fic for arashijun
Gift fic for: arashijun
From: sashjun
Title: Soul Cravings
Rating: R
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Warnings: AU inspired by Cold Souls trailer. I have not seen the movie though, so there should be no spoilers.
Summary: Shige wakes up one morning and realizes he needs to do some soul searching. Literally.
Notes: Dear arashijun, I know you wanted zombies, but someone not having a soul is the closest to the concept of a zombie I managed to get. I hope you will find at least something enjoyable while accompanying Shige on his quest.
Shige wakes up, trots into the bathroom to wash his face, then into his kitchen to have a cup of coffee and some breakfast. He sits there, palm rubbing his forehead since his head hurts terribly. He attributes his headache to the storm raging outside and goes back into the bathroom to take a quick shower and make himself presentable. When he gets out into the rain, he realizes that he is not annoyed and walks right under the pouring water, ignoring his brain telling him he should go back for an umbrella. Shige meets with his editor, stops to do grocery shopping, and once back home collapses back into his bed, his body cold and tired, head thrumming with pain, and his mind a little empty. He does not feel disappointment over not finishing the latest chapter of his novel, nor does he feel upset about his editor being mean about the stuff he handed in last week. He does not feel much at all, he thinks, for such an ugly day. He should, but there is nothing. He falls asleep and wakes up nine hours later, no dream, no worry, no feeling, just nothing.
After his morning routine the next day, Shige sits behind his computer because he knows he has to write. He stares at the monitor-his mind, that had been a whirlwind of emotions, fears and worries just two days ago, completely calm. His fingers move across the keyboard robotically. He expects his mind to race through the night, but there are no dreams, and the morning is just as dull, too normal, too automatic yet again.
He does not really feel like something is wrong. His brain, however, the rational part that has been observing his own behavior, comes up with an idea that something has indeed gone very, very wrong in the past few days. Shige seems quite unfazed by this epiphany, but there is nothing easier than googling it.
He should feel panic, horror and complete shock. But he only stares at his monitor yet again, and rubs his hands absently as he forces his brain to work, to process the information, to come up with a solution. The headache returns, but he rubs his chest instead of his forehead this time. He really is empty; his brain is telling him as much. He is expecting a wave of emotions, but nothing happens, and Shige thinks maybe he should sleep on this before he does something stupid. It does not feel that bad after all. He just does not feel at all.
“Are you sure?” Koyama asks him, his face pale, eyes wide, mouth never really closing. Shige thinks it looks a little comical, but it does not make him laugh.
“Well, as much as one can be sure about something so surreal,” Shige pauses. When Koyama just keeps on staring like he has never seen Shige before, he continues, “I didn’t go to the doctors, but what would I say? 'Hey doctor, I think I lost my soul overnight'?”
“Shige?” Koyama gasps exasperatedly, stands up and shakes him, bringing the attention of everyone in the café to them. “Stop being so stoic about this! Only the idea of this happening has me scared to death!”
“That’s just the thing. I don’t feel, at least not emotions. But it is like I found my inner peace. Nothing really bugs me.”
“Shige, you need to go to the doctor.”
“All right,” Shige says, unfazed, promises because Kei is his best friend and if he worries this much, it usually means something is off. Usually. Shige also usually feels a bit annoyed or amused by how worried Kei is. But today, he just looks at him and nods. Koyama makes a call and then another one and hands Shige a number, his hands trembling.
“Here’s a name and an address. Go to this clinic. This doctor is supposed to be a real expert.”
“How do you know?” Shige asks.
“My friend’s friend. He had it done. Voluntarily,” Koyama stresses.
“Oh,” Shige says and examines the paper. He decides to stop by later that day.
***
The man looks at him, eyes dark and positively trying to pierce him. His forehead might be all wrinkled, but Shige cannot tell because there is his frilly black hair falling over it. Shige wants to swipe it away just so he too could observe the other and his brain could compensate for Shige not feeling the atmosphere. The doctor seems only a little older than Shige, and Shige doubts him because how much of an expert can one become in his twenties. Logically.
“Impossible,” the doctor mutters.
“Excuse me?” Shige asks. Maybe he should be offended by the doubt.
“Extraordinary,” the doctor says next, checking Shige’s results again, and Shige raises an eyebrow.
“You sure this is not just a very badly done job from one of those unauthorized clinics that promise you miracles?” the doctor asks.
Shige should feel rage. But rationally, of course the doctor would ask something like that. “The relationship between me and my soul might have been rocky, but I definitely haven’t been planing on getting rid of it,” he says.
The doctor chuckles. But Shige stays indifferent, and the doctor schools his features.
“Well then. As you yourself suspected, you do not have a soul right now. And since you say you did not ask for its removal, it was probably stolen from you. Now, Kato-san, normally when one has his or her soul taken away, it is on request and only so it can be replaced by some other-and what the patient believes is also better-soul. In your case, that has not happened.” The doctor stops to take a breath, and Shige sees him fidget nervously before he continues. “I could offer you some soul, but I cannot guarantee how your body will react since your previous soul and your body did not come to terms with the replacement. But I also cannot tell at all how and for how long you could function without one.”
Shige thinks about it. He can tell the doctor does not want to risk planting a soul into Shige’s body. He too has read quite unpleasant stories of what happens if the planting does not take place willingly.
“Where is my soul?” he asks the one question that seems to be the key to all the solutions.
The doctor stands up and starts pacing the room. “I have no clue, Kato-san.”
“Why would someone...”
“I don’t know,” the doctor cuts in. “I don’t know.” He turns around and looks at Shige. “And you don’t feel anything?”
“No. Not really.” Shige says. “I mean, I know what I should feel. I know I should be really angry and afraid right now. But I am neither. I only know that I want my soul back. Maybe that is the one thing I kind of feel. This, this longing,” Shige stops because the doctor is close to him, looking him into the eyes. His breath is already warming Shige’s skin, and his hands are gripping the sides of Shige’s chair. Shige’s body feels hot from being so close to another human being.
“Doctor,” he says.
“Yeah, right, still nothing?” the doctor asks, straightens up.
“I want my soul back,” Shige repeats.
“I . . . I’m going to give you this address and a name. The guy might be able to help you,” the doctor says.
“Who is this Yamashita?” Shige asks automatically, taking and reading the note.
“I can’t tell you; he must decide on that.”
“You know something.”
“I am not to talk about that,” the doctor says and throws one last searching look towards Shige. “But come back here if you need any help,” he adds and turns his back on Shige. Shige picks up the address and, understanding everyone thinks this is serious, he steps out of the office and sets out to look for the man called Yamashita Tomohisa.
***
“Who sent you?” the man who introduced himself as Yamashita Tomohisa asks. He is wearing a sleek suit and a polite face, and Shige cannot read him at all.
“The doctor I went to. Nishikido-san,” Shige says warily for what feels like the thousandth time. The looks of this place does not suggest anything good coming out of it. He was thoroughly checked, metal detector, body search and some awkward questioning, and made to wait in a room that had practically nothing but shiny white walls surrounding him and simple metal chairs lining those walls. The office, in which he is now, is cramped with files and several PCs and books, and curtains are pulled to a complete close.
“What else did he tell you?” Yamashita asks after a moment of silence, gesturing for Shige to sit down.
“That you might help. I lost my soul,” Shige says.
Yamashita twitches. “I see. How does one loose it?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just woke up, and it wasn’t there.” Shige thinks this might make a good comedic skit. The irony is screaming at him from every corner. “I need to find it,” he adds out loud, remembers that this is why he came here in the first place. “I want my soul back.”
“I see.” Yamashita says then asks Shige to leave. “I need to make a call or two.” Shige waits yet again.
“Have you ever heard of soul trafficking?” A guy with a childish face, bright socks underneath his suit, and big smile asks Shige when he picks him up some time later.
Shige thinks it would be nice to wake up from this dream already.
“You are an interesting one,” the guy adds. “They usually pick from what is available. I have not heard of a case where they would actually go and extract the soul. Very intriguing.” Shige has a sense of déjà-vu.
“Stop treating me like some kind of a scientific phenomenon. Tell me where my soul is.”
“That I do not know. We had no information on an order being placed, on anyone on the move, and as I said the smugglers usually try and steal the souls from their deposits, or when they are transferred.”
“This is ridiculous!” Shige really thinks it is. “And who are you anyway?” He really wants to know.
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Masuda Takahisa. I’m an expert on these things around the agency. On soul trafficking. I was told to try and get as much information as I can from you.”
“Get information?” Shige raises his voice on purpose. He is not really angry, but it seems that unless he shows some kind of emotion, some kind of fury, these people will not listen. “I’m the one that needs information and explanations! My fucking soul was apparently stolen from me. I need to know where to find it.”
Masuda looks at him for a while and then hands him a glass of water.
“It’s a bit more complicated Kato-san. You see, soul trafficking is a highly technical, well organized crime done by dangerous professionals. People desiring souls that are not available for sale usually do not have the best intentions, wanting to exploit the soul until it is feeble and black. Eventually, they simply throw it away and use another one. I cannot just go and tell you things here, now can I? Besides, as I said, I’m puzzled as to why someone would risk so much to extract your soul precisely.”
“I have had enough,” Shige says, throwing the glass on the floor, thinking it might create the needed effect. “I’m leaving.”
“And where will you go?” Masuda asks, placing a hand on Kato’s shoulder. “The police won’t help you, Kato-san.”
Shige’s brain is working fast, trying to find some solution, some way out of this so he does not have to rely on these people. But even his brain feels empty, and he feels the same pang of pain that he has taken to calling longing, the only emotion he can still trace in himself. The want for his soul. He sits down on the chair that Masuda points out and answers countless number of questions, some repeating several times, racks his brain to remember. When he is let go, with a telephone number to call Masuda if anything else happens and a cold dismissal from his boss Yamashita who tells him to wait until they contact him otherwise, it is almost midnight and all he can do is drag himself to the bed, curl up in search of some inner warmth he is missing, and fall asleep, giving in to the dreamless limbo his nights have become.
***
“What are you going to do now?” Koyama asks, visibly trying to control another outburst as they seem a little pointless now that Shige just does not react.
“I’m going to look for my soul, obviously,” Shige says.
“But how? And what about your book?”
“Well, it is a prerogative of a writer to do what he wants to do. My latest writing was kind of crappy anyway. I went to see my editor, and when I announced I was going to travel, she simply said that a little bit of soul searching might just do me good.”
