mission report for amhrancas
Title: After
Groups/Pairings: Ohkura Tadayoshi centric featuring Taguchi Junnosuke, Kato Shigeaki, Maruyama Ryuhei
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Character death - but not truly as it’s set in the afterlife.
Summary: There’s a white light just like in the stories - but it’s nothing celestial or heavenly. It’s the headlamps of the car about to hit him.
Notes: For amhrancas - I hope you like your fic it was inspired by Kanjani8’s Namida no Kotae pv. Thank you to my beta for helping when I needed her most and to the great Captain Planet.
-
After - when he looks back Ohkura only remembers the insignificant details. The heavy summer rain hitting the road, smacking against his face, droplets clinging to his eyelashes faster than he can blink them away, the moonlight barely breaking through the dark blanketing storm clouds in fractured beams, his stomach growling in protested hunger. The last time he ate had been hours previous, an early lunch of steamed bright seasonal vegetables with chicken cooked slowly till it fell off the bone and perfect soft fluffy rice on the side. It was a recipe Ohkura had been given by his father, or maybe it was grandfather. He can’t remember either man but he can remember the food, remember that final taste.
Those are the things he remembers perfectly, but Ohkura can’t recall why he was ever there, so lost in rural nowhere and so far from the city, or how his bike broke down leaving him stranded.
When it happens there’s a chill and a trail of goosebumps down Ohkura’s arm that’s unusual for the high autumn humidity and there’s a white light just like in the stories - but it’s nothing celestial or heavenly. It’s the headlamps of the car about to hit him and that’s all.
-
“Wake up.”
And Ohkura couldn’t even if he wanted to. His whole body feels smothered by a heavy unknown weight holding him down, pressing hard on his chest.
“Wake up Tacchon.”
There’s a light touch to his shoulder, a soft grip pulling at him, dragging him up from the ground, helping him fight against the force holding him down until he can at least sit up, and reluctantly Ohkura opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he is, but he knows already with a clear certainty that he know’s where he’s not, he’s not home, he’s not alive.
“Are you- are you an angel?” Ohkura asks a little incredulously. The word sounds ridiculous to use, but it’s all he can think of as a face swims into his vision, the sun blocked out by his silhouette, leaving the glow of a halo all around him and a sky of perfect pearl-white cumulus clouds backdropped behind the stranger.
“No, I’m Junno,” and the guy laughs and Ohkura doesn’t quite believe him because his smile is sweet and bright enough to belong to an angel. “And I’m just dead too.”
-
It’s takes a while for Ohkura to believe that Junno truly isn’t an angel. He knows the ins and outs of the afterlife suspiciously too well, knows how to travel across the universe or through time, knows how to dream up and create anything Ohkura wants to see or do. Sometimes Junno knows what Ohkura wants before Ohkura even thinks of it.
“Hungry?” Junno guesses as he produces a bento out of a nowhere before Ohkura’s stomach even has a chance to growl, and maybe that’s just a lucky guess because Ohkura’s always hungry (it’s because he died hungry, Ohkura reasons as he helps himself to seconds). But Junno knew too that Ohkura in life always wanted to travel to Italy, and Junno even made them togas to wear when they went to a make believe ancient Rome one day.
“I’ve just been here longer,” is Junno’s excuse when Ohkura questions him again as Junno makes the sun set and rise over and over, up and down again like a yo-yo just for fun and entertainment as the two of them sit along the edge of a mountain cliff. Ohkura lets his legs dangle over the sheer drop of the cliff face into an abyss of nothing and marvels at how unafraid he is of things that used to terrify him.
“But I’m flattered you think I’m so good looking,” Junno adds with a wink because everything has to end with a joke with Junno, and Ohkura laughs loudly when Junno’s concentration slips as he tries to act suave and the sun falls from his control and crashes into the solid false horizon and bursts into a thousand solar flares.
It takes even longer for Ohkura to believe that Junno is real, or was real and once alive too, that he’s not just some figment of the after Ohkura somehow created into his companion. Occasionally they’ll see other souls passing by, but none are ever as solid to Ohkura as Junno. Most are just flickers or light fading in and out like fireflies.
“The lucky ones have no unfinished business,” Junno sighs wistfully as another light flies by them overhead and zooms away into the distance. “Nothing or no one that’s tying them down or that they need to wait for. Ah-” And Junno smiles at him happily until his eyes disappear. “Or maybe they’re the unlucky ones.” And Ohkura just envies Junno’s ability to always look on the bright side.
-
Beside him, Ohkura can hear the rustle of the grass as Junno stretches until his back pops. He knows Junno is watching, but he’s tired and too close to sleep to say anything or acknowledge the other.
“You shouldn’t sleep so much, lingering in there and clinging on. It can be dangerously addictive,” Junno warns, but Ohkura doesn’t listen, just squeezes his eyes shut tighter and tries to block out Junno’s presence. “Go away.”
