dragonfruit #1: if you play the opening wrong, the game is already lost
Author: Marika Kailaya
Title: Lonesome Folly
'Verse: Nagekawashii; MeYu
Challenge: Dragonfruit: 1. if you play the opening wrong, the game is already lost
Counts for the Summer Challenge?: it damn well better.
Toppings/Extras: N/A
Wordcount: 1873
Rating: PG
A/N: N/A
So here's a fact, a story that Ray told once, sitting at Meki's kitchen table the day the Death Lord tried to steal him, and which now repeats in his head every year in the spring.
When Ray was five years old, his mother took him to the doctor, because he had chicken pox. She never took him to the doctor otherwise, because, well, she probably didn't even notice him. But she had to keep him alive to maintain her status and her image and whatever, so when he came down with a fever of one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit and a gruesome rash, she made an appointment.
It was the thirteenth of May. The doctor said, Why little Shoji, it's your birthday. What a shame it is that you're sick today! At least you weren't sick before the festival earlier this month, huh?
Ray hadn't gone to that festival. Ray never went. And there were seldom flags. His mother liked to make up excuses to avoid taking him places when she didn't absolutely have to.
And he hadn't known it was his birthday. He had never celebrated it. The doctor asked his mother what their plan was since her son was sick. She had laughed and said they would have a small, quiet dinner with just the family that evening.
Of course that hadn't happened. He hadn't gotten his hopes up anyway. She got him home and forgot him again, except to give him medication. He stayed in bed in a constant half dream for days and tried not to claw at himself too badly.
He was nine when he told that story.
It's the twelfth of May today. Tomorrow he'll be fourteen years old. The Death Lord died before Ray had even turned ten. The shadows had no time to linger for the next crisis, and now that crisis is over and cannot linger, either.
He is walking home from school, drained and aching from no sleep and previous abuse on his body. He doesn't sleep these days, because he stays up hearing his fathers discuss what they intend to do. They fill out endless, endless paperwork and call people who are far beyond the law at this point-people who are afraid of Meki and Yuku, but also people who are feared by everyone else.
What strange lives his parents must've led in these human bodies, Ray thinks.
But it's not the first time he's thought that.
There are meetings, some of which Ray has to go to. There are police. There's Meki glowing white with fire in front of the law and smiling, because he is so sure they can work this out, really.
Manipulative trickster fox, barely human now for his sanity wracked as it has been by torture and loss.
Kobayashi Meguru will not lose this, too.
It's one good thing on Ray's side, for once. Because if it happens, if there's really no way out, Meki will destroy it, and no one will remember. He will take all their memories and replace them.
The only certain thing is this, certain to them but never to Ray: they will not lose Ray.
Ray knows the penalties for what they've done.
And he doesn't sleep, too, because when he does he dreams of his mother, and of his father, and of the silent house he lived in before the streets. And what audacity they have, to dare find him after all this time.
He understands they only did this to get him off their conscience. After all, they did let his older brother die.
He's understood that since Meki told him with shaking hands and a white face that his mother was on the phone. He threw up and passed out from the ache in his chest and awoke cradled in Yuku's arms. It was the last time he felt warm.
Liang tries to console him on the way home from school. "I made you a birthday gift in art club yesterday," he says, triumphantly, and digs around in his black bag until he comes up with a tiny figurine.
Liang's into sculpting. Ray missed the club yesterday. He misses a lot of things these days.
Ray takes the figurine and holds it in his hands, staring first down at it and then at Liang. "You sculpted Andy Bell," he says.
Liang nods enthusiastically, making his earrings (entirely against all dress codes and also handmade) bounce. "Definitely." He points to the sculpture's face. "See, he's got glitter. And little angel wings, because remember, that one concert-"
"I remember."
Liang continues to point out amazing, sparkling details on the little statue, and Ray doesn't mean to-he's very grateful-but he stops listening.
His teachers are aware he's about to be kicked out of school. They know what's up. How could they not? His father-his pretend father, Meki-is the most famous novelist in the country.
Shoji.
What a fucking classic name. Ray had forgotten about it until he heard it again that day his mother called. He had tried to forget.
You know, Ray could've died, too, from being ignored like their first son.
"Ray, are you listening?" Liang asks, tilting his head at Ray. His hair falls over his neon green glasses.
"No," Ray says, because he isn't.
Liang isn't offended. Worry lines crease his forehead. He's worried about Ray and Ray knows it. Dead gods of his fathers know Liang spends enough time at his house.
Liang's mother ignores him, too. Liang says she misses China. Ray just says she's an alcoholic and asks if Liang wants him to beat her up.
