Fic for hatenaimirai_e!
Intergroup Gold for hatenaimirai_e
from jerainbowbridge
Title: Nepenthēs
Pairings/Groups: Nagase/Koki, mentioned Mabo/Ohno and Aiba/Yoko; Koyama and Tegoshi cameos
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Loads of rampant BFFery, mentions of Sensual Anal Probes of Joy, memory loss, pandas.
Summary: It's easy to remember, but sometimes easier to left things forgotten.
Word Count/Notes: 4,639 words. Notes: For hatenaimirai_e - enjoy! I have absolutely no idea what inspired this, but I liked the concept and ran with it. You gave fun pairings for me to use, and I enjoyed the chance to play with them.
He opened his eyes and blinked once, then twice. The room was still dark; it must have been late - or early. He closed his eyes and reached to his left. The phone was always in the same place, on the front corner of his nightstand, next to his bed. Opening it, he held "1" to speed-dial his voicemail.
"You have no new messages. Main menu. To hear your deleted messages, press one."
Nagase flipped the phone shut. It was odd to not immediately receive a message. It was even odder to not have a message at all after a ping.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to forget. His life had become nothing but hauling boxes, a drink or seven after work, and praying for a ping - then waiting for the phone. Mostly the waiting and praying.
Sometimes, Nagase wished he could go back to the hospital and remain under the care of the cute nurse who'd called him "Kato-kun" after some kid on TV, before the phone had reminded him of his name. He'd gotten puddings after breakfast when he smiled at her and two servings of dinner when he'd let her sponge-bathe him (he'd done that twice daily, netting him four dinners - he'd been hungry). The nurse - "Keiko-chan", she'd managed through her giggles, while scrubbing his back - let him wander pretty freely. Nagase had never been much for sitting around and watching TV, so he got his news from patients and random people he encountered. It took about half an hour to figure out that there weren't other people missing their memories at that hospital, but he'd overheard a couple delivery guys talking about amnesiacs at their other hospital stops.
He still wondered if he knew them. Maybe he wasn't alone in this forgetting. Maybe there were other phones.
The phone showed up on his third day in the hospital, when Keiko had returned his clothes. It was the only non-clothing thing he'd had - no wallet, no ID, no keys, nothing but that phone. He'd scoured its memory, looking for any phone numbers or missed calls, but only found a voicemail pre-programmed into speed-dial, with no messages. The phone remained silent until he, after begging Keiko for a favor, had gone into the bathroom to shave. He'd looked at himself in the mirror very carefully and noticed a small scar near his left ear that he almost remembered getting. The more he'd stared at the scar, the more he almost saw a face or knew a name.
Then the phone rang, nearly scaring him out of his pants. It was an unidentified number, and a voice told him his name - Nagase Tomoya - and his age - 32 - before abruptly disconnecting.
It had felt right, and Nagase had not questioned it. Keiko had been a bit disappointed that her guess hadn't been right, but a sponge bath had helped her feelings recover. Not even a couple psych evaluations could help the doctors understand his sudden and limited memory recovery. Nagase hadn't mentioned the phone. How could he? "Oh, yes, Doctor, the phone told me who I was, and I didn't even bother to question it. … Wait, what do you mean, I'm staying indefinitely?
The phone only rang once more while Nagase was in the hospital (after seeing a familiar-seeming map of Tokyo on the wall in an office, the voice provided him with an address). The voice was different each time, a trend that continued after he left - old, young, male, female. No pattern ever developed, and no voice ever repeated. Nagase had no idea how many people were calling, nor how much they knew about him.
He'd persuaded Keiko to help him check himself out of the hospital. The doctors' biggest concern was that he had no place to go, but the phone had given him the address - and it had again felt right. The doctor had bought this confidence and signed off on letting Nagase go (though Nagase had asked for one last sponge bath; Keiko gladly acquiesced - and brought pudding).