“No~” Junno sing songs in refusal. “Lets go somewhere. I could show you a dodo. I’d let you eat it too.” And while the taste of a dodo piques Ohkura’s curiosity and the offer is alluring - so is sleep. When he sleeps Ohkura can slip back down to earth. Odd now how life, his old life is nothing but a hazy dream and the after is his reality.
“What do you dream of anyway?” Junno asks, and Ohkura can’t tell if he’s actually curious or only asking to stop Ohkura from falling back asleep. “Are you doing perverted things? Peeping on cute girls undressing and changing?”
“None of that,” Ohkura replies and it’s the truth. While the idea of spying on cute girls in the showers or frightening middle school students during tests of courage sounds amusing or entertaining to a degree, Ohkura doesn’t bother with it. He doesn’t relive lost chances or visit missed loved ones either. The only person on earth Ohkura ever sees in his dreams is the one he’s most drawn to. Kato Shigeaki.
Shige.
The man that killed him.
-
Even before the night Ohkura died, he knew Shige’s name, knew his face. He’d often seen the guy on television, knew him because he was semi-famous for a book he’d written, and that success and popularity then coupled with the added features of good looks and charm had led to Shige quickly becoming a regular fixture on variety shows Ohkura often watched. Ironically, before he murdered him, Ohkura already disliked him for the purely silly reason that he gave lackluster reactions on food shows.
Stories run in gossip magazines of models and beautiful women Shige is supposedly seeing, about wild parties he attends with actors and other celebrities he’s befriended - but they’re just stories, and the truth is a stark contrast to the illusion. In reality Ohkura knows Shige spends every night home alone, occasionally talking to himself or an imaginary cat and staring at a blank computer screen. Ohkura knows because he watches him.
The first time Ohkura falls asleep and slips into Shige’s apartment, it’s by pure uninvited thought. It isn’t something he actively wants to do or even knew he could do. But once Ohkura’s eyes readjust to the cold dull colours of life on Earth he quickly realises where he is, recognizes Shige, remembers him from the night on the road, and the weight on his chest returns and pushes down heavier than it had in months. The panic that he can’t breathe forces him awake and out of Shige’s world and back into the bright technicolor glow of the after. Junno regards him curiously from where he’s sitting a few feet away as if he had been just waiting for Ohkura to come back.
“Everything okay?” Junno tries cautiously.
“Yeah,” is all Ohkura can manage in reply as he gasps for air, the weight gone again momentarily, Junno’s company always a balm to him.
The second time, Ohkura goes back to Shige out of morbid curiosity, or maybe because he misses Earth and this is the only way he can see it again. It takes until the fourth visit for Ohkura to realise there’s a word for what he is now - he’s a ghost.
“Are you writing again at least?” Shige’s editor’s voice crackles through the receiver of the phone switched to loudspeaker.
“I am,” Shige hums in vague reply, occupied by scissors carefully cutting through a local newspaper article about a missing man called Ohkura Tadayoshi, and then he carefully pins the clipping into his notebook while the editor drones on about public expectation and deadlines. Ohkura tries to read over Shige’s shoulder as he writes but can’t make sense of the messy scrawl and cryptic shorthand. The only thing he can decipher is the occasional kanji of his own name.
“Murderer,” Ohkura whispers, and Shige’s brow furrows as his scissors slip and nick at skin.
Ohkura isn't your typical ghost. He doesn’t moan or groan or possess objects and shake chains or flicker light bulbs. He doesn’t do much of anything but watch and occasionally taunt. At night Shige is all sunken eyes dead with sleeplessness, and Ohkura watches him lie restless in bed at night and wonders how much of Shige’s insomnia could be due to his own presence. Or maybe this is just how killers sleep (or don’t) at night.
-
“Monster,” Ohkura whispers, and Shige practically trips over his own feet walking down the street and Ohkura takes small glee in it despite the circumstances until he realises he wasn’t the cause of Shige’s stumble. Or in a way he was - it’s his face, after all, plastered across a missing poster taped to a lamppost smiling back at them.
Ohkura watches as Shige, transfixed, reaches out a hand and brushes along the lightly faded copy paper and smoothes out the poster’s crinkles tracing the curve of Ohkura’s face in the photograph. Ohkura shivers unconsciously as if he can feel it.
“Do you know him?” a voice behind them asks, and Shige’s startles, his hand snapping away. Ohkura equally freezes as his heart skips over itself as he recognizes the voice.
“Maru!” Ohkura exclaims and “I-I don’t know,” Shige stutters out as they talk over one another, and then Ohkura tchs judgmentally, thinking that at least as a murderer Shige’s act could be a bit better.
“He’s my friend Ohkura. He’s been missing for a while now. Maybe you recognize him from somewhere?” Maru tries and Ohkura’s heart aches at the hopelessness as Maru offers Shige a loose copy of the poster.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know him.” Shige replies crisply but still accepts the print out and tucks it into the pages of his notebook.