Shige gives Koyama an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle, and Koyama has to laugh even if Shige does not. Shige knows this is funny, and he forces his mouth into some kind of smile, but it just turns out bizarre. Koyama tells him so and laughs some more.
“Do you need a companion on your quest?” Koyama asks when the giggles pass and squeezes Shige’s shoulders. Shige feels Koyama’s hand warm against his shirt and realizes how much his body appreciates it. Human touch seems to be what brings his cold body and mind closer to feeling. Someone else’s warmth also makes the longing in him grow. Because he himself used to be like that. Full of this sense of place and time and atmosphere that really made him feel, that made his existence so intense.
“I think it might get dangerous. I mean, they said these people might be dangerous. I think I’d rather you stay home. You can still help me here, maybe someone will come back or I will need some other assistance. I don’t even know where to start, to be honest.”
“No plan?” Koyama asks, a little hurt at being refused but not pushing it. There is no point to; Shige cannot be blackmailed by his huge puppy eyes right now.
“Well, I’m going to go talk to Nishikido-san one more time. Maybe I will understand more then. He did offer help. I think.”
***
“Now this is what I call self-confidence,” Nishikido Ryo says, crossing his arms over his chest, when Shige finishes his explanation, but then he snatches keys from Shige and points to the passenger seat. “I’m driving. You might think you are amazing enough for your creepy admirer to steal your soul, but you are unstable and I’m not going to die because of you.”
“No one asked you to come,” Shige mutters, but decides it is not worth arguing. This guy is tiring him out as it is.
“Of course you did,” Nishikido mumbles, and the car moves out of the parking lot. “Besides I cannot let you wander around the country alone. I’ve told you that, and you are my patient, my responsibility.”
Shige frowns. This too is weird logic in his book.
When he showed up in Nishikido-sensei’s office a week ago, the other ran a series of test on him right away. Shige went on to tell him that this Yamashita guy he had sent him to was not helpful at all, but Nishikido just kept on doing tests and giving him worried looks.
“Any pains?”
“No,” Shige lied. “I just want my soul back. And I thought you might know something. I’m sure you do.”
“Kato-san, I just know how this works from a medical point of view. Moreover, I would rather not get anywhere close to the soul trafficking business.”
“So you knew,” Shige accused him back then. Nishikido didn’t answer, just asked Shige what he was told to do. When Shige said he was to wait, but he would be going to search for the person who stole his soul himself, Nishikido cursed under his breath. Shige could have sworn he heard him muttering something about Yamashita being an asshole. He then announced he would go with Shige and asked where they would be going exactly. Shige decided he would shout at that point, only to make his brain feel lighter because these people were idiots. How should have he known?
“See, completely unstable,” was all Nishikido said. But he then told Shige about all the things one can do with someone’s soul. About using other people’s emotions, patterns in which they are created, altering one’s personality, trying to find peace or inspiration, about people hoping to forget how much they stretched themselves in the past, wanting to start anew, or just being fascinated by gaining all new emotional field to play on.
“Is there someone who would want your soul that badly that he would sedate you, perform the complicated procedure on you in your own house or take you somewhere where they could do so and then leave you soulless afterwards? Someone with resources, desire, yet cold enough to do something like that to you?”
Shige still does not know the answer to that, but he had come home that day and searched his house for anything, something, searched his memories that were paler and distant now that the emotions he remembered just were not there anymore. The only trail he has come up with is a series of letters from an admirer signed Yuko that claimed to admire the way Shige gives life to his stories. This Yuko wanted a piece of that life, or at least that was what the letters said. Shige never really responded, not knowing how to approach this person who sounded almost mental in the letters. Shige, not accustomed to his readers and fans actually wanting the interaction, just threw the letters aside. There was no return address on the envelope, but there was a stamp, plastered over the postmark in red ink, of a small post office about five hour drive away. Shige called Nishikido only to tell him he would be gone and not able to attend the next check-up the doctor has scheduled. He refused to call Masuda even though Nishikido pressed. This was the only way. With Nishikido driving his car across the country.
***
The guy at the post office says he cannot tell Shige a thing, that it is a postal secret. Shige does not really believe him; he can read the hostility with which he is shown out the door on the man’s face. He crosses the road and sits on a low wall right next to Nishikido, who is smoking.
“So.”
“Nothing. I don’t have big boobs and bright smile,” Shige says. Nishikido laughs.
“Do you want to look around?” he asks, and Shige ruffles his own hair, thinking, then catches Nishikido staring a little.
“Stop observing me. I’m not going to fall apart,” Shige says, watching cars pass and clouds gather.
“That’s not why I . . .” Nishikido trails off, and Shige curses the fact that he cannot tell if it is because of the young perky girl walking towards the post office who Nishikido is following with his eyes or because the doctor does not want to continue.
Before he can ask, Nishikido gets up, takes the envelope from Shige and crosses the street. The girl disappears into the post office, and Nishikido meets with the old postman in the door. He bows curtly and enters. Twenty minutes later, he comes out just as first raindrops start to fall onto Shige’s face. Shige sees him scrunch his nose up and look towards where Shige is sitting with what Shige identifies as worry. Or melancholy. He cannot tell them apart that well, but the first seems more probable.
“Let’s get into the car,” Nishikido says, and when they get in, he grins and slaps Shige across the face with the envelope.
“Yuko is apparently a guy. He has a summer house close by and they call him that around here because he is as pretty as a girl. The girl in the post office was swooning when talking about him,” Ryo laughs, “figures your creepy fan would be a girly guy. He did not really sound like someone who would steal souls, though,” Nishikido continues.
“How did you, what . . .”
“Well, I do have a great smile and nice body,” Nishikido fake-blinks at him. When Shige just stares at him blankly, he turns forward and starts the engine.
“Fuck the weather,” Nishikido hisses as the thick curtains of water keep on falling onto the front shield. Shige stays silent, starting to shiver as they get closer to the address scribbled across the envelope. When they stop, Nishikido’s jaw drops. Shige gets out of the car and walks close to the huge iron gate, looking through the bars, taking in the spacious garden, small pond, and the mansion set into the scenery-dark, half hidden by the rain. His head hurts again, and he feels, really feels, as if something was pulling him towards the place. Nishikido gets out and tries to pry Shige’s hands away from the gate.
“Come on, get back into the car. There is no one here.”
Shige knows he should; he is cold and completely soaked, and Nishikido is shaking him violently by now. It takes all of his effort to move away from the closed premises.
Back in the car, Nishikido rummages through his bag tossed on the back seat, pulling out a hoodie and a t-shirt from it.
“This is why you need to be supervised. You are getting instable,” he mumbles as he uses the t-shirt to dry Shige’s hair a little, then puts it aside and forces Shige to take off his own shirt. Shige lets him, still dazed, looking at the gate and the house behind it, while the warmth of Nishikido’s touch is slowly coaxing him back to reality. The man runs his hands down Shige’s torso, drying him as much as he can, using now dump t-shirt to at least rub some water off Shige’s pants. He then forces him to put the hoodie on and squeezes some water from his own hair. He starts the engine and backs down the long alley, stepping on the speed pedal once out of there.
“That guy has enough money to steal souls with a summer mansion like that,” Shige says eventually, his body slowly coming back to normal. He registers Nishikido next to him in wet clothes and himself being dried, and startles. “I have a jacket in the trunk,” he says after a while. Nishikido keeps on driving.
Shige tries again. “Do you know what happened to me?”
“How should I? I’ve never met a person without a soul before,” Nishikido says dryly. “It is deemed too dangerous to deprive a human of the soul to even perform medical experiments with anyone in such a state.”
“I think my soul was there.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Nishikido shakes his head.
“Did you get Yuko’s real name, some information on where he is from?” Shige does not give up.
“No. The girl just said everyone calls him that. And that he tends to appear and disappear with no pattern.”
“The registrar should have the owner of the house listed though,” Shige says, already thinking of going there the next day. “I hope he owns the house. I wonder if I have any more letters that could be from him somewhere at home.”
Nishikido breaks a little more sharply at the next interjections. “If you really think that this is the guy, you should call Masuda. But you are not investigating yourself.”
“Why not?”
“You are losing it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are trying too hard to guess emotions, to recreate them with the rational part of your brain activity, and you forget about other natural reflexes and reactions. You are dangerous.”
“I’m fine. I’m okay as long as I don’t feel my soul’s trail. I think. And if I feel it, it means I’m close. So I can use that to my advantage too. I’m fine.”
“See, you are having these illusions. There are no soul trails.”
“How do you know what there is? You never came across a case like mine.”
Nishikido stays silent for the rest of the journey, biting his lips and glancing at Shige who is determined.
“I’m not calling anyone. They were useless and only interested in the smugglers, not in finding my soul,” Shige announces when they park the car by his apartment and get out.
“If you don’t do it, I will,” Nishikido says sternly and drives away. Shige shrugs his shoulders and goes home. He can still investigate on his own.
***
“Good morning, Kato-kun,” Masuda smiles at Shige the next morning from behind the table in his kitchen.
“How did you get in?” Shige asks, but Masuda just raises an eyebrow. “Oh, right.”
“So I hear you have been playing detective,” Masuda says around a mouthful of pastry. He offers some to Shige, too. Shige figures it makes up a little for breaking and entering when the intruder brings breakfast.
“Well, I’m sure Nishikido told you all about it.”
Masuda just raises an eyebrow again. “I checked the registrar and the name in it. The official owner is clearly a puppet, so I’m on my way to ask a few questions. I hear from your editor that you are on some kind of soul searching trip, so I figured you might want to come along.” Masuda says eventually, scoffing a little when he notices unwashed dishes in the sink from Shige’s late night dinner yesterday. Shige wants to question the logic behind agency taking random civilians with them while investigating but changes his mind, seeing the thin line of Masuda’s lips and the odd glance he gives him after checking his sink. He opts for nodding and hurrying off to get ready.
“You don’t believe me,” Shige says as he is once again seated in the passenger seat, this time next to Masuda. He just told the detective what had happened yesterday.
