The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 6
And now I've actually used the title and all, so it's official. Not that I can't still change my mind between here and the finished copy if need be. >.>
Other parts so far:
The ficlets that started it all
Plot notes and background info
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
The tunnel lead out on to what seemed like a low rooftop, although the surface was mostly flat. Taller buildings soared up from the unseen ground below on either side. Ahead, a pale white shape stood out in sharp contrast to the dull grey of their surroundings. It was another rooftop, a little lower down and half buried where larger buildings had begun to collapse on either side. The white roof itself, however, had miraculously survived. It was obvious all of a sudden that this was where they’d been going all along.
Watanuki pointed. “There’s a way down on the other side. There should be some kind of entrance from there.”
Doumeki squinted to where Watanuki was pointing, he thought he could just about make out the place he was talking about. “That our destination?”
“Seems like it,” said Watanuki evasively. Apparently his ghost was being vague again,
Rubble around the base had built up so high that the entrance brought them in through a broken second story window. Doumeki’s feet touched down on a floor covered with a couple of decades of dust. Once his eyes had had a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, Doumeki saw that they’d arrived in a small, square room. There was a bed on one wall - a real one with a proper base and springs, but the room as a whole had an artificial quality to it somehow. Doumeki doubted anyone had ever lived here long.
“Here?” he inquired.
Watanuki shook his head. “There’s nothing in this room that would be useful. We have to go further down.”
The corridor was far darker than the room had been. Doorways lead to other rooms on both sides, but there were no windows to let light in from less than the width of a room away. The end of the corridor brought them to a corner, then another door, and through it, down a flight of stairs. Whatever they were looking for was on the bottom floor.
The ground floor was better lit than Doumeki had expected. Open spaces were larger on this level, and most of the large windows lining the outer wall were clear of the debris that had covered the other side of the building. One final journey down a darkened corridor brought them to where light spilled out of an open doorway. The room beyond -the first of a series of smaller rooms - was lit from another window, one of few in which even the glass had survived intact. Inside, row after row of shelves held an assortment of boxes and jars. They must have found their way to a store room.
“This is it,” said Watanuki, stopping and turning back to face his follower.
Doumeki picked a jar off a nearby shelf and inspected it. Most of the words on the faded label were gibberish to him, but a couple of familiar ones rang some illuminating bells. “These are medical supplies.”
“That’s what this whole building was for,” said Watanuki. “…some kind of medical stuff.”
Definitely a find, assuming any of these old drugs were still usable after all this time, or anyone remembered what they were for. But even if less than a quarter of all this was salvageable, it was still a treasure trove. With their usual diet of old meat, even a handful of vitamin pills was worth a good deal.
But just stuffing things into a bag at random couldn’t be much of a strategy. “There aren’t many things here I recognise,” Doumeki admitted.
“I can point out what’s usable,” said Watanuki.
Doumeki nodded, and shrugged the pack off his shoulders. “Your ghost was some kind of doctor?” he asked conversationally.
“No,” Watanuki replied distantly, “he just had some sort of part-time job here once.” He shook himself slightly. “I don’t ask them how they know this stuff - they just do. Start with these ones here,” he added, pointing to a shelf.
After moving through the shelves and piling a few dozen containers carefully into the pack at Watanuki’s direction, Doumeki had to ask, “Will we be able to get back here a second time?” With the pack almost full they’d barely dented the supplies here.
Watanuki paused a moment, then sighed and said, “He’ll be smug and annoying about it, but he’ll lead us back here again. Just… we can’t always do this, alright? Some of them get all tetchy and they take it out on me.”
“Noted,” said Doumeki, not really listening. Satisfied, he buckled the pack back up for the long trip home.