Things had been easier before he started remembering. It was all pudding and sponge baths and smokes snuck from vending machine restockers, and no worrying about phone calls or familiar feelings or pings… or strangely familiar attractive men walking across the street. Who had that been? Did the phone not know? The phone knew everything, it seemed. It had gotten Nagase his apartment back, it had provided his banking access codes, it had found him a job hauling boxes at a bookshop (and even given the manager's daughter's name, upon whose use Nagase had instantly been endeared to the man), it had even identified people on TV (Tano Shingo was decidedly unfunny; Nagase tried to change the channel every time he saw the guy, but he was everywhere).
But the phone hadn't rung after Nagase pinged on the man - he was familiar, somehow, but how? The phone usually rang within thirty seconds of that surprised vague recollection feeling Nagase had come to call a ping, but today? Nothing. Nothing, and it was driving Nagase crazy.
He rolled over and buried his face into his pillow. Turning his head, he glared at the still and silent phone. Ring, damn you. he thought.
It stayed quiet.
---
Work sucked, Nagase decided as he lifted his third glass of beer. The manual labor was surprisingly relaxing, which he didn't mind at all. The people were a different story entirely. The phone had found a medium-sized bookshop to employ him, right on a busy corner - almost as if it wanted him to see and eventually remember more people. But the people who came into the shop needed help and didn't know what books they wanted. Relying on about a week's worth of book knowledge was frustrating. How could he know the third-best selling non-fiction work from five weeks ago? More to the point, he mused between gulps, why would anyone want to know that? He didn't get people, and that didn't feel like a new development.
He snorted and drained his glass. Signaling the bartender, he looked around the bar. It was half-full, pretty usual for a weekday evening. Newly-familiar faces sat along the bar near Nagase, a couple loners had corner tables to themselves, and a table of office workers was clearly getting ready to go out for karaoke, if the drunken singing was any indication.
"Here you go." A new bottle skidded along the bar and into Nagase's hand.
"Mm." Nagase refilled his glass and took a long drink. "Excellent. Thanks… Koyama, was it?" He hadn't pinged on the bartender; as such, Nagase couldn't trust his memory.
"Exactly." Koyama smiled. "Long day at work?"
Nagase grimaced. "Yeah. Too many questions I couldn't answer. And they were all about stupid woman books or business success manuals."
"Woman books? I wouldn't mind reading a couple of those myself," Koyama smirked.
"I'm not sure you need a diet."
Koyama laughed and patted his stomach. "I did have a pretty big lunch today." He turned to the cooler as another man called out for more beer. "But your point is well taken. No woman books for me, I guess."
"You'll live." Koyama tossed him a quick smile before delivering the beer.
Nagase wanly smiled into his glass. Not even a charming beer dispenser could bring him out of the funk into which a long work day and no phone calls had put him. The phone hadn't rung since before he'd seen that strangely familiar guy, nor had he pinged at all after seeing him. He usually got three or four calls a day and felt more confident going around town because of them. Without the calls, though, he was floundering. Was nothing important anymore? Had he done something wrong?
His apartment hadn't helped much, either. There weren't any pictures of friends or letters from family or lists of contacts. There were plenty of clothes that fit, though, and a driver's license with his picture on it - so it had to be his apartment, right? He glared at his beer. Stupid beer, not giving any answers. Stupid phone, being silent these past few days. Stupid breeze, coming from the open door.
He turned to glare at the door, but his stomach lurched instead. It was his first ping in several days. The man coming through the door was tall and looked like he lived in his sunglasses, but most of all - he was familiar. Nagase knew that he knew this man very well. He just… didn't know how. The man walked over to one of the corner tables and greeted his friend - more than friend, judging from the smiles and surreptitious touches - before sitting down and calling for beer.
The phone started vibrating. In his hurry to pull it out of his pocket, Nagase almost missed the man in the far corner jump and reach for his phone at the same time. They locked eyes and shared a rueful grin at the shared sensation of sudden pocket vibrations, before looking away.
"You call him Mabo. You got him the sunglasses he's wearing for his birthday two years ago. He's celebrating his new job with his friend Ohno."