“Well, that would be one creepy fan.” Masuda cuts the windings a bit too close for Shige’s liking, “but I think there is more to a human soul that meets the eye and people should not meddle,” Masuda continues darkly. Shige cannot help to wonder if he speaks from experience and if one can really see a human soul, if they have colors just like in books, black if a person is inhuman and cruel, white and shining when someone is innocent. If there exists an innocent soul these days. He never asks, especially not after he sees how Masuda grabs a guy they have been waiting for from behind, drags him into his own small shop and comes back an hour later, unfazed and smiling despite his jacket being torn a bit, coincidently showing off the gun in the scabbard that Shige has not noticed before.
“Well, you have rich and strange fans, Kato Shigeaki,” is all he says and turns the car to drop Shige home.
“Why did he take me along?” Shige asks Koyama over a cup of coffee later that day. “Not that I’m protesting or anything.”
“I’d rather you not go next time. These are dangerous people, Shige.” Koyama says, observing Shige like a hawk.
“Should I just sit back and let them forget about me then?” Shige asks coldly, and Koyama winces.
Shige cannot help it; he knows his voice has only one tone lately. It is disinterested, neutral, distant and cold. Empty. Just like he is.
“Maybe I should take a holiday and hang out with you a little. If Nishikido-sensei thinks you might hurt yourself.”
“Nishikido-sensei only guesses. Koyama, please.” Shige tries, but Koyama only sips on his coffee.
“What’s next?” he asks eventually.
“Now, I wait.” Shige mutters and sees the frustration he knows he should be feeling mirror in Koyama’s eyes. He himself just feels his inside ache after something that is missing from him.
***
Masuda comes by a couple of times in the next week or so. He digs through Shige’s correspondence, his library, asks about places he has been to, examines his room, his bedroom. Shige is having hard time putting together the puzzle of this man. He wears salmon-colored shirts and socks with colorful stripes on them. He has a face of a baby, but when he once takes off his jacket and his shirt, his undershirt reveals muscles Shige associates with people in that line of business. He carries a gun and a smile on his face with equal ease and tends to disappear so fast and quietly that at first Shige searches every inch of his apartment before believing he is gone.
Nishikido-that is another story. Shige thinks he is a cocky doctor. He also thinks Nishikido is in fact a coward, wanting Shige watched, which is why he apparently made Masuda take Shige with him and got in contact with Koyama. He stopped calling him Kato-san after that and adopted the familiar Shige ever since. Shige calls him Nishikido in return.
Nishikido seems to be angry with Shige most of the time, mostly because he cannot bring any reaction out of Shige. Of course not; Shige does not get angry or happy or anxious or excited. No matter what the doctor tries, what he tells him, Shige just stares at him and repeats the same thing over and over again. I miss my soul. That is when Nishikido turns around, shows him his back, and usually stops any treatment for the day. Shige wonders how many of those tests are really necessary, thinks that Nishikido might just be using him as a rare and welcome laboratory rat and might be writing a report, an article to some sterile medical journal on him. Shige figures he should appreciate that he cannot get angry over it.
***
Nishikido is glaring at Yamashita who is for some reason accompanying them both to the airport. It is hard not to notice. Koyama is trotting along, making sure Shige has his insurance and silently watching the other two men, pleading with Shige not to go one last time when he pulls him to the airport bathroom. Shige does not waver. Yamashita thinks he might help, Masuda has been apparently undercover for the past month or so, and Nishikido is coming along for reasons Shige was not given.
Koyama bites his lip as they pass through the passport control, and Yamashita puts his hand on his shoulder, using all of his posture and authority to calm him down. Shige catches Nishikido’s dark eyes on him, and they do not waiver when he challenges them. He feels that longing spreading through his body again as he sees the depth of the eyes boring into him. His body just about feels the soul, strong yet somehow bare in that look, and he twitches when Nishikido finally looks away and tells him to get moving. Shige’s insides twist in protest, loosing that almost warmth that he can feel just from the closeness of someone’s soul lately, and he follows Nishikido, silently praying that Masuda is right, that he is spying on the right person, and that his soul is really lying just across the country. He does not understand why someone would want to keep his soul away from him. Why someone would be so cruel. Why somebody would be interested enough.
Before they land, Nishikido gives him a weird hat and attempts a stupid joke about how even that does not save Shige’s stupid hair. He also tells the taxi driver a wrong address and makes Shige walk almost an hour from where the taxi driver drops them off to their hotel. It is a shabby one, dark corridors with blinking feeble neon lights and a receptionist with sickly white skin. They are sharing a room, and Nishikido just takes an extra blanket from the closet and collapses onto the couch, types a message to someone and dozes off. Shige gets no explanation. His head hurts, and his body is pulled into two different directions, towards Nishikido, the closest soul in his vicinity and somewhere out and to the south, where he knows there is ocean and something, something he wants. His soul, he thinks just as someone knocks on the door.
Nishikido jumps like he was not sleeping at all up till now and stomps to the door, knocks on it and opens only when there are three more knocks from outside. The door reveals Masuda, looking thinner than when Shige saw him last time, as the man slumps down on the couch and sighs.
“I think he wants my soul too,” he whispers, and Nishikido’s eyes widen.
***
Shige is mostly closed inside the hotel room for the next few days. He is not told anything but not to go outside. Nishikido leaves at times to get them food or to meet Massu when they deem it too dangerous to meet in the room. Shige paces the room for nothing better to do or attempts to talk to Nishikido who has his nose in tons of medical reports, if he is not asking Shige how he feels, that is. But Nishikido at least tries to humor Shige when he demands his attention, having nothing to pass the time with. But humoring someone without feelings is hard. Shige thinks of ways to find out what is going on. Why take him along and not tell him anything?
He ends up shutting the door with a bang after Ryo comes back from the meeting with Massu one night and stomping in front of him.
“Did you bring me here just so that I am under your supervision?” Shige shouts because that is what you are supposed to do when you are angry. “And stop playing some secret agent man, you are a doctor! Why are you here to begin with? Why does no one tell me anything? It is my freaking soul that got stolen.”
Nishikido crosses his arms and looks at him with those eyes once again, and Shige shrinks away, trying to push the thought of just somehow taking this man’s soul instead into the back of his mind.
“You suck at playing emotions,” Nishikido tells him. “You say you don’t have any, yet you are throwing tantrums.”
“What do you know?” Shige says flatly. “Nothing.”
“I know you don’t feel. Don’t underestimate me.” Nishikido’s voice is low, almost a whisper.
“And why is it that I do not feel a thing?” Shige asks, searching at least for some answers because nothing makes sense anymore. “Emotions are just chemical reactions, they happen in one’s brain. So why is it that I feel nothing? Nothing but emptiness.” He screams the last thing outside the window in the direction he is pulled to.
Nishikido sighs. “Ever since we learned how to separate a human soul from a human being, how to extract it and plant a new one, that theory was proven lacking. It seems that soul is, so to speak, the essential ingredient in that chemical cocktail that creates emotions. The same human being but with a different soul feels differently.”
Shige hits the frame of the window just because it should bring him relief. It does not. “That sounds more like alchemy than science to me, Nishikido,” he says and turns only to find himself staring into Nishikido’s black eyes. The man is too close to him, in his personal space, eyes on fire, his jaw set.
When he moves, Shige’s instinct is to cover his face because it looks like Nishikido might hit him. He yelps when instead a hand grabs his jeans, unzips them and pushes into his underwear. Nishikido pulls at Shige’s cock harshly.
“So what do you feel now Shige?” he asks, “Disgust?” and drags his fingers up Shige’s cock, “Shock?” and his palm closes around Shige and slides down. “Or are you as turned on as you would normally be only if it was a girl doing this?” Shige bites his lip because he might moan otherwise. “This is your instinct. Nothing but your raw nature, no soul or my hand would not be in your pants anymore. What do you feel?” Nishikido asks again as he pulls away completely.
“Too little finesse for someone who claims to be a doctor,” Shige tells him because he knows it will piss the other off. He does not tell Nishikido that, normally, he would be much more turned on than he is now because, if he had a soul, those dark eyes, that black hair in Nishikido’s face, the dark sinewy man would turn him on much more than any girl out there. Still the point gets across as he is catching his breath, still hard, but not feeling anything but lust, a little like an animal. And the warmth that a touch always brings. And the desire. For Nishikido’s soul.
“I didn’t want to take you along,” Nishikido breathes out eventually. “We could not tell if the man has your soul planted in him or not. So I was necessary, should the extraction take place. But you should not be here. It’s dangerous.” Shige thinks he can trace exhaustion in the other’s voice. “But now it seems you will have to identify your soul before Masuda can steal it.”
Shige slides to the floor, suddenly feeling exhaustion wash over his own body as well.
“I don’t think that is going to be a problem,” he says, rubbing his eyes. Nishikido ends up sitting next to him, though not before getting Shige’s blanket and wrapping it around Shige.
“Do you really think you could feel it? Even if there are many other souls around?”
Shige looks up. “How did you . . . And what do you mean by many?”
“I saw how you look at me. Longing, as you once said.”
“So you believe me now? That I can feel its trace?”
“Massu does,” Nishikido nods. “And, well, I have been spending lots of time with you. You can’t lie to save your life, and your brain has proven pretty resilient, given the situation.”
“Ah, always analyzing,” Shige notes.
“Right back at you. You throw nice tantrums for someone with no passion.”
Shige quirks his lips up.
“Don’t,” Nishikido says quickly, “it just looks creepy like that,” he adds. Shige knows but tries anyway. “Really fake,” Nishikido laughs, and Shige thinks that for once the man earned the right to laugh at him.
“So does this mean I get to play super secret agent as well?”
Nishikido sighs. “Not if I can help it,” he replies, and for the first time Shige wonders why Nishikido cares. He is just a soulless shell after all.
***
Shige is very lucky everything inside him is dull. He would never have enough courage to do this otherwise. He would probably trip over his feet and give them all away a hundred times by now. His teeth would probably made his lip bleed, knowing how he always bites himself in a nervous gesture. Tegoshi Yuya, the man who, accordingly to Masuda, stole his soul, has done him a favor and made him capable of coming into the thief’s house, entering through the main gate under some pretense, sneaking around to the back door leading to a dark underground only to climb up and crawl and tiptoe in an effort to get into the quirky tower that looks positively ugly on a modern, simple house. Shige still has enough to do with himself as his skin prickles, and he feels himself being pulled in thousand of different directions, the ocean he should not hear pounding in his ears and his eyes watering with tears of exertion because it takes all of his will to concentrate on not giving into his urge to practically burst as they slowly make it into another floor when Masuda renders yet another camera inoperative.
