The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 23
A week and a half late on this chapter - oh man, I was not counting on this taking so long. >.> I've had a pretty good run on this story so far, but this chapter kicked my arse - which I was expecting, but not quite on this scale. This would be what happens when you finally get to scenes you've been building towards for pretty much the whole damn story (bound to be a few more of those to come now I'm getting towards the end of the story, but I'll just have to take it as it comes on that front).
On the upside, in that extra week this thing grew to twice the length of most of the chapters I've posted so far, so, er, maybe I can claim it as equivalent to two chapters? Thanks go to lunargeography for looking over this part for me and - well, mostly just telling me I didn't need to worry so much about how it had turned out in the end. The part to follow is coming along with much less fuss so far, which is a great relief.
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Side Story 1
Two weeks after Kohane had arrived, and Doumeki still wasn’t comfortable with her.
The same had been true of Watanuki at the same point in his own initiation, and equally of the few others who’d spend varying periods in their camp, but with Kohane, it probably should have been simpler. She was quiet and unassuming, and even if she was weak, unskilled and not the fastest of learners, she would apply herself diligently to whatever task she was given without complaint. She should have been as unthreatening as they came if it hadn’t been for her recent past. It was no secret she wasn’t the only member of the camp who’s history had passed through the Complexes, but she was the only one for whom it loomed so close behind her that it was still nearly part of her present. None of the others at Kurogane’s camp gave the impression they’d brought some aspect of the Complex with them.
She didn’t talk about it - at least not in Doumeki’s hearing, but that made the matter worse rather than better. It kept that crucial part of herself in the land of the unknown. The only person in their camp she’d connected with was Watanuki, but with all his own weirdness, all that served to do was to pull him further from the rest of them rather than give Kohane a needed link inwards. The other camp members dealt with her well enough, but there was still a level of awkwardness over so much of the situation, and it was too early to say how much of that time alone would dissipate.
Attempts to engage Watanuki on the subject only produced responses insisting she was still settling in and blunt allegations that Doumeki wasn’t even trying to understand how much she’d been through. It was blatantly obvious even Watanuki was bothered by something he’d learned from her, but something kept him from opening up on the subject the way he had on similar occasions in the past.
The memory of the look on Watanuki’s face when Doumeki had lifted him off his feet by the collar tended to come to mind whenever Doumeki let himself think that far, but he pushed the thought away.
It was only when the other camp members did start to relax around her that Doumeki had to remind himself of their golden rule about people’s pasts and begin to question his own perspective on this issue. He tried briefly to pin his irritation on the idea Watanuki had presumed so much as to ask them to take in someone like her at all, but Kohane being another mouth to feed had never been part of the issue. Watanuki had brought them in enough supplies over the last few months that if anything their situation was worryingly comfortable (worryingly, because from here things could only possibly get worse). He was well within his rights to request they support one more person with his help. What it really was was that Watanuki was giving Kohane more attention than he’d payed anyone but Doumeki since arriving. Doumeki was letting himself get jealous, and that was just stupid.
By the time Kurogane had made time to go out of his way to talk to him about it, he was already well on the way to realising just how far out he’d let things go, though if he hadn’t been that alone should have been more than enough to make the point.
***
Strictly speaking, Kurogane still wasn’t comfortable with Kohane either. As the camp leader, it was his job not to be - not while any doubt about her remained, and given the circumstances under which she’d joined them, some of those doubts could be set to linger well beyond their usual lifetime. It wasn’t her fault, more was the shame of it, but the way she’d joined them could only underline Watanuki’s otherness, especially when he himself had been only barely past his own suspicion period. He’d shown very effectively how prepared he was to work hard and even put himself in danger for the good of the camp, but all that proved was good intentions. Common sense and survival instinct were different things, and just as important where trust was concerned. Kurogane knew all too well where good intentions got you if you only worked up a little ability for creative justification on the side.
Leadership was something Kurogane had fallen into only by accident. He’d never gone out planning on starting his own gang - he’d never planned much at all after going freelance, which might have been the problem. It was perfectly natural - a group in their position needed at least a de facto leader to function; Fye had no interest in taking on any responsibility outside of his particular area of expertise, and the rest of their gang were too young to exert much authority. It only became an oddity when you knew how much more experience Kurogane should have had with taking orders rather than giving them, given how he’d spent most of his adult life up to that point, but the others didn’t know that, so the irony was his alone to appreciate.