"Are you all right?" Liang asks, stopping in front of Ray's house.
"No," Ray says again. He looks at Liang. "Do you want to come inside for tea? It's cold today."
Liang considers. But then he shakes his head. "No. I mean I want to, but I think I'm about to be expelled."
Ray stops, and looks at him. This is new. "Why?"
"Because I haven't done any homework in three weeks because I've been, um, hanging out at your house and annoying your parents."
Ray resists the urge to press his face into his hand.
Liang smiles awkwardly. "Sorry!"
"Thanks for the statue," Ray tells him, because he's too tired to yell at Liang for missing so much.
"No problem!" Liang says, grinning, and pats Ray's shoulder before running off.
The kitchen is warm when Ray steps inside and drops his bag next to his shoes, even though he's not really supposed to. He leans against the wall for a moment and closes his eyes.
But he sees his mother behind their lids.
He is so tired.
He hears Meki and Yuku in the other room, probably not having noticed he's home. They are talking, worriedly. The house smells of cigarette smoke from nervous chain-smoking. If Yuku keeps this up he'll need a lung transplant. For fuck's sake.
"We fucked this up from the beginning," Yuku is saying, and Ray can imagine him burying his face in his hands. "Meki, are you aware that you stepped on the kid, told him he smelled bad, and dragged him to your house?"
"It's not like I was sane at the time." Ray hears Meki sigh.
"Yeah, and anyone can see that, and it'll do no good for our case here."
"No shit." Pause. "Put that fucking thing out. I can't fucking breathe."
There is no squeak, no scream, not even a gasp, so Ray realizes Yuku is probably crushing the cigarette in an ashtray instead of on his husband's flesh.
"Thank you," Meki says, and then, "I don't know what-we did fuck this up. We did everything wrong. Right at the start."
Yuku snorts. "We should just be glad nobody knows about the fucking demon lord."
Meki laughs, dismally, bordering on hysteria. "Oh, hell. We are lost. Is there even any point in doing this now?"
There's silence. The shuffling of papers. Then, "Well, do you have anything better to do?" Yuku's voice is cracked.
"Do you have anything left?" Meki responds, prompt and coded.
"Certainly not."
Ray pushes his hair out of his eyes-Yuku hates how messy his hair always is-and walks into the room. They are sitting there in front of the table, hunched over paperwork and stacks of forms and books and pamphlets, sticky notes covering all surfaces.
There are ashtrays, all of them filled, and the phone.
They look up instantly when he enters. Always waiting for him. Always balancing on panic that he might not come home.
It never annoys Ray. Not anymore. He knows why.
"Ah. Ray. Come over here," Meki says, his voice rough and his eyes shadowed by black circles. His bangs are clipped back with pink barrettes Ray imagines belong to Raizu.
Ray goes over to sit beside them, and they clear away some papers. They do this a lot, or they used to, so Ray could do his homework while Yuku helped.
Yuku looks at him cheerfully. Cheerful with wrinkles in his forehead and the same black bags beneath his eyes. Ray glances down at one of the forms. Medical history of child.
Ray's healthier than Yuku.
"Kid," Yuku says, coughing, "your birthday is tomorrow. We've managed to get almost all the ingredients for your meal. And I'm making a fucking cake. It's going to be an awesome cake, I stole the recipe off my mother."
Ray is surprised, underneath the layers of cold numbness. "You're actually doing this?" It seems so trivial.
"Dude," Meki says, raising his eyebrow. "It's your fourteenth birthday. Birthdays get boring after fifteen. This is your last chance to have any fun. Anyway, it'll get that look off your face." He pokes Ray's forehead with a pen. Ray doesn't even bat him away.
"What look?"
"That look," Meki says, but doesn't elaborate.
"And also we just really like cake," Yuku adds.
They will never say, "Kid, we freaking love you, and we are going to hate every birthday you have until university. Therefore we are going to give you lots of shiny stuff every year to maybe make you stay here forever and ever and ever, even though that's never going to happen," while they are thinking clearly, but Ray gets that impression anyway.
"Oh," he says. Then he points at the paperwork in front of them. One sheet says his name. "You wrote Ray. In English, even. It's Shoji. On the real records," he says, quietly. He means, on the records you guys didn't forge when you were saving my life. On the records that would include a death certificate right now if I had stayed.
Meki and Yuku glance at each other.
It's Yuku who answers. Hard and cold and imperious like he owns the world, like he named all the creatures inside it. "Your name," he says, "is Ray," even though there is no fucking hope, and Ray doesn't mean to start crying like that.
And Meki, who did name them, who so quietly owns some part of reality and works now to twist it to his liking, uses his shirt to wipe Ray's eyes and stands to go make tea.