Nishikido is pulling him by the sleeve and telling him to hold on, and Masuda is hurrying them because Tegoshi might be back any minute and they are taking too long. He looks frightened in his bizarre butler-like costume with frilly shirt under his suit and eyeliner, the house uniform as he said.
“Tegoshi likes to marvel in all the souls he collected, but he does not actually use them that often. Only about five times have I recognized big enough deviations in his behavior to deduce he pulled one out of his collection. He does not let anyone into the room where he keeps them, but I know he does not label the storages. Instead, he has the souls in weird containers that look like objects he associates with a person from which the soul was stolen. It is scary that he has more than one, and we might never be able to find their owners unless he speaks up. I’m afraid that if we arrest him, he will make sure they are all destroyed when he goes down, which is why you need to collect yours before we take the actions against him.”
They were sitting in the stiff hotel room listening to everything Masuda was quickly throwing at them.
“Why.” Nishikido asked then, looking positively bewildered.
Masuda shivered. “He is such a cheerful young man, yet there is this glint in his eyes. It’s like he does not realize that he is making others miserable when he takes what he wants. And he wants many things. He wants to know how an architect feels when creating a design. He wants to feel the itch of a mangaka’s fingers when drawing a story, the despair of an actor absorbed in his best role, the internal struggle of a writer when he evokes most of the emotions by his work. And he just . . . takes it, has his men steal the soul he wants. Then when he feels like it, he takes on that personality for a day, searching for those emotions he wants to feel and does not know how to feel by himself. When he is satisfied, he returns the soul into his ever-growing collection and transforms into the smart, relatively innocent brat. In a way, it is horrifying-the ease with which he takes on those many faces.”
Masuda swears next to him, and Shige hears a loud bang as the man fires three shots at the lock of the door in front of which they are standing.
“I’m sorry, I can’t pick it. We have only a little time left now. I’m going to notify the others. Search, now,” he hisses as he looks out of the window.
Shige is shaking and gripping Nishikido, the only thing that still connects him to reality while the souls that must be all around him practically attack his senses. They are looking for the bodies from which they were taken unwillingly. He is a body they could latch onto. He himself wants a soul, any soul, just one that would make him whole again because he cannot feel the trace of his own over the cravings of practically the entire room. It is closing on him, the walls falling down on his head, the furniture crawling to him, the books luring him to pick one, and his mind is going blurry on the edges.
He hears a distant voice, sees a face, one minute split in a smile and shocked in the next one, rendered unmoving by the betrayal.
“Massu, I would have never guessed,” there’s sadness in the young man’s eyes, “I liked your soul,” shimmering in Shige’s ears before he sees a flash of rage on Tegoshi’s pretty face, “These are mine; you will never find what you are looking for,” and Masuda is launching, there are steps approaching and burning fingers around his wrist, pleading.
“Kato Shigeaki, concentrate,” Nishikido is whispering into his ear. “Tell me where your soul lies. Where do you want to go most, which part of the room do you feel familiar with?”
Shige is fighting the tears and the burn in his body, looking around, closing his eyes and listening, searching for that longing that has always been there. But Nishikido holding him, his own life so intense in that moment, is overpowering; Shige can once again sense only the desire for his soul.
“Let go,” he sputters, and Nishikido probably does because Shige is falling to his knees then, but behind Shige’s closed eyes, the pulling is more defined this time. He crawls the way his body wants him to. But as he tries to open his eyes, he hears a cry of Shige and feels the hard wooden floor against his cheek as he collapses.
***
“In a way, it is flattering to have him almost love me. But it makes me question my own normalcy when I remind myself he is someone who destroyed so many human beings,” Masuda’s voice says from somewhere far away. There is a silent murmur, more voices, and a thud of the door closing, and Shige opens his eyes, slowly, feeling sore but so alive. Then he is trembling with so many emotions; fear of losing his life, fear of emptiness and no meaning, and joy and powerful surges to live because he feels a slow warmth spreading from inside of him, and tears are rolling down his cheek, and Kei is smiling a brilliant smile from over his head, and Shige’s soul flutters inside of him just to give him one more confirmation that it is there and it is all his.
“Welcome back, Shige.” Kei sniffles a little.
Shige groans, “Can’t you be any sappier?” he asks and attempts a grin. His muscles are a little sore, but it is there, on his face, stretching the corners of his mouth, and Koyama throws himself on him, hugs him tightly and lets go only when Shige grumbles that it hurts.
“Where am I?” he asks when Koyama manages to compose himself.
“Home,” Koyama smiles, and Shige relaxes against the pillow, closes his eyes and lets his soul drag him into another whirlpool of emotions. His own.
***
He is released from the clinic soon after. He meets Nishikido just once when the man comes to check on him and tell him the planting of his soul was successful. He has dark circles under his eyes, and Shige wants to say thank you because he should be grateful. He does not know what happened that night, but Nishikido was the one that technically gave him his soul back. He should probably be thankful for many other things, but as the man does not look him straight into the eyes and Shige’s soul does not remember the past months of his existence, his brain, his memory, is not enough to really create that emotion. He would like to ask why, but Nishikido bows his head slightly and hurriedly excuses himself.
Two weeks later, Shige finds himself sitting in a café with Masuda, watching a very flustered Koyama as he talks with Yamashita on the other side of the big window. Masuda chuckles a little and then returns his attention to Shige.
“So how is your book coming along?” he asks.
“My editor is very pleased.” Shige grins. “She is confident that I was reborn on my little trip.” Massu only nods seriously.
“Almost like it,” he says, and Shige eyes him a little suspiciously. It was supposed to be a joke.
“How did you know which one was my soul?” he asks after all, wanting to know what happened after he had blacked out that night and knowing Masuda will not talk once Koyama is back inside.
“Nishikido-kun found your soul, we took Tegoshi and fled the place,” Massu says simply, and Shige stares.
“How did he?”
“I don’t know. He says it was crystal clear though, once you made it to those bookshelves.”
Shige bites his lip.
“You should just ask him. And thank him properly.”
It sounds like Masuda is actually scolding him.
“He threatened Yamashita to put a stop to our collaboration if the agency didn’t help you. He used up the favor I owed him to make me look after you too. He has done some extensive research in order to help us understand how Tegoshi and his crew of smugglers worked too.”
“Well I did not ask him to,” Shige says stubbornly. Masuda’s cup clanks against the table top a little too loudly.
“What was it? The container, just tell me that,” Shige sighs, then adds, “I promise I will go and talk to Nishikido properly.”
“A fake old Polaroid camera.”
Koyama comes inside in that moment, and Shige excuses himself, going into the bathroom to catch his breath and collect himself. He almost wishes his soul was missing again because the way he is flooded with ache and confusion is not helping Shige at all.
***
They meet in a park by a small pond of water, and Shige watches as Nishikido Ryo walks towards him, short, sharp steps, head held high, aura of determination enveloping anything at least remotely close to him. His hair is a little longer, and the wind is ruffling it into an attractive mess, his skin is more tanned with the summer slowly creeping on the city, and when he looks at Shige, his eyes are so dark and striking that Shige stops breathing for a while. It is as if the longing in him returned for a moment.
“I don’t remember you being this hot,” Shige blurts out the thought swirling in his head and then turns bright red. He also remembers the most embarrassing moment they shared and concludes he was right-soul in place, Nishikido could turn him on with one touch.
Now though, he is smiling at Shige, his mouth suddenly showing off his white teeth, and his laughter rumbles from inside him in deep glittering tones.
“You have a very bad memory, I’m always hot,” he says. “You are odd,” he adds as an afterthought while Shige sputters and Nishikido sits down next to Shige.
“You should think what that says about yourself since you clearly read this odd man’s book enough to remember tiny details,” Shige notes dryly once he gets his brain to function properly again.
Nishikido looks at him sideways, a little shy in that passing moment.
“It was for research. I wanted to know why it all happened. What was so special about you, about your books, and what was so alluring. What emotions would you normally harbor.” Nishikido falls silent then.
“That is a very elaborate excuse?” Shige snorts. Nishikido elbows his side.
“I’m glad. It saved my soul from destruction. All the other souls disappeared.” Shige eventually admits.
Nishikido nods. They sit in silence for a while.
“It was an almost good read though,” Nishikido says at the end.
Shige smiles, his insides trembling a little at what he knows is actually a compliment. “Now for that comment, I’m buying you dinner,” he says, happy he has found an excuse and a first sliver of real thankfulness towards this man.
“Okay,” Nishikido says, visibly surprised at the invitation. He stands up and says good bye for the day a little later. At the end, he turns back and stomps back to Shige from almost the other side of the pond, pulling him to his feet and into an awkward embrace, both of his hands clutching to Shige’s back. When he takes a step back, he looks straight into Shige’s eyes.
“I’m happy to finally meet you, Kato Shigeaki,” he says and with a confidence in his stride practically runs away from Shige.
***
That night, Shige dreams about dark eyes boring into him, watching him as he stumbles through a deep forest, lost and helpless. He feels a warm hand pulling his wrist, making him stumble less and focus on the path that is slowly forming. A scenery changes, and Shige sees a man silently observing him from a low wall, cigarette smoke whirling around him, making him look so far away. He feels the warmth of caring when it suddenly turns freezing cold in his dream and then arousal searing through his body as his dream self is pushed against the cold pane of a filthy window, those black eyes looking at him. They are everywhere, pulling and pressing him to fight, and there is determination and gentleness in the stare that follows him everywhere. When the dream takes him back into the forest, there is soft grass under his feet and he is leaving the last trees behind. The man is no longer looking, back turned to him, so familiar, sad, but letting go. Shige wakes up and realizes Nishikido Ryo is in love with him.
“Why?” Shige asks over a cup of coffee a week later. Nishikido keeps on sipping from his huge cup, nothing but his eyes visible behind it.
“Never mind,” Shige says and burns his tongue on his own cup of coffee.
“I can’t answer all of your questions,” Nishikido tells him.
“And I can’t answer yours,” Shige says back, “not yet anyway,” he whispers, turning to look out of the window, watching the sky slowly turn darker as a storm approaches. The tip of Nishikido’s shoe brushes against his under the table. The only indication that Nishikido has heard him.
Shige starts looking for a way to explain that his soul is still craving the one that is brimming with passion behind Nishikido’s eyes.
