The Weary Wandering Way
Standard Disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei © Matsuhita Youko, Central Park Media, et al.
Rating: G
Summary: It has to be enough. Tsuzuki Asato after Kyoto.
AN: Just what the world needs, another post-Kyoto fic. Thanks to my beta, the wonderful Nicolas V. Feedback is love. Enjoy.
The Weary Wandering Way
By Dorian Gray (hinikunokotsuzui@yahoo.com)
...Which when the carle beheld, and saw his guest
Would safe depart, for all his subtill sleight,
He chose an halter from among the rest,
And with it hung himselfe, vnbid vnblest.-
But death he could not worke himselfe thereby;
For thousand times he so himselfe had drest...
-- The Faerie Queene, Spenser
tied down, blood in his throat -- no -- something creeping over his skin, light as a spider -- don't -- hands cold as scalpels, drifting down -- I could break all this -- lying still, he could perceive the motion of each blink, the clench-release of his heart, the weight of his own body pushing him into the bed -- Why am I still here? -- by degrees he became aware of a gray dawn falling through his bedroom window. He didn't know when the dream slipped away, becoming nothing but a vague internal ache.
Tsuzuki got up. The bathroom replaced the bedroom around him. He washed yesterday away in the shower; put on clean clothes; waited as the bedroom became the hall, the kitchen. The floor under his feet felt cold. Nothing happened when he flipped on the light-switch -- he must not have changed that burnt-out bulb -- and only a dull half-light entered the room with him. Somewhere in between opening the cupboard door and reaching for a bowl, there was a moment when he was convinced that all this must belong to someone wholly unconnected with him.
He blinked and it was just Tsuzuki Asato, in his kitchen, his hand half way to a bowl.
Tsuzuki ate his breakfast. The street outside was still, the neighbors silent. No one had been in his house for weeks.
How am I still here?
He only had to blink and his kitchen was replaced by EnMaCho. The air around him felt cold and he wished he had his trench-coat, but couldn't remember where he'd left it.
He didn't know why he was here -- no one would have objected if he'd taken another day of medical leave, another week. In his head, he could still hear the chief's voice -- all the time you need...
The words hung around him like smoke.
Tsuzuki was halfway up the steps before he thought about what he was doing, but by then it would've taken too much effort to stop and consider. He was early. The building surrounded him, a collection of vast spaces that echoed his every step through air stale as old dreams. All he had to do was wait as the lobby contracted into dimly lit halls, resolving itself into the summoning department's door. Reaching out, he became aware of the metal knob and forced himself not to pause.
The door shut behind him soundlessly as the office enveloped him, empty, wrapped in stillness. Weak sunlight drifted through the eastern window, illuminating dust motes that flickered in and out of being. The banks of fluorescent lights above him faltered before staying on, a low hum in the silence. The sign-in board confronted him. He erased the note next to Tsuzuki Asato's name; marked himself present; tried to picture in his mind the last time he'd been here. Awareness of change in the room came over him as imperceptibly as sleep. But when he looked around the dilapidated office he couldn't find the difference in any one place.
Tsuzuki meant to go to his desk, but ended up in front of the window watching dawn inch its way into day. Around him, dust particles continued to shimmer in and out. The sun got in his eyes.
He turned away from the window, blinked in surprise: the room was filled with people, noise, motion and the smell of coffee. The maple bars someone had brought were almost gone. It didn't take much thought to rush over and grab one, grab some coffee, grab the cheap excuse for an office chair at his desk and flop down. Hisoka was already filling out paper work and mumbled something like "good morning." Or maybe it was "don't put that there." He moved his donut off the half-completed incident report just in case; tilted his chair back and propped his feet on the edge of his desk; got his fingers sticky with imitation maple topping; drank his coffee; ignored his paperwork; ignored Hisoka's irritated glance.
He was a little surprised: becoming himself again was no more difficult than drowning. It wasn't until Tatsumi came over and yelled at him that he started working.
Tsuzuki didn't feel like writing up the Kyoto case, so he spent over an hour fishing restaurant receipts out of his wallet and desk drawers and the piles of old memos. Sorting them by cost only took a few minutes, so he allocated the rest of the morning to arranging them by quantity and type of dessert. He figured Hisoka must have noticed, but was letting it slide. Just to make sure, he asked, "In Okinawa, at that coffee shop, did I get a muffin or a danish?"