The hour it took on the bike to get back to the camp gave Doumeki ample time to reflect on the outcome of the day. Watanuki’s talents had gone beyond question. It would take masterful ability to fabricate such a scheme deliberately - more than Doumeki could believe worth the effort to anyone. However, nothing he’d seen had to be supernatural, and it didn’t have to be conscious deceit either. A madman with a few unnaturally developed instincts for finding stable ground could pull of most of what he’d seen Watanuki do today without ever realising how he was doing it. Just because Watanuki honestly believed he was seeing ghosts didn’t mean they had to be real. And even if the ghosts really were real, it didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t crazy.
After all, everyone was a little crazy these days.
***
“He’s for real,” was how he summarised it to Kurogane when they got back.
“Then it must be time we taught him how to avoid tripping the security fence,” said Kurogane, which was as close to throwing a welcoming party for the newcomer as the camp was ever likely to get.
The haul from their trip was delivered to Fye and Sakura, who fell on the task of sorting through it all eagerly. Watanuki made an attempt to help, but even he was a bit unclear about some of the jars he’d instructed Doumeki to take now that the serious question of what they were for had come up. Between them, enough of the containers were identified by the end of the day (painkillers, antibiotics, diet supplements, amongst many other kinds) for the trip to be declared a great success.
It was a great relief to Watanuki to have that first trip over with, although the outcome was no surprise. Even if they did have to go back again the very next day. Kurogane and Fye came too on the other bike that time, the latter making assorted comments about double dates and Kuro finally taking him out somewhere interesting, which Watanuki did his level best not to hear. Doumeki appeared to be doing likewise.
“At least your new keeper’s better looking than any of the last lot,” said the ghost.
“Shut up,” Watanuki hissed, and tried not to notice that Doumeki now seemed to be ignoring him the same way he was ignoring the other two.
***
When they got back from the second trip at last, Doumeki and Fye went to lug their new haul over to that lab building they still wouldn’t let him near. Apparently that wasn’t the only reason he’d been excluded from the final stage of the transport process though, because Kurogane pulled him aside almost as soon as they were back and said he needed a word.
Watanuki had not been left alone for long with anyone but Doumeki since he’d joined their camp, and Kurogane’s long limbed bulk and glare were no less imposing in private. He swallowed nervously and hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. He just couldn’t read anything from any of these people. Thank god Kurogane didn’t have any reason to be angry with him.
“’A couple of times a month’, you said,” Kurogane began, sitting himself down on the edge of a table.
“On average, Watanuki repeated automatically, wondering whether he should find somewhere to sit down himself or whether he’d been left standing deliberately. “But I meant it when I said I never know…”
“You never know when and you never know what for,” Kurogane cut in, demonstrating that his memory or comprehension skills left nothing lacking. “We can’t rely on that,” he said seriously, “but we can use it. You want to stay, you pull your weight around the camp like everyone else does. When you can find us supplies, we’ll take advantage of it, but you won’t be thrown out for failing as long as you work for your keep.”
Part of Watanuki was horribly insulted. It might have had a history of causing him as much strife as good, but he’d never had his unique supernatural gift reduced to a mild annoyance with the occasional boon before. It was also so painfully rational that it was just about impossible to object to.
“Doumeki already asked me what skills I had you could make use of. There isn’t much,” he admitted. “I’ve never been expected - or really allowed - to do much before.”
“You can learn,” said Kurogane, unperturbed. “Your past doesn’t matter to any of us here, it’s what you do from here on. It’s the same rule for everyone.”
“That’s the kind of rule you make when you have more to hide from your own past than everyone else does, isn’t it?” Watanuki had said before he could stop himself, then mentally kicked himself hard for it. You just didn’t say things like that to people like this. What was it about a week or two without getting beaten that had made him this stupid?
But Kurogane practically brushed his comment aside. “If that were true, would you want to know?”
“No,” Watanuki admitted. “But - that isn’t always how even you think, is it? I know you’re all still thinking about - about what happened to that gang you found me with.”
“Will it happen again?” Kurogane had him fixed with a look there could be no escaping from.