The voice (this time, a little girl's) disconnected the line. Nagase flipped the phone shut, but held it in his fist, against his face. Mabo was clearly distracted by whatever the other man was saying and thus noticed neither Nagase's staring nor his relief at remembering something again. He closed his eyes and turned back to the bar. Nagase sighed and knocked back the rest of his glass. How do I know Mabo? he wondered. School friend? Old work buddy? Were we in a band? Nagase had no idea. His head dropped to the bar with a thunk.
"Careful, amigo. Do that too many times and you'll forget what the phone tells you."
Nagase jerked his head up so quickly that he almost fell backwards off the stool; only grabbing the counter prevented what would have been a pretty nasty spill. The man now next to him, who had been in the corner, chuckled and poured some beer into Nagase's glass - then drank it, refilled it, and handed it to Nagase.
"You… you know about the phone?" Nagase sputtered. "Do you… How… B-but… wha… Phone?"
The man smiled, not unkindly. "Drink. It helps, I've found."
Nagase drank. He also spilled beer half down his front, but some found its way inside his stomach nonetheless.
"I've only met one other person with a phone like ours. The kid found out he could sing, the phone gave him an address, and he was gone in a flash. I never bothered tracking him down again." The man shook his head and Nagase caught sight of earrings on both ears. "Anyhow. I'm Tanaka. Tanaka Koki. I've had this phone for two weeks, and I remember only what it tells me about any time before that."
"Nagase Tomoya. Same, except only about a week and a half. And you're my first- the first I've met with a phone."
"Pleasure." Tanaka drummed his fingers on the bar. "So you haven't met anyone else with this phone?" he asked, gesturing at the phone he'd set between them.
"Nope." Nagase shrugged. "I did hear about other people who lost their memories, but I had other interests at the time."
"Women?"
"Smokes."
"Ha. Right."
"…Shut up, Tanaka." Nagase glared at the man, who just smiled in response.
"Come on. I don't fancy talking about this where people can overhear. How nuts does it sound to remember only what a phone says?"
Nagase arched an eyebrow. "That's why I didn't tell the doctors about it."
"Great minds and all. Let's get out of here - walk or something. Maybe we'll recognize something along the way. Drink up." Tanaka poured about half the remaining beer into Nagase's glass and examined the bottle.
"I call it pinging."
"Pinging! I like it!" Tanaka cheered, then toasted Nagase with the bottle. "Let us drink and ping and get the hell out of here, yeah?"
"I'll race you on the drink-" Before Nagase could finish the drinking challenge, Tanaka slammed the empty bottle down on the bar.
"Hm? You want something?"
Nagase could only shake his head before finishing his glass.
---
He wasn't sure how they'd wound up back at Koki's place (Nagase had gotten "Oi, call me Koki" after a rather enthusiastic game of Flyswatter Tag throughout some neighborhood; he hadn't yet made it to the bathroom to see if the flyswatter patterns left the same imprints on his ass as they had on his arms), but he was fairly sure it involved the beer bottles littering the floor. The two of them were stretched out on the floor, Nagase propped up by the couch and Koki (insisting on calling him "Tomo-baby" for whatever reason - Nagase found he didn't mind) slumped half on a kotatsu.
Discovering that he wasn't alone was nice. Koki had gotten much of the same information from the phone - a place to live, where the spare keys were hidden, the landlady's name, a job - and had equally few personal effects. The walls only held up artwork, no photos or diplomas. Not even browsing the CD cases did much good. Koki apparently listened to everything. But he was fun to hang out with.
Nagase wondered if he had other friends. Had he and Mabo ever played Flyswatter Tag? Hell, how had he even known that game?
"Hey, Koki."
"Yeah?"
"How'd you lose your memory? Were you at a hospital?
"Yeah." Koki yawned. "I don't know. No head injuries. No drugs. Maybe I signed up to forget. Maybe it was aliens or a government conspiracy or men in black."
"Aliens would be pretty cool."
"Yeah."
"No, I take that back. Aliens would be awesome."