From: sashjun
Title: Soul Cravings
Rating: R
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Warnings: AU inspired by Cold Souls trailer. I have not seen the movie though, so there should be no spoilers.
Summary: Shige wakes up one morning and realizes he needs to do some soul searching. Literally.
Notes: Dear arashijun, I know you wanted zombies, but someone not having a soul is the closest to the concept of a zombie I managed to get. I hope you will find at least something enjoyable while accompanying Shige on his quest.
Shige wakes up, trots into the bathroom to wash his face, then into his kitchen to have a cup of coffee and some breakfast. He sits there, palm rubbing his forehead since his head hurts terribly. He attributes his headache to the storm raging outside and goes back into the bathroom to take a quick shower and make himself presentable. When he gets out into the rain, he realizes that he is not annoyed and walks right under the pouring water, ignoring his brain telling him he should go back for an umbrella. Shige meets with his editor, stops to do grocery shopping, and once back home collapses back into his bed, his body cold and tired, head thrumming with pain, and his mind a little empty. He does not feel disappointment over not finishing the latest chapter of his novel, nor does he feel upset about his editor being mean about the stuff he handed in last week. He does not feel much at all, he thinks, for such an ugly day. He should, but there is nothing. He falls asleep and wakes up nine hours later, no dream, no worry, no feeling, just nothing.
After his morning routine the next day, Shige sits behind his computer because he knows he has to write. He stares at the monitor-his mind, that had been a whirlwind of emotions, fears and worries just two days ago, completely calm. His fingers move across the keyboard robotically. He expects his mind to race through the night, but there are no dreams, and the morning is just as dull, too normal, too automatic yet again.
He does not really feel like something is wrong. His brain, however, the rational part that has been observing his own behavior, comes up with an idea that something has indeed gone very, very wrong in the past few days. Shige seems quite unfazed by this epiphany, but there is nothing easier than googling it.
He should feel panic, horror and complete shock. But he only stares at his monitor yet again, and rubs his hands absently as he forces his brain to work, to process the information, to come up with a solution. The headache returns, but he rubs his chest instead of his forehead this time. He really is empty; his brain is telling him as much. He is expecting a wave of emotions, but nothing happens, and Shige thinks maybe he should sleep on this before he does something stupid. It does not feel that bad after all. He just does not feel at all.
“Are you sure?” Koyama asks him, his face pale, eyes wide, mouth never really closing. Shige thinks it looks a little comical, but it does not make him laugh.
“Well, as much as one can be sure about something so surreal,” Shige pauses. When Koyama just keeps on staring like he has never seen Shige before, he continues, “I didn’t go to the doctors, but what would I say? 'Hey doctor, I think I lost my soul overnight'?”
“Shige?” Koyama gasps exasperatedly, stands up and shakes him, bringing the attention of everyone in the café to them. “Stop being so stoic about this! Only the idea of this happening has me scared to death!”
“That’s just the thing. I don’t feel, at least not emotions. But it is like I found my inner peace. Nothing really bugs me.”
“Shige, you need to go to the doctor.”
“All right,” Shige says, unfazed, promises because Kei is his best friend and if he worries this much, it usually means something is off. Usually. Shige also usually feels a bit annoyed or amused by how worried Kei is. But today, he just looks at him and nods. Koyama makes a call and then another one and hands Shige a number, his hands trembling.
“Here’s a name and an address. Go to this clinic. This doctor is supposed to be a real expert.”
“How do you know?” Shige asks.
“My friend’s friend. He had it done. Voluntarily,” Koyama stresses.
“Oh,” Shige says and examines the paper. He decides to stop by later that day.
***
The man looks at him, eyes dark and positively trying to pierce him. His forehead might be all wrinkled, but Shige cannot tell because there is his frilly black hair falling over it. Shige wants to swipe it away just so he too could observe the other and his brain could compensate for Shige not feeling the atmosphere. The doctor seems only a little older than Shige, and Shige doubts him because how much of an expert can one become in his twenties. Logically.
“Impossible,” the doctor mutters.
“Excuse me?” Shige asks. Maybe he should be offended by the doubt.
“Extraordinary,” the doctor says next, checking Shige’s results again, and Shige raises an eyebrow.
“You sure this is not just a very badly done job from one of those unauthorized clinics that promise you miracles?” the doctor asks.
Shige should feel rage. But rationally, of course the doctor would ask something like that. “The relationship between me and my soul might have been rocky, but I definitely haven’t been planing on getting rid of it,” he says.
The doctor chuckles. But Shige stays indifferent, and the doctor schools his features.
“Well then. As you yourself suspected, you do not have a soul right now. And since you say you did not ask for its removal, it was probably stolen from you. Now, Kato-san, normally when one has his or her soul taken away, it is on request and only so it can be replaced by some other-and what the patient believes is also better-soul. In your case, that has not happened.” The doctor stops to take a breath, and Shige sees him fidget nervously before he continues. “I could offer you some soul, but I cannot guarantee how your body will react since your previous soul and your body did not come to terms with the replacement. But I also cannot tell at all how and for how long you could function without one.”
Shige thinks about it. He can tell the doctor does not want to risk planting a soul into Shige’s body. He too has read quite unpleasant stories of what happens if the planting does not take place willingly.
“Where is my soul?” he asks the one question that seems to be the key to all the solutions.
The doctor stands up and starts pacing the room. “I have no clue, Kato-san.”
“Why would someone...”
“I don’t know,” the doctor cuts in. “I don’t know.” He turns around and looks at Shige. “And you don’t feel anything?”
“No. Not really.” Shige says. “I mean, I know what I should feel. I know I should be really angry and afraid right now. But I am neither. I only know that I want my soul back. Maybe that is the one thing I kind of feel. This, this longing,” Shige stops because the doctor is close to him, looking him into the eyes. His breath is already warming Shige’s skin, and his hands are gripping the sides of Shige’s chair. Shige’s body feels hot from being so close to another human being.
“Doctor,” he says.
“Yeah, right, still nothing?” the doctor asks, straightens up.
“I want my soul back,” Shige repeats.
“I . . . I’m going to give you this address and a name. The guy might be able to help you,” the doctor says.
“Who is this Yamashita?” Shige asks automatically, taking and reading the note.
“I can’t tell you; he must decide on that.”
“You know something.”
“I am not to talk about that,” the doctor says and throws one last searching look towards Shige. “But come back here if you need any help,” he adds and turns his back on Shige. Shige picks up the address and, understanding everyone thinks this is serious, he steps out of the office and sets out to look for the man called Yamashita Tomohisa.
***
“Who sent you?” the man who introduced himself as Yamashita Tomohisa asks. He is wearing a sleek suit and a polite face, and Shige cannot read him at all.
“The doctor I went to. Nishikido-san,” Shige says warily for what feels like the thousandth time. The looks of this place does not suggest anything good coming out of it. He was thoroughly checked, metal detector, body search and some awkward questioning, and made to wait in a room that had practically nothing but shiny white walls surrounding him and simple metal chairs lining those walls. The office, in which he is now, is cramped with files and several PCs and books, and curtains are pulled to a complete close.
“What else did he tell you?” Yamashita asks after a moment of silence, gesturing for Shige to sit down.
“That you might help. I lost my soul,” Shige says.
Yamashita twitches. “I see. How does one loose it?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just woke up, and it wasn’t there.” Shige thinks this might make a good comedic skit. The irony is screaming at him from every corner. “I need to find it,” he adds out loud, remembers that this is why he came here in the first place. “I want my soul back.”
“I see.” Yamashita says then asks Shige to leave. “I need to make a call or two.” Shige waits yet again.
“Have you ever heard of soul trafficking?” A guy with a childish face, bright socks underneath his suit, and big smile asks Shige when he picks him up some time later.
Shige thinks it would be nice to wake up from this dream already.
“You are an interesting one,” the guy adds. “They usually pick from what is available. I have not heard of a case where they would actually go and extract the soul. Very intriguing.” Shige has a sense of déjà-vu.
“Stop treating me like some kind of a scientific phenomenon. Tell me where my soul is.”
“That I do not know. We had no information on an order being placed, on anyone on the move, and as I said the smugglers usually try and steal the souls from their deposits, or when they are transferred.”
“This is ridiculous!” Shige really thinks it is. “And who are you anyway?” He really wants to know.
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Masuda Takahisa. I’m an expert on these things around the agency. On soul trafficking. I was told to try and get as much information as I can from you.”
“Get information?” Shige raises his voice on purpose. He is not really angry, but it seems that unless he shows some kind of emotion, some kind of fury, these people will not listen. “I’m the one that needs information and explanations! My fucking soul was apparently stolen from me. I need to know where to find it.”
Masuda looks at him for a while and then hands him a glass of water.
“It’s a bit more complicated Kato-san. You see, soul trafficking is a highly technical, well organized crime done by dangerous professionals. People desiring souls that are not available for sale usually do not have the best intentions, wanting to exploit the soul until it is feeble and black. Eventually, they simply throw it away and use another one. I cannot just go and tell you things here, now can I? Besides, as I said, I’m puzzled as to why someone would risk so much to extract your soul precisely.”
“I have had enough,” Shige says, throwing the glass on the floor, thinking it might create the needed effect. “I’m leaving.”
“And where will you go?” Masuda asks, placing a hand on Kato’s shoulder. “The police won’t help you, Kato-san.”
Shige’s brain is working fast, trying to find some solution, some way out of this so he does not have to rely on these people. But even his brain feels empty, and he feels the same pang of pain that he has taken to calling longing, the only emotion he can still trace in himself. The want for his soul. He sits down on the chair that Masuda points out and answers countless number of questions, some repeating several times, racks his brain to remember. When he is let go, with a telephone number to call Masuda if anything else happens and a cold dismissal from his boss Yamashita who tells him to wait until they contact him otherwise, it is almost midnight and all he can do is drag himself to the bed, curl up in search of some inner warmth he is missing, and fall asleep, giving in to the dreamless limbo his nights have become.
***
“What are you going to do now?” Koyama asks, visibly trying to control another outburst as they seem a little pointless now that Shige just does not react.
“I’m going to look for my soul, obviously,” Shige says.
“But how? And what about your book?”
“Well, it is a prerogative of a writer to do what he wants to do. My latest writing was kind of crappy anyway. I went to see my editor, and when I announced I was going to travel, she simply said that a little bit of soul searching might just do me good.”