Title: Lonesome Folly
'Verse: Nagekawashii; MeYu
Challenge: Dragonfruit: 1. if you play the opening wrong, the game is already lost
Counts for the Summer Challenge?: it damn well better.
Toppings/Extras: N/A
Wordcount: 1873
Rating: PG
A/N: N/A
So here's a fact, a story that Ray told once, sitting at Meki's kitchen table the day the Death Lord tried to steal him, and which now repeats in his head every year in the spring.
When Ray was five years old, his mother took him to the doctor, because he had chicken pox. She never took him to the doctor otherwise, because, well, she probably didn't even notice him. But she had to keep him alive to maintain her status and her image and whatever, so when he came down with a fever of one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit and a gruesome rash, she made an appointment.
It was the thirteenth of May. The doctor said, Why little Shoji, it's your birthday. What a shame it is that you're sick today! At least you weren't sick before the festival earlier this month, huh?
Ray hadn't gone to that festival. Ray never went. And there were seldom flags. His mother liked to make up excuses to avoid taking him places when she didn't absolutely have to.
And he hadn't known it was his birthday. He had never celebrated it. The doctor asked his mother what their plan was since her son was sick. She had laughed and said they would have a small, quiet dinner with just the family that evening.
Of course that hadn't happened. He hadn't gotten his hopes up anyway. She got him home and forgot him again, except to give him medication. He stayed in bed in a constant half dream for days and tried not to claw at himself too badly.
He was nine when he told that story.
It's the twelfth of May today. Tomorrow he'll be fourteen years old. The Death Lord died before Ray had even turned ten. The shadows had no time to linger for the next crisis, and now that crisis is over and cannot linger, either.
He is walking home from school, drained and aching from no sleep and previous abuse on his body. He doesn't sleep these days, because he stays up hearing his fathers discuss what they intend to do. They fill out endless, endless paperwork and call people who are far beyond the law at this point-people who are afraid of Meki and Yuku, but also people who are feared by everyone else.
What strange lives his parents must've led in these human bodies, Ray thinks.
But it's not the first time he's thought that.
There are meetings, some of which Ray has to go to. There are police. There's Meki glowing white with fire in front of the law and smiling, because he is so sure they can work this out, really.
Manipulative trickster fox, barely human now for his sanity wracked as it has been by torture and loss.
Kobayashi Meguru will not lose this, too.
It's one good thing on Ray's side, for once. Because if it happens, if there's really no way out, Meki will destroy it, and no one will remember. He will take all their memories and replace them.
The only certain thing is this, certain to them but never to Ray: they will not lose Ray.
Ray knows the penalties for what they've done.
And he doesn't sleep, too, because when he does he dreams of his mother, and of his father, and of the silent house he lived in before the streets. And what audacity they have, to dare find him after all this time.
He understands they only did this to get him off their conscience. After all, they did let his older brother die.
He's understood that since Meki told him with shaking hands and a white face that his mother was on the phone. He threw up and passed out from the ache in his chest and awoke cradled in Yuku's arms. It was the last time he felt warm.
Liang tries to console him on the way home from school. "I made you a birthday gift in art club yesterday," he says, triumphantly, and digs around in his black bag until he comes up with a tiny figurine.
Liang's into sculpting. Ray missed the club yesterday. He misses a lot of things these days.
Ray takes the figurine and holds it in his hands, staring first down at it and then at Liang. "You sculpted Andy Bell," he says.
Liang nods enthusiastically, making his earrings (entirely against all dress codes and also handmade) bounce. "Definitely." He points to the sculpture's face. "See, he's got glitter. And little angel wings, because remember, that one concert-"
"I remember."
Liang continues to point out amazing, sparkling details on the little statue, and Ray doesn't mean to-he's very grateful-but he stops listening.
His teachers are aware he's about to be kicked out of school. They know what's up. How could they not? His father-his pretend father, Meki-is the most famous novelist in the country.
Shoji.
What a fucking classic name. Ray had forgotten about it until he heard it again that day his mother called. He had tried to forget.
You know, Ray could've died, too, from being ignored like their first son.
"Ray, are you listening?" Liang asks, tilting his head at Ray. His hair falls over his neon green glasses.
"No," Ray says, because he isn't.
Liang isn't offended. Worry lines crease his forehead. He's worried about Ray and Ray knows it. Dead gods of his fathers know Liang spends enough time at his house.
Liang's mother ignores him, too. Liang says she misses China. Ray just says she's an alcoholic and asks if Liang wants him to beat her up.
"Are you all right?" Liang asks, stopping in front of Ray's house.
