and blooming like flower petals until everything was red.
"No," he moaned, and that was all he could get out with the absence of breathing.
He was too young to die. He was young and healthy; yesterday, he hadn't felt anything out of the ordinary.
There was another spasm in his back, jerking his muscles so hard it hurt. It felt like the transmitter was sputtering out, giving up- he knew without even having a mirror to look at it with that it had to be either dark, or barely flickering. He could feel it in his bones. He was dying, and they were going to take him away. He gasped, but he still couldn't get anything into his lungs.
The world tipped on its axis, and he fell as everything started to spin out of control. There were bits and pieces of memories that surfaced in the darkness- the school he'd grown up in, the first day after he'd been apprenticed. Images of things he was fairly certain he'd never actually seen before. Sights and smells and sudden bright flares of color that tangled together.
And then there was just nothing but the dull thud of pain as his head hit the ground, and everything went black.
Chapter: 1/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): none yet
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: The first half of this was written as a collab between us, while the second half was written solo by katmillia . The concept, setting, and plot are based on KAT-TUN's Don't U Ever Stop PV, which, in the off-chance that you haven't seen it, can be found streaming here (though you should make a point to see the extended version). Much thanks also go to threewalls for nudging and encouragement, and to bubbly and aoife_hime for looking over this a year ago when I never thought it would get done and was still referring to it as "that steampunk collab". Soundtrack to go up in a few.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon when Kame opened his eyes.
The blankets were tangled around his legs when he swung his feet over the side of the mattress, pushing hair out of his eyes as he blinked in an attempt to right his vision. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so; it wouldn't reach sweltering temperatures until midday- at least not for a few months more. He liked the mornings before the onslaught of heat hit, the lazy way the sun blurred behind the clouds and the way it was just humid enough to make his hair stick to his cheeks and neck.
His soles made small padding 'thwaps' against the floorboards as he made his way to the washroom, and it was oddly comforting- normal. Routine. The water was cool and it helped to wake him up fully when he splashed it over his face, wetting his hands and running them across his shoulders a bit. He needed to replace the mirror hanging above the sink, because there was a crack in one of the corners from when he'd gotten soap in his eye and had banged his fist into the glass grabbing for a nearby towel.
All of these things slipped neatly into his daily life, into his schedule and his responsibilities. He looked at his reflection on the slightly warped surface of the mirror, pursing his lips a few times and pushing errant hair out of his eyes. He was going to need to see the barber, soon, too- his bangs were getting unruly.
Another pass of his hands under the faucet, and he felt alert enough. He reached for the towel folded by the cabinets and pressed the fabric to his face. When he looked back over the top at the mirror again, his reflection wobbled. It sort of shook and trembled, like the glass itself was warping and folding in on itself.
Kame froze.
He closed his eyes, counted to two, and then opened them again, hoping that it was simply the remnants of sleep still messing with his vision and nothing more. For an achingly long second, the image was still once more, and then it twisted as his entire world pitched to one side and blurred. He dropped the towel to the ground and grabbed for the edges of the sink; it was the only thing he had to anchor him to reality. His heart was in his throat, pounding and harsh and shrill, and he couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.
The sensation passed over and dissipated in a few moments, but those seconds felt like a lifetime, and by the time Kame was dressed and leaving his apartment for work, he still couldn't shake the knob of nerves that had lodged itself in his stomach.
--
Mid-afternoon at the market was the busiest time. Kame had a steady stream of bags to fill with rice, label, and clip closed for the row of shelves on the far wall. The second week of the month meant that shopping was available for ID numbers that ended with 3-5, and it seemed to pick up near the middle of the week rather than at either end. He'd never quite been able to figure out that phenomenon. But he continued packing the sacks full of rice grains, measuring them on the scale and twisting the tops before looping the iron through the burlap.
A few of the older women gave him wan smiles as they picked up their monthly allotments.
"You always do such a nice job," one of them told him. "The young woman who works the evening shifts sometimes lets the bags get loose, and then I lose rice when I pick it up."