“Walk away, Maru. Walk away,” Ohkura pleads - torn between wanting to see his friend but not like this - and relief floods over him as Maru, with an understanding nod and friendly smile, turns to leave. But the respite lasts until Ohkura sees an ember of an idea flare in Shige’s usual dull eyes, and it causes his stomach to twist and turn in knots.
“Hey, wait!” Shige calls, and Maru halts and swivels around again with a happy Hmm?
“Could I help you with anything?” Shige offers as he forces on a plastic smile, and it’s the most terrifying thing Ohkura’s ever seen.
-
Maru was the best friend Ohkura ever knew. Maru was the best friend a lot of people knew because of his habit of picking up and befriending anyone and everyone and those that needed someone most. Ohkura used to tease Maru for being such an idiot at times for trusting strangers and picking up hitchhikers. He was such a fool of goodness Ohkura called him and truthfully Ohkura used to love Maru for it - but now the idiot of a fool is inviting murderers over to his house for dinner.
-
Shige pays for every meal, even buys Maru gifts and surprise presents, and Maru just smiles happily and jokes that he'll have to keep inviting Shige around for sure as he could get used to treatment like this, and Ohkura just groans in agony in the background.
Recently Ohkura spends more days asleep than awake. Obsessively he watches, scared that if he drifts away back into the after for even a moment, that’ll be the second that Shige strikes. At night, instead of his usual pattern of restless sleep, Shige sits at his desk and writes with a fresh fury, and amongst the messy secret scrawls of Shige's notebook, Ohkura starts to see Maru's name appear in the text alongside his own.
“Maru. Get away. He’s planning something,” Ohkura pleads but Maru never hears or notices.
When they meet for coffee and Shige offers to order and buy both their drinks, Ohkura's convinced Shige's going to slip poison into them, and when Shige cooks in Maru's apartment, everything in suddenly a potential murder weapon. Chop chop chop, Shige dices the mushrooms while Maru lounges around unsuspecting in the sitting room, and Ohkura imagines Shige cutting up Maru with the same diligence.
-
Fog rolls through the scene as Ohkura’s frustration rises and he struggles to keep his hold on life, to hold his presence there. “Stop dwelling on it,” Junno cooly warns, and while Ohkura knows he’s here out of friendship, it still feels like a taunt.
“Don’t dwell on being murdered?” Ohkura grits out. “Don’t dwell on him planning to kill again? He’s going murder Maru too.”
“It looks to me like he’s making them pasta.” And Junno laughs blackly at his own joke, and something breaks in Ohkura and he lunges at Shige across the kitchen.
"You can't do anything. You can't reach them. Just come back,” Junno sedately urges as Ohkura swings and strikes at Shige, arms only flying right through him like air.
"How do you know?!" Ohkura yells, and it feels good, losing himself in a dark fog of anger and letting out his frustration on someone that can’t ignore him like Shige always does.
"I just do,” Junno calmly replies.
"But you never try! You’re too happy being dead!" Ohkura accuses.
“I know because I couldn’t save you!” Junno shouts suddenly, loudly through the fog, and it’s oh so startling to see Junno snap that Maru’s apartment and the Earth slips away as Ohkura's concentration and hold on it falters and the warm glow of the after settles in around them again.
“You couldn’t save me?” Ohkura echoes back, confused both by the statement and Junno’s sad eyes. Junno always smiles, always laughs and jokes. Ohkura’s never seen him any other way. But this Junno - this Junno that seems somber and shy - is suddenly a lot more familiar.
The after shifts again and a scene builds around them, a quiet private hospital from years ago with sterile blank walls that Ohkura remembers leaning against for hours as Doctors and Nurses came and went, running tests on his Grandfather. Ohkura remembers it, but it’s not his memory.
“Taguchi-kun?” Ohkura tests as the memory of a young man his own age drifts into the scene.
"You don't remember me. It's okay, no one really remembers me," Junno confesses in a whisper.
“But you look- different?” and Ohkura doesn’t know how to continue. The image of the boy he knew was all lanky limbs and sunken pale features. Sick. Dying. It’s a stark contrast to the Junno he knows now.
“Alive,” Junno supplies with a laugh. “Funny, isn’t it? I look more alive now that I’m dead than I ever did in life.”
Since the first day they met passing one another in the corridor, there had always been an easy familiarity between them as they both found what they needed in the other at the time - an easy, comfortable companionship and a partner in multiplayer video games. It was like they made their own little world in a hospice ward where Ohkura could laugh again, distracted from his grandfather dying slowly in the next room, and Taguchi wasn't treated like a walking corpse by at least one person. Ohkura never asked Taguchi why he was there and Taguchi seemed happy to not talk about it for once.