"No," Ray says again. He looks at Liang. "Do you want to come inside for tea? It's cold today."
Liang considers. But then he shakes his head. "No. I mean I want to, but I think I'm about to be expelled."
Ray stops, and looks at him. This is new. "Why?"
"Because I haven't done any homework in three weeks because I've been, um, hanging out at your house and annoying your parents."
Ray resists the urge to press his face into his hand.
Liang smiles awkwardly. "Sorry!"
"Thanks for the statue," Ray tells him, because he's too tired to yell at Liang for missing so much.
"No problem!" Liang says, grinning, and pats Ray's shoulder before running off.
The kitchen is warm when Ray steps inside and drops his bag next to his shoes, even though he's not really supposed to. He leans against the wall for a moment and closes his eyes.
But he sees his mother behind their lids.
He is so tired.
He hears Meki and Yuku in the other room, probably not having noticed he's home. They are talking, worriedly. The house smells of cigarette smoke from nervous chain-smoking. If Yuku keeps this up he'll need a lung transplant. For fuck's sake.
"We fucked this up from the beginning," Yuku is saying, and Ray can imagine him burying his face in his hands. "Meki, are you aware that you stepped on the kid, told him he smelled bad, and dragged him to your house?"
"It's not like I was sane at the time." Ray hears Meki sigh.
"Yeah, and anyone can see that, and it'll do no good for our case here."
"No shit." Pause. "Put that fucking thing out. I can't fucking breathe."
There is no squeak, no scream, not even a gasp, so Ray realizes Yuku is probably crushing the cigarette in an ashtray instead of on his husband's flesh.
"Thank you," Meki says, and then, "I don't know what-we did fuck this up. We did everything wrong. Right at the start."
Yuku snorts. "We should just be glad nobody knows about the fucking demon lord."
Meki laughs, dismally, bordering on hysteria. "Oh, hell. We are lost. Is there even any point in doing this now?"
There's silence. The shuffling of papers. Then, "Well, do you have anything better to do?" Yuku's voice is cracked.
"Do you have anything left?" Meki responds, prompt and coded.
"Certainly not."
Ray pushes his hair out of his eyes-Yuku hates how messy his hair always is-and walks into the room. They are sitting there in front of the table, hunched over paperwork and stacks of forms and books and pamphlets, sticky notes covering all surfaces.
There are ashtrays, all of them filled, and the phone.
They look up instantly when he enters. Always waiting for him. Always balancing on panic that he might not come home.
It never annoys Ray. Not anymore. He knows why.
"Ah. Ray. Come over here," Meki says, his voice rough and his eyes shadowed by black circles. His bangs are clipped back with pink barrettes Ray imagines belong to Raizu.
Ray goes over to sit beside them, and they clear away some papers. They do this a lot, or they used to, so Ray could do his homework while Yuku helped.
Yuku looks at him cheerfully. Cheerful with wrinkles in his forehead and the same black bags beneath his eyes. Ray glances down at one of the forms. Medical history of child.
Ray's healthier than Yuku.
"Kid," Yuku says, coughing, "your birthday is tomorrow. We've managed to get almost all the ingredients for your meal. And I'm making a fucking cake. It's going to be an awesome cake, I stole the recipe off my mother."
Ray is surprised, underneath the layers of cold numbness. "You're actually doing this?" It seems so trivial.
"Dude," Meki says, raising his eyebrow. "It's your fourteenth birthday. Birthdays get boring after fifteen. This is your last chance to have any fun. Anyway, it'll get that look off your face." He pokes Ray's forehead with a pen. Ray doesn't even bat him away.
"What look?"
"That look," Meki says, but doesn't elaborate.
"And also we just really like cake," Yuku adds.
They will never say, "Kid, we freaking love you, and we are going to hate every birthday you have until university. Therefore we are going to give you lots of shiny stuff every year to maybe make you stay here forever and ever and ever, even though that's never going to happen," while they are thinking clearly, but Ray gets that impression anyway.
"Oh," he says. Then he points at the paperwork in front of them. One sheet says his name. "You wrote Ray. In English, even. It's Shoji. On the real records," he says, quietly. He means, on the records you guys didn't forge when you were saving my life. On the records that would include a death certificate right now if I had stayed.
Meki and Yuku glance at each other.
It's Yuku who answers. Hard and cold and imperious like he owns the world, like he named all the creatures inside it. "Your name," he says, "is Ray," even though there is no fucking hope, and Ray doesn't mean to start crying like that.
And Meki, who did name them, who so quietly owns some part of reality and works now to twist it to his liking, uses his shirt to wipe Ray's eyes and stands to go make tea.