The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 10
Once again, the next couple of parts are coming along nicely, so up this goes a day inside my usual one-week-to-a-chapter schedule.
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, Part 9
When Watanuki began to come back to himself through the dull haze of pain, the first thing he heard was a voice say, “Chii?”
When his good eye began to focus - as best it could without his glasses and under the influence of whatever painkillers they had him on - the first thing he saw was the blurry shape of a slim, pale figure leaning over him. It was so unfamiliar that at first Watanuki was left completely at a loss to figure out where he was, or even to remember any of the events of the past month or two.
Then he heard a voice say, “Kimihiro is waking up,” and suddenly his field of vision became a whole lot more crowded.
Someone in the room started sniffling - happy or sad he couldn’t tell - then the door banged open and an irritatingly familiar young voice was saying, “He’s awake?” only to be shushed quickly by someone else, followed by some other exchange he couldn’t follow.
“So he is!” said a voice, coming from a shaggy, white, head-shaped thing that could only have been Fye. “You can understand me alright, can’t you? Welcome back!”
“W… who…?” Watanuki managed, glancing back and forth from Fye to the mystery figure.
“Ah, of course,” said Fye. “Watanuki Kimihiro, I’d like you to meet Chi.”
“Chii?” said ‘Chi’ again, gradually starting to resolve into a pretty, young female with pale hair so long Watanuki couldn’t see where it ended. There was something seriously wrong about her ears, but for a moment he couldn’t figure out exactly what.
“Where did…?” he asked vaguely.
“Chi lives in the lab most of the time,” said Fye.
The lab he’d never been allowed to enter, Watanuki remembered, not that that made this make any more sense.
“Forgive us for choosing such an awkward time to make introductions,” Fye went on, “but she doesn’t get to meet new people much, and somehow we never quite got around to it until now.”
“But…” said Watanuki, quite sure he didn’t deserve this so soon after such an ordeal. “…all this time..?” Surely he wasn’t being told he’d just been introduced to a girl who was kept locked in the lab most of her life?
“She’s a computer,” said Doumeki, always the voice of reason, speaking from somewhere just outside his useful field of vision.
“She’s…?” he repeated, barely comprehending.
“You have heard of computers before, Kimihiro?” Fye’s voice again.
“A bit, but…”
“No, not many people would have seen one quite so fine as our Chi out in this country,” said Fye, happily picking up for him. “You can see why we have to be so careful who we let her meet, I’m sure. Anyway, if you hadn’t gathered, Chi’s the one who lets us intercept the weather reports being passed between the Complexes, amongst other things. We’ve even been lucky enough to be able to get hold of some old medical programs for her. She’s done a splendid job of patching you up, under the circumstances.”
Even while his head was spinning with all this information, Watanuki was finally beginning to feel as though there was ground under his feet again (even if it did keep moving around like a minor earthquake was taking place).
“Do you remember what happened?” Fye asked, more seriously.
“I think so,” Watanuki replied. There’d been those men in the city, aiming at them, and then a terrible pain… instinctively, he flexed his left arm, and instantly regretted it.
Through the haze of pain which returned full force, Watanuki could dimly make out Sakura talking, her voice still betrayed some sniffles. “You mustn’t move your arm! Chi says you’ll make a full recovery - you’ll be absolutely fine - but you can’t start moving around yet!”
“They only hit you in the shoulder, luckily enough,” said Fye, “but you’d lost a lot of blood by the time you got back here. We had to give you a transfusion just so you’d make it through. You’ve got Doumeki to thank for that. On top of taking care of your attackers and carrying you back, that is.”
Doumeki. For a moment Watanuki panicked, before he realised Doumeki was in the room and had spoken already, and showed no signs of being any the worse for wear for their ordeal.
“He’s quite alright,” said Fye, apparently reading Watanuki’s mind again. “Hasn’t gone far since he got you back here. Everyone’s fine.”
“We’re all here,” said the young voice, coming from a figure who gradually began to resolve into Syaoran. “Everyone except Kurogane.”
“He’s out on a very important errand,” Sakura added quickly. “But I’m sure he’ll come back to look in on you as soon as he gets back.”
There was a rough sensation in Watanuki’s throat and chest that was distinctly familiar, but which he was sure he hadn’t felt in a long while. He suddenly felt in even more need of something to drink.
“He should have something to eat before he gets too tired again,” said Chi. “Then we should let him get some more rest.”
“I can make the leftovers into some soup,” Sakura volunteered immediately.
“And I, alas, really must be getting back to work,” said Fye. “But I’m sure you’re not going to lack for visitors, like them or not.”