But there was more to being a leader than making people follow instructions - that, as far as Kurogane was concerned, was the easy part. The hard part was keeping a small group of sometimes near-starving people in one camp with no-one but each other for company from winding up at each other’s throats. Mostly, the situation took care of itself - or Fye took care of it, since it was Kurogane’s understanding that Fye had never met anyone he didn’t like, and was so earnest in his belief that everyone could get on that it was very hard to disagree with him. It wasn’t for nothing that virtually everyone in the camp had wound up on first-name basis without ever quite realising how they got there.
Even so, Kurogane was better at watching for telltale subtleties of behaviour than most people who only saw his unyielding exterior would have given him credit for. He’d been watching Watanuki and his assigned caretaker very closely ever since he’d joined, and had had enough surprises in that time to keep himself doing it. He’d been watching just the same since they’d picked up their latest member. He knew something had stirred up Doumeki’s long held suspicions about Watanuki’s abilities a few months ago just when they’d seemed to have been settling down - he didn’t know what and didn’t want to, it wasn’t his business, but it was taking far longer to sort itself out than it had any right to. The events surrounding Kohane’s arrival had made the whole thing flare up again to the point he could no longer even pretend to ignore it.
What complicated this one was that Doumeki was one of the few people who was immune to Fye’s brand of charm, even though usually that distance was his own defence because it was almost unheard of for anyone to leave enough of an impression on him to be able to get under his skin. Fye’s approach was going to be useless here. He loved a good mystery too much to be bothered by the practical implications of people who went around seeing ghosts the way it bothered Doumeki; and Kurogane too to an extent. Like Doumeki, he’d never been particularly pleased with the supernatural world that had been opening up beneath them since the April Fool arrived at their camp, though letting his second in command know there was someone else around who sympathised with his viewpoint was hardly going to be all it would take to get through to Doumeki on this. For the most part, Kurogane trusted Doumeki’s judgement second only to his own. He wasn’t the kind to balk at nothing, but he was unlikely to voice theories he was less than certain about either. There were a couple of things it could mean if Kohane was making Doumeki uncomfortable, but neither of them were good.
The crux of the matter was that Kurogane didn’t know what what it was going to take to fix this. Even now he was mostly content enough to trust that he’d have plenty more warning signs well before things got serious in any way that demanded his attention. It wasn’t his job to make them all get on as long as they behaved in the more general sense but the situation needed keeping an eye on at least - and a closer eye than usual.
It wouldn’t hurt to let Doumeki know he was keeping an eye on things either.
***
On the way out of the camp on their next hunting trip he broke their usual silence long enough to say, “You’ve still got the business from the ruined Complex on your mind.” It wasn’t a question, and Doumeki didn’t bother denying it, though it prompted a slight eyebrow raise, wondering where this was going to go.
“It isn’t over yet, is it?” he replied. “The other Complexes can’t ignore it. They’ll want to know why.”
“Probably,” said Kurogane. “But it won’t be our business unless we’re very unlucky.”
Doumeki cast a scathing look out into the distance - the direction something close to where the remains of the Complex lay, as Kurogane’s mental compass informed him after a moment to realign. “When we don’t have any answers, it’s hard to guess how unlucky we might be.”
“Especially when we’re hoarding one piece of the puzzle in our own camp?”
That got him Doumeki’s attention. “You think she fits somewhere important?” It sounded so obvious that the sentiment must have occurred to everyone since Kohane arrived, but up until now it had been unspoken taboo - hardly voiced aloud.
“The others say she sees ghosts too,” said Kurogane.
It wasn’t evident from Doumeki’s expression whether he’d already known this or not, but it didn’t surprise him greatly. “That’s three of them now.”
“Like they attract each other,” said Kurogane, agreeing with everything Doumeki wasn’t saying. It gave even someone as determinedly un-superstitious as him the uncomfortable sensation that forces unseen were pulling their strings, a sensation both unpleasant in its own right and unpleasantly familiar. “They’re a strange novelty for the likes of us to be collecting. And it’s unusual enough for us to be collecting lasting campmates at all.”
Doumeki seemed to consider this, probably running over the short list of more temporary camp members who’d appeared in the years he’d been there only to be removed from their numbers again, never for pleasant reasons. “There’s been no-one since me.”
“There was no-one before you who lasted either, not since the kids showed up, and we didn’t count as a gang before that,” Kurogane corrected him. “And you were the exception to begin with.”
It was only when Doumeki looked at him questioningly that it occurred to Kurogane that that idle statement needed some clarification. “I never mentioned that I met your grandfather,” he said, admitting the omission to himself as much as Doumeki. It seemed funny to be bringing it up now after all these years, but when the younger Doumeki had first shown up at their camp himself, he hadn’t made any mention of his grandfather or any other family, and Kurogane had found it appropriate to follow suit. If it wasn’t for the undeniable resemblance they shared he might have doubted any connection beyond a coincidence of timing.
