The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 9
The next couple of parts are coming along nicely, so up this one goes a day early.
Other parts so far: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
At the end of the week, with autumn drawing to a close, the weather turned bad again - unseasonably so for that time of year. The new forecast promised two acid storms within the space of a few days, but at least this time the first was still a couple of days away when they heard about it, so the drama of informing the local landlords was not repeated.
Apart from a little pointed grouching, Watanuki seemed to have given up on having it explained to him how they knew what was coming. Really, after he’d been at the camp so long, their original reasons for not telling him were wearing a little thin, but it could wait a shade longer. The midst of their preparations for the first storm was not the ideal time to bring up that subject and all the additional questions it would raise.
Not that there was much stress involved in preparations they’d had down to an art long ago, or when they had ample time to make them. The evening and night spent huddled indoors were nothing more than routine either. Trouble didn’t begin until the next morning when they went to remove the covers from the solar panels again to make the most of the late autumn sunshine over the next couple of days. The covers had been showing their age for years, there were small tears around the edges of several of them, but they’d shown no inclination to advance at all in ages. Not until Watanuki and Sakura were removing one from a panel that day, and one innocent tug too many sent the whole sheet tearing end to end in one fluid, unstoppable motion, dividing the whole piece exactly in half.
“And I only just got that last panel working again too,” said Fye, staring at the ruined sheet forlornly.
“How bad is it going to be?” Kurogane asked him.
“I can remove most of the sensitive components before the storm hits,” said Fye, “and it probably wouldn’t hurt to tack what we’ve got left of the cover over the top of it, but no matter what, the water’s still going to get in and corrode some little hard-to-find connection somewhere. If I’ve been very good this year, maybe it’ll be repairable without needing too many new parts I don’t have handy, but tracking down just what needs to be replaced is bound to take me at least a solid week. You know,” he added, playing idly with the dust with his fingers, “assuming none of the other panels give me any other trouble in the meantime.” He gave a dejected sigh.
“The Tower and the Diet Building are bound to have sheets of their own to spare…” said Doumeki thoughtfully.
“But you just try and convince them to trade us even one piece at twice its value two days from an acid storm,” said Fye, finishing the thought for him.
“We don’t have any other options, do we?” said Syaoran.
“Short of a miracle,” said Fye, with maybe the slightest sideways glance at Watanuki, “nothing at all!”
“Then get started on that panel,” Kurogane instructed, his frown even deeper than usual.
Watanuki spent the rest of the day in a mood even more miserable than the gloom that had settled on the rest of the camp.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Doumeki said to him at last. “Or Sakura’s,” he added.
“I know that!” Watanuki protested. “Just… why did it have to rip now of all times? How often do we get two storms this close together?”
“Better now than an hour before the next storm, or in the middle of one,” said Doumeki. “At least this way we’ll have prepared as best we can without it. We’ve managed on one less solar panel in the past.”
“Thank you. All very rational and sensible and everything, but none of that makes this one bit less frustrating.”
“It’s frustrating for everyone,” said Doumeki. “We’ll deal with it.”
After Watanuki had sat there glowering for a few minutes, Doumeki added. “No-one expects you to be able to do anything to fix this.”
“And wouldn’t you believe it,” said Watanuki, not meeting his eyes, “that only makes it all even worse.”
Doumeki more or less put the conversation out of his mind for the rest of the day, but late in the evening, he stepped out of the storeroom to find Watanuki standing nearby with the angry, pointed look on his face that meant he had something on his mind as was waiting for permission to speak. Doumeki raised an eyebrow.
“Suppose I could do something,” said Watanuki.
“Something like?”
“Like find us a new cover sheet for the panel.”
Alarm bells went off in Doumeki’s head immediately. “You can’t. You always made it very clear you don’t know in advance what you’re going to find.”
“Well,” said Watanuki uneasily, “suppose I lied about that.”
“That sounds like a very big thing to lie about,” said Doumeki dangerously.
“Don’t call it a lie then,” Watanuki’s unease was growing, “call it - an oversimplification. You remember how I told you that not all the ghosts who lead me places are reliable?”
“Yeah?” said Doumeki. The run of luck they’d had since Watanuki had joined their camp had been better than anyone had expected.
“Well, there’s more to it than that,” said Watanuki, taking a deep breath. “Some of them I know will be reliable - like the one that lead us to those medical supplies. Some anyone could tell only want to make trouble - I don’t deal with those ones. Most of the time I don’t know for sure one way or the other, but if I think they probably aren’t trustworthy, usually I ignore them.