One by one, the others began filing out of the room, until only Doumeki and Chi were left there with him.
Ordinarily, Watanuki wouldn’t have minded the company, but as so often happened with Doumeki, the silence became less comfortable as the minutes ticked past. Even though most of the world was still little more than a blur, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being glared at.
“Don’t you have something else you should be doing?” he complained half-heartedly.
“You jumped into the way,” said Doumeki.
It took Watanuki all of a confusing moment to realise what the idiot was getting at. “Of course I did!” he spluttered. “Otherwise they would’ve shot you!”
“You thought it would be better if you got shot instead?”
“Well, yes I did!” Watanuki argued. “You were the one with the gun and any hope of defending us if you weren’t all full of bullet holes!” And they may have wanted me alive, he couldn’t help thinking. They’d known what they were doing, aiming at Doumeki first.
“That’s what you were thinking when you jumped?”
“No, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, those nasty looking men with guns are going to shoot that idiot who isn’t looking where he’s going!’ I didn’t have time to sit down and analyse things, I just reacted.” He tried to match Doumeki’s defiant stare, but after a minute he faltered and had to look away.
“It worked, didn’t it? They didn’t hit me anywhere that mattered,” he offered sullenly.
“They could have.”
“Didn’t have time to stop and think about that either, thank you very much.”
Silence went on long enough for Watanuki to give up on getting any further reply on that subject, for better or worse. “Who do you think they were?” he wondered aloud.
“They must be new to this area,” said Doumeki. “Hostile gangs don’t last long around here.”
“Thanks to you,” said Watanuki quietly.
“There’s worse than me around here,” said Doumeki. “Our neighbours take care of most of them.”
There was quiet again for a minute.
“We got lucky, didn’t we?” said Watanuki. “We both got out of there, and at least we got that sheet we needed…”
“I left it behind,” said Doumeki, bland as ever.
Watanuki very nearly forgot his strict instructions not to move (on pain of really nasty pain), the urge to sit up was so strong. “You - what? Why!?”
“Dropped the pack somewhere,” Doumeki shrugged. “It wasn’t important.”
“But after we went through all that…” Watanuki could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Can’t we got back for it, or…”
“Too late,” Doumeki cut in. “You’ve been out for more than a day. The storm ended hours ago. Fye will be checking how bad the damage is now.”
“But how could…” Watanuki protested helplessly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Doumeki firmly, just as Sakura came back in with the soup and finally brought the conversation to an end.
***
“Unusual to see you here yourself, especially alone,” said Kamui as the bike pulled up in front of him. “Would I be right in supposing it’s not another simple rainstorm that inspired this visit?”
“There’s a new gang in the area,” said Kurogane. “One of ours took down three of them, but there could be more.”
Kamui gave him just long enough to make sure that was all Kurogane had to say before replying. “Why would you come so far for information like this? We’ll deal with them when we encounter them, the same as all the others. It isn’t news of any great value to us.”
“We don’t want to be paid for it,” said Kurogane. “All we’re asking is that when you do find them, you don’t show them any mercy.”
The two men studied each other critically for a moment before Kamui said, “Understood,” and Kurogane turned back towards home.
***
The next time Doumeki was woken up unexpectedly it was Watanuki who was shaking him awake. “You have to come with me,” he was saying.
It was the middle of the night; Watanuki was little more than a dark silhouette leaning over him. The encounter with the other gang still loomed in far too recent memory, Watanuki had only been declared well enough to be up and about a few days previously. Seeing - or mostly hearing him - like this made Doumeki just slightly uncomfortable.
“Where?” he asked.
“There’s something we have to go find,” said Watanuki evasively. “It’s… oh, think of it like just another supply mission.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“He’ll only take us while the full moon is still up,” said Watanuki, starting to rise to his feet.
Doumeki caught him by the wrist. “This isn’t going to be like last time, is it?”
“Like… oh, nothing like,” said Watanuki quickly. “He’s a completely different kind of spirit - a safe one. But if we don’t go now, we’re not going to get another chance.”
Doumeki frowned. “If you’re sure,” he said, getting out of bed.
***
Doumeki had lived through enough midnight surprise attacks to have had to pick up the knack for going from asleep to fully alert at odd hours of the night as quickly as possible. And yet, later, he’d have to wonder whether he’d been properly awake for any of the trip that followed. It was one of the most dreamlike experiences of his life.