Doumeki stopped altogether and frowned at him. “When?”
“A year before you joined us. You weren’t with him, but he mentioned you. Said you’d need somewhere to go in the near future.”
“Did he ask you to take me on?”
“That wasn’t the way he put it.” It was a bit long ago for Kurogane to remember exactly how he’d put it at all, just the general gist. “But he seemed to have an idea what was ahead.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not that I recall.” It hadn’t been a long conversation. The older Doumeki had appeared to know his own business to a level that didn’t invite questioning.
Doumeki looked thoughtful, but he didn’t have anymore questions, and the whole subject was dropped for the rest of the hunt, Kurogane not much the wiser but satisfied enough not to press things.
***
Parts of that conversation hung around the edges of Doumeki’s mind for the rest of the day. The discovery that Kurogane had met Haruka was strangely unstartling; calming even - it fit. It wasn’t likely Kurogane would have mentioned this to Watanuki - it wouldn’t be like him to let it slip out unintended, but it wasn’t impossible. The was the explanation he’d been looking for for what Watanuki had known ever since that day - a mundane way for him to hear about Haruka that required nothing of the supernatural at all.
And Doumeki didn’t believe it for a moment.
***
That evening, he cornered Watanuki in their shared room and stood, arms folded in front of the door, blocking the exit.
Watanuki tried to glare daggers at him, but there was a weakness to his posture that prevented it from being very convincing. “What do you want? I still have chores I should be…”
“No you don’t,” said Doumeki. “We need to talk.”
“Why?” Watanuki complained. “What would you…?”
“I’ll rephrase. You need to talk to me.”
“What about?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
Watanuki was clearly warring with the urge to yell, argue - just for the habit of it as much as for the need to get out of this conversation, but instead, something drained out of him and he gave in.
“Do you know what Kohane’s birthday is?” he asked, avoiding eye contact.
Doumeki blinked at the apparent non-sequitur, but since the answer was so obviously ‘no’ on his part, he stayed quiet and waited for Watanuki to explain wherever he might be going with this.
“April first,” said Watanuki. “The same as me. Sakura too. We’re all April Fools.” He gave a weak laugh. “It fits, doesn’t it? Anyone born on the day the whole world died spends their life seeing the dead. I always used to think I was the only one, but if that’s how it works there must be lots of people like me out there. Maybe hundreds!”
As an explanation for the supernatural, it was about as poetic as ‘he sees the land of the dead with his dead eye’ - and almost as easily rationalised aside, although Watanuki had dismissed the latter story out of hand when they first met, but was apparently new to this one. “I don’t recall ever hearing of any other April Fools.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that they’re like Sakura and Kohane and can only see but not hear, or they’re not stupid enough to get famous.” Watanuki gave him another defeated attempt at a glare. “Do you know what really happened to Kohane’s Complex? You remember what happened when you found me - you saw what was left. It was the same - they hurt Kohane and the ghosts all went mad. I didn’t know it could even happen to anyone else, but it did - so much bigger and worse. It’s probably happened before too. It could happen again.”
Disturbing enough on its own, but Watanuki was only getting started.
“You can’t… you can’t just not believe in ghosts anymore, don’t you see? They’re real! I’ve never been the only one who sees them, and even if you can’t see them they can hurt you. There are so many and they’re everywhere, and if they get angry they can do terrible things. Real people have died and they never even realised they were in any danger until it was too late. I can’t make them not be real just by letting you be all… noncommittal when I talk about them. They’re still going to be there.”
“So you’re saying you need me to…” was as far as Doumeki got before Watanuki waved him back into silence again, his voice speeding up with every new sentence, the words all running together as they came tumbling out.
“But I get that it’s not that easy, alright? You can’t see them, you’ve just got to take my word for it when I tell you about them, and you know, I make mistakes. I probably make more mistakes than even I know. Ghosts lie and I’ve got no-one else to listen to what they’re saying and help me figure out when they’re not telling the truth. And that whole thing with your grandfather - I’m sorry about that, okay? I should have thought - I know people don’t like hearing about people they knew from me, but I was angry and I wasn’t even thinking.”
“What…?” Doumeki tried. This topic had come out of nowhere, but Watanuki ploughed on.
“It was stupid of me but I didn’t even wonder - I didn’t even realise you might not know whether he was dead!”
There was that desperate note of hysteria in Watanuki’s voice again - all too familiar. But just moments before when he’d been talking about the reality of the ghosts he’d sounded so sure of himself, and the change so fast over such a subject was almost more than Doumeki could take.
