—
Chapter Thirty Nine
Amaranthine
—
The door slowly closed behind Race.
The glistening white walls were less pristine than the shadows of the panel lines were dark. There was no light in their surfaces, none of the cheery glow that prompted Ren’s sighs and forced Tone to smile. The gloomy air seemed to seep out of every door and compartment like a mold, poisoning everything it made contact with.
Plopping down in front of the pile of clothes, Race slowly clawed through it, pulling out anything that was obviously far too small for her to have worn. A hint of purple caught her eye, and she drew it out from the base of the pile, looking at it with a cold expression before water finally escaped from her lids, wetting the front of the hoodie as she wrapped her arms around it and held it close.
—
Ren closed the car door with far more force than it required, making him flinch in response to how easily it moved. He was accustomed to old silver sedans, not the slick black coupe which by comparison felt like a concept car.
“We’re good.” He mumbled, setting a slim briefcase in the passenger seat which instantly disappeared. “I’ll have to come back some time soon.”
“Why?” Rook’s question felt alien, its authenticity missing during the days prior. “I mean, you got it all taken care of, right?”
“Yes and no.” Ren felt for the ignition to no avail, finally craning around the steering wheel and realized for not the first time that it had none. “The court is satisfied, but the police aren’t. I think they suspect some kind of foul play and aren’t satisfied with the story of him fooling around the stairwell. But they’re too busy trying to get their hands on that footage from the hotel to split their focus.”
“We need to find it first.” Rook’s eyes were empty, but Ren had to blink to assure himself they had not just flashed blue for a moment. “The longer we delay, the likelier it is someone’s going to get to it first and use it against us.”
“You’re not wrong.” Ren pulled out the key fob from his shirt pocket and started the car. “But… It’s way to soon for something like this. We need time to recover.”
Rook seemed like he wanted to say more, but he remained silent. Ren sighed as he slowly drifted out of the parallel parking space, the sentiment Rook’s wordless response carried all too clear to him.
“I want him back, too.”
—
“Hey, I’m back.”
Kohaku threw up a peace sign along with the most pitiful fake smile the world had ever witnessed as she entered through the sliding door, Bekko close at her heels. “Where’s Ren?”
“Shower.” Race mumbled.
Kohaku’s artificial smile disappeared as the air of the room became more apparent. Race was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring into a bag of clothes. Her mask was lying in the corner of the room, the scuffed portion of the wall indicating she had thrown it there.
Turning towards Tone, Kohaku got even less help in response. He was busy staring into the wall opposite the door, hands in his pockets, almost completely motionless. Bekko tapped her calf and made a gesture to move along, a nod of his head and a closing of his eyes trying to mask the danger he was anticipating.
“Whatcha need?” Rook floated up from under the extended counter, the haniwa he rested on patched with what was in all likelihood far too little tape. “Ren probably won’t be too much longer, if you need to talk to him.”
“It’s fine, I just…” Kohaku looked around despondently before flopping her hand against her thigh with noticeable force. “I’m just so sick of dad lately. He just- I mean, Makuei. I’m so ticked off every time I try to tell him anything. It’s always ‘I know what’s best, Kohaku’ and ‘Don’t go making these kind of connections’ and stuff. Where was all this ‘fatherly advice’ for my entire life that now he thinks I care about his opinion?”
“What’s he doing now?”
Kohaku did a slight double take, more annoyed than anything else at how Rook drove the point. “He’s saying I need to stop coming here because you guys are ‘trouble’. As if the entire yakuza wasn’t trouble before all this, and I didn’t have any choice about attending every single stupid-”
Bekko’s presence by the door caught her attention, and a slightly worried glance was sent in his direction. He looked about awkwardly before returning a comical shrug.
“Well, I just… I think it’s time I stopped depending on him for everything.” She walked to the wall aside Ren’s door and leaned against it. “I’ve got enough money that I could travel pretty much anywhere I want to, I just… I wanted to extend the offer to you guys, if you wanted to come with. Norway, America, the U.S. I mean, Spain, Italy, France-”
“Yeeuck.” Rook made the best possible attempt at a gagging motion that he could as a mask.
“What’s wrong with France??” Kohaku folded her arms across her chest, and Rook internally smiled at her usual attitude taking the opportunity to assert itself.
“I can’t smoke, so I wouldn’t fit in that well.” Rook attempted to lean against the wall, but the motion was too bizarre and he gave it up. “That’s definitely a question for Ren. We’re kind of bound by our promise to defeat the yakuza though, so I don’t think we’ll have the option until that happens.”
“Well,” Kohaku huffed, rolling her eyes. “With Koi Blood gone I don’t see how you have any other attachments to this place.”