Watanuki’s directions took them far out into the deadlands, in what direction Doumeki would not later recall. The torch he’d brought with them illuminated a small area ahead of the bike, but not even the light of the full moon overhead did much to resolve the surrounding landscape beyond a mess of dark shapes. The place they stopped at last was shrouded in even deeper shadow than the land around, though whether by dense trees, sheer hills or old buildings Doumeki could either not remember or never managed to make out at all. Before them, a flight of stairs lead downwards, deep underground.
They left the torch with the bike, but the space which opened up at the bottom of the staircase was lit somehow, with a pale, silvery light, just enough to illuminate the shapes around them in monochrome and faded blues. On either side of a wide central corridor, Doumeki saw rooms walled with glass, filled with stacks or shelves of books or clothes or all manner of other things he couldn’t recognise. This was a place from the old world - that much was obvious, but whereas most of the places Watanuki had brought him before may have seemed unnaturally well preserved, this once scarcely felt to have ever been abandoned at all. Everything might have been closed down for the night, but in the morning, it felt almost as though life would go on in this place as if the terms ‘Before’ and ‘After’ meant nothing special at all.
Watanuki lead them unerringly past any number of rooms and around several corners where the corridor branched. At last, they came to a room where pair upon pair of glasses sat stacked in display structures, custom designed to show them off. Doumeki waited at the doorway while Watanuki vanished inside, hunting around somewhere just out of sight for several minutes before he finally re-emerged again. Brand new glasses, both lenses intact and whole, sat perched on his nose.
As he stepped outside again, Doumeki couldn’t resist taking one last, long look around the corridor in which they stood. There were things here which no-one in his generation would ever have seen or even heard of before. This place held enough treasures to dwarf all of Watanuki’s other finds together.
A hand on his arm made him turn to look Watanuki in the face. His guide had his other hand resting lightly on the pane of his glasses that covered his sightless eye.
“These are all we’re allowed to take,” he said. “The rest has to be left for later.”
“Later?” asked Doumeki.
“When it’s needed,” Watanuki said simply.
Doumeki didn’t ask when that was going to be.
They arrived home again as the full moon was setting, and Doumeki feel into bed almost at once and slept through until morning. When he woke, he might have wondered whether any of it had really happened at all, if it hadn’t been for the evidence of those new glasses which were there to see whenever he looked at Watanuki’s face.
And there ends what I have mentally labelled as the second major section of the story. It turned out a fair bit shorter than part one, but considering how the first couple of chapters of part three are turning out so far, I don't think it's going to suffer from the same problem.
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, Part 9
When Watanuki began to come back to himself through the dull haze of pain, the first thing he heard was a voice say, “Chii?”
When his good eye began to focus - as best it could without his glasses and under the influence of whatever painkillers they had him on - the first thing he saw was the blurry shape of a slim, pale figure leaning over him. It was so unfamiliar that at first Watanuki was left completely at a loss to figure out where he was, or even to remember any of the events of the past month or two.
Then he heard a voice say, “Kimihiro is waking up,” and suddenly his field of vision became a whole lot more crowded.
Someone in the room started sniffling - happy or sad he couldn’t tell - then the door banged open and an irritatingly familiar young voice was saying, “He’s awake?” only to be shushed quickly by someone else, followed by some other exchange he couldn’t follow.
“So he is!” said a voice, coming from a shaggy, white, head-shaped thing that could only have been Fye. “You can understand me alright, can’t you? Welcome back!”
“W… who…?” Watanuki managed, glancing back and forth from Fye to the mystery figure.
“Ah, of course,” said Fye. “Watanuki Kimihiro, I’d like you to meet Chi.”
“Chii?” said ‘Chi’ again, gradually starting to resolve into a pretty, young female with pale hair so long Watanuki couldn’t see where it ended. There was something seriously wrong about her ears, but for a moment he couldn’t figure out exactly what.
“Where did…?” he asked vaguely.
“Chi lives in the lab most of the time,” said Fye.
The lab he’d never been allowed to enter, Watanuki remembered, not that that made this make any more sense.
“Forgive us for choosing such an awkward time to make introductions,” Fye went on, “but she doesn’t get to meet new people much, and somehow we never quite got around to it until now.”
“But…” said Watanuki, quite sure he didn’t deserve this so soon after such an ordeal. “…all this time..?” Surely he wasn’t being told he’d just been introduced to a girl who was kept locked in the lab most of her life?
“She’s a computer,” said Doumeki, always the voice of reason, speaking from somewhere just outside his useful field of vision.
“She’s…?” he repeated, barely comprehending.
“You have heard of computers before, Kimihiro?” Fye’s voice again.