“But what do I know?” Watanuki went on, sounding genuinely miserable. “Maybe it wasn’t even really him. Maybe it was you great grandfather, or someone completely different just pretending to be him. There are so many ghosts that lie just to cause trouble - there are ones that change how they look just to make you think you’re seeing someone you know, and I’ve never even met your real grandfather so how would I know if it wasn’t one like that? Maybe I am wrong, maybe he’s not dead at all. And even if he is, I should never have made such a deal about it...”
This was who the April Fool had always been, Doumeki remembered sharply, with a moment of clarity that had been welling up for so long he had no excuse for being surprised by it - a boy-legend with a power everyone needed but no-one wanted, who they feared as much as they relied on. Who’d seen so many people die for possession of his ability that he barely even felt human to himself anymore, who was so used to being punished for everything he had no control over that he didn’t even fight it anymore. All he ever asked was that the next tragedy he was forced to witness might be smaller than the last.
He needed Doumeki’s acceptance so badly he’d make everything that stood in front of it his own fault. This was someone who didn’t even know how to ask for anything that was purely for himself.
“You seemed sure it was him when you first told me,” said Doumeki, as evenly as he could manage.
“Only because he looked like you and knew your name. But that doesn’t mean…”
“What did he say?”
Watanuki hesitated. “It was nothing important - nothing specific. He just… asked how I was dealing with you, and with the camp. Told me it was worth sticking out even though things weren’t looking good then. Apologised for not making you be less stubborn when you were a kid.” Details emerged as if being dragged out of him, one by one. “It sounded so good I didn’t even question it, but that was right in the middle of when you were gone and all the worst spirits came back. They hate you and they were going out of their way to cause trouble and I should have remembered that…”
“That was him.” Right then, Doumeki was more sure of that than any logic could justify.
“You don’t have to say that, you know,” Watanuki protested. “If he might still be alive it’s not going to help to believe that you’re getting messages from something only pretending to be his ghost.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Doumeki, firm enough that Watanuki couldn’t talk over him this time. Even he wasn’t good at this - making someone else understand something this important.
Watanuki looked at Doumeki hopelessly, shook his head and let out a weak laugh - somehow with just that sound managing to encapsulate the full stupidity of the thought that something that had been hanging over them ever since the subject first came up could be reduced to ‘doesn’t matter.’ “I don’t get you at all. First you’re mad I brought him up, now… what do you want me to do?”
“It doesn’t,” Doumeki repeated, for once not daring Watanuki to argue. After not being able to talk this out at all for so long now he had too many answers. “It…” he tried, and gave up on words with a soft growl of frustration; so tired of Watanuki’s sick attempts at compromise; tired of watching Watanuki wonder whether the person who’s trust he wanted the most could be trusted himself and whether he cared at all, and Doumeki just needed to settle the matter for both of them before everything went back to being more complicated than there was any need for.
Watanuki had spent most of the conversation avoiding eye contact, so when the hand landed on his shoulder he startled and looked up to find Doumeki’s solid presence suddenly very much inside his personal space. For that infinite moment when he realised what Doumeki was about to do he didn’t even seem to be breathing before Doumeki pulled him through the rest of the distance between them and kissed him. Not gently, there was a point that needed to be understood here.
Watanuki barely even got out a surprised gasp before he caught up, and the next instant he was kissing Doumeki back without the slightest hesitation, surprise or relief or whatever else he might have been feeling all lost in that first overwhelming surge. Neither of them quite knew how this was meant to work well enough to make it go as smoothly as it should have, but Watanuki seemed well beyond noticing and even Doumeki was only vaguely aware of anything remotely amiss. It was only a moment more before Watanuki’s arms were wrapping tight around his body, fingers tangling in the back of his shirt as if this strange new thing between them might escape him if he didn’t cling to it with everything he had. The need and determination was startling - if anything, Doumeki had underestimated where this would get him; and there was a light, empty feeling in his gut before he’d even finished that thought that made him feel almost selfish for having been given so much control over something Watanuki needed this badly.
It was several moments before Doumeki remembered how to pull away long enough to remove Watanuki’s glasses from where they’d begun to scrape uncomfortably on both their noses, confident that whatever else happened next his point had been understood.
“Is this going to upset them?” he asked, on a whim that was maybe something a bit more.
“…what?” was the barely stuttered response.
“The ghosts. Is it going to make them angry if I do this?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know,” said Watanuki, sounding breathless and catching up with him only slowly when it was still a bit early to be talking about this. “I haven’t… I don’t think so. I don’t see why, if you’re not hurting me…”
“It’ll do,” said Doumeki, and kissed him again, and for once, Watanuki didn’t argue, didn’t question, arms tightening again like that contact was still the only thing he trusted making this experience real.