Hisoka gripped his pen hard enough to turn the tips of his fingers red and continued filling in one of the distinctly magenta explication of damage reports; muttered something that sounded a lot like "How the hell should I know?" Somehow it was enough to make Tsuzuki feel like smiling, but the sensation slipped away as soon as he tried to grab onto it.
Across from him, Hisoka cleared his throat. "I think it was a danish." Tsuzuki looked up. Hisoka didn't. He put the receipt in the pastry pile. Hisoka reached for another damage report.
Sunlight from the window had crept halfway to his desk when he found the stained bar tab, folded up like a misshapen origami bird. The moment he touched it he knew -- better if I didn't have them oh god she's dead I -- where it was from.
Tsuzuki decided to take an early lunch. No one said anything.
The cafeteria wasn't open yet. He just closed his eyes and the next thing he knew he was in Nagasaki. He'd thought he might get some champon in Chinatown, but his feet took him along the riverside instead. Rain-swollen, the river covered the lower walkway, but most of the steps that led down from the street hung exposed, looking like a path to nowhere. A few tourists loitered on the Megane bridge; a young man with his arm around a girl's shoulder, holding the camera away from them, smiling, turning his head just enough to whisper something in her ear; the flash went off. The river murmured; the willow leaves reached down to touch their reflections in the water; the sun ducked behind a cloud, casting a gray net over the city. The water continued to flow away from him, out to sea. When he looked up again, the boy and girl were gone. He walked across the bridge and into the first restaurant he could find.
A bell jangled as Tsuzuki pushed the door open: a bit upscale, a bit western, trying to be trendy, the cafe closed around him. He sat on one of the polished metal barstools; looked at the laminated menu propped up between the salt and pepper shakers; stared out the window as he waited for one of the staff to take his order. He didn't focus enough to give the passing people faces. The group at the next table kept laughing. The wine in their glasses jostled, glinting. Something about the way they talked -- bits and pieces of jokes and do you remember when? -- was like a pane of glass made visible by flashes of sunlight. A waitress bustled over. Eventually she asked him what he wanted to drink. He lied and said tea; watched the faceless people flow by on the other side of the window. Tsuzuki ate his lunch; let the sunlight, the sound of laughter and clinking glasses swirl around him. The bell jangled again on his way out.
He turned his back on the river and walked uphill. He didn't know what time it was; he'd lost his watch somewhere in Kyoto, and the old one he'd found in his nightstand was broken. He wore it anyway. The glare of early winter light reduced everything around him to blocks of color until the world resembled a cheaply made print. Soggy, decaying leaves made the streets slick, unpredictable. He didn't know where he was going until his feet were already on the lowest step, the rest of the narrow stair before him like a Jacob's ladder, the white face of the church perched above him, framed by palm trees. The thin spire stood between him and the sun, crowned with a blurring crucifix. Its shadow flowed down the steps towards him like an accusing finger, the image of an inverted cross creeping imperceptibly closer across the stair in front of him. The air around him, the stones under his feet were all cold; the looming structure impassive as fate. It would be so easy to take one more step. The muscles in his legs tensed. Just a thought would carry him up.
can't you move wait I'm coming
It seemed like all he had to do was turn away and he was facing EnMaCho again; another set of steps; the same inhuman scale; his hand was on the summoning department's door before he realized he'd started moving, the metal next to his skin cold. Only Hisoka was in the office even though the sign-in board claimed everyone was present.
Hisoka didn't look up; said, "You're late" in an offhand voice that tried to prove he hadn't been waiting.
Aww, you were worried, was Tsuzuki's line, but he didn't think he could pull off the delivery, so he just sat down at his desk and said, "I know."
He started playing with the scrapes of white paper again, but when he closed his eyes he was standing before a Saint Peter's cross made of shadows, a church of martyrs surrounded by a halo of sunshine. Just one more step...
"Tsuzuki." He blinked at the sound of Hisoka's voice, quiet as if coming from somewhere far away, but insistent. The office settled around him again.
"Yeah?" He waited, staring across the space between them; watched the momentary confusion pass over Hisoka's face as if he only just realized he was suppose to say something.
Finally Hisoka blurted out, "I was thinking of getting a camera." His eyes widened comically and Tsuzuki could see the oh god, did I really say that? flash behind them.
"Why?" seemed like a reasonable question.
But Hisoka scoffed, "Why do you think anyone gets a camera?" He straightened the neat piles of papers on his desk. "Stop slacking off and do some work." Hisoka opened the case file as though it were a curtain he could draw between them.