“A bit, but…”
“No, not many people would have seen one quite so fine as our Chi out in this country,” said Fye, happily picking up for him. “You can see why we have to be so careful who we let her meet, I’m sure. Anyway, if you hadn’t gathered, Chi’s the one who lets us intercept the weather reports being passed between the Complexes, amongst other things. We’ve even been lucky enough to be able to get hold of some old medical programs for her. She’s done a splendid job of patching you up, under the circumstances.”
Even while his head was spinning with all this information, Watanuki was finally beginning to feel as though there was ground under his feet again (even if it did keep moving around like a minor earthquake was taking place).
“Do you remember what happened?” Fye asked, more seriously.
“I think so,” Watanuki replied. There’d been those men in the city, aiming at them, and then a terrible pain… instinctively, he flexed his left arm, and instantly regretted it.
Through the haze of pain which returned full force, Watanuki could dimly make out Sakura talking, her voice still betrayed some sniffles. “You mustn’t move your arm! Chi says you’ll make a full recovery - you’ll be absolutely fine - but you can’t start moving around yet!”
“They only hit you in the shoulder, luckily enough,” said Fye, “but you’d lost a lot of blood by the time you got back here. We had to give you a transfusion just so you’d make it through. You’ve got Doumeki to thank for that. On top of taking care of your attackers and carrying you back, that is.”
Doumeki. For a moment Watanuki panicked, before he realised Doumeki was in the room and had spoken already, and showed no signs of being any the worse for wear for their ordeal.
“He’s quite alright,” said Fye, apparently reading Watanuki’s mind again. “Hasn’t gone far since he got you back here. Everyone’s fine.”
“We’re all here,” said the young voice, coming from a figure who gradually began to resolve into Syaoran. “Everyone except Kurogane.”
“He’s out on a very important errand,” Sakura added quickly. “But I’m sure he’ll come back to look in on you as soon as he gets back.”
There was a rough sensation in Watanuki’s throat and chest that was distinctly familiar, but which he was sure he hadn’t felt in a long while. He suddenly felt in even more need of something to drink.
“He should have something to eat before he gets too tired again,” said Chi. “Then we should let him get some more rest.”
“I can make the leftovers into some soup,” Sakura volunteered immediately.
“And I, alas, really must be getting back to work,” said Fye. “But I’m sure you’re not going to lack for visitors, like them or not.”
One by one, the others began filing out of the room, until only Doumeki and Chi were left there with him.
Ordinarily, Watanuki wouldn’t have minded the company, but as so often happened with Doumeki, the silence became less comfortable as the minutes ticked past. Even though most of the world was still little more than a blur, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being glared at.
“Don’t you have something else you should be doing?” he complained half-heartedly.
“You jumped into the way,” said Doumeki.
It took Watanuki all of a confusing moment to realise what the idiot was getting at. “Of course I did!” he spluttered. “Otherwise they would’ve shot you!”
“You thought it would be better if you got shot instead?”
“Well, yes I did!” Watanuki argued. “You were the one with the gun and any hope of defending us if you weren’t all full of bullet holes!” And they may have wanted me alive, he couldn’t help thinking. They’d known what they were doing, aiming at Doumeki first.
“That’s what you were thinking when you jumped?”
“No, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, those nasty looking men with guns are going to shoot that idiot who isn’t looking where he’s going!’ I didn’t have time to sit down and analyse things, I just reacted.” He tried to match Doumeki’s defiant stare, but after a minute he faltered and had to look away.
“It worked, didn’t it? They didn’t hit me anywhere that mattered,” he offered sullenly.
“They could have.”
“Didn’t have time to stop and think about that either, thank you very much.”
Silence went on long enough for Watanuki to give up on getting any further reply on that subject, for better or worse. “Who do you think they were?” he wondered aloud.
“They must be new to this area,” said Doumeki. “Hostile gangs don’t last long around here.”
“Thanks to you,” said Watanuki quietly.
“There’s worse than me around here,” said Doumeki. “Our neighbours take care of most of them.”
There was quiet again for a minute.
“We got lucky, didn’t we?” said Watanuki. “We both got out of there, and at least we got that sheet we needed…”
“I left it behind,” said Doumeki, bland as ever.
Watanuki very nearly forgot his strict instructions not to move (on pain of really nasty pain), the urge to sit up was so strong. “You - what? Why!?”
“Dropped the pack somewhere,” Doumeki shrugged. “It wasn’t important.”
“But after we went through all that…” Watanuki could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Can’t we got back for it, or…”
“Too late,” Doumeki cut in. “You’ve been out for more than a day. The storm ended hours ago. Fye will be checking how bad the damage is now.”