For the rest of that night, even for a second or two strung together, he hardly dared let go.
On the upside, in that extra week this thing grew to twice the length of most of the chapters I've posted so far, so, er, maybe I can claim it as equivalent to two chapters? Thanks go to lunargeography for looking over this part for me and - well, mostly just telling me I didn't need to worry so much about how it had turned out in the end. The part to follow is coming along with much less fuss so far, which is a great relief.
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Side Story 1
Two weeks after Kohane had arrived, and Doumeki still wasn’t comfortable with her.
The same had been true of Watanuki at the same point in his own initiation, and equally of the few others who’d spend varying periods in their camp, but with Kohane, it probably should have been simpler. She was quiet and unassuming, and even if she was weak, unskilled and not the fastest of learners, she would apply herself diligently to whatever task she was given without complaint. She should have been as unthreatening as they came if it hadn’t been for her recent past. It was no secret she wasn’t the only member of the camp who’s history had passed through the Complexes, but she was the only one for whom it loomed so close behind her that it was still nearly part of her present. None of the others at Kurogane’s camp gave the impression they’d brought some aspect of the Complex with them.
She didn’t talk about it - at least not in Doumeki’s hearing, but that made the matter worse rather than better. It kept that crucial part of herself in the land of the unknown. The only person in their camp she’d connected with was Watanuki, but with all his own weirdness, all that served to do was to pull him further from the rest of them rather than give Kohane a needed link inwards. The other camp members dealt with her well enough, but there was still a level of awkwardness over so much of the situation, and it was too early to say how much of that time alone would dissipate.
Attempts to engage Watanuki on the subject only produced responses insisting she was still settling in and blunt allegations that Doumeki wasn’t even trying to understand how much she’d been through. It was blatantly obvious even Watanuki was bothered by something he’d learned from her, but something kept him from opening up on the subject the way he had on similar occasions in the past.
The memory of the look on Watanuki’s face when Doumeki had lifted him off his feet by the collar tended to come to mind whenever Doumeki let himself think that far, but he pushed the thought away.
It was only when the other camp members did start to relax around her that Doumeki had to remind himself of their golden rule about people’s pasts and begin to question his own perspective on this issue. He tried briefly to pin his irritation on the idea Watanuki had presumed so much as to ask them to take in someone like her at all, but Kohane being another mouth to feed had never been part of the issue. Watanuki had brought them in enough supplies over the last few months that if anything their situation was worryingly comfortable (worryingly, because from here things could only possibly get worse). He was well within his rights to request they support one more person with his help. What it really was was that Watanuki was giving Kohane more attention than he’d payed anyone but Doumeki since arriving. Doumeki was letting himself get jealous, and that was just stupid.
By the time Kurogane had made time to go out of his way to talk to him about it, he was already well on the way to realising just how far out he’d let things go, though if he hadn’t been that alone should have been more than enough to make the point.
***
Strictly speaking, Kurogane still wasn’t comfortable with Kohane either. As the camp leader, it was his job not to be - not while any doubt about her remained, and given the circumstances under which she’d joined them, some of those doubts could be set to linger well beyond their usual lifetime. It wasn’t her fault, more was the shame of it, but the way she’d joined them could only underline Watanuki’s otherness, especially when he himself had been only barely past his own suspicion period. He’d shown very effectively how prepared he was to work hard and even put himself in danger for the good of the camp, but all that proved was good intentions. Common sense and survival instinct were different things, and just as important where trust was concerned. Kurogane knew all too well where good intentions got you if you only worked up a little ability for creative justification on the side.
Leadership was something Kurogane had fallen into only by accident. He’d never gone out planning on starting his own gang - he’d never planned much at all after going freelance, which might have been the problem. It was perfectly natural - a group in their position needed at least a de facto leader to function; Fye had no interest in taking on any responsibility outside of his particular area of expertise, and the rest of their gang were too young to exert much authority. It only became an oddity when you knew how much more experience Kurogane should have had with taking orders rather than giving them, given how he’d spent most of his adult life up to that point, but the others didn’t know that, so the irony was his alone to appreciate.
But there was more to being a leader than making people follow instructions - that, as far as Kurogane was concerned, was the easy part. The hard part was keeping a small group of sometimes near-starving people in one camp with no-one but each other for company from winding up at each other’s throats. Mostly, the situation took care of itself - or Fye took care of it, since it was Kurogane’s understanding that Fye had never met anyone he didn’t like, and was so earnest in his belief that everyone could get on that it was very hard to disagree with him. It wasn’t for nothing that virtually everyone in the camp had wound up on first-name basis without ever quite realising how they got there.