"...junior partner," Tsuzuki mumbled just loud enough for Hisoka to hear.
Green eyes glared at him over the edge of a manila folder. This time when Tsuzuki felt like smiling, he didn't try to grab on to it, just let it flicker inside him like a match that burned down fast until it singed his fingers and he had to let go.
He'd just begun to reach for his pen when the fire alarm screamed.
Suddenly the office was crowded again. He clamped his hands over his ears and filed out with everyone else; followed the crowd like a leaf in an eddying current, through the halls, the lobby, outside. In a moment of stillness he watched Hisoka slip away from the group milling around the front steps, exchanging gossip and speculation, but somehow the press of people shifted into a barrier whichever way he turned, so he just stayed and began to listen. The most entertaining story went that a new hire on the cleaning crew had taken the mandatory safety videos a little too seriously and replaced the batteries in the smoke detector by Watari's lab. It didn't stop Terazuma from tracking down Tsuzuki, pushing his way through the crowd to ask him what he'd manage to do this time. The argument turned awkward as soon as Tsuzuki said he hadn't set anything on fire, and Terazuma let Wakaba lead him away without exchanging even the most perfunctory insults. Tsuzuki wished it felt more like a victory. He moved through the ring of on-lookers; decided to find out where Hisoka had hidden himself; drifted away from EnMaCho and into the cherry grove until the crowd vanished behind him in a swirl of pink blossoms.
Tsuzuki wandered without direction -- the trees were eerily similar, evenly spaced, easy to get lost in like a maze with no walls. A path formed where his steps disturbed the pristine top layer of petals to reveal the brown accumulation below, only to be obscured again by the continual fall of blossoms. He'd just made up his mind to turn back when he saw Hisoka sitting with his back against a dark trunk, a book resting on his draw-up knees. Tsuzuki paused. Hisoka's eyes met his in a green flash of reflected sunlight.
Tsuzuki walked over, kicking up the drifts of petals like a child walking through snow banks. He came to a stop in front of Hisoka, his black shoes almost touching the white tips of Hisoka's sneakers; saw the faint, puzzled amusement gathering around the corners of Hisoka's mouth in an expression that was and wasn't a smile.
"The cherry blossoms never change, but every year they get less beautiful." He wasn't sure where the thought came from and was glad when Hisoka just let it go by unremarked. He wasn't in the mood for his own ten-yen profundity. But silence wasn't what he wanted either. He nudged Hisoka with his foot. "When you look at these trees, what do you see?"
Hisoka froze for a second, then rolled his eyes. "A cliche from the Kokinshu brought to life."
Tsuzuki smiled, following the black line of the trunk up along the length of one branch until he craned his neck and almost over-balanced to see the cluster of blossoms at its end. "You would." His sister had owned just two books and considered herself fortunate. On the edge of his vision he saw Hisoka cross his arms.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Tsuzuki looked down and shook his head; felt the petals brush against his skin, delicate as cobwebs. "Nothing. I forget sometimes that you were born into an elite family. It's just different." He shrugged.
"Different from what?" If it had been anyone but Hisoka, he would have said the question was tentative.
"Nothing." Tsuzuki didn't feel like talking about the past: dirt roads, and dirt floors, and people he'd let down, who went where he couldn't follow. Leaning back, he let his hands fall loosely to his sides like broken cages. The cherry trees stretched over him like a vaulted ceiling, patches of sky filling up the space between branches with an unreal shade of blue.
He didn't see the slight slump in Hisoka's shoulders; didn't notice how he looked away, down the alley of tree trunks that stood dark and smooth as columns.
"Come on." Hisoka closed his book and stood up. "They're letting people back inside."
Following Hisoka was as simple as abandoning himself to a slow deep-moving current. Behind them the cherry blossoms continued to swirl, erasing their footprints with the calm indifference of the tide.
Tsuzuki closed his eyes as he felt the office wrap around him again; the fluorescent lights were dim and ugly compared to the sunlight that fell onto the carpet in glowing squares. He didn't want to be here, in this stuffy, worn-out office that felt strange and too-familiar, but he sat down at his desk and shuffled through the blank papers as though searching for something; let the moments drift by.