"You were the only friend I had left. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” This hospital slips away again, and Ohkura hopes Junno will think it’s just the hue of the after colouring his cheeks. Thankfully Junno occupies himself with making shapes in the clouds like he often does out of habit when bored. “I couldn't watch my family. I wanted them to move on, but who would actually want to see everyone they loved forget them - so - so I watched you. I watched you that night too. I saw the car coming, and I tried to save you. I shouted and grabbed at you and tried to control the wind or moon or something to get your attention, and you thought I was nothing more than a cold breeze."
"You- you haunted me?" And it's the only word Ohkura can think of to describe it.
"Yeah." Junno smiles, finally looking away from the clouds, and Ohkura reflexively mirrors the smile as they make eye contact. "Yeah, I haunted you.”
Junno brings a hand up to cup Ohkura's cheek, and the touch is warm compared to the memory of the brush of cold goosebumps that ran down Ohkura’s arm before the car hit. So warm and solid, the first touch he's felt of something truly real and solid since he died.
“Show me how you dance,” Ohkura whispers, remembering sharing his dream of being a European chef with Junno years ago while they picked at a shared tray of disgusting hospital food and in return Taguchi had admitted to his dream of one day training to become a dancer once he was well enough to be discharged. On the day Ohkura arrived to find Junno’s room vacated and deserted, Ohkura tricked himself into believing that’s where Junno had gone.
“So you do remember some things.” Junno smiles, happy and pleased, dropping his hand from Ohkura’s cheek in favour of combing their fingers together, and hand in hand he tugs. “Come on then.”
Whole weeks can pass by if Ohkura lets Junno distract him with the wonders of the after again. It’s like the hospital room, their own little world, and Ohkura’s so close to moving on, even almost forgets Shige some days, but as soon as Ohkura closes his eyes and falls asleep, he’s back in the dark grey world of Tokyo, a lost ghost, the weight still heavy over him..
-
“You finished writing it?” Maru exclaims excitedly as Shige pushes the manuscript across the kitchen table and into Maru’s eager hands. “Will you finally tell me what it’s about now?” Ohkura stands behind Maru, curiosity equally as piqued.
“Just read it,” Shige clippedly replies, fidgeting with the cuffs of his crisp white shirt. Clearly nervous and agitated.
“What did your editor say? I hope this gets him off your back now,” Maru asks as he turns over the blank cover to reveal a neatly typed title page. “That night.” Maru reads the heading aloud.
“He hasn’t read it. It’s not for him. It’s only for you, you and the police," Shige rushes out and then buries his face in his hands, his knuckles white with tension as his nails dig into skin and the next part is muffled. "It's my confession."
"Confessions to what?" Maru laughs but it’s his forced awkward kind, and Ohkura knows Maru enough to know that he picks up on things faster than most would give him credit for.
"It was so stupid. I thought if I was your friend I could somehow help, help make it better, make up for it. So stupid. In the end you were probably the one that helped me and I couldn’t lie to you. Please just read it,” Shige pleads, peelings his hands away revealing to Maru the cracks in the usually perfect mask of his public persona. It’s dark and twisted, the face Ohkura sees secretly every night but in daylight now he sees the tear tracks streaming down Shige’s cheeks.
“Where is he?” Maru asks, knuckles white as he clutches tightly at the manuscript.
“I couldn’t say it, I couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but all I could do was write it.”
Maru turns to the first page and Ohkura reads over his friend’s shoulder the story of how he died.
-
“Hey, you’re here right?” Maru calls out as he stumbles over a log and practically falls into the ditch, the last page of Shige’s manuscript still clutched in his hand and the story of the confession still echoing in both their minds.
“Yeah,” Ohkura replies dumbly despite knowing Maru will never hear him. Ohkura remembers it all a bit better now, remembers how Shige’s car had swerved out of control on the rain slick road, Shige’s tears, and Shige’s manager there too making the cold decision for them out of fear and self preservation.
Cicadas ring out through the still night, it’s summer again, 12 months have passed. Junno watches from the side and Shige's most likely already turned himself in but Ohkura no longer feels the draw to haunt him. How strange it is to be angry for so long for it just so suddenly to be gone.
The ground is sunken and dips unnaturally under the beech tree where's Ohkura's buried. He's not down deep either. Shige's manager had rushed as he dug a makeshift grave while Shige stood immobile to the side, his shirt still drenched in Ohkura’s blood from where he had futilely tried to eb the bleeding. Ohkura had died on impact. It really had been pointless to even try. Shige tries for hours to convince his manager that really they should call the authorities, and his manager orders him to just keep quiet and forget it ever happened.
“I wanted to find you first,” Maru whispers as his shovel breaks the soil, and Ohkura feels it instantly. A weight is lifted off his chest the deeper he digs. Ohkura's chest rises and falls rapidly like he's forgotten how to breathe for a whole year, and the Earth disappears as Ohkura crumples into Junno's embrace, there to catch him and hold him.
"It's okay," Junno whispers and, "It's okay, wait until you see what's next."