Not as long as you don’t beat me up and threaten to get my blood everywhere, was what Watanuki wanted to say, but could he really be sure that was the only possible trigger? “I don’t really know. Nothing like that has ever happened on that kind of scale before, but….”
“Then might be more than part of the past,” said Kurogane. “If it comes up in future, we’ll deal with it when we get there.”
With that, the conversation seemed to be over.
Barely a couple of weeks at this camp, and Watanuki still felt like his head had never stopped spinning since he arrived. There was something intrinsically real and solid about these people in a way that made everything he’d ever experienced seem like part of a dream in comparison, but that only made it all the harder to believe any of it would stay real at all.
“Oi,” said Kurogane, just as he was heading back to the building he and Doumeki shared. As soon as Watanuki looked back, Kurogane looked away again. “If you ever get a message from anyone called Souma, I don’t want to know.” That said, he pulled the door shut and left Watanuki gaping where he stood.
Watanuki decided then that he wasn’t going to ask anything more about those gravestones he’d seen in the least used corner of the camp. Whoever was there had left him alone so far, and now he certainly didn’t want to give them any excuse to do otherwise.
And that, six parts in and somewhere north of 13,000 words in, brings me to the end of what I have mentally labeled as 'Part 1' of the story of a whole. More specifically, based on the way I have the plan broken down by what major plot point goes where, that's part 1 of 4 (or possibly even 5, since part 4 may be trying to cover a bit much material) parts in total. The other parts of the story may or may not be of comparable length, though anyone who's ever seen any amateur writer try to predict just how long her story is going to be at completion before should know just how unreliable a guideline that's likely to be. Still, safe to say I have a *long* way left to go on this.
The good news is my buffer of material written-but-not-yet-posted is still looking reasonably healthy, because I'm through a lot of stuff from the start of Part 2 which I was a little lost in before. Editting it to the point where it's worthy to be posted even as a draft is going to be a whole other task, but at least I'm back up to easier stuff for a little while.
I probably need to start posting more frequently too, or this story is going to take forever to finish. o_o
Other parts so far:
The ficlets that started it all
Plot notes and background info
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
The tunnel lead out on to what seemed like a low rooftop, although the surface was mostly flat. Taller buildings soared up from the unseen ground below on either side. Ahead, a pale white shape stood out in sharp contrast to the dull grey of their surroundings. It was another rooftop, a little lower down and half buried where larger buildings had begun to collapse on either side. The white roof itself, however, had miraculously survived. It was obvious all of a sudden that this was where they’d been going all along.
Watanuki pointed. “There’s a way down on the other side. There should be some kind of entrance from there.”
Doumeki squinted to where Watanuki was pointing, he thought he could just about make out the place he was talking about. “That our destination?”
“Seems like it,” said Watanuki evasively. Apparently his ghost was being vague again,
Rubble around the base had built up so high that the entrance brought them in through a broken second story window. Doumeki’s feet touched down on a floor covered with a couple of decades of dust. Once his eyes had had a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, Doumeki saw that they’d arrived in a small, square room. There was a bed on one wall - a real one with a proper base and springs, but the room as a whole had an artificial quality to it somehow. Doumeki doubted anyone had ever lived here long.
“Here?” he inquired.
Watanuki shook his head. “There’s nothing in this room that would be useful. We have to go further down.”
The corridor was far darker than the room had been. Doorways lead to other rooms on both sides, but there were no windows to let light in from less than the width of a room away. The end of the corridor brought them to a corner, then another door, and through it, down a flight of stairs. Whatever they were looking for was on the bottom floor.
The ground floor was better lit than Doumeki had expected. Open spaces were larger on this level, and most of the large windows lining the outer wall were clear of the debris that had covered the other side of the building. One final journey down a darkened corridor brought them to where light spilled out of an open doorway. The room beyond -the first of a series of smaller rooms - was lit from another window, one of few in which even the glass had survived intact. Inside, row after row of shelves held an assortment of boxes and jars. They must have found their way to a store room.