When he glanced up again, Hisoka had his book open on his desk, the current case files standing in a neat stack off to the side. Hisoka's shoulders were hunched up, his arms pulled in near his body, and it looked as though he wanted to draw his legs up, but felt he couldn't with so many people around. Tsuzuki gave up any pretense of work; let his pen drop onto a blank requisition form with a muffled click.
"What're you reading?"
Hisoka didn't look up. "Just an article."
Tsuzuki rolled his eyes, but Hisoka was still lost in his book and didn't notice. "I can see that. What about?"
"Lenses."
Not his idea of a good time, but anything was more entertaining than pretending to do paperwork, so he made an interested sound in the back of his throat.
Hisoka blinked and pulled himself away from the words; gave Tsuzuki a skeptical look, the one that said I know exactly what you're doing, but elaborated. "It talks about this old experiment from the 60's."
"Hey! That's not so old."
Hisoka had a certain way of looking at him that always made Tsuzuki feel like some ancient fossil.
"You want to hear or not?" Tsuzuki nodded; sent his pen spinning in a circle with the flick of his finger. "Some Tokyo U students wore inverting glasses to see what would happen. They found that after a few weeks everything started to look right side-up again."
It made sense, thought Tsuzuki, the mind compensates. "So what happened when they took them off?" He sent the pen spinning in the opposite direction.
Hisoka shrugged. "Everything was upside-down, I guess."
Tsuzuki watched the pen whirl like a clock running madly forwards; let it run down to a slow sweep as he folded the one square receipt into a tiny paper crane. He set it on top of the more-than-two-pastries pile as Hisoka tore the edge off an old policy update and slipped it between the pages as a bookmark.
Tsuzuki watched Hisoka open the top folder and start to fill out another magenta form; watched the nearest block of sunlight inch across the floor and climb halfway up the side of his desk. The flickering dust particles seemed to solidify the light into a column that leaned against the window and rested on the piles of old cases and half-filled out reports that cluttered the edge of his desk. There were only three receipts he couldn't decide how to categorize. He set them in a row along the edge of his scuffed blotter; leaned back and asked the air in front of him, "Is a Boston cream pie really a pie?"
Hisoka's pen didn't even pause. "Are you still wasting time on that?"
The joints of Tsuzuki's chair squeaked in protest as he tilted back further. "Not wasting. Tatsumi's always lecturing me about my lack of organization."
Hisoka snorted. "I'm sure this is what he had in mind."
Tsuzuki waited. "So is it?"
"What?"
"A cake or a pie?"
"I'm not doing your half of the paperwork, you know."
Tsuzuki just smiled.
He knocked off early because he could; pushed all his blank paperwork into a single pile near the center of his desk, accidentally mixing up all the little stacks of white and yellow receipts; rolled the sleeves of his shirt back down and slipped into his suit coat.
As he walked by, without thinking he reached out to put his hand on Hisoka's shoulder -- nothing behind the gesture, really. Tsuzuki remembered himself in time; was already pulling back, trying to stuff his hands inside his pockets because suddenly he didn't know what to do with them, when he heard Hisoka's whisper like a small stone dropped into the silence.
"It's all right."
He froze. He could almost see the ripples expanding towards him, felt them -- the afternoon light in Hisoka's hair; the tense, hunched lines of Hisoka's back unwinding into the curve of his neck, the way Hisoka's head turned just a few degrees toward him; felt how the expansion of his own lungs created shifting points of contact between his skin and the shirt he was wearing, how he was surrounded by flesh, pieced together with muscle and tendons, blood sweeping through him in endless cycles.
I'm still here.
Tsuzuki let his hand fall forward; gave Hisoka's shoulder a soft squeeze before letting go -- a matter of heartbeats from beginning to end. "See you tomorrow." He said it like a promise.
Hisoka's nod was just perceptible -- "Goodnight" -- but somehow it was enough.
Tsuzuki turned and was on the other side of a door at the end of a narrow corridor in the vast, echoing halls of judgment.
Later he would fix himself instant curry and burn the rice. He would think about the small, white sake jars hidden behind cereal boxes in the back of a cupboard. He would water his reviving houseplants; pluck off the brown, shriveled leaves that were already dead and hanging like empty chrysalises while in the background nostalgic love songs played on the radio.
Later he would lie on his bed, still, watching shadows gather in the dark like a waiting army. The distinction between sleep and waking would blur like air and water at the ocean's horizon, and -- no...
But for now, Tsuzuki is standing at the top of the stone stairs of EnMaCho. They flow down into the road that winds before him like a gray thread.