Groups/Pairings: Ohkura Tadayoshi centric featuring Taguchi Junnosuke, Kato Shigeaki, Maruyama Ryuhei
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Character death - but not truly as it’s set in the afterlife.
Summary: There’s a white light just like in the stories - but it’s nothing celestial or heavenly. It’s the headlamps of the car about to hit him.
Notes: For amhrancas - I hope you like your fic it was inspired by Kanjani8’s Namida no Kotae pv. Thank you to my beta for helping when I needed her most and to the great Captain Planet.
-
After - when he looks back Ohkura only remembers the insignificant details. The heavy summer rain hitting the road, smacking against his face, droplets clinging to his eyelashes faster than he can blink them away, the moonlight barely breaking through the dark blanketing storm clouds in fractured beams, his stomach growling in protested hunger. The last time he ate had been hours previous, an early lunch of steamed bright seasonal vegetables with chicken cooked slowly till it fell off the bone and perfect soft fluffy rice on the side. It was a recipe Ohkura had been given by his father, or maybe it was grandfather. He can’t remember either man but he can remember the food, remember that final taste.
Those are the things he remembers perfectly, but Ohkura can’t recall why he was ever there, so lost in rural nowhere and so far from the city, or how his bike broke down leaving him stranded.
When it happens there’s a chill and a trail of goosebumps down Ohkura’s arm that’s unusual for the high autumn humidity and there’s a white light just like in the stories - but it’s nothing celestial or heavenly. It’s the headlamps of the car about to hit him and that’s all.
-
“Wake up.”
And Ohkura couldn’t even if he wanted to. His whole body feels smothered by a heavy unknown weight holding him down, pressing hard on his chest.
“Wake up Tacchon.”
There’s a light touch to his shoulder, a soft grip pulling at him, dragging him up from the ground, helping him fight against the force holding him down until he can at least sit up, and reluctantly Ohkura opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he is, but he knows already with a clear certainty that he know’s where he’s not, he’s not home, he’s not alive.
“Are you- are you an angel?” Ohkura asks a little incredulously. The word sounds ridiculous to use, but it’s all he can think of as a face swims into his vision, the sun blocked out by his silhouette, leaving the glow of a halo all around him and a sky of perfect pearl-white cumulus clouds backdropped behind the stranger.
“No, I’m Junno,” and the guy laughs and Ohkura doesn’t quite believe him because his smile is sweet and bright enough to belong to an angel. “And I’m just dead too.”
-
It’s takes a while for Ohkura to believe that Junno truly isn’t an angel. He knows the ins and outs of the afterlife suspiciously too well, knows how to travel across the universe or through time, knows how to dream up and create anything Ohkura wants to see or do. Sometimes Junno knows what Ohkura wants before Ohkura even thinks of it.
“Hungry?” Junno guesses as he produces a bento out of a nowhere before Ohkura’s stomach even has a chance to growl, and maybe that’s just a lucky guess because Ohkura’s always hungry (it’s because he died hungry, Ohkura reasons as he helps himself to seconds). But Junno knew too that Ohkura in life always wanted to travel to Italy, and Junno even made them togas to wear when they went to a make believe ancient Rome one day.
“I’ve just been here longer,” is Junno’s excuse when Ohkura questions him again as Junno makes the sun set and rise over and over, up and down again like a yo-yo just for fun and entertainment as the two of them sit along the edge of a mountain cliff. Ohkura lets his legs dangle over the sheer drop of the cliff face into an abyss of nothing and marvels at how unafraid he is of things that used to terrify him.
“But I’m flattered you think I’m so good looking,” Junno adds with a wink because everything has to end with a joke with Junno, and Ohkura laughs loudly when Junno’s concentration slips as he tries to act suave and the sun falls from his control and crashes into the solid false horizon and bursts into a thousand solar flares.
It takes even longer for Ohkura to believe that Junno is real, or was real and once alive too, that he’s not just some figment of the after Ohkura somehow created into his companion. Occasionally they’ll see other souls passing by, but none are ever as solid to Ohkura as Junno. Most are just flickers or light fading in and out like fireflies.
“The lucky ones have no unfinished business,” Junno sighs wistfully as another light flies by them overhead and zooms away into the distance. “Nothing or no one that’s tying them down or that they need to wait for. Ah-” And Junno smiles at him happily until his eyes disappear. “Or maybe they’re the unlucky ones.” And Ohkura just envies Junno’s ability to always look on the bright side.
-
Beside him, Ohkura can hear the rustle of the grass as Junno stretches until his back pops. He knows Junno is watching, but he’s tired and too close to sleep to say anything or acknowledge the other.
“You shouldn’t sleep so much, lingering in there and clinging on. It can be dangerously addictive,” Junno warns, but Ohkura doesn’t listen, just squeezes his eyes shut tighter and tries to block out Junno’s presence. “Go away.”