Her face fell as the last words exited her mouth. The temperature seemed to drop as the air in the room suddenly changed, Bekko’s blatant grimace making it abundantly clear her choice of words was exceptionally poor. After a moment of silence Rook slowly floated towards Race, who had shrunken down ever further in the meantime.
“I, uh…” Kohaku swallowed, her awkwardness competing with her melancholy as Bekko combined his grimace with a repeated cutting motion of his flat hand across his neck in an attempt to get her to stop. “Do you… Happen to know what, um… What his last- his, his last, uh…”
“His last words.” Race replied, her voice so weary it almost resembled an actual whisper for once. “The doctors said he came out of his coma for a brief moment right before he died. He said something they couldn’t understand but followed it up with ‘I forgive you.’”
“I guess that means all of us.”
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
—
He still processed the conversation. He still saw the white wall in front of him. He still felt the mechanical hum of the medical equipment many of the panels concealed, equipment that he had never seen and never had to use.
Equipment he failed to use.
The room was mostly quiet, but the noise in his head could not have been louder. It was the noise of a thousand scenes all fighting for dominance, forcing him back to past events where he could have done better. Should have done better.
“‘I forgive you.’”
—
“That’s not sugar free.” Tone’s eyes skimmed the ingredients list and grew more and more visibly appalled as he read.
“But it says sugar free right there.” Corey retorted, gesturing with his head to the top of the beverage. “Where’s the sugar in it?”
“Corey, aspartame is worse than sugar.” Tone turned the can around and shoved it in Corey’s face, tapping half of the ingredient list with his finger and obscuring the word he was trying to draw attention towards. “That stuff causes cancer. You’d lose all your hair and end up like me, except not nearly as good-looking.”
Corey raised an incredulous eyebrow at both claims. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a health nut?”
“Just recently, as a matter of fact.” Tone returned the beverage and pulled out three of the sugar-sweetened variety to Corey’s evident disappointment, as it meant he could only enjoy the delicious drink on occasion.
“Who said it?”
“You.” Tone smiled, ruffling Corey’s hair and prompting him to send an extremely careful punch at Tone’s side. “Let’s grab some more of basket case’s chocolate and we can get out of here.”
“Could we shop here when the store is actually open?” Corey inquired, hoping there was some way Tone could hide his mask and not look immensely stupid by doing so.
“Of course not.” Tone jingled a set of keys in his hand, looking down at Corey with a smirk. “Then we wouldn’t be able to rearrange all the fish carts and make Ren go crazy.”
BANG
“Listen.”
Tone lazily rolled his head around on his neck until his eyes happened to land on Ren again. “Mm?”
“Corey has to go to school. That’s the law.” Ren stared hard at Tone’s disinterested eyes, which broke contact to perform a dramatic roll. “He’s not fifteen for a while now, and we don’t have the means to homeschool even if we could. You have to pick a school.”
“I was homeschooled, and I ended up perfectly fine.” Tone flopped his still crossed arms to emphasize how fine he was. “Besides, according to the government, he doesn’t technically exist, so how could they arrest you for it?”
“Listen.” Ren gripped the bridge of his nose until the bone started to ache. “We’re not having this discussion right now. You want to look into that sort of thing when I’m not at risk of going to jail, that’s fine. But for now, just find a school please.”
Tone sighed as best he could with the mask in the way. “Okay, boss. I’ll take a look around. But I reserve the right to final say with anything regarding the school or his attending.”
“That’s what I want.” Ren leaned forward and patted Tone’s shoulder. “I know your standards. You won’t settle for anything but the best.”
BANG
“For the love of…”
Race looked back over her shoulder at Tone with a perfectly flat expression. “Can’t think of anything to love?”
“Why do I hear Corey selling a buick?” Tone grumbled, suspecting he already knew the answer.
“It means throwing up.” Ren replied, saving Race’s face from being forever locked in confusion. “I think we ought to start making him meals to take to school. That food barely meets its own definition, and it digests about as well as a rock.”
“It’s the stomach that digests.” Tone turned towards the fridge, not giving Ren any opportunity to retort to his pedantic snark. “I’m gonna need ginger ale for him when he’s through. You might want to-”
“-slow down on the way back…” Tone trailed off as Race abruptly disappeared, the door slowly rolling back into place. “Thanks for taking this one. I don’t want to think about what would happen if I gagged a bit too much from that.”
Ren gave a half smile and a nod as he pushed his sleeves further up his elbows and disappeared back into the restroom. Tone sunk down into the computer chair, folding his fingers and staring despondently at the floor as the retching noises continued.
BANG
A gloved hand was extended, but as Corey reached out to meet the handshake it faltered, flinching away slightly from the incoming hand. Corey responded by gently grabbing Tone’s wrist and keeping his hand still long enough to complete the gesture.