Shige gives Koyama an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle, and Koyama has to laugh even if Shige does not. Shige knows this is funny, and he forces his mouth into some kind of smile, but it just turns out bizarre. Koyama tells him so and laughs some more.
“Do you need a companion on your quest?” Koyama asks when the giggles pass and squeezes Shige’s shoulders. Shige feels Koyama’s hand warm against his shirt and realizes how much his body appreciates it. Human touch seems to be what brings his cold body and mind closer to feeling. Someone else’s warmth also makes the longing in him grow. Because he himself used to be like that. Full of this sense of place and time and atmosphere that really made him feel, that made his existence so intense.
“I think it might get dangerous. I mean, they said these people might be dangerous. I think I’d rather you stay home. You can still help me here, maybe someone will come back or I will need some other assistance. I don’t even know where to start, to be honest.”
“No plan?” Koyama asks, a little hurt at being refused but not pushing it. There is no point to; Shige cannot be blackmailed by his huge puppy eyes right now.
“Well, I’m going to go talk to Nishikido-san one more time. Maybe I will understand more then. He did offer help. I think.”
***
“Now this is what I call self-confidence,” Nishikido Ryo says, crossing his arms over his chest, when Shige finishes his explanation, but then he snatches keys from Shige and points to the passenger seat. “I’m driving. You might think you are amazing enough for your creepy admirer to steal your soul, but you are unstable and I’m not going to die because of you.”
“No one asked you to come,” Shige mutters, but decides it is not worth arguing. This guy is tiring him out as it is.
“Of course you did,” Nishikido mumbles, and the car moves out of the parking lot. “Besides I cannot let you wander around the country alone. I’ve told you that, and you are my patient, my responsibility.”
Shige frowns. This too is weird logic in his book.
When he showed up in Nishikido-sensei’s office a week ago, the other ran a series of test on him right away. Shige went on to tell him that this Yamashita guy he had sent him to was not helpful at all, but Nishikido just kept on doing tests and giving him worried looks.
“Any pains?”
“No,” Shige lied. “I just want my soul back. And I thought you might know something. I’m sure you do.”
“Kato-san, I just know how this works from a medical point of view. Moreover, I would rather not get anywhere close to the soul trafficking business.”
“So you knew,” Shige accused him back then. Nishikido didn’t answer, just asked Shige what he was told to do. When Shige said he was to wait, but he would be going to search for the person who stole his soul himself, Nishikido cursed under his breath. Shige could have sworn he heard him muttering something about Yamashita being an asshole. He then announced he would go with Shige and asked where they would be going exactly. Shige decided he would shout at that point, only to make his brain feel lighter because these people were idiots. How should have he known?
“See, completely unstable,” was all Nishikido said. But he then told Shige about all the things one can do with someone’s soul. About using other people’s emotions, patterns in which they are created, altering one’s personality, trying to find peace or inspiration, about people hoping to forget how much they stretched themselves in the past, wanting to start anew, or just being fascinated by gaining all new emotional field to play on.
“Is there someone who would want your soul that badly that he would sedate you, perform the complicated procedure on you in your own house or take you somewhere where they could do so and then leave you soulless afterwards? Someone with resources, desire, yet cold enough to do something like that to you?”
Shige still does not know the answer to that, but he had come home that day and searched his house for anything, something, searched his memories that were paler and distant now that the emotions he remembered just were not there anymore. The only trail he has come up with is a series of letters from an admirer signed Yuko that claimed to admire the way Shige gives life to his stories. This Yuko wanted a piece of that life, or at least that was what the letters said. Shige never really responded, not knowing how to approach this person who sounded almost mental in the letters. Shige, not accustomed to his readers and fans actually wanting the interaction, just threw the letters aside. There was no return address on the envelope, but there was a stamp, plastered over the postmark in red ink, of a small post office about five hour drive away. Shige called Nishikido only to tell him he would be gone and not able to attend the next check-up the doctor has scheduled. He refused to call Masuda even though Nishikido pressed. This was the only way. With Nishikido driving his car across the country.
***
The guy at the post office says he cannot tell Shige a thing, that it is a postal secret. Shige does not really believe him; he can read the hostility with which he is shown out the door on the man’s face. He crosses the road and sits on a low wall right next to Nishikido, who is smoking.
“So.”
“Nothing. I don’t have big boobs and bright smile,” Shige says. Nishikido laughs.
“Do you want to look around?” he asks, and Shige ruffles his own hair, thinking, then catches Nishikido staring a little.
“Stop observing me. I’m not going to fall apart,” Shige says, watching cars pass and clouds gather.
“That’s not why I . . .” Nishikido trails off, and Shige curses the fact that he cannot tell if it is because of the young perky girl walking towards the post office who Nishikido is following with his eyes or because the doctor does not want to continue.
Before he can ask, Nishikido gets up, takes the envelope from Shige and crosses the street. The girl disappears into the post office, and Nishikido meets with the old postman in the door. He bows curtly and enters. Twenty minutes later, he comes out just as first raindrops start to fall onto Shige’s face. Shige sees him scrunch his nose up and look towards where Shige is sitting with what Shige identifies as worry. Or melancholy. He cannot tell them apart that well, but the first seems more probable.
“Let’s get into the car,” Nishikido says, and when they get in, he grins and slaps Shige across the face with the envelope.
“Yuko is apparently a guy. He has a summer house close by and they call him that around here because he is as pretty as a girl. The girl in the post office was swooning when talking about him,” Ryo laughs, “figures your creepy fan would be a girly guy. He did not really sound like someone who would steal souls, though,” Nishikido continues.
“How did you, what . . .”
“Well, I do have a great smile and nice body,” Nishikido fake-blinks at him. When Shige just stares at him blankly, he turns forward and starts the engine.
“Fuck the weather,” Nishikido hisses as the thick curtains of water keep on falling onto the front shield. Shige stays silent, starting to shiver as they get closer to the address scribbled across the envelope. When they stop, Nishikido’s jaw drops. Shige gets out of the car and walks close to the huge iron gate, looking through the bars, taking in the spacious garden, small pond, and the mansion set into the scenery-dark, half hidden by the rain. His head hurts again, and he feels, really feels, as if something was pulling him towards the place. Nishikido gets out and tries to pry Shige’s hands away from the gate.
“Come on, get back into the car. There is no one here.”
Shige knows he should; he is cold and completely soaked, and Nishikido is shaking him violently by now. It takes all of his effort to move away from the closed premises.
Back in the car, Nishikido rummages through his bag tossed on the back seat, pulling out a hoodie and a t-shirt from it.
“This is why you need to be supervised. You are getting instable,” he mumbles as he uses the t-shirt to dry Shige’s hair a little, then puts it aside and forces Shige to take off his own shirt. Shige lets him, still dazed, looking at the gate and the house behind it, while the warmth of Nishikido’s touch is slowly coaxing him back to reality. The man runs his hands down Shige’s torso, drying him as much as he can, using now dump t-shirt to at least rub some water off Shige’s pants. He then forces him to put the hoodie on and squeezes some water from his own hair. He starts the engine and backs down the long alley, stepping on the speed pedal once out of there.
“That guy has enough money to steal souls with a summer mansion like that,” Shige says eventually, his body slowly coming back to normal. He registers Nishikido next to him in wet clothes and himself being dried, and startles. “I have a jacket in the trunk,” he says after a while. Nishikido keeps on driving.
Shige tries again. “Do you know what happened to me?”
“How should I? I’ve never met a person without a soul before,” Nishikido says dryly. “It is deemed too dangerous to deprive a human of the soul to even perform medical experiments with anyone in such a state.”
“I think my soul was there.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Nishikido shakes his head.
“Did you get Yuko’s real name, some information on where he is from?” Shige does not give up.
“No. The girl just said everyone calls him that. And that he tends to appear and disappear with no pattern.”
“The registrar should have the owner of the house listed though,” Shige says, already thinking of going there the next day. “I hope he owns the house. I wonder if I have any more letters that could be from him somewhere at home.”
Nishikido breaks a little more sharply at the next interjections. “If you really think that this is the guy, you should call Masuda. But you are not investigating yourself.”
“Why not?”
“You are losing it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are trying too hard to guess emotions, to recreate them with the rational part of your brain activity, and you forget about other natural reflexes and reactions. You are dangerous.”
“I’m fine. I’m okay as long as I don’t feel my soul’s trail. I think. And if I feel it, it means I’m close. So I can use that to my advantage too. I’m fine.”
“See, you are having these illusions. There are no soul trails.”
“How do you know what there is? You never came across a case like mine.”
Nishikido stays silent for the rest of the journey, biting his lips and glancing at Shige who is determined.
“I’m not calling anyone. They were useless and only interested in the smugglers, not in finding my soul,” Shige announces when they park the car by his apartment and get out.
“If you don’t do it, I will,” Nishikido says sternly and drives away. Shige shrugs his shoulders and goes home. He can still investigate on his own.
***
“Good morning, Kato-kun,” Masuda smiles at Shige the next morning from behind the table in his kitchen.
“How did you get in?” Shige asks, but Masuda just raises an eyebrow. “Oh, right.”
“So I hear you have been playing detective,” Masuda says around a mouthful of pastry. He offers some to Shige, too. Shige figures it makes up a little for breaking and entering when the intruder brings breakfast.
“Well, I’m sure Nishikido told you all about it.”
Masuda just raises an eyebrow again. “I checked the registrar and the name in it. The official owner is clearly a puppet, so I’m on my way to ask a few questions. I hear from your editor that you are on some kind of soul searching trip, so I figured you might want to come along.” Masuda says eventually, scoffing a little when he notices unwashed dishes in the sink from Shige’s late night dinner yesterday. Shige wants to question the logic behind agency taking random civilians with them while investigating but changes his mind, seeing the thin line of Masuda’s lips and the odd glance he gives him after checking his sink. He opts for nodding and hurrying off to get ready.
“You don’t believe me,” Shige says as he is once again seated in the passenger seat, this time next to Masuda. He just told the detective what had happened yesterday.