"Unless you remembered the anal probe."
"Unless the anal probe were a bad thing."
Koki laughed. "True, true. Maybe you got picked up by the sexy aliens of Blargerder Prime, who made you forget the Sensual Anal Probe of Joy."
"The Sensual Anal Probe of Joy?" Nagase grinned. "That does have 'Make them forget!' written all over it, doesn't it."
"Yeah." Koki propped his head up on a hand and studied Nagase intently. "Do you know how you lost it?"
Nagase picked at the label of the beer in his hands. "No. The doctors said I just got left at the door, no marks, no note, no nothing. They checked the cameras, which had shorted out when I'd arrived."
"That's… actually pretty strange."
"And convenient." Nagase drained the last lukewarm swallow from the bottle. "It makes you wonder what actually happened and if we'll ever remember anything else."
Koki stretched out to the nearby short fridge and grabbed a couple beers. "Ugh, last two." He tossed one to Nagase, who immediately opened it. "You mean remembering things not from the phone?"
"Mm. Have you?"
"Of course not. I don't know if I have a family or friends or anything aside from this apartment, if it's even mine- wait. Have you? Do you remember something?!"
"Well." Nagase hesitated but plowed on at Koki's glare. "I pinged on a guy but didn't get a call."
Koki's eyes got big. "Whoa."
"I know."
"That's huge. And you have no idea who it was?"
"None."
"Wow. Not even the singing kid had anything like that, and he was a bit prec… precoja… talented. We walked by a music store, the phone called and told him he could play guitar, and he just picked one up and started singing and playing perfectly. Next thing I knew, Tegoshi ran off to be a star."
"That is a bit special." Nagase took a long drink. "I wonder if I have any skills."
Koki snorted. "I don't. After that, I went to all sorts of hobby stores and sports shops - and a bunch of geek stuff, down in Akihabara. Nothing pinged."
Nagase sat forward. "But how would the phone even know? It hasn't identified that guy for me, but it got all the quiz show people on TV right."
"Maybe it's because they're famous."
"Maybe the phone doesn't know everything."
"It knew my PIN! How could it know that and what color boxers I prefer and that my landlady likes pink roses on Tuesdays?" Koki slammed a fist onto the table. "It has to know everything."
"Except who that guy was."
Koki slumped forward. "Damn." He paused in thought for a while, and Nagase kept sipping his beer. "Well, fine. Why don't we try to figure out what the phone doesn't know?"
"Huh?"
"Tell me about this ping. Was it a normal one? What was the man like? Where'd you see him?
"I was reorganizing the outdoor magazine stand at work," Nagase recalled, "and I saw the guy's reflection in a window. I turned and saw him across the street, and that flippy thing happened in my gut-"
"The ping?"
"Yeah, that. But no call ever came, even though every other ping got an explanation, no matter where I was."
"Okay, that is weird. So, who was the dude?"
Nagase half-glared at Koki. "Really? If I knew that, why would I be here?"
"For my charming company, of course, and because the other guy probably doesn't like Flyswatter Tag."
"He did look the type to enjoy such a rousing game. Kinda sporty looking, dressed pretty trendily, brown hair. He was a good-looking guy, actually."
"A good-looking guy who sounds like half the men in Tokyo." Koki tipped the rest of his beer back and belched. "Do you have to be anywhere tomorrow?"
"Huh? No. I've got tomorrow off work."
"Alright. Crash here, and we'll plan how to find this guy tomorrow. You can sleep wherever, futon or couch or hard floor, though preferably not the bathroom. We'll need that. I'm not moving from right here, so don't worry about me."
Nagase looked around the studio apartment. There wasn't that much space for him to stretch out on the floor without running into empty bottles, so he pulled himself onto the couch and tried to get comfortable. He jolted at a thud behind him - Koki had fallen over, still half under the kotatsu. Nagase, in a fit of charitableness, tossed one of the throw pillows at him; Koki immediately grabbed it and stuck it under his head, after which he seemed to fall asleep.
"Hey Koki?"