“No~” Junno sing songs in refusal. “Lets go somewhere. I could show you a dodo. I’d let you eat it too.” And while the taste of a dodo piques Ohkura’s curiosity and the offer is alluring - so is sleep. When he sleeps Ohkura can slip back down to earth. Odd now how life, his old life is nothing but a hazy dream and the after is his reality.
“What do you dream of anyway?” Junno asks, and Ohkura can’t tell if he’s actually curious or only asking to stop Ohkura from falling back asleep. “Are you doing perverted things? Peeping on cute girls undressing and changing?”
“None of that,” Ohkura replies and it’s the truth. While the idea of spying on cute girls in the showers or frightening middle school students during tests of courage sounds amusing or entertaining to a degree, Ohkura doesn’t bother with it. He doesn’t relive lost chances or visit missed loved ones either. The only person on earth Ohkura ever sees in his dreams is the one he’s most drawn to. Kato Shigeaki.
Shige.
The man that killed him.
-
Even before the night Ohkura died, he knew Shige’s name, knew his face. He’d often seen the guy on television, knew him because he was semi-famous for a book he’d written, and that success and popularity then coupled with the added features of good looks and charm had led to Shige quickly becoming a regular fixture on variety shows Ohkura often watched. Ironically, before he murdered him, Ohkura already disliked him for the purely silly reason that he gave lackluster reactions on food shows.
Stories run in gossip magazines of models and beautiful women Shige is supposedly seeing, about wild parties he attends with actors and other celebrities he’s befriended - but they’re just stories, and the truth is a stark contrast to the illusion. In reality Ohkura knows Shige spends every night home alone, occasionally talking to himself or an imaginary cat and staring at a blank computer screen. Ohkura knows because he watches him.
The first time Ohkura falls asleep and slips into Shige’s apartment, it’s by pure uninvited thought. It isn’t something he actively wants to do or even knew he could do. But once Ohkura’s eyes readjust to the cold dull colours of life on Earth he quickly realises where he is, recognizes Shige, remembers him from the night on the road, and the weight on his chest returns and pushes down heavier than it had in months. The panic that he can’t breathe forces him awake and out of Shige’s world and back into the bright technicolor glow of the after. Junno regards him curiously from where he’s sitting a few feet away as if he had been just waiting for Ohkura to come back.
“Everything okay?” Junno tries cautiously.
“Yeah,” is all Ohkura can manage in reply as he gasps for air, the weight gone again momentarily, Junno’s company always a balm to him.
The second time, Ohkura goes back to Shige out of morbid curiosity, or maybe because he misses Earth and this is the only way he can see it again. It takes until the fourth visit for Ohkura to realise there’s a word for what he is now - he’s a ghost.
“Are you writing again at least?” Shige’s editor’s voice crackles through the receiver of the phone switched to loudspeaker.
“I am,” Shige hums in vague reply, occupied by scissors carefully cutting through a local newspaper article about a missing man called Ohkura Tadayoshi, and then he carefully pins the clipping into his notebook while the editor drones on about public expectation and deadlines. Ohkura tries to read over Shige’s shoulder as he writes but can’t make sense of the messy scrawl and cryptic shorthand. The only thing he can decipher is the occasional kanji of his own name.
“Murderer,” Ohkura whispers, and Shige’s brow furrows as his scissors slip and nick at skin.
Ohkura isn't your typical ghost. He doesn’t moan or groan or possess objects and shake chains or flicker light bulbs. He doesn’t do much of anything but watch and occasionally taunt. At night Shige is all sunken eyes dead with sleeplessness, and Ohkura watches him lie restless in bed at night and wonders how much of Shige’s insomnia could be due to his own presence. Or maybe this is just how killers sleep (or don’t) at night.
-
“Monster,” Ohkura whispers, and Shige practically trips over his own feet walking down the street and Ohkura takes small glee in it despite the circumstances until he realises he wasn’t the cause of Shige’s stumble. Or in a way he was - it’s his face, after all, plastered across a missing poster taped to a lamppost smiling back at them.
Ohkura watches as Shige, transfixed, reaches out a hand and brushes along the lightly faded copy paper and smoothes out the poster’s crinkles tracing the curve of Ohkura’s face in the photograph. Ohkura shivers unconsciously as if he can feel it.
“Do you know him?” a voice behind them asks, and Shige’s startles, his hand snapping away. Ohkura equally freezes as his heart skips over itself as he recognizes the voice.
“Maru!” Ohkura exclaims and “I-I don’t know,” Shige stutters out as they talk over one another, and then Ohkura tchs judgmentally, thinking that at least as a murderer Shige’s act could be a bit better.
“He’s my friend Ohkura. He’s been missing for a while now. Maybe you recognize him from somewhere?” Maru tries and Ohkura’s heart aches at the hopelessness as Maru offers Shige a loose copy of the poster.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know him.” Shige replies crisply but still accepts the print out and tucks it into the pages of his notebook.