“Well, that would be one creepy fan.” Masuda cuts the windings a bit too close for Shige’s liking, “but I think there is more to a human soul that meets the eye and people should not meddle,” Masuda continues darkly. Shige cannot help to wonder if he speaks from experience and if one can really see a human soul, if they have colors just like in books, black if a person is inhuman and cruel, white and shining when someone is innocent. If there exists an innocent soul these days. He never asks, especially not after he sees how Masuda grabs a guy they have been waiting for from behind, drags him into his own small shop and comes back an hour later, unfazed and smiling despite his jacket being torn a bit, coincidently showing off the gun in the scabbard that Shige has not noticed before.
“Well, you have rich and strange fans, Kato Shigeaki,” is all he says and turns the car to drop Shige home.
“Why did he take me along?” Shige asks Koyama over a cup of coffee later that day. “Not that I’m protesting or anything.”
“I’d rather you not go next time. These are dangerous people, Shige.” Koyama says, observing Shige like a hawk.
“Should I just sit back and let them forget about me then?” Shige asks coldly, and Koyama winces.
Shige cannot help it; he knows his voice has only one tone lately. It is disinterested, neutral, distant and cold. Empty. Just like he is.
“Maybe I should take a holiday and hang out with you a little. If Nishikido-sensei thinks you might hurt yourself.”
“Nishikido-sensei only guesses. Koyama, please.” Shige tries, but Koyama only sips on his coffee.
“What’s next?” he asks eventually.
“Now, I wait.” Shige mutters and sees the frustration he knows he should be feeling mirror in Koyama’s eyes. He himself just feels his inside ache after something that is missing from him.
***
Masuda comes by a couple of times in the next week or so. He digs through Shige’s correspondence, his library, asks about places he has been to, examines his room, his bedroom. Shige is having hard time putting together the puzzle of this man. He wears salmon-colored shirts and socks with colorful stripes on them. He has a face of a baby, but when he once takes off his jacket and his shirt, his undershirt reveals muscles Shige associates with people in that line of business. He carries a gun and a smile on his face with equal ease and tends to disappear so fast and quietly that at first Shige searches every inch of his apartment before believing he is gone.
Nishikido-that is another story. Shige thinks he is a cocky doctor. He also thinks Nishikido is in fact a coward, wanting Shige watched, which is why he apparently made Masuda take Shige with him and got in contact with Koyama. He stopped calling him Kato-san after that and adopted the familiar Shige ever since. Shige calls him Nishikido in return.
Nishikido seems to be angry with Shige most of the time, mostly because he cannot bring any reaction out of Shige. Of course not; Shige does not get angry or happy or anxious or excited. No matter what the doctor tries, what he tells him, Shige just stares at him and repeats the same thing over and over again. I miss my soul. That is when Nishikido turns around, shows him his back, and usually stops any treatment for the day. Shige wonders how many of those tests are really necessary, thinks that Nishikido might just be using him as a rare and welcome laboratory rat and might be writing a report, an article to some sterile medical journal on him. Shige figures he should appreciate that he cannot get angry over it.
***
Nishikido is glaring at Yamashita who is for some reason accompanying them both to the airport. It is hard not to notice. Koyama is trotting along, making sure Shige has his insurance and silently watching the other two men, pleading with Shige not to go one last time when he pulls him to the airport bathroom. Shige does not waver. Yamashita thinks he might help, Masuda has been apparently undercover for the past month or so, and Nishikido is coming along for reasons Shige was not given.
Koyama bites his lip as they pass through the passport control, and Yamashita puts his hand on his shoulder, using all of his posture and authority to calm him down. Shige catches Nishikido’s dark eyes on him, and they do not waiver when he challenges them. He feels that longing spreading through his body again as he sees the depth of the eyes boring into him. His body just about feels the soul, strong yet somehow bare in that look, and he twitches when Nishikido finally looks away and tells him to get moving. Shige’s insides twist in protest, loosing that almost warmth that he can feel just from the closeness of someone’s soul lately, and he follows Nishikido, silently praying that Masuda is right, that he is spying on the right person, and that his soul is really lying just across the country. He does not understand why someone would want to keep his soul away from him. Why someone would be so cruel. Why somebody would be interested enough.
Before they land, Nishikido gives him a weird hat and attempts a stupid joke about how even that does not save Shige’s stupid hair. He also tells the taxi driver a wrong address and makes Shige walk almost an hour from where the taxi driver drops them off to their hotel. It is a shabby one, dark corridors with blinking feeble neon lights and a receptionist with sickly white skin. They are sharing a room, and Nishikido just takes an extra blanket from the closet and collapses onto the couch, types a message to someone and dozes off. Shige gets no explanation. His head hurts, and his body is pulled into two different directions, towards Nishikido, the closest soul in his vicinity and somewhere out and to the south, where he knows there is ocean and something, something he wants. His soul, he thinks just as someone knocks on the door.
Nishikido jumps like he was not sleeping at all up till now and stomps to the door, knocks on it and opens only when there are three more knocks from outside. The door reveals Masuda, looking thinner than when Shige saw him last time, as the man slumps down on the couch and sighs.
“I think he wants my soul too,” he whispers, and Nishikido’s eyes widen.
***
Shige is mostly closed inside the hotel room for the next few days. He is not told anything but not to go outside. Nishikido leaves at times to get them food or to meet Massu when they deem it too dangerous to meet in the room. Shige paces the room for nothing better to do or attempts to talk to Nishikido who has his nose in tons of medical reports, if he is not asking Shige how he feels, that is. But Nishikido at least tries to humor Shige when he demands his attention, having nothing to pass the time with. But humoring someone without feelings is hard. Shige thinks of ways to find out what is going on. Why take him along and not tell him anything?
He ends up shutting the door with a bang after Ryo comes back from the meeting with Massu one night and stomping in front of him.
“Did you bring me here just so that I am under your supervision?” Shige shouts because that is what you are supposed to do when you are angry. “And stop playing some secret agent man, you are a doctor! Why are you here to begin with? Why does no one tell me anything? It is my freaking soul that got stolen.”
Nishikido crosses his arms and looks at him with those eyes once again, and Shige shrinks away, trying to push the thought of just somehow taking this man’s soul instead into the back of his mind.
“You suck at playing emotions,” Nishikido tells him. “You say you don’t have any, yet you are throwing tantrums.”
“What do you know?” Shige says flatly. “Nothing.”
“I know you don’t feel. Don’t underestimate me.” Nishikido’s voice is low, almost a whisper.
“And why is it that I do not feel a thing?” Shige asks, searching at least for some answers because nothing makes sense anymore. “Emotions are just chemical reactions, they happen in one’s brain. So why is it that I feel nothing? Nothing but emptiness.” He screams the last thing outside the window in the direction he is pulled to.
Nishikido sighs. “Ever since we learned how to separate a human soul from a human being, how to extract it and plant a new one, that theory was proven lacking. It seems that soul is, so to speak, the essential ingredient in that chemical cocktail that creates emotions. The same human being but with a different soul feels differently.”
Shige hits the frame of the window just because it should bring him relief. It does not. “That sounds more like alchemy than science to me, Nishikido,” he says and turns only to find himself staring into Nishikido’s black eyes. The man is too close to him, in his personal space, eyes on fire, his jaw set.
When he moves, Shige’s instinct is to cover his face because it looks like Nishikido might hit him. He yelps when instead a hand grabs his jeans, unzips them and pushes into his underwear. Nishikido pulls at Shige’s cock harshly.
“So what do you feel now Shige?” he asks, “Disgust?” and drags his fingers up Shige’s cock, “Shock?” and his palm closes around Shige and slides down. “Or are you as turned on as you would normally be only if it was a girl doing this?” Shige bites his lip because he might moan otherwise. “This is your instinct. Nothing but your raw nature, no soul or my hand would not be in your pants anymore. What do you feel?” Nishikido asks again as he pulls away completely.
“Too little finesse for someone who claims to be a doctor,” Shige tells him because he knows it will piss the other off. He does not tell Nishikido that, normally, he would be much more turned on than he is now because, if he had a soul, those dark eyes, that black hair in Nishikido’s face, the dark sinewy man would turn him on much more than any girl out there. Still the point gets across as he is catching his breath, still hard, but not feeling anything but lust, a little like an animal. And the warmth that a touch always brings. And the desire. For Nishikido’s soul.
“I didn’t want to take you along,” Nishikido breathes out eventually. “We could not tell if the man has your soul planted in him or not. So I was necessary, should the extraction take place. But you should not be here. It’s dangerous.” Shige thinks he can trace exhaustion in the other’s voice. “But now it seems you will have to identify your soul before Masuda can steal it.”
Shige slides to the floor, suddenly feeling exhaustion wash over his own body as well.
“I don’t think that is going to be a problem,” he says, rubbing his eyes. Nishikido ends up sitting next to him, though not before getting Shige’s blanket and wrapping it around Shige.
“Do you really think you could feel it? Even if there are many other souls around?”
Shige looks up. “How did you . . . And what do you mean by many?”
“I saw how you look at me. Longing, as you once said.”
“So you believe me now? That I can feel its trace?”
“Massu does,” Nishikido nods. “And, well, I have been spending lots of time with you. You can’t lie to save your life, and your brain has proven pretty resilient, given the situation.”
“Ah, always analyzing,” Shige notes.
“Right back at you. You throw nice tantrums for someone with no passion.”
Shige quirks his lips up.
“Don’t,” Nishikido says quickly, “it just looks creepy like that,” he adds. Shige knows but tries anyway. “Really fake,” Nishikido laughs, and Shige thinks that for once the man earned the right to laugh at him.
“So does this mean I get to play super secret agent as well?”
Nishikido sighs. “Not if I can help it,” he replies, and for the first time Shige wonders why Nishikido cares. He is just a soulless shell after all.
***
Shige is very lucky everything inside him is dull. He would never have enough courage to do this otherwise. He would probably trip over his feet and give them all away a hundred times by now. His teeth would probably made his lip bleed, knowing how he always bites himself in a nervous gesture. Tegoshi Yuya, the man who, accordingly to Masuda, stole his soul, has done him a favor and made him capable of coming into the thief’s house, entering through the main gate under some pretense, sneaking around to the back door leading to a dark underground only to climb up and crawl and tiptoe in an effort to get into the quirky tower that looks positively ugly on a modern, simple house. Shige still has enough to do with himself as his skin prickles, and he feels himself being pulled in thousand of different directions, the ocean he should not hear pounding in his ears and his eyes watering with tears of exertion because it takes all of his will to concentrate on not giving into his urge to practically burst as they slowly make it into another floor when Masuda renders yet another camera inoperative.