“This is it,” said Watanuki, stopping and turning back to face his follower.
Doumeki picked a jar off a nearby shelf and inspected it. Most of the words on the faded label were gibberish to him, but a couple of familiar ones rang some illuminating bells. “These are medical supplies.”
“That’s what this whole building was for,” said Watanuki. “…some kind of medical stuff.”
Definitely a find, assuming any of these old drugs were still usable after all this time, or anyone remembered what they were for. But even if less than a quarter of all this was salvageable, it was still a treasure trove. With their usual diet of old meat, even a handful of vitamin pills was worth a good deal.
But just stuffing things into a bag at random couldn’t be much of a strategy. “There aren’t many things here I recognise,” Doumeki admitted.
“I can point out what’s usable,” said Watanuki.
Doumeki nodded, and shrugged the pack off his shoulders. “Your ghost was some kind of doctor?” he asked conversationally.
“No,” Watanuki replied distantly, “he just had some sort of part-time job here once.” He shook himself slightly. “I don’t ask them how they know this stuff - they just do. Start with these ones here,” he added, pointing to a shelf.
After moving through the shelves and piling a few dozen containers carefully into the pack at Watanuki’s direction, Doumeki had to ask, “Will we be able to get back here a second time?” With the pack almost full they’d barely dented the supplies here.
Watanuki paused a moment, then sighed and said, “He’ll be smug and annoying about it, but he’ll lead us back here again. Just… we can’t always do this, alright? Some of them get all tetchy and they take it out on me.”
“Noted,” said Doumeki, not really listening. Satisfied, he buckled the pack back up for the long trip home.
The hour it took on the bike to get back to the camp gave Doumeki ample time to reflect on the outcome of the day. Watanuki’s talents had gone beyond question. It would take masterful ability to fabricate such a scheme deliberately - more than Doumeki could believe worth the effort to anyone. However, nothing he’d seen had to be supernatural, and it didn’t have to be conscious deceit either. A madman with a few unnaturally developed instincts for finding stable ground could pull of most of what he’d seen Watanuki do today without ever realising how he was doing it. Just because Watanuki honestly believed he was seeing ghosts didn’t mean they had to be real. And even if the ghosts really were real, it didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t crazy.
After all, everyone was a little crazy these days.
***
“He’s for real,” was how he summarised it to Kurogane when they got back.
“Then it must be time we taught him how to avoid tripping the security fence,” said Kurogane, which was as close to throwing a welcoming party for the newcomer as the camp was ever likely to get.
The haul from their trip was delivered to Fye and Sakura, who fell on the task of sorting through it all eagerly. Watanuki made an attempt to help, but even he was a bit unclear about some of the jars he’d instructed Doumeki to take now that the serious question of what they were for had come up. Between them, enough of the containers were identified by the end of the day (painkillers, antibiotics, diet supplements, amongst many other kinds) for the trip to be declared a great success.
It was a great relief to Watanuki to have that first trip over with, although the outcome was no surprise. Even if they did have to go back again the very next day. Kurogane and Fye came too on the other bike that time, the latter making assorted comments about double dates and Kuro finally taking him out somewhere interesting, which Watanuki did his level best not to hear. Doumeki appeared to be doing likewise.
“At least your new keeper’s better looking than any of the last lot,” said the ghost.
“Shut up,” Watanuki hissed, and tried not to notice that Doumeki now seemed to be ignoring him the same way he was ignoring the other two.
***
When they got back from the second trip at last, Doumeki and Fye went to lug their new haul over to that lab building they still wouldn’t let him near. Apparently that wasn’t the only reason he’d been excluded from the final stage of the transport process though, because Kurogane pulled him aside almost as soon as they were back and said he needed a word.