"Yeah?" he mumbled.
"What color boxers do you prefer?"
"Green."
Nagase smiled. "Good choice."
---
For the sixth time in the past two weeks, they put their plan into action. Over a breakfast of leftover rice after their initial drinking night, Koki had laid out a plan for locating Nagase's Mystery Man. The plan was about as simple as plans came: Koki would loiter in various areas around the bookshop, hoping for a glance of a brown-haired sporty trendy guy, and if Nagase gave a thumbs-up (through some cheap walkie-talkies; both Nagase and Koki enjoyed the childish feelings the communicators provided), Koki would follow the man to figure out where he lived - or at least where he spent time. It was exceedingly simple, though it was predicated on the most difficult variable: the man's presence. Considering that they didn't have any other leads, though, this was still their best bet. It hadn't yet worked, but Nagase got to spend more time with Koki, who was turning out to be an excellent friend.
This was why Nagase was squatting down in front of the outdoors magazine stand, meticulously organizing the remaining stacks of Yomiuri Shimbun, though most had sold early that morning. He just had to get those two papers in the middle … just… so! Nagase stood up and admired his perfect-stacking skill.
"Whoops! My bad!" came the cry as a dark-clothed blur ran into the formerly-perfect stack of newspapers. "Here, let me help reorganize those."
Nagase grabbed the offender by the front of the shirt and pulled him up so he could growl in his face. "Koki! What the hell?! I just spent several minutes organizing those. I should rip your arms off and take your walkie-talkie and never have another beer with you!"
"Oh, lighten up, Tomo-baby. I said I'd help. And who else are you going to drink with, eh?" Koki lowered his voice. "Besides, I was just going to the café on the other side of the shop. Maybe Mystery Man will be there." He tried to shrug off Nagase's hands, but the grip was too strong. "Come on, man, you're drawing a crowd."
"Several! Whole! Minutes! Wasted! Gone!" Nagase let go of Koki's lapels and looked up at the sky. "At least it's a nice day. Sorry." He shook out his hands. "Why the hell do you wear so many pins, anyhow? They hurt."
Koki smoothed down the front of his vest. "I happen to like them. And they're trendy, and since you said Mystery Man was trendy, I thought I'd try to fit in. See if I try to do anything for you again."
"Look, I'm sorry. I'm just worked up. I pinged yesterday, and the phone gave me two panda names and a couple of book titles. Pandas! Why do I need to know anything about freaking pandas?" Nagase squatted back down by the newspapers. "Still got your walkie-talkie?"
"Yup!" Koki dug in his pants pocket and produced it. "It's on and everything," he said as he showed Nagase the red blinking light on top.
"Good. Go keep an eye out, yeah?" Nagase gathered a couple more copies back onto the pile. "And hey, I'm sorry again."
"No worries, Tomo-baby." Koki waved as he headed off, leaving Nagase to restack the papers. Again. He then hauled some more boxes, restocked the inside manga shelves, and went back outside to clean up the girl magazines (the "girly" ones were kept behind the counter, where only the sales guy could get to them). Shifting images of idols from one rack to another, he nearly dropped a stack of magazines about some new singing sensation when he heard a throat clear behind him.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir! I didn't mean to startle you." The customer was a totally unfamiliar-looking young man. "I'm just… do you have any books on pandas? Only I need one for a present for a friend, because it's our anniv- just because."
"Pandas?"
"Yeah, he's got a thing for pandas. Well, all animals, really, but he's in a 'panda phase' right now. I think it was because I dragged him to Adventure World last week and he fell in love with Rau Hin's twins, and now it's all he can talk about, so I thought I'd get him a nice picture book about pandas. Um. Right. Have you got any, do you know?"
Nagase put down the magazines, finally noticing the new star's name: Tegoshi. That rang a bell, but didn't ping, so he ignored it to focus on the phone's prescience. "Come on inside, I'll show you where the panda books are. We've got a bunch. I actually just restocked them earlier today - are you only interested in the ones from Shirahama? Those are on the left side." He pointed the young man to the far wall, where the glossy photobooks were kept, before he heard his walkie-talkie crackle to life.