“Sometimes there are just a few that act like they’re trying to tempt me by telling me exactly what they’re going to lead me too, but those ones are always the kind I’m less sure about. Sometimes they make good on what they promise, but other times they just lead me to a dead end and laugh at me.”
“Or worse,” Doumeki guessed.
“Or worse,” Watanuki confirmed.
“So this is one of those kinds,” said Doumeki, folding his arms.
Watanuki nodded, still looking nervous. “It’s a risk - and you need to know it’s a risk - but it might pay off. We risk losing a panel if we don’t try it. What do you think?”
Doumeki considered. The whole situation made him uncomfortable, but whether this was a risk too big to afford to waste he didn’t know how to judge. “You’re the expert. Do you think it’s worth it?”
“I’m going to feel like I’ve wasted an opportunity if we don’t at least give it a try,” said Watanuki, looking at the ground.
“Can we leave it until first thing tomorrow morning?” Doumeki asked.
Watanuki nodded, though he didn’t look much relieved to have the matter settled.
***
The following morning dawned warm and bright. The sky revealed not the slightest hint that another storm was barely more than twenty four hours away. Although he wasn’t normally prone to superstition, it didn’t do anything to put Doumeki at ease.
The route Watanuki directed them on took them back to the ruined city again, but rather than take the same entrance as on their last visit, they turned to skirt just around the edge of it for a good distance. Presently, they layout of the buildings nearest changed, to bring them to the edge of an old warehouse district. The ground any further in was uneven, there was rubble everywhere from where parts of the buildings had collapsed, so they left the bike behind and went in on foot.
Watanuki had little of his usual confidence on this mission, Doumeki noticed straight away. He glanced around far more than usual; Doumeki caught him swallowing dryly on a couple of occasions, and more than once he stumbled even where the ground had seemed relatively smooth. That made sense if the spirit guiding them was - by his own admission - so untrustworthy, but it put Doumeki all the more on edge as well.
Grey, bricklike buildings loomed up on either side of them in regularly spaced rows, all the more imposing for the monotony of their design. Watanuki lead them along one of the inner boundaries of the district for a short distance, to one of the smaller warehouses. It had probably been a dull, decrepit-looking building even back in the days when it was still in use, but time since had seen part of the roof and one of the walls cave in. They made their way inside through the gap with care.
Rubble from the fallen roof covered most of what this place had stored inside. There was none of the unnatural preservation that marked most of the places the April Fool had been before to be found here. Perhaps that made a sort of sense though, when the material they were searching for was characterised by its durability. Doumeki was just about to draw some attention to this when a flash of red n one of Watanuki’s arms caught his eye.
“What’s that?” he said. When Watanuki turned to look at him questioningly, Doumeki nodded downwards. Watanuki followed his gaze, and stared at the cuts on his arm with a look of surprise that his companion doubted he was faking.
“I must’ve scraped it on something,” Watanuki said, starting to turn away again, but Doumeki caught him by the wrist and forced him around so that they were facing one another properly. There were cuts on both his arms, three horizontal lines on each, evenly spaced and far too far apart for claw marks.
“Those look too regular to be accidental,” he observed.
“Well, I don’t know how they happened, do I?” Watanuki protested. “I didn’t even notice they were there until you pointed them out. Can’t we just find what we’re looking for and get out of here?”
Doumeki took another hard look at the cuts. They didn’t look very deep, and there was no sign they’d been bleeding much (which was odd enough on it’s own). There wasn’t going to be much point in pursing the matter any further, not when Watanuki was so obviously set against discussing it, but the suggestion they get out of there quickly sounded suddenly even more appealing than before.
They found what they were looking for in a sheltered back corner. Sheets of the old-world fabric were folded and stacked in a pile, a heavy weight on the top to keep them from blowing away. The one on the very top showed some signs of wear, but several below it looked to be in usable condition and held out comfortably as Doumeki gave the sides a few experimental tugs to test their strength. There’d be room in the pack for a couple of sheets at least, if they folded them down far enough.
Technically, however, they only needed the one. And some instinct in Doumeki - one he couldn’t put a name to, though it had to have more than a little to do with those marks on Watanuki’s arms - was making him wary of taking any more from this place than they needed.
Doumeki picked one of the better looking sheets, folded it into a bundle and stuffed it into his pack. “We’re done,” he told Watanuki. “Let’s go.”