Even so, Kurogane was better at watching for telltale subtleties of behaviour than most people who only saw his unyielding exterior would have given him credit for. He’d been watching Watanuki and his assigned caretaker very closely ever since he’d joined, and had had enough surprises in that time to keep himself doing it. He’d been watching just the same since they’d picked up their latest member. He knew something had stirred up Doumeki’s long held suspicions about Watanuki’s abilities a few months ago just when they’d seemed to have been settling down - he didn’t know what and didn’t want to, it wasn’t his business, but it was taking far longer to sort itself out than it had any right to. The events surrounding Kohane’s arrival had made the whole thing flare up again to the point he could no longer even pretend to ignore it.
What complicated this one was that Doumeki was one of the few people who was immune to Fye’s brand of charm, even though usually that distance was his own defence because it was almost unheard of for anyone to leave enough of an impression on him to be able to get under his skin. Fye’s approach was going to be useless here. He loved a good mystery too much to be bothered by the practical implications of people who went around seeing ghosts the way it bothered Doumeki; and Kurogane too to an extent. Like Doumeki, he’d never been particularly pleased with the supernatural world that had been opening up beneath them since the April Fool arrived at their camp, though letting his second in command know there was someone else around who sympathised with his viewpoint was hardly going to be all it would take to get through to Doumeki on this. For the most part, Kurogane trusted Doumeki’s judgement second only to his own. He wasn’t the kind to balk at nothing, but he was unlikely to voice theories he was less than certain about either. There were a couple of things it could mean if Kohane was making Doumeki uncomfortable, but neither of them were good.
The crux of the matter was that Kurogane didn’t know what what it was going to take to fix this. Even now he was mostly content enough to trust that he’d have plenty more warning signs well before things got serious in any way that demanded his attention. It wasn’t his job to make them all get on as long as they behaved in the more general sense but the situation needed keeping an eye on at least - and a closer eye than usual.
It wouldn’t hurt to let Doumeki know he was keeping an eye on things either.
***
On the way out of the camp on their next hunting trip he broke their usual silence long enough to say, “You’ve still got the business from the ruined Complex on your mind.” It wasn’t a question, and Doumeki didn’t bother denying it, though it prompted a slight eyebrow raise, wondering where this was going to go.
“It isn’t over yet, is it?” he replied. “The other Complexes can’t ignore it. They’ll want to know why.”
“Probably,” said Kurogane. “But it won’t be our business unless we’re very unlucky.”
Doumeki cast a scathing look out into the distance - the direction something close to where the remains of the Complex lay, as Kurogane’s mental compass informed him after a moment to realign. “When we don’t have any answers, it’s hard to guess how unlucky we might be.”
“Especially when we’re hoarding one piece of the puzzle in our own camp?”
That got him Doumeki’s attention. “You think she fits somewhere important?” It sounded so obvious that the sentiment must have occurred to everyone since Kohane arrived, but up until now it had been unspoken taboo - hardly voiced aloud.
“The others say she sees ghosts too,” said Kurogane.
It wasn’t evident from Doumeki’s expression whether he’d already known this or not, but it didn’t surprise him greatly. “That’s three of them now.”
“Like they attract each other,” said Kurogane, agreeing with everything Doumeki wasn’t saying. It gave even someone as determinedly un-superstitious as him the uncomfortable sensation that forces unseen were pulling their strings, a sensation both unpleasant in its own right and unpleasantly familiar. “They’re a strange novelty for the likes of us to be collecting. And it’s unusual enough for us to be collecting lasting campmates at all.”
Doumeki seemed to consider this, probably running over the short list of more temporary camp members who’d appeared in the years he’d been there only to be removed from their numbers again, never for pleasant reasons. “There’s been no-one since me.”
“There was no-one before you who lasted either, not since the kids showed up, and we didn’t count as a gang before that,” Kurogane corrected him. “And you were the exception to begin with.”
It was only when Doumeki looked at him questioningly that it occurred to Kurogane that that idle statement needed some clarification. “I never mentioned that I met your grandfather,” he said, admitting the omission to himself as much as Doumeki. It seemed funny to be bringing it up now after all these years, but when the younger Doumeki had first shown up at their camp himself, he hadn’t made any mention of his grandfather or any other family, and Kurogane had found it appropriate to follow suit. If it wasn’t for the undeniable resemblance they shared he might have doubted any connection beyond a coincidence of timing.
Doumeki stopped altogether and frowned at him. “When?”