One step, he thinks, and he's home.
Rating: G
Summary: It has to be enough. Tsuzuki Asato after Kyoto.
AN: Just what the world needs, another post-Kyoto fic. Thanks to my beta, the wonderful Nicolas V. Feedback is love. Enjoy.
The Weary Wandering Way
By Dorian Gray (hinikunokotsuzui@yahoo.com)
...Which when the carle beheld, and saw his guest
Would safe depart, for all his subtill sleight,
He chose an halter from among the rest,
And with it hung himselfe, vnbid vnblest.-
But death he could not worke himselfe thereby;
For thousand times he so himselfe had drest...
-- The Faerie Queene, Spenser
tied down, blood in his throat -- no -- something creeping over his skin, light as a spider -- don't -- hands cold as scalpels, drifting down -- I could break all this -- lying still, he could perceive the motion of each blink, the clench-release of his heart, the weight of his own body pushing him into the bed -- Why am I still here? -- by degrees he became aware of a gray dawn falling through his bedroom window. He didn't know when the dream slipped away, becoming nothing but a vague internal ache.
Tsuzuki got up. The bathroom replaced the bedroom around him. He washed yesterday away in the shower; put on clean clothes; waited as the bedroom became the hall, the kitchen. The floor under his feet felt cold. Nothing happened when he flipped on the light-switch -- he must not have changed that burnt-out bulb -- and only a dull half-light entered the room with him. Somewhere in between opening the cupboard door and reaching for a bowl, there was a moment when he was convinced that all this must belong to someone wholly unconnected with him.
He blinked and it was just Tsuzuki Asato, in his kitchen, his hand half way to a bowl.
Tsuzuki ate his breakfast. The street outside was still, the neighbors silent. No one had been in his house for weeks.
How am I still here?
He only had to blink and his kitchen was replaced by EnMaCho. The air around him felt cold and he wished he had his trench-coat, but couldn't remember where he'd left it.
He didn't know why he was here -- no one would have objected if he'd taken another day of medical leave, another week. In his head, he could still hear the chief's voice -- all the time you need...
The words hung around him like smoke.
Tsuzuki was halfway up the steps before he thought about what he was doing, but by then it would've taken too much effort to stop and consider. He was early. The building surrounded him, a collection of vast spaces that echoed his every step through air stale as old dreams. All he had to do was wait as the lobby contracted into dimly lit halls, resolving itself into the summoning department's door. Reaching out, he became aware of the metal knob and forced himself not to pause.
The door shut behind him soundlessly as the office enveloped him, empty, wrapped in stillness. Weak sunlight drifted through the eastern window, illuminating dust motes that flickered in and out of being. The banks of fluorescent lights above him faltered before staying on, a low hum in the silence. The sign-in board confronted him. He erased the note next to Tsuzuki Asato's name; marked himself present; tried to picture in his mind the last time he'd been here. Awareness of change in the room came over him as imperceptibly as sleep. But when he looked around the dilapidated office he couldn't find the difference in any one place.
Tsuzuki meant to go to his desk, but ended up in front of the window watching dawn inch its way into day. Around him, dust particles continued to shimmer in and out. The sun got in his eyes.
He turned away from the window, blinked in surprise: the room was filled with people, noise, motion and the smell of coffee. The maple bars someone had brought were almost gone. It didn't take much thought to rush over and grab one, grab some coffee, grab the cheap excuse for an office chair at his desk and flop down. Hisoka was already filling out paper work and mumbled something like "good morning." Or maybe it was "don't put that there." He moved his donut off the half-completed incident report just in case; tilted his chair back and propped his feet on the edge of his desk; got his fingers sticky with imitation maple topping; drank his coffee; ignored his paperwork; ignored Hisoka's irritated glance.
He was a little surprised: becoming himself again was no more difficult than drowning. It wasn't until Tatsumi came over and yelled at him that he started working.
Tsuzuki didn't feel like writing up the Kyoto case, so he spent over an hour fishing restaurant receipts out of his wallet and desk drawers and the piles of old memos. Sorting them by cost only took a few minutes, so he allocated the rest of the morning to arranging them by quantity and type of dessert. He figured Hisoka must have noticed, but was letting it slide. Just to make sure, he asked, "In Okinawa, at that coffee shop, did I get a muffin or a danish?"