They mood lightened somewhat on their way back out. It was a relief just to have the mission proven successful and the worst over with. Doumeki thought he could just make out the first suggestion of storm clouds on the horizon through a gap between the buildings when they got back outside again - still far off yet, but another reminder it was high time they were on their way home.
Those cuts on Watanuki’s arms were still bothering him, visible in distracting snatches as he followed the other boy out. The red showed up far too starkly in contrast to the other dull colours of the scene. He spent a lot of the walk back towards where they’d left the bike looking more at Watanuki’s arms than where they were going, so even when his guide froze suddenly and then leapt back towards him, it was still Watanuki he was watching more than anything else beyond.
He didn’t realise what was going on until he heard the gunshot, and saw Watanuki cry out in pain and crumple at his feet.
And suddenly that distracting red was everywhere - all over Watanuki’s slim body, but Doumeki couldn’t do anything to help him, couldn’t even pause to check whether he was still breathing, because there was a man with a gun on a rooftop twenty yards away with a gun pointed at both of them. Reflex response had Doumeki’s gun off his shoulders before even the harsh tinkle of the wounded boy’s glasses shattering on the ground had faded, and in the next heartbeat he’d fired a shot, scanned across the rooftop to spot a second man and fired two more. Both bodies collapsed without another sound. A bullet whizzed past him, missing by a good couple of feet to impact harmlessly into the ground some distance behind him. Doumeki fired again in answer at an adjacent rooftop, and a third man fell almost without a sound.
After that, there was silence. Doumeki forced himself to wait until the count of twenty, scanning everywhere in sight for any sign of any more, before finally he could take it no longer without dropping to Watanuki’s side. He was conscious but barely, eyes defocused in pain, breathing harsh and laboured. The bullet had struck him in the shoulder, but Watanuki was losing blood fast. There was a first aid kit in the bottom of the pack, and Doumeki scrabbled for it, yanking the useless sheet they’d come so far to find out of the way to get to it. If Watanuki was going to have any chance of surviving the long bike trip back to the camp, he needed to get pressure on that wound - and fast.
Nothing would have made him leave his gun behind, but the pack stayed where he’d dropped it when he finally began to drag Watanuki away. On the ground behind them the blood stains hissed and faded, but Doumeki never looked back to see.
Other parts so far: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
At the end of the week, with autumn drawing to a close, the weather turned bad again - unseasonably so for that time of year. The new forecast promised two acid storms within the space of a few days, but at least this time the first was still a couple of days away when they heard about it, so the drama of informing the local landlords was not repeated.
Apart from a little pointed grouching, Watanuki seemed to have given up on having it explained to him how they knew what was coming. Really, after he’d been at the camp so long, their original reasons for not telling him were wearing a little thin, but it could wait a shade longer. The midst of their preparations for the first storm was not the ideal time to bring up that subject and all the additional questions it would raise.
Not that there was much stress involved in preparations they’d had down to an art long ago, or when they had ample time to make them. The evening and night spent huddled indoors were nothing more than routine either. Trouble didn’t begin until the next morning when they went to remove the covers from the solar panels again to make the most of the late autumn sunshine over the next couple of days. The covers had been showing their age for years, there were small tears around the edges of several of them, but they’d shown no inclination to advance at all in ages. Not until Watanuki and Sakura were removing one from a panel that day, and one innocent tug too many sent the whole sheet tearing end to end in one fluid, unstoppable motion, dividing the whole piece exactly in half.
“And I only just got that last panel working again too,” said Fye, staring at the ruined sheet forlornly.
“How bad is it going to be?” Kurogane asked him.
“I can remove most of the sensitive components before the storm hits,” said Fye, “and it probably wouldn’t hurt to tack what we’ve got left of the cover over the top of it, but no matter what, the water’s still going to get in and corrode some little hard-to-find connection somewhere. If I’ve been very good this year, maybe it’ll be repairable without needing too many new parts I don’t have handy, but tracking down just what needs to be replaced is bound to take me at least a solid week. You know,” he added, playing idly with the dust with his fingers, “assuming none of the other panels give me any other trouble in the meantime.” He gave a dejected sigh.
“The Tower and the Diet Building are bound to have sheets of their own to spare…” said Doumeki thoughtfully.
“But you just try and convince them to trade us even one piece at twice its value two days from an acid storm,” said Fye, finishing the thought for him.
“We don’t have any other options, do we?” said Syaoran.