Kame wasn't sure how to answer that- he knew the woman who took over after him, but he'd never worked with her enough to evaluate her deftness. "Thank you," he settled on, with a polite bow.
One of the men to enter during his shift was the best short stop in the DD3 block, and Kame perked up when Yamada waved him over, hoping for good news.
"Game tonight?" Kame asked.
"At the south most field," Yamada replied. "You in?"
Kame thought about his reflection in the mirror that morning, about how he could still taste the copper tang at the back of his throat. It was obvious that he hadn't slept well- a day amidst the dust and the sharp leather smell of his baseball glove would be a welcome wave of normalcy. "Yeah. I'm in."
Yamada gave him a pat to the shoulder. "Usual time, then. Seeya round."
Kame went back to the large bags of rice near the far corner of the market. When he stuck his hand in the sack, the grains of rice trickled out between his fingers like droplets of water. He watched them slide down and get lost amidst the others that looked just like them; hundreds and thousands of identical twins all resting together in an off-white mound. His throat constricted.
He stared at the grains until everything started to blur again, and when he tried to take a slow breath to fix it, he realized that he couldn't seem to suck in enough oxygen to appease his lungs. He dropped the rest of the rice he was holding and took a shaky step back, one hand flying to his throat. It felt like someone was pressing down against his neck; his vision went red at the edges. There was a roar in his ears that almost sounded like the sound of a train going past him on the tracks.
It lasted longer than it had in the bathroom that morning. Kame almost fell to his knees, and caught himself just in time, because he was still at the market- he was surrounded by people, and he couldn't afford to lose it. He had to keep it to himself, because the consequences otherwise were too dire to think about.
He propped one hand against the boards of the walls, a sliver jabbing itself into the pad of his thumb. The pain helped him to gain a bearing on his body again.
"Kamenashi?" his supervisor asked.
"Just a little tired," he managed to get out, and he hoped his voice wasn't shaking as much as his arm was. The answer seemed to appease her; at least she moved away and went back to writing down ID numbers on her ledger as the clients left with their rations. Kame stayed where he was, one hand unconsciously sliding around his side, across the ridges of his ribs, to the base of his spine. When his hand closed over the cool, familiar metal of his transmitter, it didn't help as much as he thought it would. He wanted a mirror, but trying to find a surface to use as one in the market would only arouse suspicion.
He had to calm himself down. His palm against the wall was still trembling.
"Kamenashi!" his supervisor's voice said, sharp and cutting.
"Yes," he answered, and pushed himself back away from the wall, to his heels. He had to keep working; he had to stay calm. "Sorry. I just needed to catch my breath."
For some reason after that, looking down at the rice grains in the sack as he was bagging them just made him feel slightly sick to his stomach, and he didn't know why.
--
It had grown chillier later in the afternoon, and icing his shoulder after a solid five innings was a more preferable pain than the strange feelings he’d been having all day. Focusing on pitching, even in a sandlot game, was something Kame far preferred to the nausea and the headaches from earlier that day. Maybe he was coming down with something. He didn’t want to have to miss work. The last thing he needed on the yearly evaluation form was a reputation as an unreliable member of the trade.
They could probably get in another inning, maybe one and a half before the sun set. Another inning to think back on the pitches he could have thrown faster, the ones where he should have had a little bit more control. Yamada came over and sat beside him on the bench.
“It’s no fun playing with you, you know,” Yamada pointed out. “Nobody can hit off of you.”
“Sorry,” he said, not really feeling all that badly about it. He could be the best at dividing rice, scooping miso paste or unloading the tins of tuna from the supply train, but none of that really mattered. He sometimes wished he’d been apprenticed somewhere else, but he never knew what he’d have preferred. It wasn’t like his friends had any exciting options to envy.
Yamada was almost done apprenticing at the waterworks and would be a master before too long. Aiba was a great third baseman, but he was probably just an average weaver. Ninomiya always had complaints about working at the train yard. So really, what else could he do but play baseball until his arm was ready to fall out of its socket? It was something to pass the time.