Hisoka gripped his pen hard enough to turn the tips of his fingers red and continued filling in one of the distinctly magenta explication of damage reports; muttered something that sounded a lot like "How the hell should I know?" Somehow it was enough to make Tsuzuki feel like smiling, but the sensation slipped away as soon as he tried to grab onto it.
Across from him, Hisoka cleared his throat. "I think it was a danish." Tsuzuki looked up. Hisoka didn't. He put the receipt in the pastry pile. Hisoka reached for another damage report.
Sunlight from the window had crept halfway to his desk when he found the stained bar tab, folded up like a misshapen origami bird. The moment he touched it he knew -- better if I didn't have them oh god she's dead I -- where it was from.
Tsuzuki decided to take an early lunch. No one said anything.
The cafeteria wasn't open yet. He just closed his eyes and the next thing he knew he was in Nagasaki. He'd thought he might get some champon in Chinatown, but his feet took him along the riverside instead. Rain-swollen, the river covered the lower walkway, but most of the steps that led down from the street hung exposed, looking like a path to nowhere. A few tourists loitered on the Megane bridge; a young man with his arm around a girl's shoulder, holding the camera away from them, smiling, turning his head just enough to whisper something in her ear; the flash went off. The river murmured; the willow leaves reached down to touch their reflections in the water; the sun ducked behind a cloud, casting a gray net over the city. The water continued to flow away from him, out to sea. When he looked up again, the boy and girl were gone. He walked across the bridge and into the first restaurant he could find.
A bell jangled as Tsuzuki pushed the door open: a bit upscale, a bit western, trying to be trendy, the cafe closed around him. He sat on one of the polished metal barstools; looked at the laminated menu propped up between the salt and pepper shakers; stared out the window as he waited for one of the staff to take his order. He didn't focus enough to give the passing people faces. The group at the next table kept laughing. The wine in their glasses jostled, glinting. Something about the way they talked -- bits and pieces of jokes and do you remember when? -- was like a pane of glass made visible by flashes of sunlight. A waitress bustled over. Eventually she asked him what he wanted to drink. He lied and said tea; watched the faceless people flow by on the other side of the window. Tsuzuki ate his lunch; let the sunlight, the sound of laughter and clinking glasses swirl around him. The bell jangled again on his way out.
He turned his back on the river and walked uphill. He didn't know what time it was; he'd lost his watch somewhere in Kyoto, and the old one he'd found in his nightstand was broken. He wore it anyway. The glare of early winter light reduced everything around him to blocks of color until the world resembled a cheaply made print. Soggy, decaying leaves made the streets slick, unpredictable. He didn't know where he was going until his feet were already on the lowest step, the rest of the narrow stair before him like a Jacob's ladder, the white face of the church perched above him, framed by palm trees. The thin spire stood between him and the sun, crowned with a blurring crucifix. Its shadow flowed down the steps towards him like an accusing finger, the image of an inverted cross creeping imperceptibly closer across the stair in front of him. The air around him, the stones under his feet were all cold; the looming structure impassive as fate. It would be so easy to take one more step. The muscles in his legs tensed. Just a thought would carry him up.
can't you move wait I'm coming
It seemed like all he had to do was turn away and he was facing EnMaCho again; another set of steps; the same inhuman scale; his hand was on the summoning department's door before he realized he'd started moving, the metal next to his skin cold. Only Hisoka was in the office even though the sign-in board claimed everyone was present.
Hisoka didn't look up; said, "You're late" in an offhand voice that tried to prove he hadn't been waiting.
Aww, you were worried, was Tsuzuki's line, but he didn't think he could pull off the delivery, so he just sat down at his desk and said, "I know."
He started playing with the scrapes of white paper again, but when he closed his eyes he was standing before a Saint Peter's cross made of shadows, a church of martyrs surrounded by a halo of sunshine. Just one more step...
"Tsuzuki." He blinked at the sound of Hisoka's voice, quiet as if coming from somewhere far away, but insistent. The office settled around him again.
"Yeah?" He waited, staring across the space between them; watched the momentary confusion pass over Hisoka's face as if he only just realized he was suppose to say something.
Finally Hisoka blurted out, "I was thinking of getting a camera." His eyes widened comically and Tsuzuki could see the oh god, did I really say that? flash behind them.
"Why?" seemed like a reasonable question.
But Hisoka scoffed, "Why do you think anyone gets a camera?" He straightened the neat piles of papers on his desk. "Stop slacking off and do some work." Hisoka opened the case file as though it were a curtain he could draw between them.