“Walk away, Maru. Walk away,” Ohkura pleads - torn between wanting to see his friend but not like this - and relief floods over him as Maru, with an understanding nod and friendly smile, turns to leave. But the respite lasts until Ohkura sees an ember of an idea flare in Shige’s usual dull eyes, and it causes his stomach to twist and turn in knots.
“Hey, wait!” Shige calls, and Maru halts and swivels around again with a happy Hmm?
“Could I help you with anything?” Shige offers as he forces on a plastic smile, and it’s the most terrifying thing Ohkura’s ever seen.
-
Maru was the best friend Ohkura ever knew. Maru was the best friend a lot of people knew because of his habit of picking up and befriending anyone and everyone and those that needed someone most. Ohkura used to tease Maru for being such an idiot at times for trusting strangers and picking up hitchhikers. He was such a fool of goodness Ohkura called him and truthfully Ohkura used to love Maru for it - but now the idiot of a fool is inviting murderers over to his house for dinner.
-
Shige pays for every meal, even buys Maru gifts and surprise presents, and Maru just smiles happily and jokes that he'll have to keep inviting Shige around for sure as he could get used to treatment like this, and Ohkura just groans in agony in the background.
Recently Ohkura spends more days asleep than awake. Obsessively he watches, scared that if he drifts away back into the after for even a moment, that’ll be the second that Shige strikes. At night, instead of his usual pattern of restless sleep, Shige sits at his desk and writes with a fresh fury, and amongst the messy secret scrawls of Shige's notebook, Ohkura starts to see Maru's name appear in the text alongside his own.
“Maru. Get away. He’s planning something,” Ohkura pleads but Maru never hears or notices.
When they meet for coffee and Shige offers to order and buy both their drinks, Ohkura's convinced Shige's going to slip poison into them, and when Shige cooks in Maru's apartment, everything in suddenly a potential murder weapon. Chop chop chop, Shige dices the mushrooms while Maru lounges around unsuspecting in the sitting room, and Ohkura imagines Shige cutting up Maru with the same diligence.
-
Fog rolls through the scene as Ohkura’s frustration rises and he struggles to keep his hold on life, to hold his presence there. “Stop dwelling on it,” Junno cooly warns, and while Ohkura knows he’s here out of friendship, it still feels like a taunt.
“Don’t dwell on being murdered?” Ohkura grits out. “Don’t dwell on him planning to kill again? He’s going murder Maru too.”
“It looks to me like he’s making them pasta.” And Junno laughs blackly at his own joke, and something breaks in Ohkura and he lunges at Shige across the kitchen.
"You can't do anything. You can't reach them. Just come back,” Junno sedately urges as Ohkura swings and strikes at Shige, arms only flying right through him like air.
"How do you know?!" Ohkura yells, and it feels good, losing himself in a dark fog of anger and letting out his frustration on someone that can’t ignore him like Shige always does.
"I just do,” Junno calmly replies.
"But you never try! You’re too happy being dead!" Ohkura accuses.
“I know because I couldn’t save you!” Junno shouts suddenly, loudly through the fog, and it’s oh so startling to see Junno snap that Maru’s apartment and the Earth slips away as Ohkura's concentration and hold on it falters and the warm glow of the after settles in around them again.
“You couldn’t save me?” Ohkura echoes back, confused both by the statement and Junno’s sad eyes. Junno always smiles, always laughs and jokes. Ohkura’s never seen him any other way. But this Junno - this Junno that seems somber and shy - is suddenly a lot more familiar.
The after shifts again and a scene builds around them, a quiet private hospital from years ago with sterile blank walls that Ohkura remembers leaning against for hours as Doctors and Nurses came and went, running tests on his Grandfather. Ohkura remembers it, but it’s not his memory.
“Taguchi-kun?” Ohkura tests as the memory of a young man his own age drifts into the scene.
"You don't remember me. It's okay, no one really remembers me," Junno confesses in a whisper.
“But you look- different?” and Ohkura doesn’t know how to continue. The image of the boy he knew was all lanky limbs and sunken pale features. Sick. Dying. It’s a stark contrast to the Junno he knows now.
“Alive,” Junno supplies with a laugh. “Funny, isn’t it? I look more alive now that I’m dead than I ever did in life.”
Since the first day they met passing one another in the corridor, there had always been an easy familiarity between them as they both found what they needed in the other at the time - an easy, comfortable companionship and a partner in multiplayer video games. It was like they made their own little world in a hospice ward where Ohkura could laugh again, distracted from his grandfather dying slowly in the next room, and Taguchi wasn't treated like a walking corpse by at least one person. Ohkura never asked Taguchi why he was there and Taguchi seemed happy to not talk about it for once.