He adjusted the small ice pack, and Yamada laughed at him. “You’re going to feel terrible in the morning. Look, my friend’s got an in at the pharmacy in DD6. I can get you some stuff for the pain if you want. Well, I imagine you’d have to cough up some stuff from your warehouse...”
Kame shook his head. It wasn’t worth playing that kind of game, that was for sure. People disappeared for less. “It’s fine. I’ll just take it easy tomorrow.”
Yamada shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, man.”
Their side wasn’t doing so bad tonight, and he watched Aiba run the bases after he sent the ball over the shoddy aluminum wall in right field. He laughed as Aiba pulled off his t-shirt and waved it around his head as he rounded second, the transmitter glowing bright blue at the base of his spine. “What a show off.”
His friend agreed. “Yeah, especially since he’s the one who has to go get the ball once he gets home. We only brought two tonight.”
Well, that had been poor planning, but Yamada fixed leaky pipes all day. He probably had a leaky brain too, but Kame liked him enough. Aiba made it to home and went trudging off again to retrieve the baseball. The game went on, and the sun started to set. As it got lower and lower in the sky, Kame’s mood lowered right along with it.
He didn’t get sick a lot, he never had. Sometimes a bug just went around the area and people missed a day of work. It wasn’t really that big a deal, but this didn’t feel like a cold or something that could be fixed with something from the pharmacy (legitimately obtained or not). This had med center written all over it. And then if they found out he’d been handling food while he was sick...
“Curfew, thirty minutes!” came the cry from the street, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Curfew, thirty minutes!”
“Bishops, man,” Yamada complained. “Don’t they care that this might go to extra innings?”
Kame snorted. “I don’t think they do. And besides, once the sun’s down, we can’t count on the lighting in this shitty block.”
A bunch of foul balls and arguments over the strike zone wrapped the game up at the end of seven, and Kame figured they’d just have to resume the next evening. He just hoped he’d be able to pitch again. Everyone headed for their own apartment blocks, Kame keeping his glove tucked under his good arm as he walked slowly home. The bishops were still shouting the time until curfew, bellowing like a bunch of idiots as their voices echoed throughout the neighborhood.
Maybe he should have been a bishop, Kame thought. They got to stay out past curfew, although for what? To catch stragglers and escort them home? To report the rare theft? To shout until his voice gave out every night? Probably not worth it.
He passed a messenger girl on his way into the building, stepping aside quickly as she rushed off to beat the curfew. Whatever the message was, it hadn’t been for him, he thought, seeing his empty mailbox.
He took to the stairs, listening to the familiar creaks as he headed for the third floor. He’d been living in this building for nearly six years, and tonight it felt somehow different. Some kind of change in the air, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. Everything was so much more intense than it usually was. He could hear the buzzing of the light bulbs, could smell that someone had burnt their dinner, could feel the wooden railing under his fingertips as he climbed. Everything was happening at once. He was noticing everything at once. The strange sensation from earlier in the day washed over him, almost like someone had suddenly dunked him into ice cold water.
He sat down on the landing, dropping his baseball glove at his side. The smells and the sounds were too much. He had to get upstairs to check his back, look in the mirror and make sure he was just as bright as Aiba had been rounding the bases. Normal, just like everyone else. His breaths were coming in short, hitching gasps. He was normal. He was a normal person with a normal trade and a normal group of friends. He just had to be.
There was noise from the street, people returning to their buildings in an awful hurry. People didn’t hurry. Nobody ever hurried, even when the bishops were in the neighborhood shouting about curfew. It was something worse then, Kame realized, hearing people in the apartments around him shuffling their feet and opening windows to look out into the street.
Everyone opened their windows at times like these. Everyone wanted to watch. Everyone needed to know it wasn’t them. And with the way Kame was feeling, there was a pretty good chance he was the target. This propelled him off of the steps quickly, abandoning his glove and racing for his apartment despite still feeling woozy.
He fumbled in his pocket for his keys, shoulder screaming. Nobody ever shouted, nobody ever said anything. The panic was all in the windows opening and the feet pacing the floorboards. He got the door open and nearly stumbled inside, shutting the door behind him and turning the lock. He shakily jammed the metal chain in too, not like it would stop them.