“A year before you joined us. You weren’t with him, but he mentioned you. Said you’d need somewhere to go in the near future.”
“Did he ask you to take me on?”
“That wasn’t the way he put it.” It was a bit long ago for Kurogane to remember exactly how he’d put it at all, just the general gist. “But he seemed to have an idea what was ahead.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not that I recall.” It hadn’t been a long conversation. The older Doumeki had appeared to know his own business to a level that didn’t invite questioning.
Doumeki looked thoughtful, but he didn’t have anymore questions, and the whole subject was dropped for the rest of the hunt, Kurogane not much the wiser but satisfied enough not to press things.
***
Parts of that conversation hung around the edges of Doumeki’s mind for the rest of the day. The discovery that Kurogane had met Haruka was strangely unstartling; calming even - it fit. It wasn’t likely Kurogane would have mentioned this to Watanuki - it wouldn’t be like him to let it slip out unintended, but it wasn’t impossible. The was the explanation he’d been looking for for what Watanuki had known ever since that day - a mundane way for him to hear about Haruka that required nothing of the supernatural at all.
And Doumeki didn’t believe it for a moment.
***
That evening, he cornered Watanuki in their shared room and stood, arms folded in front of the door, blocking the exit.
Watanuki tried to glare daggers at him, but there was a weakness to his posture that prevented it from being very convincing. “What do you want? I still have chores I should be…”
“No you don’t,” said Doumeki. “We need to talk.”
“Why?” Watanuki complained. “What would you…?”
“I’ll rephrase. You need to talk to me.”
“What about?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
Watanuki was clearly warring with the urge to yell, argue - just for the habit of it as much as for the need to get out of this conversation, but instead, something drained out of him and he gave in.
“Do you know what Kohane’s birthday is?” he asked, avoiding eye contact.
Doumeki blinked at the apparent non-sequitur, but since the answer was so obviously ‘no’ on his part, he stayed quiet and waited for Watanuki to explain wherever he might be going with this.
“April first,” said Watanuki. “The same as me. Sakura too. We’re all April Fools.” He gave a weak laugh. “It fits, doesn’t it? Anyone born on the day the whole world died spends their life seeing the dead. I always used to think I was the only one, but if that’s how it works there must be lots of people like me out there. Maybe hundreds!”
As an explanation for the supernatural, it was about as poetic as ‘he sees the land of the dead with his dead eye’ - and almost as easily rationalised aside, although Watanuki had dismissed the latter story out of hand when they first met, but was apparently new to this one. “I don’t recall ever hearing of any other April Fools.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that they’re like Sakura and Kohane and can only see but not hear, or they’re not stupid enough to get famous.” Watanuki gave him another defeated attempt at a glare. “Do you know what really happened to Kohane’s Complex? You remember what happened when you found me - you saw what was left. It was the same - they hurt Kohane and the ghosts all went mad. I didn’t know it could even happen to anyone else, but it did - so much bigger and worse. It’s probably happened before too. It could happen again.”
Disturbing enough on its own, but Watanuki was only getting started.
“You can’t… you can’t just not believe in ghosts anymore, don’t you see? They’re real! I’ve never been the only one who sees them, and even if you can’t see them they can hurt you. There are so many and they’re everywhere, and if they get angry they can do terrible things. Real people have died and they never even realised they were in any danger until it was too late. I can’t make them not be real just by letting you be all… noncommittal when I talk about them. They’re still going to be there.”
“So you’re saying you need me to…” was as far as Doumeki got before Watanuki waved him back into silence again, his voice speeding up with every new sentence, the words all running together as they came tumbling out.
“But I get that it’s not that easy, alright? You can’t see them, you’ve just got to take my word for it when I tell you about them, and you know, I make mistakes. I probably make more mistakes than even I know. Ghosts lie and I’ve got no-one else to listen to what they’re saying and help me figure out when they’re not telling the truth. And that whole thing with your grandfather - I’m sorry about that, okay? I should have thought - I know people don’t like hearing about people they knew from me, but I was angry and I wasn’t even thinking.”
“What…?” Doumeki tried. This topic had come out of nowhere, but Watanuki ploughed on.
“It was stupid of me but I didn’t even wonder - I didn’t even realise you might not know whether he was dead!”
There was that desperate note of hysteria in Watanuki’s voice again - all too familiar. But just moments before when he’d been talking about the reality of the ghosts he’d sounded so sure of himself, and the change so fast over such a subject was almost more than Doumeki could take.