Watanuki had not been left alone for long with anyone but Doumeki since he’d joined their camp, and Kurogane’s long limbed bulk and glare were no less imposing in private. He swallowed nervously and hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. He just couldn’t read anything from any of these people. Thank god Kurogane didn’t have any reason to be angry with him.
“’A couple of times a month’, you said,” Kurogane began, sitting himself down on the edge of a table.
“On average, Watanuki repeated automatically, wondering whether he should find somewhere to sit down himself or whether he’d been left standing deliberately. “But I meant it when I said I never know…”
“You never know when and you never know what for,” Kurogane cut in, demonstrating that his memory or comprehension skills left nothing lacking. “We can’t rely on that,” he said seriously, “but we can use it. You want to stay, you pull your weight around the camp like everyone else does. When you can find us supplies, we’ll take advantage of it, but you won’t be thrown out for failing as long as you work for your keep.”
Part of Watanuki was horribly insulted. It might have had a history of causing him as much strife as good, but he’d never had his unique supernatural gift reduced to a mild annoyance with the occasional boon before. It was also so painfully rational that it was just about impossible to object to.
“Doumeki already asked me what skills I had you could make use of. There isn’t much,” he admitted. “I’ve never been expected - or really allowed - to do much before.”
“You can learn,” said Kurogane, unperturbed. “Your past doesn’t matter to any of us here, it’s what you do from here on. It’s the same rule for everyone.”
“That’s the kind of rule you make when you have more to hide from your own past than everyone else does, isn’t it?” Watanuki had said before he could stop himself, then mentally kicked himself hard for it. You just didn’t say things like that to people like this. What was it about a week or two without getting beaten that had made him this stupid?
But Kurogane practically brushed his comment aside. “If that were true, would you want to know?”
“No,” Watanuki admitted. “But - that isn’t always how even you think, is it? I know you’re all still thinking about - about what happened to that gang you found me with.”
“Will it happen again?” Kurogane had him fixed with a look there could be no escaping from.
Not as long as you don’t beat me up and threaten to get my blood everywhere, was what Watanuki wanted to say, but could he really be sure that was the only possible trigger? “I don’t really know. Nothing like that has ever happened on that kind of scale before, but….”
“Then might be more than part of the past,” said Kurogane. “If it comes up in future, we’ll deal with it when we get there.”
With that, the conversation seemed to be over.
Barely a couple of weeks at this camp, and Watanuki still felt like his head had never stopped spinning since he arrived. There was something intrinsically real and solid about these people in a way that made everything he’d ever experienced seem like part of a dream in comparison, but that only made it all the harder to believe any of it would stay real at all.
“Oi,” said Kurogane, just as he was heading back to the building he and Doumeki shared. As soon as Watanuki looked back, Kurogane looked away again. “If you ever get a message from anyone called Souma, I don’t want to know.” That said, he pulled the door shut and left Watanuki gaping where he stood.
Watanuki decided then that he wasn’t going to ask anything more about those gravestones he’d seen in the least used corner of the camp. Whoever was there had left him alone so far, and now he certainly didn’t want to give them any excuse to do otherwise.
And that, six parts in and somewhere north of 13,000 words in, brings me to the end of what I have mentally labeled as 'Part 1' of the story of a whole. More specifically, based on the way I have the plan broken down by what major plot point goes where, that's part 1 of 4 (or possibly even 5, since part 4 may be trying to cover a bit much material) parts in total. The other parts of the story may or may not be of comparable length, though anyone who's ever seen any amateur writer try to predict just how long her story is going to be at completion before should know just how unreliable a guideline that's likely to be. Still, safe to say I have a *long* way left to go on this.
The good news is my buffer of material written-but-not-yet-posted is still looking reasonably healthy, because I'm through a lot of stuff from the start of Part 2 which I was a little lost in before. Editting it to the point where it's worthy to be posted even as a draft is going to be a whole other task, but at least I'm back up to easier stuff for a little while.
I probably need to start posting more frequently too, or this story is going to take forever to finish. o_o