“But how could…” Watanuki protested helplessly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Doumeki firmly, just as Sakura came back in with the soup and finally brought the conversation to an end.
***
“Unusual to see you here yourself, especially alone,” said Kamui as the bike pulled up in front of him. “Would I be right in supposing it’s not another simple rainstorm that inspired this visit?”
“There’s a new gang in the area,” said Kurogane. “One of ours took down three of them, but there could be more.”
Kamui gave him just long enough to make sure that was all Kurogane had to say before replying. “Why would you come so far for information like this? We’ll deal with them when we encounter them, the same as all the others. It isn’t news of any great value to us.”
“We don’t want to be paid for it,” said Kurogane. “All we’re asking is that when you do find them, you don’t show them any mercy.”
The two men studied each other critically for a moment before Kamui said, “Understood,” and Kurogane turned back towards home.
***
The next time Doumeki was woken up unexpectedly it was Watanuki who was shaking him awake. “You have to come with me,” he was saying.
It was the middle of the night; Watanuki was little more than a dark silhouette leaning over him. The encounter with the other gang still loomed in far too recent memory, Watanuki had only been declared well enough to be up and about a few days previously. Seeing - or mostly hearing him - like this made Doumeki just slightly uncomfortable.
“Where?” he asked.
“There’s something we have to go find,” said Watanuki evasively. “It’s… oh, think of it like just another supply mission.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“He’ll only take us while the full moon is still up,” said Watanuki, starting to rise to his feet.
Doumeki caught him by the wrist. “This isn’t going to be like last time, is it?”
“Like… oh, nothing like,” said Watanuki quickly. “He’s a completely different kind of spirit - a safe one. But if we don’t go now, we’re not going to get another chance.”
Doumeki frowned. “If you’re sure,” he said, getting out of bed.
***
Doumeki had lived through enough midnight surprise attacks to have had to pick up the knack for going from asleep to fully alert at odd hours of the night as quickly as possible. And yet, later, he’d have to wonder whether he’d been properly awake for any of the trip that followed. It was one of the most dreamlike experiences of his life.
Watanuki’s directions took them far out into the deadlands, in what direction Doumeki would not later recall. The torch he’d brought with them illuminated a small area ahead of the bike, but not even the light of the full moon overhead did much to resolve the surrounding landscape beyond a mess of dark shapes. The place they stopped at last was shrouded in even deeper shadow than the land around, though whether by dense trees, sheer hills or old buildings Doumeki could either not remember or never managed to make out at all. Before them, a flight of stairs lead downwards, deep underground.
They left the torch with the bike, but the space which opened up at the bottom of the staircase was lit somehow, with a pale, silvery light, just enough to illuminate the shapes around them in monochrome and faded blues. On either side of a wide central corridor, Doumeki saw rooms walled with glass, filled with stacks or shelves of books or clothes or all manner of other things he couldn’t recognise. This was a place from the old world - that much was obvious, but whereas most of the places Watanuki had brought him before may have seemed unnaturally well preserved, this once scarcely felt to have ever been abandoned at all. Everything might have been closed down for the night, but in the morning, it felt almost as though life would go on in this place as if the terms ‘Before’ and ‘After’ meant nothing special at all.
Watanuki lead them unerringly past any number of rooms and around several corners where the corridor branched. At last, they came to a room where pair upon pair of glasses sat stacked in display structures, custom designed to show them off. Doumeki waited at the doorway while Watanuki vanished inside, hunting around somewhere just out of sight for several minutes before he finally re-emerged again. Brand new glasses, both lenses intact and whole, sat perched on his nose.
As he stepped outside again, Doumeki couldn’t resist taking one last, long look around the corridor in which they stood. There were things here which no-one in his generation would ever have seen or even heard of before. This place held enough treasures to dwarf all of Watanuki’s other finds together.
A hand on his arm made him turn to look Watanuki in the face. His guide had his other hand resting lightly on the pane of his glasses that covered his sightless eye.
“These are all we’re allowed to take,” he said. “The rest has to be left for later.”
“Later?” asked Doumeki.
“When it’s needed,” Watanuki said simply.
Doumeki didn’t ask when that was going to be.
They arrived home again as the full moon was setting, and Doumeki feel into bed almost at once and slept through until morning. When he woke, he might have wondered whether any of it had really happened at all, if it hadn’t been for the evidence of those new glasses which were there to see whenever he looked at Watanuki’s face.
And there ends what I have mentally labelled as the second major section of the story. It turned out a fair bit shorter than part one, but considering how the first couple of chapters of part three are turning out so far, I don't think it's going to suffer from the same problem.