“Short of a miracle,” said Fye, with maybe the slightest sideways glance at Watanuki, “nothing at all!”
“Then get started on that panel,” Kurogane instructed, his frown even deeper than usual.
Watanuki spent the rest of the day in a mood even more miserable than the gloom that had settled on the rest of the camp.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Doumeki said to him at last. “Or Sakura’s,” he added.
“I know that!” Watanuki protested. “Just… why did it have to rip now of all times? How often do we get two storms this close together?”
“Better now than an hour before the next storm, or in the middle of one,” said Doumeki. “At least this way we’ll have prepared as best we can without it. We’ve managed on one less solar panel in the past.”
“Thank you. All very rational and sensible and everything, but none of that makes this one bit less frustrating.”
“It’s frustrating for everyone,” said Doumeki. “We’ll deal with it.”
After Watanuki had sat there glowering for a few minutes, Doumeki added. “No-one expects you to be able to do anything to fix this.”
“And wouldn’t you believe it,” said Watanuki, not meeting his eyes, “that only makes it all even worse.”
Doumeki more or less put the conversation out of his mind for the rest of the day, but late in the evening, he stepped out of the storeroom to find Watanuki standing nearby with the angry, pointed look on his face that meant he had something on his mind as was waiting for permission to speak. Doumeki raised an eyebrow.
“Suppose I could do something,” said Watanuki.
“Something like?”
“Like find us a new cover sheet for the panel.”
Alarm bells went off in Doumeki’s head immediately. “You can’t. You always made it very clear you don’t know in advance what you’re going to find.”
“Well,” said Watanuki uneasily, “suppose I lied about that.”
“That sounds like a very big thing to lie about,” said Doumeki dangerously.
“Don’t call it a lie then,” Watanuki’s unease was growing, “call it - an oversimplification. You remember how I told you that not all the ghosts who lead me places are reliable?”
“Yeah?” said Doumeki. The run of luck they’d had since Watanuki had joined their camp had been better than anyone had expected.
“Well, there’s more to it than that,” said Watanuki, taking a deep breath. “Some of them I know will be reliable - like the one that lead us to those medical supplies. Some anyone could tell only want to make trouble - I don’t deal with those ones. Most of the time I don’t know for sure one way or the other, but if I think they probably aren’t trustworthy, usually I ignore them.
“Sometimes there are just a few that act like they’re trying to tempt me by telling me exactly what they’re going to lead me too, but those ones are always the kind I’m less sure about. Sometimes they make good on what they promise, but other times they just lead me to a dead end and laugh at me.”
“Or worse,” Doumeki guessed.
“Or worse,” Watanuki confirmed.
“So this is one of those kinds,” said Doumeki, folding his arms.
Watanuki nodded, still looking nervous. “It’s a risk - and you need to know it’s a risk - but it might pay off. We risk losing a panel if we don’t try it. What do you think?”
Doumeki considered. The whole situation made him uncomfortable, but whether this was a risk too big to afford to waste he didn’t know how to judge. “You’re the expert. Do you think it’s worth it?”
“I’m going to feel like I’ve wasted an opportunity if we don’t at least give it a try,” said Watanuki, looking at the ground.
“Can we leave it until first thing tomorrow morning?” Doumeki asked.
Watanuki nodded, though he didn’t look much relieved to have the matter settled.
***
The following morning dawned warm and bright. The sky revealed not the slightest hint that another storm was barely more than twenty four hours away. Although he wasn’t normally prone to superstition, it didn’t do anything to put Doumeki at ease.
The route Watanuki directed them on took them back to the ruined city again, but rather than take the same entrance as on their last visit, they turned to skirt just around the edge of it for a good distance. Presently, they layout of the buildings nearest changed, to bring them to the edge of an old warehouse district. The ground any further in was uneven, there was rubble everywhere from where parts of the buildings had collapsed, so they left the bike behind and went in on foot.
Watanuki had little of his usual confidence on this mission, Doumeki noticed straight away. He glanced around far more than usual; Doumeki caught him swallowing dryly on a couple of occasions, and more than once he stumbled even where the ground had seemed relatively smooth. That made sense if the spirit guiding them was - by his own admission - so untrustworthy, but it put Doumeki all the more on edge as well.
Grey, bricklike buildings loomed up on either side of them in regularly spaced rows, all the more imposing for the monotony of their design. Watanuki lead them along one of the inner boundaries of the district for a short distance, to one of the smaller warehouses. It had probably been a dull, decrepit-looking building even back in the days when it was still in use, but time since had seen part of the roof and one of the walls cave in. They made their way inside through the gap with care.