"Come back outside! I think I see him! I think he's coming this way!"
Nagase hurried back outside. "Where are you?" he demanded.
"Out at the café. Outside, by the stoplight. Look just underneath it."
There were four stoplights by the café, but only two had people waiting to cross the street. Nagase scanned from left to right, and just barely noticed a brown-haired blur running across the street to avoid the bikes.
It was him. Nagase's stomach lurched, and he prayed the phone wouldn't ring. Mystery Man stopped at a vending machine and fumbled with coins for a bit, before getting a red can of something. Mystery Man looked around for someone and opened the red can when he didn't spot anyone.
"He's RIGHT THERE! Should I go say something? Come on, Tomo-baby, don't just stand there - it's freaking Mystery Man right there!
"I… I… Should I? What do I ev-"
"Thanks for your help with the book!" The customer from before was back. Nagase hid the walkie-talkie by his side, hoping his pants would help distract from the awkwardness of being on it in the middle of a work shift. "I got this great book all about Rau Hin's panda mom that I think Aiba's just going to love. Yeah! Thanks again! Oh, there he is! Gotta go - bye! Thanks!" Nagase could only stand there and watch as the customer ran to Mystery Man, and the two started chattering up a storm.
"The hell was that? Mystery Man is leaving, did you see him?"
Nagase looked down at the walkie-talkie and back up at Mystery Man and the customer walking off together, arm-in-arm. "Pandas. That was pandas. I'm almost done here. Let's go drink."
---
"You know, I think I hate the phone. I found Mystery Man - through pandas of all things - and lost him the same way." Nagase pouted into his beer. "Why couldn't it just tell me his name, instead of letting me think Mystery Man was important and not just really attractive?"
"I dunno, man." Koki paused for a drink. "It was kind of fun playing with walkie-talkies. And they came in super-handy when we got Mabo and Ohno to play Flyswatter Tag last night."
"No, they didn't. That's how Ohno kept finding us. My ass is bruised, I tell you - bruised!" Nagase hollered this last over his shoulder, hoping to inspire guilt in his new fisherman friend. They'd gotten extraordinarily drunk after the failure with Mystery Man and wound up unburdening the phone saga on the couple. The conversation may have started with Nagase insulting his own taste when he called Mabo's sunglasses "hideous pieces of eye-covering panda puke," but Mabo had just been glad Nagase was clothed. Nagase later learned of his proclivities for naked shenanigans, after which he'd hidden in Koki's shower for three hours. The resulting shrieks were so worth it.
"Tomo-baby, where is your phone? Did you leave it home?"
"Yeah." Nagase poured a glass of beer for each of them. "Pandas suck. And Mabo's got pictures of Before-times, so if I need to remember something, I can plead ignorance and bug him later."
"Don't you want to know everything?" Koki looked more curious than drunk, which Nagase interpreted as genuine interest and concern.
"Well, sure. I mean, I still ping, and probably will for years. I don't want to wait for a phone call to tell me whether I saw a movie before or not. That sucks."
"Like pandas?"
"Exactly like pandas." Heaving a sigh, Nagase played with the condensation on his glass. "We'll work on this, maybe. We've got people with memories to help us figure this out. And, well." Nagase looked sidelong at Koki. "I've got you. Right?"
"Right." They shared a smile and clinked their glasses. "Hey, would a show make you feel better?"
Nagase paused. "What kind of show?"
"Music, first."
"First?" This piqued Nagase's curiosity. "Whose music, and what's next?"
"Remember that kid I told you about with the phone? The singing kid? He sent me tickets to his show and mentioned something about an afterparty." Koki looked a bit too smug. "I may have convinced him that afterparties had more than just apple juice, crackers, and sound tech guys."
Nagase laughed, a full belly laugh. "Done. Wait, let me finish my beer, then done." He drained the rest of the bottle and grinned at Koki. "Alright, amigo. Let's get out of here."