"...junior partner," Tsuzuki mumbled just loud enough for Hisoka to hear.
Green eyes glared at him over the edge of a manila folder. This time when Tsuzuki felt like smiling, he didn't try to grab on to it, just let it flicker inside him like a match that burned down fast until it singed his fingers and he had to let go.
He'd just begun to reach for his pen when the fire alarm screamed.
Suddenly the office was crowded again. He clamped his hands over his ears and filed out with everyone else; followed the crowd like a leaf in an eddying current, through the halls, the lobby, outside. In a moment of stillness he watched Hisoka slip away from the group milling around the front steps, exchanging gossip and speculation, but somehow the press of people shifted into a barrier whichever way he turned, so he just stayed and began to listen. The most entertaining story went that a new hire on the cleaning crew had taken the mandatory safety videos a little too seriously and replaced the batteries in the smoke detector by Watari's lab. It didn't stop Terazuma from tracking down Tsuzuki, pushing his way through the crowd to ask him what he'd manage to do this time. The argument turned awkward as soon as Tsuzuki said he hadn't set anything on fire, and Terazuma let Wakaba lead him away without exchanging even the most perfunctory insults. Tsuzuki wished it felt more like a victory. He moved through the ring of on-lookers; decided to find out where Hisoka had hidden himself; drifted away from EnMaCho and into the cherry grove until the crowd vanished behind him in a swirl of pink blossoms.
Tsuzuki wandered without direction -- the trees were eerily similar, evenly spaced, easy to get lost in like a maze with no walls. A path formed where his steps disturbed the pristine top layer of petals to reveal the brown accumulation below, only to be obscured again by the continual fall of blossoms. He'd just made up his mind to turn back when he saw Hisoka sitting with his back against a dark trunk, a book resting on his draw-up knees. Tsuzuki paused. Hisoka's eyes met his in a green flash of reflected sunlight.
Tsuzuki walked over, kicking up the drifts of petals like a child walking through snow banks. He came to a stop in front of Hisoka, his black shoes almost touching the white tips of Hisoka's sneakers; saw the faint, puzzled amusement gathering around the corners of Hisoka's mouth in an expression that was and wasn't a smile.
"The cherry blossoms never change, but every year they get less beautiful." He wasn't sure where the thought came from and was glad when Hisoka just let it go by unremarked. He wasn't in the mood for his own ten-yen profundity. But silence wasn't what he wanted either. He nudged Hisoka with his foot. "When you look at these trees, what do you see?"
Hisoka froze for a second, then rolled his eyes. "A cliche from the Kokinshu brought to life."
Tsuzuki smiled, following the black line of the trunk up along the length of one branch until he craned his neck and almost over-balanced to see the cluster of blossoms at its end. "You would." His sister had owned just two books and considered herself fortunate. On the edge of his vision he saw Hisoka cross his arms.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Tsuzuki looked down and shook his head; felt the petals brush against his skin, delicate as cobwebs. "Nothing. I forget sometimes that you were born into an elite family. It's just different." He shrugged.
"Different from what?" If it had been anyone but Hisoka, he would have said the question was tentative.
"Nothing." Tsuzuki didn't feel like talking about the past: dirt roads, and dirt floors, and people he'd let down, who went where he couldn't follow. Leaning back, he let his hands fall loosely to his sides like broken cages. The cherry trees stretched over him like a vaulted ceiling, patches of sky filling up the space between branches with an unreal shade of blue.
He didn't see the slight slump in Hisoka's shoulders; didn't notice how he looked away, down the alley of tree trunks that stood dark and smooth as columns.
"Come on." Hisoka closed his book and stood up. "They're letting people back inside."
Following Hisoka was as simple as abandoning himself to a slow deep-moving current. Behind them the cherry blossoms continued to swirl, erasing their footprints with the calm indifference of the tide.
Tsuzuki closed his eyes as he felt the office wrap around him again; the fluorescent lights were dim and ugly compared to the sunlight that fell onto the carpet in glowing squares. He didn't want to be here, in this stuffy, worn-out office that felt strange and too-familiar, but he sat down at his desk and shuffled through the blank papers as though searching for something; let the moments drift by.
When he glanced up again, Hisoka had his book open on his desk, the current case files standing in a neat stack off to the side. Hisoka's shoulders were hunched up, his arms pulled in near his body, and it looked as though he wanted to draw his legs up, but felt he couldn't with so many people around. Tsuzuki gave up any pretense of work; let his pen drop onto a blank requisition form with a muffled click.