Rubble from the fallen roof covered most of what this place had stored inside. There was none of the unnatural preservation that marked most of the places the April Fool had been before to be found here. Perhaps that made a sort of sense though, when the material they were searching for was characterised by its durability. Doumeki was just about to draw some attention to this when a flash of red n one of Watanuki’s arms caught his eye.
“What’s that?” he said. When Watanuki turned to look at him questioningly, Doumeki nodded downwards. Watanuki followed his gaze, and stared at the cuts on his arm with a look of surprise that his companion doubted he was faking.
“I must’ve scraped it on something,” Watanuki said, starting to turn away again, but Doumeki caught him by the wrist and forced him around so that they were facing one another properly. There were cuts on both his arms, three horizontal lines on each, evenly spaced and far too far apart for claw marks.
“Those look too regular to be accidental,” he observed.
“Well, I don’t know how they happened, do I?” Watanuki protested. “I didn’t even notice they were there until you pointed them out. Can’t we just find what we’re looking for and get out of here?”
Doumeki took another hard look at the cuts. They didn’t look very deep, and there was no sign they’d been bleeding much (which was odd enough on it’s own). There wasn’t going to be much point in pursing the matter any further, not when Watanuki was so obviously set against discussing it, but the suggestion they get out of there quickly sounded suddenly even more appealing than before.
They found what they were looking for in a sheltered back corner. Sheets of the old-world fabric were folded and stacked in a pile, a heavy weight on the top to keep them from blowing away. The one on the very top showed some signs of wear, but several below it looked to be in usable condition and held out comfortably as Doumeki gave the sides a few experimental tugs to test their strength. There’d be room in the pack for a couple of sheets at least, if they folded them down far enough.
Technically, however, they only needed the one. And some instinct in Doumeki - one he couldn’t put a name to, though it had to have more than a little to do with those marks on Watanuki’s arms - was making him wary of taking any more from this place than they needed.
Doumeki picked one of the better looking sheets, folded it into a bundle and stuffed it into his pack. “We’re done,” he told Watanuki. “Let’s go.”
They mood lightened somewhat on their way back out. It was a relief just to have the mission proven successful and the worst over with. Doumeki thought he could just make out the first suggestion of storm clouds on the horizon through a gap between the buildings when they got back outside again - still far off yet, but another reminder it was high time they were on their way home.
Those cuts on Watanuki’s arms were still bothering him, visible in distracting snatches as he followed the other boy out. The red showed up far too starkly in contrast to the other dull colours of the scene. He spent a lot of the walk back towards where they’d left the bike looking more at Watanuki’s arms than where they were going, so even when his guide froze suddenly and then leapt back towards him, it was still Watanuki he was watching more than anything else beyond.
He didn’t realise what was going on until he heard the gunshot, and saw Watanuki cry out in pain and crumple at his feet.
And suddenly that distracting red was everywhere - all over Watanuki’s slim body, but Doumeki couldn’t do anything to help him, couldn’t even pause to check whether he was still breathing, because there was a man with a gun on a rooftop twenty yards away with a gun pointed at both of them. Reflex response had Doumeki’s gun off his shoulders before even the harsh tinkle of the wounded boy’s glasses shattering on the ground had faded, and in the next heartbeat he’d fired a shot, scanned across the rooftop to spot a second man and fired two more. Both bodies collapsed without another sound. A bullet whizzed past him, missing by a good couple of feet to impact harmlessly into the ground some distance behind him. Doumeki fired again in answer at an adjacent rooftop, and a third man fell almost without a sound.
After that, there was silence. Doumeki forced himself to wait until the count of twenty, scanning everywhere in sight for any sign of any more, before finally he could take it no longer without dropping to Watanuki’s side. He was conscious but barely, eyes defocused in pain, breathing harsh and laboured. The bullet had struck him in the shoulder, but Watanuki was losing blood fast. There was a first aid kit in the bottom of the pack, and Doumeki scrabbled for it, yanking the useless sheet they’d come so far to find out of the way to get to it. If Watanuki was going to have any chance of surviving the long bike trip back to the camp, he needed to get pressure on that wound - and fast.
Nothing would have made him leave his gun behind, but the pack stayed where he’d dropped it when he finally began to drag Watanuki away. On the ground behind them the blood stains hissed and faded, but Doumeki never looked back to see.