Nishikido is pulling him by the sleeve and telling him to hold on, and Masuda is hurrying them because Tegoshi might be back any minute and they are taking too long. He looks frightened in his bizarre butler-like costume with frilly shirt under his suit and eyeliner, the house uniform as he said.
“Tegoshi likes to marvel in all the souls he collected, but he does not actually use them that often. Only about five times have I recognized big enough deviations in his behavior to deduce he pulled one out of his collection. He does not let anyone into the room where he keeps them, but I know he does not label the storages. Instead, he has the souls in weird containers that look like objects he associates with a person from which the soul was stolen. It is scary that he has more than one, and we might never be able to find their owners unless he speaks up. I’m afraid that if we arrest him, he will make sure they are all destroyed when he goes down, which is why you need to collect yours before we take the actions against him.”
They were sitting in the stiff hotel room listening to everything Masuda was quickly throwing at them.
“Why.” Nishikido asked then, looking positively bewildered.
Masuda shivered. “He is such a cheerful young man, yet there is this glint in his eyes. It’s like he does not realize that he is making others miserable when he takes what he wants. And he wants many things. He wants to know how an architect feels when creating a design. He wants to feel the itch of a mangaka’s fingers when drawing a story, the despair of an actor absorbed in his best role, the internal struggle of a writer when he evokes most of the emotions by his work. And he just . . . takes it, has his men steal the soul he wants. Then when he feels like it, he takes on that personality for a day, searching for those emotions he wants to feel and does not know how to feel by himself. When he is satisfied, he returns the soul into his ever-growing collection and transforms into the smart, relatively innocent brat. In a way, it is horrifying-the ease with which he takes on those many faces.”
Masuda swears next to him, and Shige hears a loud bang as the man fires three shots at the lock of the door in front of which they are standing.
“I’m sorry, I can’t pick it. We have only a little time left now. I’m going to notify the others. Search, now,” he hisses as he looks out of the window.
Shige is shaking and gripping Nishikido, the only thing that still connects him to reality while the souls that must be all around him practically attack his senses. They are looking for the bodies from which they were taken unwillingly. He is a body they could latch onto. He himself wants a soul, any soul, just one that would make him whole again because he cannot feel the trace of his own over the cravings of practically the entire room. It is closing on him, the walls falling down on his head, the furniture crawling to him, the books luring him to pick one, and his mind is going blurry on the edges.
He hears a distant voice, sees a face, one minute split in a smile and shocked in the next one, rendered unmoving by the betrayal.
“Massu, I would have never guessed,” there’s sadness in the young man’s eyes, “I liked your soul,” shimmering in Shige’s ears before he sees a flash of rage on Tegoshi’s pretty face, “These are mine; you will never find what you are looking for,” and Masuda is launching, there are steps approaching and burning fingers around his wrist, pleading.
“Kato Shigeaki, concentrate,” Nishikido is whispering into his ear. “Tell me where your soul lies. Where do you want to go most, which part of the room do you feel familiar with?”
Shige is fighting the tears and the burn in his body, looking around, closing his eyes and listening, searching for that longing that has always been there. But Nishikido holding him, his own life so intense in that moment, is overpowering; Shige can once again sense only the desire for his soul.
“Let go,” he sputters, and Nishikido probably does because Shige is falling to his knees then, but behind Shige’s closed eyes, the pulling is more defined this time. He crawls the way his body wants him to. But as he tries to open his eyes, he hears a cry of Shige and feels the hard wooden floor against his cheek as he collapses.
***
“In a way, it is flattering to have him almost love me. But it makes me question my own normalcy when I remind myself he is someone who destroyed so many human beings,” Masuda’s voice says from somewhere far away. There is a silent murmur, more voices, and a thud of the door closing, and Shige opens his eyes, slowly, feeling sore but so alive. Then he is trembling with so many emotions; fear of losing his life, fear of emptiness and no meaning, and joy and powerful surges to live because he feels a slow warmth spreading from inside of him, and tears are rolling down his cheek, and Kei is smiling a brilliant smile from over his head, and Shige’s soul flutters inside of him just to give him one more confirmation that it is there and it is all his.
“Welcome back, Shige.” Kei sniffles a little.
Shige groans, “Can’t you be any sappier?” he asks and attempts a grin. His muscles are a little sore, but it is there, on his face, stretching the corners of his mouth, and Koyama throws himself on him, hugs him tightly and lets go only when Shige grumbles that it hurts.
“Where am I?” he asks when Koyama manages to compose himself.
“Home,” Koyama smiles, and Shige relaxes against the pillow, closes his eyes and lets his soul drag him into another whirlpool of emotions. His own.
***
He is released from the clinic soon after. He meets Nishikido just once when the man comes to check on him and tell him the planting of his soul was successful. He has dark circles under his eyes, and Shige wants to say thank you because he should be grateful. He does not know what happened that night, but Nishikido was the one that technically gave him his soul back. He should probably be thankful for many other things, but as the man does not look him straight into the eyes and Shige’s soul does not remember the past months of his existence, his brain, his memory, is not enough to really create that emotion. He would like to ask why, but Nishikido bows his head slightly and hurriedly excuses himself.
Two weeks later, Shige finds himself sitting in a café with Masuda, watching a very flustered Koyama as he talks with Yamashita on the other side of the big window. Masuda chuckles a little and then returns his attention to Shige.
“So how is your book coming along?” he asks.
“My editor is very pleased.” Shige grins. “She is confident that I was reborn on my little trip.” Massu only nods seriously.
“Almost like it,” he says, and Shige eyes him a little suspiciously. It was supposed to be a joke.
“How did you know which one was my soul?” he asks after all, wanting to know what happened after he had blacked out that night and knowing Masuda will not talk once Koyama is back inside.
“Nishikido-kun found your soul, we took Tegoshi and fled the place,” Massu says simply, and Shige stares.
“How did he?”
“I don’t know. He says it was crystal clear though, once you made it to those bookshelves.”
Shige bites his lip.
“You should just ask him. And thank him properly.”
It sounds like Masuda is actually scolding him.
“He threatened Yamashita to put a stop to our collaboration if the agency didn’t help you. He used up the favor I owed him to make me look after you too. He has done some extensive research in order to help us understand how Tegoshi and his crew of smugglers worked too.”
“Well I did not ask him to,” Shige says stubbornly. Masuda’s cup clanks against the table top a little too loudly.
“What was it? The container, just tell me that,” Shige sighs, then adds, “I promise I will go and talk to Nishikido properly.”
“A fake old Polaroid camera.”
Koyama comes inside in that moment, and Shige excuses himself, going into the bathroom to catch his breath and collect himself. He almost wishes his soul was missing again because the way he is flooded with ache and confusion is not helping Shige at all.
***
They meet in a park by a small pond of water, and Shige watches as Nishikido Ryo walks towards him, short, sharp steps, head held high, aura of determination enveloping anything at least remotely close to him. His hair is a little longer, and the wind is ruffling it into an attractive mess, his skin is more tanned with the summer slowly creeping on the city, and when he looks at Shige, his eyes are so dark and striking that Shige stops breathing for a while. It is as if the longing in him returned for a moment.
“I don’t remember you being this hot,” Shige blurts out the thought swirling in his head and then turns bright red. He also remembers the most embarrassing moment they shared and concludes he was right-soul in place, Nishikido could turn him on with one touch.
Now though, he is smiling at Shige, his mouth suddenly showing off his white teeth, and his laughter rumbles from inside him in deep glittering tones.
“You have a very bad memory, I’m always hot,” he says. “You are odd,” he adds as an afterthought while Shige sputters and Nishikido sits down next to Shige.
“You should think what that says about yourself since you clearly read this odd man’s book enough to remember tiny details,” Shige notes dryly once he gets his brain to function properly again.
Nishikido looks at him sideways, a little shy in that passing moment.
“It was for research. I wanted to know why it all happened. What was so special about you, about your books, and what was so alluring. What emotions would you normally harbor.” Nishikido falls silent then.
“That is a very elaborate excuse?” Shige snorts. Nishikido elbows his side.
“I’m glad. It saved my soul from destruction. All the other souls disappeared.” Shige eventually admits.
Nishikido nods. They sit in silence for a while.
“It was an almost good read though,” Nishikido says at the end.
Shige smiles, his insides trembling a little at what he knows is actually a compliment. “Now for that comment, I’m buying you dinner,” he says, happy he has found an excuse and a first sliver of real thankfulness towards this man.
“Okay,” Nishikido says, visibly surprised at the invitation. He stands up and says good bye for the day a little later. At the end, he turns back and stomps back to Shige from almost the other side of the pond, pulling him to his feet and into an awkward embrace, both of his hands clutching to Shige’s back. When he takes a step back, he looks straight into Shige’s eyes.
“I’m happy to finally meet you, Kato Shigeaki,” he says and with a confidence in his stride practically runs away from Shige.
***
That night, Shige dreams about dark eyes boring into him, watching him as he stumbles through a deep forest, lost and helpless. He feels a warm hand pulling his wrist, making him stumble less and focus on the path that is slowly forming. A scenery changes, and Shige sees a man silently observing him from a low wall, cigarette smoke whirling around him, making him look so far away. He feels the warmth of caring when it suddenly turns freezing cold in his dream and then arousal searing through his body as his dream self is pushed against the cold pane of a filthy window, those black eyes looking at him. They are everywhere, pulling and pressing him to fight, and there is determination and gentleness in the stare that follows him everywhere. When the dream takes him back into the forest, there is soft grass under his feet and he is leaving the last trees behind. The man is no longer looking, back turned to him, so familiar, sad, but letting go. Shige wakes up and realizes Nishikido Ryo is in love with him.
“Why?” Shige asks over a cup of coffee a week later. Nishikido keeps on sipping from his huge cup, nothing but his eyes visible behind it.
“Never mind,” Shige says and burns his tongue on his own cup of coffee.
“I can’t answer all of your questions,” Nishikido tells him.
“And I can’t answer yours,” Shige says back, “not yet anyway,” he whispers, turning to look out of the window, watching the sky slowly turn darker as a storm approaches. The tip of Nishikido’s shoe brushes against his under the table. The only indication that Nishikido has heard him.
Shige starts looking for a way to explain that his soul is still craving the one that is brimming with passion behind Nishikido’s eyes.