Kame made it over to the window, yanking the curtains aside to stare out into the darkened street. He could see across the way, seeing a person at nearly every window peering out, looking to see what direction they were coming. Where were they? The street was emptying. No stray bishops, a few people running back and entering their buildings without saying a word.
He stared across to the building opposite, meeting the eyes of a young woman briefly before stepping back. He had to check his back, going into the bathroom and pulling up his shirt. His shoulder was still very displeased with him, but he ignored the pain long enough to turn around, craning his neck. If it was blue and glowing and normal, he could relax. He could go back to the window and see where they were going, if they even came down his street.
It was flickering.
He found it with his fingers, keeping his shirt up with one hand and feeling the familiar metallic bump at the small of his back. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he mumbled, tapping it, wondering what the hell was going on. He was young and healthy and in good shape. Sometimes when there was an older person in the neighborhood, there was less panic. Because it made sense then. There was less shuffling and less standing at the windows when it was predictable.
They were coming for him, he realized, seeing how faint the light was, seeing it blinking slowly like one of the light bulbs in the hallway of his building. But people from the electric trade replaced those. There was no replacement in Kame’s case. Nobody came back. But he wasn’t dying. He couldn’t be dying. He’d gone to work and pitched so perfectly it had pissed everybody off.
And now he’d locked himself in. That wasn’t going to work. No, there had to be some kind of mistake here. Maybe he’d hit his back funny or there was a problem on their end. Because he was twenty-four years old and he was not dying. He’d never felt more alive. No matter how much his head was hurting or his limbs were shaking, he was alive.
He could still hear windows opening as he undid the chain and unlocked the door. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for them to get there first. He wasn’t just going to let them take him wherever they took people. Nobody who had ever seen a rook had been around to tell people what they were like. Even the bishops steered clear. Kame wasn’t terribly interested in finding out what they looked like either.
He grabbed a jacket and a hat, better to put another layer of fabric over his flickering transmitter and to conceal his face. Nobody really knew how they found you. But if there wasn’t a Kamenashi Kazuya in Kamenashi Kazuya’s apartment, then it would confuse them, wouldn’t it? He headed for the end of the hall, going out the side exit onto the fire escape.
He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t let whatever was wrong with his body slow him down. Everyone would be watching the street, so he went down the metal staircase, hearing his sneakers clang on each step. Maybe he should have brought food. Maybe he should have brought water, he thought as he hopped off the last few feet to the ground, asphalt under his soles as he headed for the alley.
They weren’t going to find him. They weren’t going to take him away.
--
There had only been one time that Kame had been out past curfew- it had been a mistake, an oversight, but he remembered feeling anxious as he made his way back towards his apartment. It hadn't been a particularly strong feeling, but one that he'd noted nonetheless, curls of it stretching up his chest from his stomach. He'd made it home that day without any problem, but he'd always sort of known in the back of his head that he'd been a little lucky. Reprimands for staying out past curfew weren't terribly severe, and yet he'd been relieved at having avoided getting one.
The slight nerves from the last time he'd been out past sundown were nothing like the knots in his stomach now as he made his way through the poorly lit alley that snaked between buildings and rotting wooden fences. There were no flutterings of fear- it was everywhere. His entire body was trembling and shaking, throat clogged and tongue dry. Every sound was something waiting to jump out and grab him. Every noise was a rook or bishop hot on his tail to take him to wherever they take the people whose transmitters grew dark- nowhere.
When he'd been younger, he'd heard stories from the other kids in the bunks at school. They had been nothing more than whispers after the lights were turned out designed to scare the younger ones, and it had worked, but now they felt terrifyingly real. They'd said that when the rooks came for someone, that everything was over. Some claimed they took people somewhere else and performed horrible magic tricks on them. Others had said that they took people past the city limits, past the metal doors covered in rust. None of the options were good- and Kame couldn't help but believe that all of them were true, and that each and every story was going to happen to him if he didn't get away fast enough.