"You were the only friend I had left. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” This hospital slips away again, and Ohkura hopes Junno will think it’s just the hue of the after colouring his cheeks. Thankfully Junno occupies himself with making shapes in the clouds like he often does out of habit when bored. “I couldn't watch my family. I wanted them to move on, but who would actually want to see everyone they loved forget them - so - so I watched you. I watched you that night too. I saw the car coming, and I tried to save you. I shouted and grabbed at you and tried to control the wind or moon or something to get your attention, and you thought I was nothing more than a cold breeze."
"You- you haunted me?" And it's the only word Ohkura can think of to describe it.
"Yeah." Junno smiles, finally looking away from the clouds, and Ohkura reflexively mirrors the smile as they make eye contact. "Yeah, I haunted you.”
Junno brings a hand up to cup Ohkura's cheek, and the touch is warm compared to the memory of the brush of cold goosebumps that ran down Ohkura’s arm before the car hit. So warm and solid, the first touch he's felt of something truly real and solid since he died.
“Show me how you dance,” Ohkura whispers, remembering sharing his dream of being a European chef with Junno years ago while they picked at a shared tray of disgusting hospital food and in return Taguchi had admitted to his dream of one day training to become a dancer once he was well enough to be discharged. On the day Ohkura arrived to find Junno’s room vacated and deserted, Ohkura tricked himself into believing that’s where Junno had gone.
“So you do remember some things.” Junno smiles, happy and pleased, dropping his hand from Ohkura’s cheek in favour of combing their fingers together, and hand in hand he tugs. “Come on then.”
Whole weeks can pass by if Ohkura lets Junno distract him with the wonders of the after again. It’s like the hospital room, their own little world, and Ohkura’s so close to moving on, even almost forgets Shige some days, but as soon as Ohkura closes his eyes and falls asleep, he’s back in the dark grey world of Tokyo, a lost ghost, the weight still heavy over him..
-
“You finished writing it?” Maru exclaims excitedly as Shige pushes the manuscript across the kitchen table and into Maru’s eager hands. “Will you finally tell me what it’s about now?” Ohkura stands behind Maru, curiosity equally as piqued.
“Just read it,” Shige clippedly replies, fidgeting with the cuffs of his crisp white shirt. Clearly nervous and agitated.
“What did your editor say? I hope this gets him off your back now,” Maru asks as he turns over the blank cover to reveal a neatly typed title page. “That night.” Maru reads the heading aloud.
“He hasn’t read it. It’s not for him. It’s only for you, you and the police," Shige rushes out and then buries his face in his hands, his knuckles white with tension as his nails dig into skin and the next part is muffled. "It's my confession."
"Confessions to what?" Maru laughs but it’s his forced awkward kind, and Ohkura knows Maru enough to know that he picks up on things faster than most would give him credit for.
"It was so stupid. I thought if I was your friend I could somehow help, help make it better, make up for it. So stupid. In the end you were probably the one that helped me and I couldn’t lie to you. Please just read it,” Shige pleads, peelings his hands away revealing to Maru the cracks in the usually perfect mask of his public persona. It’s dark and twisted, the face Ohkura sees secretly every night but in daylight now he sees the tear tracks streaming down Shige’s cheeks.
“Where is he?” Maru asks, knuckles white as he clutches tightly at the manuscript.
“I couldn’t say it, I couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but all I could do was write it.”
Maru turns to the first page and Ohkura reads over his friend’s shoulder the story of how he died.
-
“Hey, you’re here right?” Maru calls out as he stumbles over a log and practically falls into the ditch, the last page of Shige’s manuscript still clutched in his hand and the story of the confession still echoing in both their minds.
“Yeah,” Ohkura replies dumbly despite knowing Maru will never hear him. Ohkura remembers it all a bit better now, remembers how Shige’s car had swerved out of control on the rain slick road, Shige’s tears, and Shige’s manager there too making the cold decision for them out of fear and self preservation.
Cicadas ring out through the still night, it’s summer again, 12 months have passed. Junno watches from the side and Shige's most likely already turned himself in but Ohkura no longer feels the draw to haunt him. How strange it is to be angry for so long for it just so suddenly to be gone.
The ground is sunken and dips unnaturally under the beech tree where's Ohkura's buried. He's not down deep either. Shige's manager had rushed as he dug a makeshift grave while Shige stood immobile to the side, his shirt still drenched in Ohkura’s blood from where he had futilely tried to eb the bleeding. Ohkura had died on impact. It really had been pointless to even try. Shige tries for hours to convince his manager that really they should call the authorities, and his manager orders him to just keep quiet and forget it ever happened.
“I wanted to find you first,” Maru whispers as his shovel breaks the soil, and Ohkura feels it instantly. A weight is lifted off his chest the deeper he digs. Ohkura's chest rises and falls rapidly like he's forgotten how to breathe for a whole year, and the Earth disappears as Ohkura crumples into Junno's embrace, there to catch him and hold him.
"It's okay," Junno whispers and, "It's okay, wait until you see what's next."