"What're you reading?"
Hisoka didn't look up. "Just an article."
Tsuzuki rolled his eyes, but Hisoka was still lost in his book and didn't notice. "I can see that. What about?"
"Lenses."
Not his idea of a good time, but anything was more entertaining than pretending to do paperwork, so he made an interested sound in the back of his throat.
Hisoka blinked and pulled himself away from the words; gave Tsuzuki a skeptical look, the one that said I know exactly what you're doing, but elaborated. "It talks about this old experiment from the 60's."
"Hey! That's not so old."
Hisoka had a certain way of looking at him that always made Tsuzuki feel like some ancient fossil.
"You want to hear or not?" Tsuzuki nodded; sent his pen spinning in a circle with the flick of his finger. "Some Tokyo U students wore inverting glasses to see what would happen. They found that after a few weeks everything started to look right side-up again."
It made sense, thought Tsuzuki, the mind compensates. "So what happened when they took them off?" He sent the pen spinning in the opposite direction.
Hisoka shrugged. "Everything was upside-down, I guess."
Tsuzuki watched the pen whirl like a clock running madly forwards; let it run down to a slow sweep as he folded the one square receipt into a tiny paper crane. He set it on top of the more-than-two-pastries pile as Hisoka tore the edge off an old policy update and slipped it between the pages as a bookmark.
Tsuzuki watched Hisoka open the top folder and start to fill out another magenta form; watched the nearest block of sunlight inch across the floor and climb halfway up the side of his desk. The flickering dust particles seemed to solidify the light into a column that leaned against the window and rested on the piles of old cases and half-filled out reports that cluttered the edge of his desk. There were only three receipts he couldn't decide how to categorize. He set them in a row along the edge of his scuffed blotter; leaned back and asked the air in front of him, "Is a Boston cream pie really a pie?"
Hisoka's pen didn't even pause. "Are you still wasting time on that?"
The joints of Tsuzuki's chair squeaked in protest as he tilted back further. "Not wasting. Tatsumi's always lecturing me about my lack of organization."
Hisoka snorted. "I'm sure this is what he had in mind."
Tsuzuki waited. "So is it?"
"What?"
"A cake or a pie?"
"I'm not doing your half of the paperwork, you know."
Tsuzuki just smiled.
He knocked off early because he could; pushed all his blank paperwork into a single pile near the center of his desk, accidentally mixing up all the little stacks of white and yellow receipts; rolled the sleeves of his shirt back down and slipped into his suit coat.
As he walked by, without thinking he reached out to put his hand on Hisoka's shoulder -- nothing behind the gesture, really. Tsuzuki remembered himself in time; was already pulling back, trying to stuff his hands inside his pockets because suddenly he didn't know what to do with them, when he heard Hisoka's whisper like a small stone dropped into the silence.
"It's all right."
He froze. He could almost see the ripples expanding towards him, felt them -- the afternoon light in Hisoka's hair; the tense, hunched lines of Hisoka's back unwinding into the curve of his neck, the way Hisoka's head turned just a few degrees toward him; felt how the expansion of his own lungs created shifting points of contact between his skin and the shirt he was wearing, how he was surrounded by flesh, pieced together with muscle and tendons, blood sweeping through him in endless cycles.
I'm still here.
Tsuzuki let his hand fall forward; gave Hisoka's shoulder a soft squeeze before letting go -- a matter of heartbeats from beginning to end. "See you tomorrow." He said it like a promise.
Hisoka's nod was just perceptible -- "Goodnight" -- but somehow it was enough.
Tsuzuki turned and was on the other side of a door at the end of a narrow corridor in the vast, echoing halls of judgment.
Later he would fix himself instant curry and burn the rice. He would think about the small, white sake jars hidden behind cereal boxes in the back of a cupboard. He would water his reviving houseplants; pluck off the brown, shriveled leaves that were already dead and hanging like empty chrysalises while in the background nostalgic love songs played on the radio.
Later he would lie on his bed, still, watching shadows gather in the dark like a waiting army. The distinction between sleep and waking would blur like air and water at the ocean's horizon, and -- no...
But for now, Tsuzuki is standing at the top of the stone stairs of EnMaCho. They flow down into the road that winds before him like a gray thread.
One step, he thinks, and he's home.