“I’m tired.” He said, trying to keep his face as flat and cold as possible to prevent any emotion from slipping through. “Could I rest at your home for a while? Just long enough for me to…”
Tone stepped forward and knelt down to match Corey’s height, placing his hands on his shoulders as he tried to fight back a fresh wave of tears. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. That’s a promise, kid.”
Red dots were strewn across Kohaku’s face.
That was the first thing that entered Tone’s mind, followed closely by the realization that it was Kohaku, and not the wall, he had missed by an inch. His eyes were almost as wide as hers, both staring at the other in shock, her background consisting of more red dots scattered across the wall she leaned against.
Rook glanced back at the wall which he now floated aside. It had splintering cracks stretching out in every direction, almost touching the ceiling, and the center was repainted with an artistic splattering of crimson which ran down in heavy droplets to the floor. Race had fallen over and now stared up at Tone’s back. Bekko silently returned a half-drawn handgun to his jacket pocket.
Tone’s hunched and tense posture slowly and shakily drew itself back to full height, towering over the occupants of the room with his presence. His eyes remained locked on Kohaku until, with a lowering of his brows, he abruptly turned and disappeared out through the door, which slowly opened for him.
Silence ruled in the apartment for nearly a minute, with Race being the first to realize the sound of running water had also disappeared. As her gaze drew towards the restroom door, it violently swung open, a visibly moist Ren rushing out while struggling into a white t-shirt. “Wait here, everybody wait here.”
“Ren?” Kohaku looked up at him, water having built up under her eyelids during the silence and finally spilling over as she spoke.
“I’m on it, everybody stay p-PUT!!” He yelped as his bare feet slipped on the apartment floor, instinctively slamming his palm into Bekko’s scalp to use him as leverage as he scrambled out the open doorway. “Don’t worry!”
—
Ren was beginning to worry.
For Tone, yes, but also for his poor feet.
Having made the decision to forego the automobile in his pursuit of the Wild Mask meant walking for an innumerable amount of blocks through the city with no shoes on, and his soles felt like they were about to start bleeding as badly as Tone’s hand was. Still, he hopped yet another fence and grimaced as he hit the concrete hard instead of trying to find a safe way down, unwilling to lose even a second of progress.
A silhouette sat at the edge of the concrete, motionless, staring at the water as it slowly crept towards him before receding over and over. Ren slowly stepped forwards, his hands in his pockets, the cold concrete burning against his skin. This was Haneda International Airport, but Ren knew it by another name, one that he learned from Tone years ago.
It was the place that Hie died.
For a while the two stared out across the ocean, Ren standing in the shadow and Tone illuminated by moonlight. His sleeve had been rolled up, and his opposite hand held a black fabric brace, previously concealing the network of twisted, black wounds running through his forearm, still just as charred and glowing red beneath the cracks as the day of the fire. The water beneath Tone’s legs occasionally rippled as crimson droplets fell, the world demanding tears in any form.
“I shall miss him when the flowers come, in the garden where he played;”
“I shall miss him more by the fireside, when the flowers have all decayed.”
“I shall see his tops, and his empty chair, and the horse he used to ride;”
“And they will speak with a silent speech-”
“Tone.”
Ren’s voice was strong, but he could not hide the wavering tremble in his throat. “I knew what Corey said. Race told me the doctors heard him perfectly; she was obeying my instructions to keep it from you.”
Tone’s head lowered with the slowest of motions as tears finally found their escape across the outside of his mask, running down the smoothed divisions of metal with mechanical perfection. He did not turn away as Ren softly seated by his side, the silence stretching on until the universe found it impossible to withstand.
“Do you know when Corey died?”
Ren fidgeted in his seat. He knew the question was rhetorical, and his last attempt at responding to Tone had been answered with intolerable silence. Another stretch of time unbroken passed between the pair, ending with grace as Tone slowly drew and released an unfathomably long breath that swept the universe away with it.
“Right now.”
Gently returning the brace to his forearm, Tone methodically secured it in place before covering his arm again with the two heavy layers he wore. He drew his legs up over the edge he sat upon, slowly pulling himself back to his feet as Ren matched his speed standing up.
“And they will speak with a silent speech of the little boy that died.”
Tone sniffed at the cold, which eagerly rushed in as the pair stood and stared out across the water. The unbroken hand was pocketed; its battered counterpart hung in the bitter night air. “Let’s go home, Ren.”
He trudged off, pulling himself up and over the fence in deliberate fashion. Ren watched him for a moment, his teeth pressing together until they ached, the freezing air burning through the skin of his feet and into his bones. The bleeding hand he watched seemed to burn in the night, all fire and fury behind the knuckles that burst against the wall.
He couldn’t tell him.
Not yet.
—