His heartbeat was pounding against his ears. He'd never felt it throbbing so strongly before.
Kame swallowed hard and turned a corner, and then there was one of them, at the end of the dim lighting. It was just a shadow against the only brightness there was, outline of its hood blurred and too soft to be correct.
For a split second, everything in Kame's vision went red, and then black. He surged to the left without thinking, and his ankle rolled a little when he stepped on something he couldn't see in the darkness. He just kept moving, kept pushing his body forward, even though he could barely catch his breath. Behind him, he could hear shuffles, like the soles of shoes against pavement in uneven, jagged steps; it just made everything that much worse.
He ran into a fence, unable to completely stop the anguished noise that bubbled up from his throat. They were coming for him- they were coming for him.
There was a pile of discarded crates and trash cans near the wall, and Kame used them to propel himself up and over the fence. The unfinished wood from the top spikes dug into his palm and he could feel the hot sting of blood drawn, but even the pain wasn't enough to keep his mind in control. He landed with a thud and stumbled forward, and then just kept moving. If the rook was still behind him, maybe the fence would slow it down a bit. He didn't know how mobile or flexible they were; no one even knew who they were.
And then, from his transmitter, there was a spasm of pain. It ran up his spine and down his legs, clenching his muscles, and he tripped. He tripped because his feet would no longer respond to the movements he was directing to them. He fell forward and caught himself on the side of the building just in front of him. All the air was gone from his lungs. He couldn't decipher which way was up.
Everything was bright- sharp. All the edges of the forms around him were piercing against one another, jagged pieces that didn't align. There was the almost overpowering scent of grime and oil from one of the train warehouses, so thick that it made him even dizzier. He'd never smelled anything so strongly, never felt the air so keenly against his skin.
He sucked in a deep lungful of air, as much as he could manage to get down.
There was the sound of something moving behind him, trash cans being knocked over. If the rook was following him, it had toppled the pile he'd used to get over the fence.
"Oh god," Kame gasped. He thought he was going to be sick.
There was only one thing to do, and it was keep moving. He could barely make his legs obey, but somehow he did. He stumbled forward, one foot after another, keeping one palm against the wall in the desperate hope to stay upright. He couldn't hear anything behind him anymore, because all he could hear was the roar of sounds flooding his senses. The chug and whir of the train past the next bend. The buzz of the dim lighting above his head, hung up on strings between rooftops. The sound of the pebbles crunching beneath the soles of his shoes. Everything was louder than he'd ever experienced it before, pounding and swirling together into a din he couldn't discern a single individual thing from.
His shoe splashed in a puddle of something- oil, maybe, leaked out from the barrels stored behind the train yard.
Kame got around the next building, towards the yard entrance, and then he bypassed it- he didn't want to go somewhere that the rooks would think to look for him. There was an abandoned building just inside the next block that had been closed down because it needed repairs to the roof. He knew the direction it was, and he was propelled by terror stronger than anything he'd ever felt in his life.
Halfway there, he stopped being able to get oxygen into his lungs at all. He had to pause, wheezing, one hand rising involuntarily to his throat. He choked and fell to his knees. Crimson blossomed over his vision, unfolding and blooming like flower petals until everything was red.
"No," he moaned, and that was all he could get out with the absence of breathing.
He was too young to die. He was young and healthy; yesterday, he hadn't felt anything out of the ordinary.
There was another spasm in his back, jerking his muscles so hard it hurt. It felt like the transmitter was sputtering out, giving up- he knew without even having a mirror to look at it with that it had to be either dark, or barely flickering. He could feel it in his bones. He was dying, and they were going to take him away. He gasped, but he still couldn't get anything into his lungs.
The world tipped on its axis, and he fell as everything started to spin out of control. There were bits and pieces of memories that surfaced in the darkness- the school he'd grown up in, the first day after he'd been apprenticed. Images of things he was fairly certain he'd never actually seen before. Sights and smells and sudden bright flares of color that tangled together.
And then there was just nothing but the dull thud of pain as his head hit the ground, and everything went black.