“But what do I know?” Watanuki went on, sounding genuinely miserable. “Maybe it wasn’t even really him. Maybe it was you great grandfather, or someone completely different just pretending to be him. There are so many ghosts that lie just to cause trouble - there are ones that change how they look just to make you think you’re seeing someone you know, and I’ve never even met your real grandfather so how would I know if it wasn’t one like that? Maybe I am wrong, maybe he’s not dead at all. And even if he is, I should never have made such a deal about it...”
This was who the April Fool had always been, Doumeki remembered sharply, with a moment of clarity that had been welling up for so long he had no excuse for being surprised by it - a boy-legend with a power everyone needed but no-one wanted, who they feared as much as they relied on. Who’d seen so many people die for possession of his ability that he barely even felt human to himself anymore, who was so used to being punished for everything he had no control over that he didn’t even fight it anymore. All he ever asked was that the next tragedy he was forced to witness might be smaller than the last.
He needed Doumeki’s acceptance so badly he’d make everything that stood in front of it his own fault. This was someone who didn’t even know how to ask for anything that was purely for himself.
“You seemed sure it was him when you first told me,” said Doumeki, as evenly as he could manage.
“Only because he looked like you and knew your name. But that doesn’t mean…”
“What did he say?”
Watanuki hesitated. “It was nothing important - nothing specific. He just… asked how I was dealing with you, and with the camp. Told me it was worth sticking out even though things weren’t looking good then. Apologised for not making you be less stubborn when you were a kid.” Details emerged as if being dragged out of him, one by one. “It sounded so good I didn’t even question it, but that was right in the middle of when you were gone and all the worst spirits came back. They hate you and they were going out of their way to cause trouble and I should have remembered that…”
“That was him.” Right then, Doumeki was more sure of that than any logic could justify.
“You don’t have to say that, you know,” Watanuki protested. “If he might still be alive it’s not going to help to believe that you’re getting messages from something only pretending to be his ghost.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Doumeki, firm enough that Watanuki couldn’t talk over him this time. Even he wasn’t good at this - making someone else understand something this important.
Watanuki looked at Doumeki hopelessly, shook his head and let out a weak laugh - somehow with just that sound managing to encapsulate the full stupidity of the thought that something that had been hanging over them ever since the subject first came up could be reduced to ‘doesn’t matter.’ “I don’t get you at all. First you’re mad I brought him up, now… what do you want me to do?”
“It doesn’t,” Doumeki repeated, for once not daring Watanuki to argue. After not being able to talk this out at all for so long now he had too many answers. “It…” he tried, and gave up on words with a soft growl of frustration; so tired of Watanuki’s sick attempts at compromise; tired of watching Watanuki wonder whether the person who’s trust he wanted the most could be trusted himself and whether he cared at all, and Doumeki just needed to settle the matter for both of them before everything went back to being more complicated than there was any need for.
Watanuki had spent most of the conversation avoiding eye contact, so when the hand landed on his shoulder he startled and looked up to find Doumeki’s solid presence suddenly very much inside his personal space. For that infinite moment when he realised what Doumeki was about to do he didn’t even seem to be breathing before Doumeki pulled him through the rest of the distance between them and kissed him. Not gently, there was a point that needed to be understood here.
Watanuki barely even got out a surprised gasp before he caught up, and the next instant he was kissing Doumeki back without the slightest hesitation, surprise or relief or whatever else he might have been feeling all lost in that first overwhelming surge. Neither of them quite knew how this was meant to work well enough to make it go as smoothly as it should have, but Watanuki seemed well beyond noticing and even Doumeki was only vaguely aware of anything remotely amiss. It was only a moment more before Watanuki’s arms were wrapping tight around his body, fingers tangling in the back of his shirt as if this strange new thing between them might escape him if he didn’t cling to it with everything he had. The need and determination was startling - if anything, Doumeki had underestimated where this would get him; and there was a light, empty feeling in his gut before he’d even finished that thought that made him feel almost selfish for having been given so much control over something Watanuki needed this badly.
It was several moments before Doumeki remembered how to pull away long enough to remove Watanuki’s glasses from where they’d begun to scrape uncomfortably on both their noses, confident that whatever else happened next his point had been understood.
“Is this going to upset them?” he asked, on a whim that was maybe something a bit more.
“…what?” was the barely stuttered response.
“The ghosts. Is it going to make them angry if I do this?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know,” said Watanuki, sounding breathless and catching up with him only slowly when it was still a bit early to be talking about this. “I haven’t… I don’t think so. I don’t see why, if you’re not hurting me…”
“It’ll do,” said Doumeki, and kissed him again, and for once, Watanuki didn’t argue, didn’t question, arms tightening again like that contact was still the only thing he trusted making this experience real.
For the rest of that night, even for a second or two strung together, he hardly dared let go.